Indecision and the Bird Box

First he painted the front panel of the wooden bird box red because that is the colour of his wife's hair, then he painted the roof of the bird box yellow because that is the colour of the shirts worn by his favourite football team, then he painted the sides royal blue because that is the colour of his son's school uniform, then he repainted the roof mauve because that was the colour of the envelope containing his seventeenth birthday card from his first real long-term girlfriend, then he repainted the front with its perfectly circular hole a kind of autumn-leaf orange because it reminded him of the wood fire on the camping trip at the turn of the millenium when he had shared a sleeping bag with a girl whose name he could no longer remember, then he repainted the sides magenta because it looked good, then he repainted the roof pink because that was the colour of the bow in the hair of the girl who worked in the cafe where he had just had two black coffees, then he repainted half of the roof aquamarine and the other half tangerine because he thought the rhyme would symbolise his love of writing poetry, then he painted the back grey like his grandfather's hair and his grandfather is dead now, then he painted the whole thing the same colour as the garden wall because someone told him this would deter cats, then he hung it on the garden wall but it was already the twenty-second of May and the birds had built their nests in trees and eaves.