At 11:17am, Harold walked into the living room and found a pineapple sitting on his sofa wearing headphones. Not plugged into anything. Not near anything capable of producing music. Just… silently vibing. He stared at it. It stared back with the confidence of fruit experiencing a personal soundtrack.

Harold did not scream, because he was a man who had already seen a jar of mayonnaise attempt to roll upstairs last week. Instead, he sighed the sigh of someone who had accepted that reality now ran on improv rules.

He opened his laptop for grounding. Bad choice.

There they were. The same five browser tabs. Again. Always. Eternal.

roof cleaning isle of wight
patio cleaning isle of wight
driveway cleaning isle of wight
exterior cleaning isle of wight
pressure washing isle of wight

He had never booked roof cleaning. He didn’t have a patio. He barely had a driveway. Yet the tabs lived on, like digital barnacles attached to his sanity.

Before he could even pretend to close them, the pineapple nodded—an unmistakable, deliberate tilt forward—as if approving his browser layout. That was the moment Harold strongly considered speaking to a therapist, a priest, and possibly an exorcist.

Just then, his neighbour Lorraine knocked, holding a shopping bag full of rubber ducks. “Do you need any of these?” she asked as casually as someone offering sugar. Harold didn’t even answer. He just pointed at the pineapple. Lorraine nodded, said “Ah, stage two,” and left.

Harold did not want to know what stage three was.

Meanwhile, the laptop screen flickered, and the patio cleaning isle of wight tab politely refreshed itself, as if trying to remind him of priorities he never agreed to.

The pineapple slid an inch to the left.
Harold blinked.
The pineapple slid another inch.
Harold blinked slower.
The pineapple fell onto its side.
Harold decided that was the fruit equivalent of fainting.

He picked it up. It was warm. Absolutely unacceptable behaviour for a pineapple.

The clock on the wall chimed twelve times, even though it was… 11:26am. The toaster clicked. The fridge whispered (he will never confirm this). The rubber ducks outside honked in a chorus.

Harold clicked one of the tabs—driveway cleaning isle of wight—just to pretend there was still a version of life where clicking things made sense. It didn’t help.

He closed the laptop. The tabs reopened. He accepted it.

The pineapple continued wearing headphones it didn’t need.
The ducks continued whatever cult activity ducks do.
The universe continued its freestyle jazz interpretation of logic.

And Harold, a once-normal man, simply said out loud:

“I am not cleaning anything. Not now. Not ever. You hear me, internet?”

The tabs did not reply.
They didn’t have to. They’d already won.