Under the Duvet: Notes on High Heels, Movie Deals, Wagon Wheels, Shoes, Reviews, Having the Blues, Builders, Babies, Families and Other Calamities by Keyes Marian

Author:Keyes, Marian [Keyes, Marian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Essays, Short Stories (single author), Writing, Romance, Biography, Humour, Humor, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780141905556
Amazon: B002RI9SA6
Goodreads: 11263119
Publisher: ePenguin
Published: 2001-10-25T07:00:00+00:00

Get that Dustbin out of my Relationship Corner

Feng Shui – sure, haven’t I enough to worry about! You can’t open a magazine or turn on the radio without hearing all sorts of advice about the relationship sectors and prosperity corners of your home. In China they take it very seriously. On the telly the other day there was a programme about an enormous luxury block of apartments that’s just been built in Hong Kong. But there’s a huge, gaping hole, the size of four flats, in the middle of it. Not, you may be surprised to hear, as the result of shoddy workmanship, but put there deliberately. The reason: so that the ‘Ch’i’ – that’s energy to the likes of you or me – can flow through the hole from the mountains to the town.

Now, under normal circumstances, I’d be an ideal candidate for the whole Feng Shui malarkey – racing out to buy a sackful of wind chimes, painting my front door red or moving my entire flat four degrees to the south as required. I’m very gullible when it comes to signs and portents and presentiments and omens. I love the idea that you can heal your life by doing something outside of yourself. To that end, I have subliminal self-help tapes. I don’t listen to them, mind, but I have them. I hold with aromatherapy. I know someone who had a chakra healing done and I wanted one too. I’ve had my aura read and I have plenty of truck with horoscopes and tarot readers.

But with Feng Shui they’ve just pushed me too far. It’s one worry too many in a world where they’re always inventing new things for me to fret about. And I usually do my best to obey – I’ve stopped drinking tap water, I don’t go out in the sun without being smothered in Factor Eighty, I feel guilty for drinking fizzy drinks because they allegedly cause cellulite, I don’t take my make-up off with toilet paper because it has wood shavings in it, I rarely brush my hair when it’s wet and I’ve stopped my daily asbestos rub.

But I’ve tried to close my ears and eyes to Feng Shui, because the nightmare that is my new house trundles on (sorry if I’m boring you), and I’ve enough tangible worries concerning it. Like, will the plumber ever come back to fix the shower? Or the fact that the paint looked like a lovely mature shade of clarety red on the chart, but as soon as I’d slapped it on to the shelves, it mutated into Barbie pink. Clashing so badly with the red couch that they go for each other regularly in hand-to-hand combat and have to be separated.

Right now, I’ve no time, energy or money to deal with intangible worries about the house. Hauntings, bad ley-lines, black streams etc. will have to wait a while. Nevertheless, I’ve managed to pick up enough about Feng Shui to feel very edgy. If I don’t want to shag up my life, it’s a veritable minefield of dos and don’ts, some of them heavy-duty.

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