Jermaine has two loves: cars and cats. He is married to Eunice that he rhymes with pumice. They are both in their mid fifties. He is tall, rangy, as he thinks of himself. She is round; he thinks of her as a wrecking ball. He is the head of Fine Art at the Art School. They are both wealthy in their own right. Jermaine is a dilettante for whom making art is not much more than a hobby, whereas Eunice has made a vocation out of baking cakes, making needlework samplers and growing roses – her hobby is to speak of her husband with utter contempt when she meets her be-hatted friends. He is only allowed one cat, Ruskin, named after the Victorian aesthete, to whom Jermaine thinks the cat bears some comparison. They sleep in separate bedrooms: Jermaine with Ruskin and Eunice with her handbag collection. They live in a large semi-detached three-storey house in an area of fading Victorian grandeur with a large rear garden, side drive and a wooden garage. She drives a 1969 green Austin Mini Countryman (with ash wood trim) that he thinks of as little more than a shoe box on wheels, aka, a piece of shit.
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