"As the weeks went on, the structural flaws in their relationship became apparent to Honey Barbara. It was, she thought, like being in a hut with a leaking rusty roof: you keep living in it, you try to ignore it, you mark the leaking parts with chalk and promise yourself you'll make temporary repairs with bituminous paint; but then, when it's dry, you forget about it. In the wet you live amongst plinking buckets but never enough of them, and you kick them over anyway, and everything becomes damp, and mould and mildew grow everywhere, even in your bed, until, in the end, it all becomes too much and you find your ladder and, just as the sunlight strikes the roof and the stream starts rising from it, you rip the fucker to pieces and the rusty iron disintegrates as easily as a dead leaf in your hand. Underneath it you find fat cockroaches, wooden battens white with rot, leaves, mulch, decay, mice, a tree snake with a yellow belly and some peculiar ice blue fungi growing from the rotten wood: a whole eco-system built on lethargy and failure."

Bliss, Peter Carey