Dippy Bit

I slice the top off my soft-boiled breakfast egg and watch as the little crackly bits start to cave in. But its a start-stop moment.  Most of the cracklies find themselves held back by a sticky membrane.

Have the cracklies been saved from a great fall into a disaster zone, or have they been captured, like fish in a net? Are they gasping, desperate for just one taste of runny egg yolk – one little sip before they die?

Will my house, stuck up here on this windswept hill, have its roof sliced off by a violent gust? Will just a few of the chips of red bricks cave into the bedrooms, fall through the en-suites, and end up swimming around in the bleach of a mop-bucket, or the grimy water of an abandoned bath-time.

And, will the rest bricks linger, held back from falling into the valley, by a plaster-board membrane. Did the Bovis builders cut costs with stick-on half bricks, like the stick-on sheets of tiles in my bathroom?

And, over time, will the membranes give up the fight. Will the by-then-empty eggshell collapse onto my kitchen table, and then be wiped up and disposed of in the compost heap?

Will the plasterboard let go of its facade and watch the no-longer-sticky-backed bricks parachute down the valley and go for a skinny dip in the River Stour?

Will there be a cloth large enough to wipe up the spillage? Where will I live when my house has been disposed of?

Anxious, I boil another egg, empty out its contents and make the necessary arrangements for moving in.

Copyright owned by Jay Cool, March 2019

Images from Pixabay.com