Skip to main content

Domestic Bliss?

Richard is watching the rugby, (England vs. South Africa). At least he says he is. He doesn't generally snore whilst awake.

However, the second I switch the vile machine off (or turn it down) he'll open his eyes and insist he's thoroughly enjoying it.

I have no idea what these men are doing, other than running after a ball then throwing themselves into a big heap. There seems to be a lot of shoving and pushing, and a fair amount of bellowing - though I have no idea what they're rabbiting on about....

Sport is peculiar. I have never understood it - or wanted to, actually. An awful lot of people disagree with me, obviously. That's ok. If they wish to pay upwards of £50 for a spectacularly ugly t-shirt or a silly foam hat, that is entirely their choice to do so.

Imagine if knitting was promoted in a similar way to football or cricket or rubgy. Our city streets might be flooded with drunken grannies chanting, "Knit one, purl one! Knit one, purl one!"

Would crochet teams struggle to pull as big a crowd as the macrame league? Would tiddley-wicks be debated in Parliament for encouraging a nation of bad backs? Would origame be condemned for being environmentally unfriendly (due to folding all that paper)? And who couldn't sit entranced before the international finals of Snap?

Well, me for one, actually.

***

Our washing machine died on Sunday afternoon, when I was half way through cooking a roast dinner. I was up to my elbows in steamy carrots and soapy jeans, simultaneously needing to leap for the mop and stop a bubbly-damp Emily from eloping with soggy underwear. That’s when Ygraine decided to have hysterics because a hedgehog had walked over her patio.

Wuff wuff wuff wuff wuff wuff wuff wuff wuff gurgle slosh gurgle slosh drip drip drip drip wuff wuff wuff wuff wuff gurgle slosh gurgle slosh drip drip drip drip drip drip squealch squealch wuff wuff drip drip….

And then he asked if dinner was ready yet.

Still, I had my revenge. On Monday afternoon, the dogs and I had enjoyed a lovely long walk on the beach, paddling in puddles, wading through crisp autumnal leaves as we very slowly wended our way home through the village. Arriving home, I found Richard sat on the dustbin in the drive. Having forgotten to take his keys with him, he found himself locked out. The stone front step was cold on his derriere, so he’d laid the bin on its side and sat down to wait – for nearly two hours.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Cure for Aging?

"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time.  This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood.  In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body.  But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself.  Folklore and myt...
15 comments
Read more

Remembering Richie Tattoo Artist's Studio

Richard in the street entrance to his tattoo studio in Liverpool. The vertical sign next to Richard is now in the Liverpool Tattoo Museum. Yesterday, my sister Evelyn, Richard and myself stood outside Richard's old tattoo studio and looked up at the few remaining signs, whose paint has now mostly flacked away to reveal bare wood. On the studio's window are stick-on letters which read, "Art", where once it boldly announced his presence as the city's only "Tattoo Artist".  I can remember him buying that simple plastic lettering from an old-fashioned printer's shop. This was in 1993, not long after he'd opened the studio and before he could afford better signs. After he'd patiently stuck them onto the glass we realised that from the outside the sign read "Artist Tattoo", so we had to carefully peel the letters off the window and have another go, laughing over having made such an obvious error yet worried in case we spoiled the letteri...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dear Diary...

Do you keep a diary? Why did you start it, and, if you started one then stopped, why was that? What sort of things do (or did) you write about? I ask as, as a long-time diarist myself, there is an interesting piece in The Guardian today which talks about one woman's diary habit, which she began at the age of fourteen. I started a diary around that age too, but destroyed it after my mother accused me of using cocaine.  A stern scene followed, with both parents perched ram-rod straight in their armchairs, while I was subjected to a heated inquisition. Where had I bought it, and who from? Didn't I know such things led to death and doom? I struggled to decipher their bewildering accusations, until Mum blurted out, "I read it in your diary!" To find my diary, Mum would first have had to rummage through my dressing table, obviously when I wasn't around to protest. Her intrusion on my privacy was assumed by both parents to be acceptable, and now, with this handwritten c...
Post a Comment
Read more