Roger and Annette
  Bought a crumbling manor house,
With grounds ideal for gardening
  And shooting ducks or grouse.

Annette prefers encountering
  The garden's sweet delights,
With imaginary friends
  Who would rather shots and fights.

They love to rant all day.
  The glass is always full.
But it's full of boiling anger
  That would frighten any bull.

They hate all other people
  And they really hate themselves
For being just as fictional
  As leprechauns or elves.

They make fun of her real friends
  And the woman down the road
Who'd lose a beauty contest
  With an overweight dead toad.

They tell her that young people
  Are as useless as small toes,
As vacant as a vacuum
  And as beautiful as crows.

Life, they say, is pointless,
  But it's rarely ever painless.
A brain is like an open wound
  Within a world that's brainless.

It's a constant source of pain
  To be smarter than your peers.
When hit by life's absurdities
  Most people just say 'cheers'.

All remaining brain cells
  Will be lost when drowned in drink.
They're good at saying 'cheers'
  But can't remember how to think.

Stupidities, absurdities
  And all of life's iniquities
Make perfect sense to them.
  The stupid, bland ubiquities

Pervading modern culture
  Means that mannequins will thrive.
An age made for clothes horses
  Who can buy and feel alive,

Despite being barely sentient.
  They don't know who they are,
Defining their persona
  With a mobile phone and car.

The friends say she's like this,
  A mannequin who smiles,
A feeble human hidden
  Under many layers of styles,

Like layers of paint on walls
  In the rooms they wander through.
She'd be a cryptic crossword
  But she doesn't have a clue.

She whistles and she sings
  And she dances in the sun.
Despite the constant ranting
  She's intent on having fun.

She rarely pays attention
  To these venomous tirades,
But sometimes in the evening
  As the golden daylight fades

Her imaginary friends
  Will start fighting with the ghosts
Who've been around for centuries
  And see themselves as hosts,

And she will intervene
  To restore a fragile truce.
Roger starts to wonder
  If a screw or two is loose.

To say the house's influence
  Is evil needs some proof,
But many past inhabitants
  Went mad beneath this roof.

His very own imaginary
  Friend is Sigmund Freud,
Who's always smartly dressed,
  Often as a bride.

Roger has consulted him
  About his wife's companions.
He thinks there are some tourists
  Looking round her mental canyons,

But Freud says not to worry.
  "She's exceptionally sane.
There's nothing wrong with tourists
  Or with water on the brain.

"And it's okay to see me
  In my splendid wedding gown.
The Freudian explanation is
  You hate the colour brown."