Country Living – A right royal stoush

Being the eternal male chauvinist, my husband once said to me, “you are the boss of the home and the yard and I am the boss of everything else”. Excellent, I thought, I can be the queen of my own little castle and I can leave him to be the king of all his land. That was until one day when ‘bedroom warfare’ broke out, and this imposter masquerading as my king decided to infiltrate some of the surface area in my pretty pink bedroom with brightly-coloured cast iron toy tractors and farm implements! And not content with having just a couple of these toys to sit neatly on his bedside table, this king was slowly but surely mustering an army of these ‘pink-décor-clashing-items’, and they were set to take over my castle! I mean, let’s face it, if I wanted to stare lovingly into the eyes of a tractor, I would simply walk out my back door and go to the implement shed where the real ones reside.

Yes, this king had now started a bedroom space war he could not possibly win, and this queen was about to re-claim her castle. So, one day when the king was out reigning over his land, I decided to redecorate. I dragged all these brightly coloured cast iron soldiers out of the bedroom and stuffed them in places I could not see. There were even the empty boxes that these toys came in adorning my room! Surely my king had gone absolutely mad! I replaced all the surfaces with vintage petticoats and bridal flowers, leaving no room in my castle for the king’s army of toys. However, just as I had predicted and just like a cat who got the canary, he rallied his army of toy tractors to come back into the bedroom, but it was worse than before this time – he had now acquired a big glass cabinet taking up half a wall; a fortress to house his toy army.

By Christmas last year, and with my bedroom battle for space still raging around me, I was dealt a rather big blow. My husband’s farm employee decided to gift him a rather large metal ‘beer bar’ in (you guessed it) the shape of a tractor! Horrified at the thought that my castle was about to be overthrown by a Trojan tractor bar, I dived for the sharpest largest kitchen knife in all my artillery. With all the zest of an iron clad knight, I waved it at my king and pronounced, “That thing makes it into my bedroom over your dead body!” Now I possibly won’t kill my husband over this war, but just like a good episode of Game of Thrones, one day I am conquered and the next day I am the conqueror. Or that is, I will be until such time as the lamb price goes up and I can afford to build him his own ‘man cave’ and turf all his man junk in it! Until such time as that, however, my battle will rage on.