Carpets, a parrot and a table.

Jake’s wife died a few years back; she was far too young and Jake wasn’t ready.

He mourned.

Friends told him not to take her clothes to the local charity shops as he would constantly see her walking around the neighbourhood.

So, eventually, he burned some and took the others across the country to shops far from his home.

In which he stayed.

Jake’s wife had been a manager and the house was as organised as her office.

Alone, Jake didn’t change a thing.

He became a bachelor.

He travelled one time to Arabia and took a woman with him, but their hosts separated them according to their equestrian skills and Jake ended up spending the week with millionaires who knew how to ride in the desert.

They returned to their separate ways.

Years passed.

He met Nelly.

Nelly came from a place that didn’t believe in the past and Jake fell in love with her.

Luckily Nelly fell in love with him.

She wasn’t a manager, she worked as an assistant in a pet shop.

She set a fish tank up in Jake’s house, a house that didn’t really have room for one.

Then she came home with a parrot that had a broken wing.

Once the wing was mended the parrot enjoyed flying about the house, which was getting crowded with bird seed and fish food bags.

The rabbits were settled outside in a run that travelled from back door to front and then a cat moved in.

He had been found with a broken leg, and Nelly was good at mending.

She mended broken animals and she mended broken Jake.

That’s when the tortoise turned up.

125 years old, and counting.

It hibernates in a big box under the kitchen table during the winter months and explore the neighbour’s gardens in the summer.

There is no room for your feet under the kitchen table.

But that’s ok, there is no room on the kitchen table to eat.

Jake drew a line at animals that crapped on the carpet.

Nelly removed the carpets.