Why I don’t remember my weekends.

Posted: January 26, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Matters that Matter | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I tend not to remember my weekends, because I tend not to remember most things that aren’t memorable.

I cooked pig’s feet on Sunday night, and I have literally no clue what we took place.

No clue.

I’m thoroughly informed on the flavour of trotters (taste like pig feet, probably like your feet too), but not on the preceeding 48 hours.

It’s because I ‘Walter Mitty’ – but not in the exotic or adventurous sense like the famous movie.

Instead, when my weekend is happening, and especially when my wife is explaining to me what we’re doing for the weekend, I like to get lost in an internal fiction of mundane oddness.

And it’s very frustrating.

I’d love to enjoy the memories of a weekend, or maybe even the weekend itself, but I reverie without mercy to the point that I’ve broadly got no idea what’s going on.

My wife was speaking, as I presume she does regularly, and instantaneously I began daydreaming about how I would explain to an ancient Viking that a cow is female, using only the most choice grunts and hand-gestures.

Why did I do that?

I didn’t do that!

That daydream happened to me and I simply couldn’t look away.

If this bizarre scenario played itself in your head – you’d also miss-out on your wife’s plans for your weekend.

And to be frank, whilst I’d like to enjoy the weekend, sometimes – I also really want to give some serious consideration to how I’d explain to an ancient Viking that a cow is female, and then watching myself in my own head, with an ancient Viking I’ve never even met before, miming a vagina whilst really committing to an effeminate moo.

Sometimes, I’d really like to do that.

But, reality is also lovely at times.

My wife and kids a smashing, really lovely. Can’t fault them at all.

My wife walks towards me with a smile that she can’t help – because she, like me, has a massive face.

Thus, she presents me with a smile, the same way someone might want to show me they’ve a bucket.

And my children – they’re worth being around for, as well as all that parental responsibility, etc.

My son reminds me of me, he’s the best show off and hopefully will do better than having a blog one day.

My daughter makes me laugh, and I expect that’s a phase till she finds easier means of getting chocolates and dollies.

How do they compare with an ancient Viking ignorant of bovine gender?

They’re preferable, but I’m still distracted by the ridiculous.

I’ll just have to concentrate on the preferable, I suppose.

But I hope you appreciate that having an uninvited Nordic fellow, complete with axe and beard and numerous other stereotypic apparel, inserted into your head from nowhere, might be distracting.

Because it is – I’ve written a whole blog about it. That’s how distracting it is – it gives me focus.

If this distracting focus makes me a millionaire thanks to this blog, that’s a negative – I don’t want my son to be inspired by such things.

He’s already distracted enough, with the void look in his eyes that tells me that in his head he’s somewhere nicer than the conversation I’m currently giving him.

He needs a good, solid focus, uninfluenced by fictional Vikings and me.

He needs his grinning mother – the ultimate reality, the sort you can both hang your hat on and rely.

My daughter will be fine, she takes after the ultimate reality with the big face.

I’m reminded of something teachers have said for, I expect, centuries…”must try harder”.

I’ll certainly try.

Sam

“Yeah, and it’s not as romantic when you use the hoover.”

Posted: October 7, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

The sentences we say…

Humans say the darndest things. In fact, I prefer not speak without guarantees that it’s the darndest thing being said in the room at that moment.

The above title is something my wife replied with to me.

Context aside (and I’m absolutely not going into the context – it’s too hilariously arousing), it was at least amongst the darndest of spoken word.

A year ago, I was washing the dishes at my kitchen sink, and my son rushed in with a grim look on his face to say “Daddy, two of The Beatles are DEAD.”

We’d been to Liverpool a fortnight earlier and the news most have only then sunk in about John and George.

I suppose The Beatles said the darndest things too.

So did Idi Amin.

Maybe the darndest things are just things people say, but perhaps only he darndest people say them.

Like children, Scouse rock stars, and Ugandan tyrants.

And my wife, as I interrupt the housework with contexts I shan’t go into.

Sometimes all you need is something to say.

Just try not to be repetitive.

Yours darndestly,

Sam

Anger to the point of fudge. Don’t make her fudgy. I don’t speak Fudgish.

Posted: October 23, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

This week my wife mothered our kids (including two baths nights), cooked all our evening meals (getting better all the time), worked her job in the Justice policy sector (one day commuting to London and back), sold our car (made a heavy note wad at it), studied evenings for her post graduate degree (late into the nights), hoovered (for fun apparently) and otherwise generally put up with me.

Forgiveness is important with this kind of wife, as it’s no wonder she didn’t have time to thank me for doing the washing up one evening, which I did do fairly loudly.

I would have done more this week, but I was too occupied watching her in astonishment. In honesty, I would have been watching her regardless of how many tasks she was doing, as she is invariably my favourite thing. I even like her handwriting, and I know I like her handwriting, which is an odd thing to know you like about someone.

What don’t I like about her, aside from her husband?

She’s got a bit of a temper. Only a bit, because she tends to leave the lion’s share of her temper about my head and neck following a dispute, such as me suggesting post-graduate education is less important than washing up, by me.

Then again, it is that same temper that I find oddly charming, on those rare occasions I see it make its way towards other poor unfortunates.

It’s somewhat as I’d imagine it to be, if I were the Arizona deserts watching little planes flying very fast towards and even faster away from little island in the French Polynesia sea.

I remember in an Australian town called Hahndorf, we’d been to a local petting zoo to pet some lambs and camels, ostrich and emu. Both ostrich and emu, this is important.

Afterwards, we were in a little sweet shop on the main road, and my wife mentioned in conversation with the owner that we’d been at the zoo.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“Well, an enormous ostrich!” my wife remarked.

The owner paused, leant back in his chair and looked out the window in a manner that suggested he just read the gospel of instructional manuals of ‘how-to-be-arrogant’, and said with his hands behind his head:

“Yeah, we call ‘em emus over here, love.”

He ran a sweet shop. Once. Who knows what’s become of him since?

He’s probably being arrogant somewhere, deceased.

All the same, I all but giggled as I clutched my candy canes in a trembling and sticky fist, watching my wife slowly lean over the counter in an all-encompassing manner and gently ask him:


“Fucking idiot?”

Good question, if confusing in that way questions you’re not meant to answer can be. He answered, and he was incorrect in and of his very being, dialogue aside, though I’m pleased to say I did my duty as a husband and global citizen of sweet shops and coaxed my wife out of the shop with the promise of there being some enormous ostriches out there someone which might match her temper, so she should try it. Also, I had some fudge.

Fudge heals all wounds. Apart from those that happened to that sweet shop guy. He needs hypnosis.

My wife then shared the fudge with me, and it was brilliant, in-Australia-and-not-in-trouble, fudge. We ate it together.

She has many other qualities I also adore, but now I’m hungry and the washing-up really needs doing loudly.

Sam