Temporary Bachelor

My wife is currently enjoying a stay in a local resort, also known as the East Surrey Hospital.  Don't panic, she's doing all right, and my plans to write another scathing article about the NHS have been dampened by the pleasantness and competence of the staff.  (The NHS is still a national disgrace, but they do have some very nice people working for them.)

While she's in there, however, she is not here, and I suddenly find myself, for the first time since setting foot on these shores, unsupervised in Britain.  It's been a few years since I've been on my own but the old, bad habits are quickly taking over--you know, staying up past my bedtime, visiting dodgy websites, running with scissors.  I think men in general, and myself in particular, aren't capable of doing anything really constructive unless someone is keeping an eye on them.  Left on our own, we're more likely to engage in too much drinking, too much smoking and too much trashy television than, for example, home improvement, laundry or finishing up that novel.

The thing I am finding the most joy in, however, is being a slacker where closing doors is concerned.

My wife is a door-closer.  Whenever we go out, she closes all the doors to all the rooms in the flat.  
 
For safety's sake.

Now, the bathroom door I can agree with.  You never know when the toilet is going to explode and send searing shards of porcelain projectiles through the front wall and into the courtyard, but I can't imagine anything spontaneously combusting in the bedrooms.

My wife always counters with logic that only she can understand.

"If there is a fire, a closed door can give you ten extra minutes to get out."

"But we're going out.  If there's a fire, we won't be here!"

"It's still a good idea."

So the doors remain closed all day while we're at work, and all evening if we go out.  But these days, reckless scamp that I am, the doors are staying open when the flat is empty.  I wonder if this allows the laundry--which by now should be taking on a life of its own--to run riot through the hall and into the living room, perhaps stopping off at the kitchen for a sandwich along the way.

Despite the guilty pleasure I feel in exercising this power, I do harbour a dark fear that I'll come home some evening to a smoking ruin where our block of flats used to be.  The firemen will be wandering around packing away hoses and ladders and all of my neighbours will be standing, forlorn and desolate, in the courtyard, their eyes upon me as the head fireman says to me:

"We would have been able to save the building but somebody left their doors open and the fire spread too quickly.  You wouldn't have any idea who that might be, would you?"

Maybe, on my way up to Surrey this evening, I'll swing by the flat and close the doors.  For safety's sake.

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