The other day I was sitting in my pants on the balcony with a peppermint tea and a mirror plucking my eyebrows and looking for things to squeeze. Birds were tweeting and the disco pickle man was cycling past with Cher’s Do You Believe cranked up to supersonic. It was nice and breezy weatherwise in CharmingVille and The Bunster was frolicking at my feet as best he could on a tile floor with just the three good legs. Yep. It really was great to be out there watching horny man pigeons flapping like billy-o trying to crack onto their heedless lady birds. How I chuckled. I even thought I smelt pancakes. It was so agreeable that though I’m not a fan of those adorable scallywags other people refer to as ‘children’, I started thinking if I had a pair I would call them Moonskin and Playwater. Yes siree. You can have your damn Parises in the Springtime, I scoffed to my now recumbent rabbit. No really, pal. Keep your Lake Districts with yer ramblers and quaint Greek Village courtyards with the wells and the lemon trees and those topless blokes with saucy eyes picking figs in Tuscany. “This is the life, eh Bunster!” I sighed. He wuffled in his sleep. Look at those pretty unicorns.
I was prematurely smug, as it happens. Three words. Motherfucking angle grinders.
I hate those things more than mole hairs and elephant pants. More than brown liquor and more than duckweb salad, and that’s saying something because I really, really hate that shit. And though godawful non-stop house musak in the changerooms at gym is high on my list of sonic abominations, along with those mewling female Khmer voices dubbed over Hong Kong chop-socky movies that the Hubster insists on watching before he goes to work, nothing beats Cambodia’s National Instrument of Aural Torment.
The angle grinder and its strident colluder, the masonry saw, are the defining sounds of Phnom Penh. The medium-size jackhammer comes in a close third. In Moscow it’s car alarms and bottles smashing. Paris it’s sirens. Poor old Aussie gets miles and miles of saddo beeping pedestrian crossings and some type of warbler. But Nomps is thrall to the relentless searing grind of a thousand sleepless machines that furrow my brow with a persistent, power-tool-specific groove in defiance of about 10 girls’ weekends’ worth of Bangkok botox. They drown the Sunday chitter of sparrers and the exotic, hypnotic drone of blessing monks. They interrupt my afternoon trysts with Detective Bobby Goren, my TV boyfriend. The Bunster gets all frantic and thumps. They cut the town – and our peace in it – to shreds.
Trouble is I love home renos. While others draw the curtains, switch on and get off watching erections of another ilk, over on Remodelista I’m gagging for the big reveal of Mike and Sandy’s foyer. I’m hot for Jenny’s small-space makeover. My pupils dilate with pleasure as I trawl Pinterest or Houzz for the perfect Warm Industrial task lighting for my imaginary Bed-Stuy walkup or my minimalist nook in Barceloneta. I’d do anything – really, just tell me what you want – for a shipping-container-cum-shabster-cabin on a Costa Rica outcrop. Give me skylights, kitchen islands, outdoor rainshowers and a rooftop plunge pool. Deep Teal feature walls and Duck Egg dunnies. Before and Afters. Oh I ache.
I’m surprised there ain’t a local show about it, given this town’s appetite for construction. There should be, and I’d be the Judge Judy of shoddy workmanship and egregious design. I’d take a sledgehammer to Sopheap’s choice of salmon and lime for every fucken room in the house. I’d rip up the plans for Leakhena’s ersatz Louis quinze gazebo with life-size Manneken-Pis made of gold. Pass me that crowbar, friend, and let me at those cockroach-camouflaging maroon-granite countertops.
For all its foibles, CharmingVille gets under your skin and, even if you don’t own a place yet, plenty of us are thinking about it and compiling look-books of pins and pix for a new abode. Except for the mittel-European gout-meister who just bought the flat across my street. For the last 50 years it was a fine example of Sangkum-style architecture in an almost pristine block of the same. Since last week old Otto’s been recreating a Bavarian Hofbrauhaus in his third-floor lounge room, complete with 360° stained birch panelling and a giant mug tree, no doubt for his grotesque stein collection. Along with a couple of untethered masons sans spirit level adding a wonky arch across the whole façade and thus obliterating its cool Corbusien bones, I spy a boney kid with a green gingham bonnet and moustache T-shirt wielding what looks to be a six-inch De Walt. If I only I had two bunnies. I could make earmuffs.