"Are they still together?" I said.
"Well I suppose you could say that they are semi-detached."
Semi-detached. What an excellent way to describe a couple in crisis. What a
peculiar way to describe a house.
Do you remember the first time you went into a house
that was the same as yours only the wrong way around? Turning to a wall and
scrabbling for a door that isn't there? When you are small, and trying to learn
your left from your right, you walk into Mrs Quinlan's up the road and
everything is the wrong way around and just the same.
You go home, you say to your mother, What would have happened, you say, if
Daddy had married somebody else, or if you had married somebody else? Would I still be me?
I could be Dympna Quinlan with a turned up nose and lots
of comics. Or I could be myself with loads of comics.
So who's in your other half? Is it you? Or a terrible version of yourself?
No wonder we run around like lunatics looking for remarkable bathroom tiles. No wonder we show our individuality when it comes to pebble dash, to guttering. Because we're only half of something.
A semi. A demi. A hemi. Left handed, right handed, we are a three legged race. We are
Bisected.
