"Ooh, I don't know, Mabel, I'm not sure I can stand up much longer!"
Whoever heard of a house being drunk?
Actually all the Polzeath houses were, today. It was because of that painter. It wasn't that he couldn't draw properly, it was that he didn't choose to. At least so Mabel, and Ethel, and Enid - and even Hepzibah, who wasn't allowed to have opinions - had decided. The nerve of him.
"He says he - hic - can sell 'em better better if all the lines are funny," Enid grumbled. "Sell us. Doesn't stop to think how we might feel, does he? Respectable cottage like me...ooh, he's making me feel so dizzy I might be sick!"
"Control yourself, dear. Look! Rescue! There's a grockle with a camera coming! Yes, he's pointing it at us. Any minute now there'll be a proper picture of us as we really are!"
As the tourist took his carefully composed shot, the houses straightened, their rooflines settled, their doors and windows became respectably symmetrical. A sigh of relief swept through the street - even if most people would have taken it for a stray puff of wind.
Bloody painters and their stupid "creative ideas" - they shouldn't be allowed!
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