The Guilt

Feel like I'm on Death Row waiting for a pardon. I'm actually waiting for the phone call. The one that berates me for wrapping up an obviously damaged football trophy in layers of newspaper and hiding it in a bag and handing it over through the coach's car window in a fake hurried kind of way before making a run for it. THAT phone call.

This is after spending hours and hours trying to repair the damn thing - until the dawn chorus had long segued into the general morningy sounds. I got a good colour match with black glass paint and white pigment but it took several experiments with several resin-y glues. None of which worked. Quick drying (which it wasn't) polyfilla was the last mix. And it still looked totally crap. All the time I had a pack of perfect-for-the-job Milliput sitting there but I had convinced myself it would be too rough texturally and not sticky enough. No. Cos of course pollyfilla is perfectly smooth and sticky. NO IT ISN'T. But once I'd started on my journey of no end, I stuck with it. Hunched over the kitchen counter (so confident I didn't even sit at a table), I pressed the Repeat button and replayed my mistake over and over until I could could not stand up straight again. Until I heard the mocking birds. Until I needed to reach the sweetie tin obviously. (Mind over matter that.)

Anyway............The Guilt is now burrowing into my innermost pea of decency. The one I had buried in nonchalant mattress after mattress just to survive this cruel and crazy world. What shall I do now? Like Macbeth I spent all day yesterday scrubbing and scratching at my villainous hands to remove the traces of black stuff but I turn around and it's everywhere I look - the kitchen counter, the tap, the tea towel - The Evidence of my crime! I can't sleep! I can't look into my children's eyes! Eating's not been a problem funnily enough.......

Of course I should just ring him up, apologise and offer to buy a new plinth. That would be the adult thing to do.

But I've left it too late now - the hopeless attempt at mending just shows my true dishonest nature. I couldn't explain that away now I've gone and done it could I. So I am left to suffer the agonies.

But if you could see me now - surrounded in filth and fighting siblings, no hope of ever reclaiming any authority or table space again, not a chance of a quiet moment for the next 20 years, infested with rodents and insects as big - AND slugs, back-ache, head-ache, bum-ache, face-ache.......... AND I have to go to Tesco's in a minute with all 4 brats...... couldn't you find it in your heart to over-look a little tiny teeny itsy bitsy witsy micro nano spot of deceit? Surely this is punishment enough? It's a life's sentence for gods' sake!!!! I'm throwing myself on your mercy............

I don't know. Mitigating circumstances...... What came first? The punishment or the crime? It's a long- running debate.

**Hey I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived!**