"Do you think I should colour my hair?" I asked.
"There's not enough Bisto left in the world to do it," replied The Small Object of Desire.
My dad saw a piece in the paper about these vibrating knickers, so he had to point it out to us when me and The Small Object of Desire went round for lunch.
"It's alright, I'm safe enough," my mum said. "It's not like he ever uses the 'phone."
I suppose I should say something about the wedding, having whinged on at length about it throughout March.
Well... it was a lovely day, the food was excellent, the service was good, the bride was radiant and the groom was as happy as a dog with two tails (a cleaner version of what he said himself). The bridesmaid looked lovely (we have argued - at length - about this) and it all went very well. Good stuff. Very nice, thank you.
And the good news is that The Small Object of Desire and myself are still together despite the combination of job stresses and both of our deep-seated aversions to weddings. Personally, I don't have any objections to marriage so long as it's something you can go away and do and then come back and tell people: "guess what we did this morning" without sulks all round. If that's what you could do I think The Small Object would be a lot less averse but she'd still not be comfortable about it, not even if she were allowed to wear a Patrick Stewart onesie and Doc Martins for the doing of it.
So now we're going through a period of reaction to the stresses of the past month or two where we're all lovey and nice to each other. It's enormous fun; it would make you sick.
We are going to a wedding. So far the conversation has consisted of:
Imagine my delight at seeing Annabel Clarabelle Jane
Walking her pet poodle down a country lane.
She caught my eye (I'd thrown it), she gave a saucy grin.
We tied the dog securely outside the village inn.
I went to buy some condoms and she drank a quart of gin
And the landlord went and put it on my slate.
The blaze of her eyes and the curl of her hair and
The curves and the dimples I found here and there
All in an April's day.
Her father grew tomatoes, the biggest that I've ever seen
And had a pet green budgie - Priscilla Desert Queen.
He has tattoos of ladies' loos from airports round the globe;
And keeps mousetraps in oddment scraps torn from a Papal robe;
And something rather grisly hanging from a nasal lobe
But I didn't care to take too close a look.
The blaze of her eyes and the curl of the hair and
The fun that we had when her parents weren't there
All in an April's day.
As I was changing into my clerical greys the small object of devotion eyed me coldly:
"There's 'loveable rumpled eccentric' and there's 'I've just walked away from a train crash.' You're not looking rumpled."
Questions a gentleman must not answer on a Sunday morning:
"Do you think I need a new saddle?"
"Would those boots make my legs look short?"
"That would look better in pink, wouldn't it?"
The youngest relative has returned to the topic of my marital status. I think we've agreed that she's not setting me up on a blind date with either the Year Three teacher or the mother of one of the girls in her class. I don't entirely trust her not to try and get around the agreement though.
"So why aren't you married?" she asked."I like being miserable on my own and I haven't found anybody who would want to be miserable with me.""Oh well. If you just want miserable you may as well get yourself a baby. They're dead miserable, honest. All they do is cry and scream and eat and cry and poo and cry a bit more. And they wake you up in the middle of the night so that they can cry and scream and poo.""I've known women like that," I admitted.
It struck me the other day that of my contemporaries the three longest-lasting relationships are all outside marriage. It came as a shock to all of us when a couple I know realised they'd been together for thirty years. "I reckon that the third date's the one we should count. That's the one where we decided we wanted to go out together," he suggested. It had been a long night and I was tired, otherwise I'd have had more sense.
That's when the problem arose.
It's easy enough to decide on the anniversary date of a marriage: there's bits of paper and stuff to provide a mark on the calendar. But if you don't get married...?
"Hmm... You're probably right," she agreed. "Anyhoo, we can't count the first date."
"Why can't you count the first date?" I asked. "Och, no, that one doesn't count," she explained. "I thought he was a right idiot."
"What did you think of her?" I asked.
"I'm saying nothing. I'm still in trouble for not eating all my lunch in May 2001."
For the past week I've been trying, and failing, to come up with a short and snappy comment on Tazeen's post about hopeless chat-up lines. I won't spoil things by telling you the offending comment but it is a classic of its kind.
Why do we do it? Oh, we all have done, let's be honest (perhaps not so spectacularly!). The answer, as always, is down to evolution.
Men are wired such that when they first approach a woman they find very seriously attractive they are more likely than not to say something utterly stupid. This is deliberate on Mother Nature's part. In the scheme of things the child-bearing partner in the relationship is bodily committed to a lengthy process of gestation and upbringing so she needs to be particular about finding a suitable mate. Now let's the honest, the usual combination of raging testosterone, general manliness and a pair of well-polished shoes would ordinarily be irresistible. So Mother Nature, in her wisdom, has redressed the balance by providing a hurdle for the gentleman to negotiate in the relationship. Just as the peahen is attracted by the peacock that can survive the rigours of the jungle despite the burden of an unfeasibly-long train of feathers so the female of our species stops and thinks to herself: "Bloody hell! Well, if they've not killed him by now he's either got a lot of money or he's very good in bed."
Nature's marvels don't end there. We're told that ladies forget much of the pain of childbirth so as not to put them off having more children.* Men are similar: we can none of us remember that first, calamitous opening line.
Luckily, we have the womenfolk to do that. Often. In company.
My mother and father:
"Now what are you doing? I'm trying to read the paper."
"I'm holding your hand, love. Doesn't that send a thrill of excitement through your body?"
"Not especially. I hope your hands are clean."
"You used to like me holding your hand when we were courting."
"If I let you have two free hands you'd have eaten all my sweets."
Prudence, Caution, Deliberation.
The Hermit points to all things hidden, such as knowledge and inspiration,hidden enemies. The illumination is from within, and retirement from participation in current events.
The Hermit is a card of introspection, analysis and, well, virginity. You do not desire to socialize; the card indicates, instead, a desire for peace and solitude. You prefer to take the time to think, organize, ruminate, take stock. There may be feelings of frustration and discontent but these feelings eventually lead to enlightenment, illumination, clarity.
The Hermit represents a wise, inspirational person, friend, teacher, therapist. This a person who can shine a light on things that were previously mysterious and confusing.
I must have been doing the cat's shoelaces
when this lot came a-calling.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
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