Email from my brother: 'I can’t tell if you’re angry now either…'


Hi Fay,

I read today that you are now sans eyebrows.  I looked up what you need eyebrows for and apparently they supposed to keep sweat, rain and debris out of your eyes and help convey emotions like anger and surprise.  So what’s going to happen when next time you go out and are surprised and angry that it’s raining?

This week we finally had the shutters fitted into our new bathroom.  After starting it four or five months ago it’s finally finished.  I only mention them because they old guy who turned up to fit them rang to say he was on his way and then next thing I know I hear a knock at the back door, get up to answer it and he’s already in the house saying “Hello Mark”.  That’s right he was in the house.  I’ve seen so many people coming for quotes or installing stuff that I’ve lost track of who’s who and I seemed to remember him from when he came to measure up for the shutters in the first place.  This lead me to wonder if he was on vampire rules where once you get invited into a home you can come and go and you please.   No really I did ponder if he was a vampire for a few minutes.  I soon realised that you can’t really be a vampire if you’re installing shutters for a living and driving around in a Hyundai iLoad during the day time.  Anything window related as a cover story for the daylight allergic is just sh*t planning.  “Let me just measure this window,” opens curtains, “aaaarrrrggggh!”.  If he was a vampire he needed to be in the night time security light business.  The shutters look really good now though.  Juliette said when she got home that it was the saleswoman who measured up for the shutters so it must have been the first time I’d met this guy.  Vampire rules my arse.

This week I bought a new phone because my old one liked to save up all the text messages and deliver them in one go.  It was the Postman Pat of mobile phones.  I’d suddenly get four e-mails from Juliette in the space of twenty seconds saying “Can you buy some bread?”, “Have you bought the bread?”, “Do you want me buy the bread?” , “What’s the deal with the non-bread buying?”.  First time it happened I wondered if she thought I was like Superman or something.  Come on, it’s been 45 seconds, where’s my Kingsmill Oatiliscious?   It also liked to take messages instead of actually ringing and letting me take the call.  I’d get a message saying I’d missed a call at so-and-so time that was always, and I mean always, one minute ago.  One minute ago was usually me sitting on the toilet with the phone in my hand wondering why someone hadn’t gotten back to me.  Mind you if I was on the toilet maybe the old phone was doing me a favour.

So I went into a random store looking to get a cheap as chips basic phone and came out with a phone worth three times what I was going to pay for it.  Luckily it was on offer for my price range and I had to ask a salesperson to verbally confirm the knock down price as knowing my luck I’d go up to the counter and find out I’d be buying a cover for an expense phone or a lanyard for hanging the phone around my neck or something rather than the phone itself.  Then I’d have to make up some story to cover my stupidity and the reason why I would actually rather not buy a twenty-kick-arse-ringtone package or what-not for a phone I didn’t own.  So I asked if the offer was true and it did actually cover the cost of the phone and the salesperson went through the whole thing in a slow voice, nodding after each feature and looking over my shoulder to see if my carer was around.

The new phone is brilliant.  It’s got a touch screen, takes photos, videos, plays back video, surfs the internet and does basically everything that phones have done for a few years now while I’ve been struggling with my old phone.  I mean my old phone when you typed a text message had the hash key open up a default option to change the language you were typing in.  So I’d be typing a text, hit the hash key by accident and end up writing gibberish in Mandarin.  Who thought that feature was needed?  I can’t even think who’d need that feature.  It’s a text message, people switch languages when they don’t want other people overhearing, no one overhears a text message.  Come on.  Chi-se wo le!

Anyway, your eyebrows, you’re better off without them.  Mine look like they’ve been drawn on with a Magic Marker and as I get older they get bushier.  So you’re best rid of yours.  My final words on this are if your eyebrows don’t grow back …. (pause to let reader know that eyebrows are needed to signal anger and surprise) …  don’t … (pause for joke)  … be surprised.

I can’t tell if you’re angry now either…

Lot’s of love,
Mark xxx

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I'm holding my eyebrow less head in my hands, groaning just a little bit. But as always.....

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