Following yesterday’s revelation that the decorating is now finished, you may think that at least two rooms in the house are clean and tidy (assuming you don’t include the cat in this statement as wherever it sits, it will make any area will look shabby), but you’d be wrong.

    The reasons for this…the wife and mother-in-law.

    I don’t know if this is indicative of women in general or just Mrs. Snowman and her mother but something seems to snap in the pre-frontal lobe area of their brain when they find themselves in an uncluttered area.

    Having completed the decorating I cleaned the rooms, vacuumed the carpet and tidied everything in sight. The rooms were absolutely pristine and I looked forward to both women massaging my ego with a barrage of compliments on how nice it was to relax in such a lovely room. Wife and mother-in-law duly arrived home and plonked themselves down in front of the television while I went out for half an hour to the shops, straightening a picture by a fraction of an inch as I left the sitting room.

    The sight that greeted me on returning was not one I entirely expected.

    Two weeks ago I carefully packed up all the crap from both rooms, stacked it in boxes and found temporary storage in a spare bedroom before hoping to find it a longer-term home at the local dump.

    Mrs. Snowman obviously had other ideas and, with the assistance of her mother, had carted it all back down again and was unpacking it in the middle of the floor. Not only that but a completely new pile of crap had mysteriously appeared next to the chair where she was previously sitting.

    Admittedly, I have several boxes of items stashed in the attic that I’ve collected over the years and they contain the usual male stuff: poker magazines, mementoes of rock concerts, clothing that will be back in fashion at some time, etc. etc. But there are two significant points here. Firstly, (as all males will appreciate) everything saved is vitally important and secondly they are all sensibly stored away.

    But as I stood watching in disbelief the mountain that was developing before my eyes I had to ask myself what possible reasons there could be for retaining some of the paraphernalia.

    Why would anyone want to keep an out of date phone card, a selection of three-year old clothing catalogues and pair of sunglasses with one lens missing?

    Then it hit me.

    Serial killers usually keep trophies of their victims.

    Of course, I’m not saying for one moment that Mrs. Snowman counts multiple homicide amongst her hobbies but her mother is a different matter altogether. It would certainly go some way to explaining why she’s so keen on forensic documentaries and has such a wide and varied collection of kitchen knives.

    From the look on her face I’m fitting wing mirrors to my baseball cap and sleeping in the car for the next couple of days.

    I might as well have worn the baseball cap over my eyes when it came to the poker today. The furthest I got was the top two hundred in the $250 game but busted out within the first ten minutes of the other two. However, tonight I’ve got a secret weapon that I shall prime ready for tomorrows games: a strategy book.

    There was another embarrassing incident that I should reveal to you. While I was having a little doze this evening, the cat sneaked up and bit me on the ankle. I know it was the cat and not the wife as: 1. The bite radius was smaller than hers and 2. There was white paint in the puncture marks.

Starting bank:  $0