A story about Eddie, his garden gnome and a chook.
Eddie was fuming! If anyone had been passing him by at that point, they would have been scorched from the steam bursting from his ears. His face was glowing ambers and the veins in his neck was jumping up from the skin. He kept muttering, ‘I can’t believe he said that!’ and flailing his arms wildly about his head. He paced from one side of his small front lawn to the other, and back again – detouring on one turn to kick a garden gnome. The gnome would miss his head, but Eddie would not miss the gnome. He had groaned when his Gran had proudly gifted it to him, and his wife feigned delight and brought it home. But now, he felt a sense of satisfaction seeing it sailing through the air before cracking on the driveway.
As Eddie continued to build to hysteria, neighbours on both sides were peeking through their curtains. Mrs Joanne Lusk was tut-tutting at the behaviour, which she would term improper but was suddenly struck with terror as she noticed the dust in her lacey curtains. She wondered at her carelessness as not washing them sooner. She immediately began to take them down, while on the other side of the street the Miller’s son, was for the first time that day, was not glued to the action on his video games, but rather the action on the street.
Eddie continued to mutter, ‘I can’t believe he said that!’ His words were beginning to slur together, and his arms were slowly returning to his side. And then he sat in the middle of the grass and attempted to re-gather his breath. He breathed in quite deliberately and then out quite deliberately. He then seized a dandelion which was growing to his left and scrunched it up into a little ball before flicking it away. He was all of a sudden very aware that he needed to mow his lawns and conscious of the eyes all around him.
With her curtains now removed, Eddie could quite clearly see Mrs Joanne Lusk, whose lights were always turned on. In looking at her quite clearly, he could quite clearly see her shaking her head in disapproval. Circling his gaze, he then rested on the Miller’s kid. His bitterness took a new target as he chuckled at the kid trying to duck out of sight, seemingly unaware that his heft was impossible to move. Eddie rose to his feet, aware of his growing audience, and once again called out, ‘I can’t believe he said that!’ and then he went to his front door, wiped his feet to remove the evening dew and went inside and sat on the couch.
Eddie wife, Leanne, emerged from the kitchen and wondered, ‘Everything all right love? Dinner in ten’. Eddie looked up and, in his cheesiest manner, offered his usual retort, ‘What’s cookin’ Good Lookin’?’ Leanne went back to the kitchen, fussing about the chook in the oven and the green beans she’d overcooked. Meanwhile, Eddie paused. Curiously, he couldn’t remember what he had said. He knew he’d said something, but it completely escaped him now. He shrugged and turned the nightly news on.
Across the road, the heavy-set young man had returned to his video games, and Mrs Joanne Lusk was buried inside on laundry, slowly starting to hand-scrub her lace curtains. She continued to tut-tut and reflected on the spectacle her neighbour had put on, muttering to herself, ‘I can’t believe he said that’, picking up the cadence of Eddie’s delivery and wondering to herself what it possibly was that he could have said!
Eddie though, said nothing more on his absurd mutterings, the subject of which he was now oblivious to, instead, he chose only to comment on just how well seasoned the chicken was. Both Leanne and Eddie enjoyed a lovely meal, and as for the gnome - it's broken shards which splayed across the driveway would mount their revenge, as it prepared to puncture Eddie's tyres the following morning.