Our perfect neighbours have invited us for a picnic and I want to scream
Our new neighbours are absolutely delightful. A beautiful family of six, their life from where I sit looks perfect – there isn’t a hair out of place.
No one ever screams or shouts or raises their voice. The children spend copious amounts of time outdoors helping their beautiful size 8 “Mamma”, as they call her, in the garden wearing little designer green wellies and wielding their own dainty tools. They eat blueberries as snacks: I’ve never so much as seen a packet of Monster Munch in their grasp.
This would all be fine and dandy if I were a retired woman pruning her roses and gazing admiringly at her new neighbours but alas, I am not.
Over the fence here we manage our very own band of children with a similar age range from 18 down to five-years-old, but we are not so elegant. Nor so quiet and mild-mannered – especially when the children are asked to help in the garden. When I suggest that one of our teens might like to put down their phone and pick up a spade, the screams of outrage can be heard in the next county.
“We don’t do screens between 11am and 6pm,” said my 5ft10 perfect neighbouress yesterday morning. I swear she missed her calling as a model-cum-nutritionist. “We don’t do refined sugar unless it’s the weekend and ideally then, of course, it’s dark chocolate – but candied orange is OK I guess,” she shrugged. “Did I mention that we’re popping to Umbria again – would you mind terribly feeding our cat?”
Again! They were there last month, with their pal the Contessa. I was steaming as I harrumphed into the kitchen and caught sight of my husband, who was eating crisps in a non-aristocratic manner.
He knew I had been talking to Mr and Mrs Perfect, and chose this moment to inform me, not quite looking me in the eye, that he had agreed to a picnic with The Perfects. In an hour’s time, in fact, at the bottom of their paddock.
What? “I’m not going,” I said, crossing my arms like a 10-year-old. “And it’s not a ‘paddock’,” I added, “because it hasn’t got a horse in it.” And, more importantly, we don’t have any food that we can take along to this impromptu déjeuner sur l’herbe.
“No problem,” my husband said, he had raided the snack draw for Penguin bars, nuts and crisps. Only he’d eaten the crisps.
Not good enough, as it turns out. Not good enough at all. The pseudo supermodel nutritionist next door had prepared the most extensively and comprehensively healthy picnic I have ever seen. There was no GM food in sight. And definitely no refined sugar. “Go on,” she urged, looking at me as if I had never heard of coconut water, “it’s all good for you.”
When we had spread our pitiful offerings on the table, chocolate bars and nuts in plastic packets, I winced. They looked so out of place next to home-cooked chicken and tomato couscous, buttered asparagus and lentil and feta salad. As I processed my embarrassment Mr Perfect eyed me for a moment, pushed his tortoiseshell sunglasses up his nose and said: “Penguin bars. Well I never. How positively quaint.”
We reviewed our performance that evening over a glass of tepid wine on the sofa. My husband looked more washed out than ever.
“It’s OK,” I said. “It’s OK that we’re not perfect. Can you imagine how tiring it must be to keep that up all the time?”
“Exhausting,” he agreed. “And ridiculous. Shall I get on the app for a takeaway curry?”
