My pony’s shrunk; my car’s rubbish and you hate me!

Apparently my biggest and most heinous offence was simply waking up this morning. Today I was unable to lie in bed, because of the noise from whatever poor animal my daughter’s cat was murdering. Usually the abuse begins after I’ve come downstairs and waded through the rubbish with which my offspring has littered the kitchen and house in her continuing attempts to find something respectable to wear. Any attempt to discover which particular cosmic law prevents her from putting anything away is usually met with a haughty sniff of disdain. My first task was to rescue my cup and from whatever she hasn’t spilt, broken, lost, spoilt or thrown away and attempt to make myself some tea.

    'Well. What‘re you gonna do about it?’

    ‘What, the pony, the car or the hating part?’

    I really didn’t need this today. I’ve worked what feels like a thousand hours this week in the tropical heatwave that afflicts us once a decade, and nearly been slaughtered on my motorbike three times - and that was just yesterday, but the worst, positively the absolute worstest, (using my daughter’s favourite word) was emerging from my bed to find no milk, no tea, and that the spawn of hell had spread my muesli in the back garden in the hope of snaring some foolish bird looking for a snack, only to become a snack itself for the feline from hell.

    ‘Louis (the pony) has shrunk!’ My attempts to calm her with the news that we all shrink as we get older is met with disdain, since aforementioned nag is only 16 years old and therefore barely middle aged. The car would be fine if she actually ever washed it, and no I didn’t hate her but did wish she’d stop waving her new laptop about – you know the one, thin enough to shave with, or in my case decapitate me.

   ‘I’m going to the yard.’ She informed the entire street, telling me with a barely suppressed snarl that things had better be different on her return. I considered asking her to buy some tea on her way back but then remembered that the same shop also sells rat poison and decided to settle for coffee, which is only for visitors since we don’t drink it, and after being in the jug for about five years will probably kill me, anyway.

    Seems like a fair deal in comparison.

   I've subsequently learnt from my daughter, frothing at the mouth in outrage, that Louis is actually 24 years old, but apparently still a sprightly youth compared to this old git.
    Her words, not mine.