They’re calling me Max the Minder down our street.
Why? Because I recently became that overwrought human being, the home minder for those away on holidays the sad stayput who waters other people’s potplants, who presides over pet food, who is savaged by goldfish while the care- free owners are living it up from Semaphore to the Gold Coast.
How I became a day-and- night water carrier, a feeder of fins, a dispenser of sustenance for incorrigible canines and scratching cats is a dark chronicle indeed.
To say nothing of a flowerbed guardian and a slave to the awful automatic watering system that some people install to leap from the lawn clean under one’s groin in the most awful and terrifying gushing.
First it was the neighbours who were taking an early holiday and who wanted to avoid the rush.
They said: “We wondered if you’d feed Centurion for us.” They indicated their guard
dog, one of those Teutonic breeds who likes to sit down quietly with your arm in his mouth to reassure himself that you aren’t a housebreaker or a member of the Secret Service.
“Well, this place where we’re going doesn’t take dogs,” they said, jiggling and avoiding my eyes, “so Centurion will have the run of the yard and just see that he has his meaty chunks and, if he does take your arm in play, stay there quietly even if it takes most of the evening.”
Then there was their cat, Dulcimer, a kind of mobile mat of indiscernible breed as fat as butter and as torpid as potatoes.
They said: “Dulcimer has milk and a little bit of chicken but no bones. If he strops your leg stay still because his claws haven’t been trimmed by the vet.”
And there were special crumbs for Moby Dick, the goldfish, splashing and spouting in his bubbling aquarium (“Make sure he is getting oxygen.”)
They handed me the house key with urgent reminders about checking the windows and keeping away from the deep freeze.
Then suddenly their car doors slammed and they were gone, leaving me with Centurion, Dulcimer and the aquatic creature, finning its way through its bubbling oxygen and over its slimy weeds.
Finally I reached home after a particularly trying hour with Centurion going walkies with my arm and Dulcimer stropping my left shin.
I screamed at Moby Dick: “Give me trouble and you’ll finish as fish fingers.”
No wonder he went green about the gills.
Alas, no sooner had I flung myself into my armchair when one of those horrible “Yoohoos” at the door caused my blood pressure to rise like a bad morning on Mount St Helens.
Another set of neighbours poured in, thrusting a packet of my favourite biscuits upon me and smoothing my forehead with soggy caramel cake. It meant only one thing.
They wanted their place minded too.
Their situation was arboreal and horticultural—complicated notes about watering, coddling the potplants and adjusting nozzles in that holy of holies, the fernery. Then there was the explanation of their sunken lawn-watering system which left me with sunken sockets in the first five minutes.
My wife spoke the terrible inevitable words: “I’ll see that Max does it.”
I shan’t tell you of the nightmare of the next few days. But then again why should you be spared!
Centurion removed my left shoe and departed into the undergrowth to his terrible lair. Sometimes I fed the plants and watered the cat. I was struck on the head by a hanging fern. The complicated lawn-watering system kept going off in a geyser of technology.
Then the neighbours began ringing from their various holiday resorts.
“How’s Centurion?”
“Well, he was OK last time I rang the dogs’ home.”
Gasping at the other end of the line.
“And the cat?”
“Well, you can’t stop a steam roller but he felt nothing and he’s flatter than a place mat. Oh, and Moby Dick? Well, before Dulcimer went to higher things he put a catspaw into the water to test the oxygen and Moby Dick just happened by and he won’t be needing Oxygen anymore.”
The telephone hung up with a crash at the other end. I could imagine them throwing things into their cases and heading for home. It was a beautiful thought.
It was unfortunate that the other neighbours rang because I was now in a thoroughly nasty and untruthful mood.
They enquired anxiously about the orchids and the ferns and the dwelling and my reply came, admirably controlled but with the faintest hint of urgency.
“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I haven’t been able to get near them. Anyway, the fire brigade is just leaving now…
They were all home within the next few hours.
Nobody is speaking to me anymore and nobody is asking me to mind anything except, my own business!
Max Fatchen