Hoard and seek

So okay, I confess I'm a hoarder - though hider might be closer to the truth - and for good reason. How do you explain to your grown-up kids that now that they're no longer dependant, they need to - ahem! - pay for their stay? Not only do I have them still dipping into my wallet for "some chota-mota money, Dad" every time they phone out for pizza, contact lenses or face wash, but they think nothing of making off with my bank cards for a lasik surgery, booking air tickets, or topping up their wardrobes with unpronounceable European brands. And it isn't just their expenses I find myself underwriting as also those of their friends or colleagues because "Nikhil lost his job", or "Preeta's boyfriend ditched her" - conditions that might lead to catastrophic breakdowns unless urgently ministered a bottle, or preferably two, of the finest.
 

While I'm hardly curmudgeonly about sharing that finest with my son, to continue to spread the cheer among his friends is, I consider, stretching the good life too far. It's resulted in a level of slyness I hadn't thought myself capable of. "Darling," asked my wife, "are you drinking secretly again?" "That's hardly fair," I argued, though on the strength of the evidence - she'd found bottles of my best malt tucked amid her shoe boxes while looking for a misplaced pair of heels - you could hardly blame her for thinking me an alcoholic. If I'd taken to stashing special blends away, it was to prevent the callow youth who drift through the house from laying their hands on the better whiskies. At their age, I'd been glad to get a drink at all, though they think little of turning up their noses at what is still my father's staple tipple, and which is what I stock the bar with for what is turning into their daily consumption.

"This has to stop," my wife complained. I couldn't agree more, since the previous week the laundress had found another case amid the cleaning detergents and liquids, and had inferred that her mistress was a closet dipsomaniac. It didn't help that the cook had added gin instead of vinegar to the salad because I'd switched bottles in the larder, but my wife was one to talk, having started her career as a married woman on the premise of hiding things for hiding's sake. Looking for chocolates behind the books, I'd find soap and toothpaste instead, her emergency money hidden where we kept "gifts for acquaintances" - as opposed to better ones for "friends" or nastier ones for "family" - provided a windfall for some hopefully grateful stranger, though I've yet to understand why she needs to store her perfumes in the refrigerator, which confuses the help, who're then prone to keep the preserves and condiments in the medicine cabinet. No wonder my visiting parents baulk at their daughter-in-law who nonchalantly asks their granddaughter to "get the jam from the bathroom, honey!"

Since a considerable part of our day is spent looking for things that should be simpler to find, I made my wife promise she would no longer tuck her locker keys under the living room carpet. "Provided," she negotiated, "you won't store your wine in the car boot." "Let's toast to that," I said, summoning our son to pour us the drinks. "Sure," he said, "will that be the Caribbean rum you've been hiding in the linen cupboard behind the towels, or the vodka you tucked into the box bed among the woollies?"