Day Four

Not a creature was stirring,
Not even a mouse-



Hey, Pyke, where are you going? As soon as Pyke gets into bed, no matter how sleepy she is, she gets out again and moves elsewhere. Why?



Pyke...



Pyke attempts to steal Nooreen's warmth like a thief in the night.



Nooreen awakes with a start, fighting off the deja vu before heading off for work. Pyke dreams of destroying Jack's paintings.



Hearing a strangle scuttling, I look around the house until I notice these black dots crawling across the ground. Vermin!



Here's the culprit. Some bastard's knocked over the dustbin out front.



Catriona and Jack both wake up at the same time. Catriona needs to go to the toilet but why does she go all the way up here when there's one perfectly free downstairs?



Oh.



Jack, meanwhile, has crafted himself the perfect woman in every detail by sellotaping a plate to a mop. Enthralled with his creation, he proceeds to have his wicked way with her. What a charmer!



Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight,
Someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight...

Nooreen is rather blasé about the whole experience.



Jack abandons his lover to burn- ah- cook himself a new toastie pastry.



Jack prepares himself another meal after finishing his last one and burns it again. He is inconsolable.



Here's something you don't see everyday. Both Catriona and Jack want to clean the dishes but there is only one sink! Their frustration is palpable. But there is a solution. Jack resolves to wash the dishes in the bathroom sink. Now there's a man with some problem solving skills!



Catriona follows him in and attempts to tickle Jack. Is it me or do Jack's expressions only range from the mild gormless to the mildly concerned?



Jack laughs like a moron.

'Oh, Catriona, you are a card!'

While Catriona's busy tickling Jack she misses her carpool. Silly!



Jack suddenly shooes Catriona out of the bathroom. He's not is he? With that? Is he?



He is.



God damn bugs! STOMP STOMP STOMP! This is my angry face to show that I am angry! At bugs! Grr!



Catriona isn't the only one upset. Jack picks up the dustbin and then starts bawling into his hands. Easy, Jack, they're just cockroaches.



Hooray! Nooreen is a paramedic. Well done that girl. Nooreen heads straight for the nearest bed.



These bugs are a pest and not just for the obvious reasons. All the Crombies keep stamping on them which doesn't help and only serves to distract them from doing more interesting things. I direct Jack to get some help.

'Hello, this is the operator, how can I help you?'

'BUUUUGS! WE'VE GOT BUUUUGS!'

'I'm sorry?'

'BUGS! BUGS EVERYWHERE!'

'I'll connect you through to the extermination service.'

*fizz crackle*

'Hello?'

'BUGS! I'VE GOT BUGS IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE!'

'We'll be right there.'

'THANK YOU! Oh, and I think I've broken my wrist.'



Jack celebrates by boogying on down.



The vermin are purged as the righteous and unrighteous alike are massacred in a great flood of green goo.



'You remember when we had roaches?'

'What? That was half an hour ago!'

'Yeah but everything reminds me of them... I look into this bowl, I see its clear white porcelain, its gentle curves... but then I think: roaches. Roaches. Roaches...'

'If I was onscreen you'd see the face I was pulling.'



Jack lets one off. Just look at that, it looks like tear gas! What the hell was he putting on his food, sulphur mustard?!



Jack is confused for a moment, takes a cautious sniff, and then chuckles like a twelve-year-old. What a prat.



Catriona enters the kitchen and Jack admires her.

'I THINK YOU'RE PURDY.'

'Why thank you.'

'YOU'VE GOT BEAUTIFUL EY-'



SMACK.

Right in the kisser. Catriona's one fickle lady.



Pyke returns from another day slaving away as a test subject and like Nooreen, she heads straight for the nearest bed. Her expression seems to suggest she just sat on someone else's chocolate bar.



Catriona decides to sit and stare at nothing for a while. Her disconcerting propensity for this behaviour is begin to unnerve me. Maybe SHE should be the test subject.



Like a rat to its hole.



What the buh? What is it with you and randomly changing beds?!



Catriona puts something in the microwave and then vamooses. I don't like the look of this, so I stick a sprinkler above it. Just in case.



'What the hell is with this sprinkler?! The Feng Shui is all wrong!'



Jack cuts his finger, which is rather unsurprising given his Whac-a-mole technique to chopping onions.











Over on the other side of the house...



Jack relaxes on the bed after a hard day of doing sod all.



HANDWASH AHOY!



SUBMERGE! SUBMERGE!



After about two hours of playing make believe in the bathtub Catriona goes to sleep, dreaming a little dream of narcissism.



As does Jack. I can't quite get over the blank expression he has in the thought bubble. It's not just blank, it's proto-blank, the blankness from which all blankness took form in the primordial blank.

I can just imagine a little thought bubble coming from HIS head saying 'I like cheese.'



Nooreen returns, thinking of how she'd like to own all the money in the world!

'I wonder if anyone's advertising money in the paper.'



MONEH MONEH MONEH MONEH



As 6am approaches, Jack gets out of bed and decides to actually catch the carpool this time round. I must admit that if he wants to be the ultimate slacker then he's making a good start. Here, he wishes to use the bathroom but Nooreen's in there, so he visualises her being rubbed out of the picture. He's pretty unforgiving is our Jack.

Day Four draws to a close. One thing I may do tomorrow is get rid of Rupert. The only thing the Crombies ever seem to want to do is play with him which is preventing them from doing more interesting things like interact with EACH OTHER.

So Day Five will be Rupert's swansong. Ah, Rupert, we hardly knew ye. Night night.