The Music Room
I like to think that I am well and truly in control of what goes on in The House of the Flying Martinis. Cheekily, but usually fairly confidently, I also like to think that I am adept at handling my husband, the celebrated Meeester M.
Other people have noticed my ability to get him to do what I’d like him to do. Although I’m probably no better at it than any other wife. I draw to your attention this faked up magazine cover, designed by my sister, Misssy A, for his 40th birthday who has been studying Meeester with a wary eye for some time. (Click on it for a closer look)
In some of those coverlines regular and long-time readers of the Misssives may notice some stories I’ve told you about Meeester in this very blog, but the one I’d like to draw your attention to is this one.
It suggests that in the early days of our relationship that Meeester perhaps wasn’t so interested in the career side of life. Perhaps post Uni he worked for a short time in a patisserie wearing a straw boater and an apron whilst sporting a recently acquired Bachelor of Divinity from the University of Aberdeen. I can only assume some kind of loaves and fishes type link between the two enterprises. Perhaps he also got the heave-ho from that job by messing about too much doing Dick van Dyke impersonations to the customers with the aforementioned boater, “Jolly ‘Oliday” style. I don’t know, my memory isn’t what it was.
Perhaps he was actually quite pleased he got the boot and could spend more time playing his guitar and getting out of bed just before Countdown. If the world of pastry didn’t want Meeester then who was he to argue? “They told me I was too happy”,he said, which we all knew was nonsense as apparently Dick Van Dyke complained about breach of copyright and the late arrival of his pastry and cup of tea.
The coverline also suggests that I was the force behind him changing his ways and now having an almost 100% perfect attendance rate of his job as a teacher. It’s true, I’ve never seen him take a bona fide sick day never mind pull a cheeky wee sickie to watch a football game like a lot of blokes do. He has a work ethic like I’ve never seen before. Apparently a few threats was all it took. Indeed.
The title also suggests that I can control the movements of my husband, and up until today I may have even boasted this to be true. Turns out I’ve been had.
For years Meeester has been banging on about turning one of our rooms into a music room. We have little room enough as it is. We are not Mr and Mrs Mozart, confident though we are that our son’s saxophone lessons might well lead to a secure retirement for us both, so good is his recent rendition of “Theme from the Flintstone’s”. I have been unequivocally against this development, particularly as the room Meeester has designs on is the room formally known as The Dining Room which I kind of need for, you know, dining in.
It started with some hooks going up on walls. “It’ll keep my guitars out of your road”. The scam begins. Then a music stand was put in the corner. Then a small amp tucked itself into another. A couple of years passed and the dining room table made its way into the newly renovated kitchen. A couple of years on a saxophone and a saxophone playing son took up residence. Then I was suckered into buying Meeester a banjo for our 10th wedding anniversary. A really nice banjo that looks great if left on display, as it happens. Some mouth organs, recorders and even a Stylophone gets chucked into the mix.
Then his plan all came together on Friday night. “My work colleague has offered us a free piano. She wants rid of it. I think we could put it in the dining room”. Now, as those who have been watching TV magician Derren Brown over the last few weeks will realise that what Meeester has been doing is a bit of auto suggestion. He’s still calling it the dining room, so that I won’t notice a thing. I’m like a rich widow at a séance. I believe every word.
The piano arrived today. There is now no dining table and no couch in this room. No eating ever gets done in this room. It has turned into the Music Room.
I have been well and truly scammed.
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Fear and Loathing at the Dinner Table
I have a phobia; I have always hated and feared Ketchup.
No one takes me seriously. But to me, it IS serious. Its presence sends me hysterical.
Hysterical reaction to something = Phobia.
Phobias = Psychological state of fear to be taken seriously (even if they seem ridiculous).
Today, there was a feature on the radio about hypnosis curing people of their phobias. I listened intently as they talked about the usual phobias; dogs, open spaces, spiders and the like. The cure success rate was impressive.
I thought to myself, “I could do that”.
But then I thought, “But it would involve going near ketchup at one point.”
And then I thought, ” I won’t bother then. I’ll live with my crippling fear. I’ll soldier on. Bravely and with dignity.”
My first encounter with the vile red stuff was at my Gran’s house when my Uncle offered my brother and I some ketchup for our chips. It looked interesting, we let him put some on our plates. My brother liked it; I most certainly did not. In fact I think I refused to eat anything else after it tainted my plate, I was so revolted.
After this point, the problem was that the genie had literally been let out of the bottle. My fear begins, my brother’s love of it begins. I am now trapped in a world of horror until one of us leaves home.
It is the smell of it that upsets me most. Once I smell it, I cannot eat. It’s that bad. I can look at it but only if it’s on telly and even then, I’m borderline throw-uppy. And the glass bottles always had crusty coagulated residue round the opening and top. I am actually finding it hard to type now. Jesus, I feel ill.
Fast forward a few years and my Mum and Dad become friendly with a Danish Family. Now, as has been documented in my blogs in the last year or so, the Scandinavians are the Kings of the Condiment, the Pioneers of the Preserve, the High Priests of Slurry. This family are typical fans of vinegar based bottled slush, not least, the middle daughter of the Danish family, Mette.
She was a horrible little beast anyway, but by far her worst trait was the fact that the only thing this brat would eat was hot dog sausages and ketchup. And she only ate the sausages as a compromise to her poor mother. Personally, I would let the little cretin starve, but I suppose her mother loved her and wanted her to live. Oh well, there’s no accounting for taste.
So, for many years we would spend a lot of leisure time with the Danes; a lot of holidays, a lot of barbecues and a lot of weekends. The most irritating part of our association with them was that we would inevitably spend a lot of meal times with the Danes, or worse, at the Danes’ house where banquets of pickled herring, indescribable bowls of mixtures that looked like vomit and bizarre offal based puddings were the order of the day.
In amongst this culinary Hades, I would be sat at the same table with a girl who would cover every inch of her plate in ketchup or on several occasions drink straight from the ketchup bottle. It was hard to watch and even harder to smell.
She knew I hated the stuff and this made her worse. She would ladle whole spoonfuls of ketchup into her mouth just to upset me. I began to loathe this little sauce filled Viking and I can still see her little sauce smeared chops before me thirty years later. I would want to smash her face in, but the thought of getting ketchup touching my actual person would send me over the edge.
Fast forward ten years and I get out of the family home to University and I am able to avoid ketchup for the most part. I am in charge of my own cooking and my own company so I live a sauce free life, on the whole. I’m not saying I avoid ketchup fiends deliberately, I’m not saucist, but let’s just say if I went out with a bloke and he covered his food in ketchup, it would be a short evening with no goodnight kiss.
On meeting Meeester, I make the no ketchup rule quite clear straight off. There is no ketchup allowed in our house. In fact it’s a no pasaran situation as far as all bottled condiments go. The rule extends to Salad Cream, Picalilli and Branston Pickle. He obeys without question and I realise at that moment that I must marry this man.
Not all people understand. Some even mock my affliction. I distance myself from these people. I do, however, have one ketchup-loving/addicted friend whom I love too much to ban from my house at meal times. If she wants ketchup with her meal at our house, she must bring her own sauce with her, and the bottle must return home with her when she leaves. This will be double checked at the end of the evening. She is fine with this and I live a blissful five years with virtually no ketchup soiling my mealtimes.
But now, everything has changed……my kids love ketchup. The red bastard has snuck in through the back door. I now have a bottle of Heinz Organic Ketchup in my cupboard. It empties and it is replaced. It winks at me as it is placed on the dinner table. Oh, I didn’t buy it. Meeester did. In fact, it was Meeester who introduced the kids to it. And now, they won’t eat without it and Meeester joins in for good measure.
I am scowled at and mocked if I complain. I am made to feel like a petty tyrant if I take my dinner elsewhere. The dinner table has become a place of horror once more.
And I suspect Meeester planned this all along…..
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Another post about Slurry here, in case you missed it.
Cleaning House
For the past couple of years I’ve set my students a production brief called, “Pet Hates”. The deal is they have to make a five minute (ish) video on something that drives them mad or that they would like eliminated from this world. It’s kind of Room 101-ish, I suppose.
In the past we’ve had some corkers; “Neds” is a favourite of mine from last years’ graduates and it went down a storm at the Belmont Cinema Showcase last year. It presumably struck a chord with those who would like to see the use of firearms legalised in the elimination of the neds… This year we had a terrific one from 3 students on ” Canvassers”- where the hero of the film was a guy harassed by one of those guys you get trying to sell you something outside M&S. Very funny.
But dealing with an age range of 17-30 year olds and sadly, mostly males, no one yet has suggested my own personal pet hate as a subject, but I pray one day it’ll come up. My pet hate is HOUSEWORK. I hate it! I Hate it! I HATE ITTTTTT!
I’m generally happy with my lot, however,every single day of my life I wish for some dramatic change in my personality and /or circumstances. I wish fervently that I would become:
A naturally tidy person, OR;
Someone who takes joy in household tasks, OR;
Someone who has a cleaner.
My husband, John, got a digital camera for Christmas and once he got round to testing it out he took random photo of me folding laundry. The result was horrific and hilarious at the same time. I looked so utterly pissed off, it was frightening. I had developed jowls, creases on my forehead and a firmly turned down bottom lip. Now, I spend a hell of a lot of my time folding the laundry of four people and to think that this is what it does to me. It should be against the Human Rights Act.
You see these poor women on “10 Years Younger” (which I MUST watch every week- obsessive, y’see?) and usually their horrific aging is usually down to smoking, sunworshipping or bad dentistry. Mine is due to HOUSEWORK. There I’d be with Vicky Hambleton-Jones and she’d be looking at my photo album.
“Now, Gillian, here we have a photo of you at aged 17. At this point your Mum was mainly picking up after you, doing your laundry and generally being your own personal slave. I must say, you look terrific…..But here we see you at 25, you’ve got your own flat and I can see from the bags under your eyes that you’re even struggling to keep a one bedroom flat tidy…we can see the aging process beginning…..But here’s the real turning point at aged 35 you’ve two kids, a three bedroom house and numerous moggies..you’re really starting to look incredibly shit….
If I were sitting on the black chair in front of Tarrant on “Millimaire” (as my son calls it) and he asks what the first thing I would spend the million on, my answer would be a firm, “Household Staff, Chris.” But Chris wouldn’t understand, never having to lift a manicured finger in his pampered life.
I recently saw that “Sex Inspectors” programme on Channel Four. Channel surfing- didn’t book it or nuffing…..Anyway, the sexpert lady handed the male half of the guinea pig couple a box and told him that inside was the answer to the question, “What turns women on most?” Ignorantly, Mr Guinea Pig said “It”ll be a load of sex toys”. What a chump! How wrong could one man be? What actually lurked inside the box was a male sized pinny, Marigolds and cleaning equipment. No, this wasn’t a bizarre fetish, it was simply this; actual bona fide research has shown that women feel more relaxed, energetic and loving towards their husband if the husbands helped out with the cleaning. It’s simple really; less drudge equals more time for extra curricular stuff; sex included.
Now, in the past week John has made up a household rota which he claims is the answer to our prayers…housework is just about the only thing we argue about. He claims he didn’t see the programme…..
I don’t want to give them impression that my house is like a landfill site; it’s usually ok and generally quite clean but it takes a hell a lot of effort on my part and it’s a Sisyphean task, as I’ve no sooner finished then in come the Destroyers (my family and their associates) and the chaos theory takes effect once more. Oh, I’m sure you all know that Sisyphus was the guy in Greek legend condemned by the Gods to roll a giant boulder up to the top of a mountain repeatedly until the end of time….that about sums it up, really.
But the rota seems to be working and we are hoping that it’ll put an end to the kind of petty arguments that sound a little like this,
“This house is bloody mess!!!”
“Well, I tidied it up last April..”
“What about the laundry, you haven’t done any since 1998″
“I have so, I folded some shirts just yesterday”
“Have you EVER washed the kitchen floor? Do you even KNOW where the mop lives????”
“Well, have you ever done the recycling. How come that seems to always be my job?”
Etc… Etc…. You get my drift. The rota is the answer to all our prayers, all power to the rota!!! Yay!
(BTW: If you know anyone who fancies a cleaning job , let me know. Reasonable rates. Must have own marigolds….)
