Tuesday, February 27, 2007

A note to the wise

Somebody asked me if I was writing the longest goodbye note in history to my husband. Leaving it propped, not against a half-full milk-bottle but in cyber-space, for my virtual neighbours to read through a microsoft window. They think I want to scrawl in Cif and blood: "Darling, I am leaving you and this place. I am taking the small children, the large notes and as many houses as I can fit into my Louis Vuitton bag. Your dinner. Is in the hard drive." All things considered - living here, the move and what-not; I rather like my husband. I think I'll keep him - maybe for forever time. At least until we grow old and then dead together. If you close your eyes, then open the green one on the left and squint a bit, in a dim light, he looks like a Hollywood star. The kind who wears a Smith and Wesson slung round snake hips, sports a woollen poncho and chews a cigarillo. The kind that spits in the dust then kills you. There are all sorts of red rose reasons I would like to keep him, not just the cowboy charm and spurs. Every other month, he will say something to make me laugh so hard, I fall off a kitchen chair. I am not sure who, otherwise, could make me laugh like that now Benny Hill is dead. Anyhows, the children look like him, so how could I forget the man and I have grown to love the garage flowers he rescues from the forecourt and carries in with care. To which I say "Thank you" and "I'll put them in a vase". I even love the fact he said: "This blog thing", "Mmm," I pinched away a drooping leaf. "It's a bit like the South Sea Bubble isn't it?" I looked across the tired, grey daisies at him: "Do you know what happened with the South Sea bubble?" He spun the chamber of his gun, "No," he said and fired a glinting smile straight at me.

21 comments:

Newmania said...

Well wifey the South Sea Bubble is known as the archetypal market disaster and so often quoted by ignorant lefties. In fact the damage it caused is over estimated and it was in particular the making of Walpole who constructed the rescue plan. You nasty husband is implying that if you take away the belief your blog is nothing at all a bit like the Wizard of Oz.
BOUNDER


. Robert Walpole became first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer and started a series of measures to restore the credit of the company and to reorganize it. The bursting of the bubble, which coincided with the similar collapse of the Mississippi Scheme in France, ended the prevalent belief that prosperity could be achieved through unlimited expansion of credit. Legislation was enacted that forbade unincorporated joint stock enterprise.

( see current worries about PE ventures)

What happened was that the well connected were saved and the others went to the wall.Nothing changes. It was crucial incident both in the formation of companies and the regularisation of government . you notice that Walpole was not actually the first Prime Minster and being a woman I bet you can’t tell me who was,. (Much later than you’d think )

BTW You`ve made your spouse sound a bit gay ?Perhaps your seciond husband will be the builder.

Anonymous said...

Hello.
I'm glad you responded to those "why don't you leave your dastardly husband - the cad" comments. Moaning about 'im indoors (or outdoors, in your case) is a perfectly reasonable and cathartic way to vent your frustrations when you're tied to the house and he's out working and dining in fine restaurants. All my female friends (those with husbands, anyway) do it, as do I. It doesn't mean we don't adore them. Doubtless our husbands have a little moan about us too - quite rightly.

rilly super said...

We have so much in common you and I. My husband sounds very similar to you own who you so movingly describe. I remember when the builders restoring our place in north first came and saw my beloved's early DIY attempts and said 'and what flippin' cowboy did that then?!'

Anonymous said...

And I'm sure he knows what a lucky,lucky man he is to have you, and vice versa...

...As a idiomatic reference for us non-British types, what are garage flowers?

Anonymous said...

By a bizarre coincidence I have just been on the Smith and Wesson website myself. Great minds think alike ?

Maybe not, but 'Winchester Whisperer' seemed to be labouring under the delusion that a firearm would set you back three grand. Pounds not Dollars.

Oh, she's a lovely lass, that girl, but she has more money than sense; and as she went to Cambridge that is saying something. Mind you, I don't think she was planning on buying it for herself. Unless she has seen the guns the rappers use which are 'diamond encrusted'...

Anonymous said...

I take it your husband has to buy you "garage flowers", due to every garden in the South having been built on.
Perhaps he should wait until a little closer to "home", I use the term loosely, before buying you flowers in future. Then at least he'd get a good, healthy, Northern bunch, rather than poor garage flowers, choked by the exhaust fumes of the M25, along with everyone else.

Sameranda said...

Hello! I read all about you in last weeks Sunday Times and decided to visit your page. I have been transfixed for the last 20 minutes when I really should have been working. You paint a very vivid picture with your writing, thanks for sharing your tales with the world!
x

kinglear said...

Ah, yes, Clint has the mantle of The Dook. I always thought one of the best lines ever delivered by an actress was when there was a congressional hearing about erecting a statue of JW. Katherine Hepburn delivered a long,impassioned speech, which had everyone on the edge of their seats, and finished with:
" Mistah CHayrman, beyond awl his A-tributes, JAHN WAYNE was ...... ( dramatic pause, catch in voice)... AN AMURICN"
Brought the house down.

Anonymous said...

I thought you were talking about Deputy Dawg. Not Clint Eastwood.

Anonymous said...

Sure hope hubby is wrong with the South Sea bubble metaphor. Something as good as your blog needs to last, for the comfort of all mothers of young children everywhere.

desertrat said...

I'm trying to pacture an English dude as a cowboy, much less Clint Eastwood. Just doesnt compute. And fyi bitching all the time about your life is a good way to screw up your marriage.

Newmania said...

John Waynes real name was Marian.It suprised me , but then I was amazed that Danny Kay was Jewish and had black hair so what do I know .
Elvis had mousey Hair and Shakira has black hair as she would ..I think the Arabic look is no the most commercial in the US.
Crumbs I could go on about hair colour for hours and hours

wife in the north said...

re jtschida: they are the sad, plastic-wrapped flowers that live in buckets on the forecourts of petrol garages. They cost £1.99 and often contain blue chrysanths.

Eurodog said...

On the continent-well in Belgium at any rate-we put chrysants on graves at All Saints which is on 1st November. Usually white or yellow ones. Why chrysants, I do not know but that is the tradition.

billystokes said...

So, for your husband, is this Goodbye ? Or do you continue ..Good. By the way...

rosierainbow said...

Oh! for a flower, a fallen petal, a weed, even a green shields plastic Daff.......

Keep up the good works and congrats on the book deal.

Sorry if this appears twice , new to blogging and didn't seem to go through the first time.

Anonymous said...

This blog is so educational ! And that is just the comments section !

It is St. David's Day tomorrow, so I shall expect some pearls of wisdom for your Welsh readers. Just, please, don't mention the rugby at this time.

Anonymous said...

Good point, whingeing about hubby is better than swapping him. I've just woken up from a bizarre [and scary] dream about negotiating a rally on country roads in an Austin Maxi...
[Trust me, I am not making this up]

Of course, the terrifying thing is that they are very unreliable and have no acceleration. So I couldn't do the 'crossing the dual carriageway' thing very convincingly without a burst of speed to get away from the artic juggernauts on the main road. And when I did the gearbox started smoking.

You see, in the 70s you could have traded in that Maxi for a Marina, but you would have been in the same boat. They were all unreliable and slow with a few snags, but we loved them all the same, because they were British.

So don't you go swapping your Maxi for a Marina...Hmmm, maybe a poor choice of words there...

Anonymous said...

Hey wifey,

Good to see you so chipper, not to say girlish.

Obviously we all love your writing (keep the blogs coming, please, and you could always park the infants in front of the TV to serve us all up some seconds) but my reading of newmania's almost daily postings is that he is carrying a more personal torch. In fact, Wifey, I think YOU are his new mania.

Keep your location very very secret. All those mentions of cattle grids, why they're as good as map references.

Anonymous said...

Gosh. I'm learning a lot here. Did you know, newmania, that Lauren Bacall's real name was Betty Joan Perske and Anne Bancroft's was the rather splendid-sounding Anna Maria Louise Italiano? Dunno about garage flowers - living in the country, I guess us men have got no excuse for not picking the real thing though (or at the very least stealing them from the churchyard!)

sophie said...

My mother, commenting about a rude woman she and my father had just met said "- i am the only person allowed to shout at your father - because i am his wife, thats what we do.

ps so what does tw stand for?