Moving Stories: Part Four...

At From Beer To Paternity Towers we share the housework.

This means that every week I do the hoovering and the dusting and take the rubbish and the recycling out... and the Missus cleans the bathrooms once a month... but only when it looks like they will collapse under the weight of their own grime.

So I'm hoovering the house and she asks me what I'm doing.
'What does it look like I'm doing?'
'But your hay fever is really bad.'
'House dust doesn't trigger hay fever.'
'But it may make yours worse.'
'It won't...'
'Well I think you should stop.'
'If I stop it won't get done.'
'Well make yourself ill. See if I care...'

And with that she strops off. I give it a few moments thought and think about calling a halt to my domestic chores. But it is true... if I don't do it no other sod will so I continue on my merry way ignoring the occasional harumphing coming from upstairs.

Then it hits me. I am the only husband in the world who can be criticised for doing too much housework. I am blessed. Truly blessed...

Dance Yourself Dizzy...

It is the big dance event myself and a few of my fellow hapkido students have put together to raise money to buy new mats for our school.

The Missus has come along early to help me set up and the Other Woman and the Other Woman Who Loves Other Women are also present. The coming together of the three women in my life is usually a recipe for some type of character assassination as they all swap notes on what an idiot I am and, true to form, the Missus and the Other Woman are soon in cahoots.

The Other Woman Who Loves Other Women, however, is otherwise engaged strutting her stuff on the dancefloor with a beautiful woman she’s turned up with and, quite frankly, the two of them are wonderful to watch. They have grace, they have poise, they have style and they look devastatingly sexy... In another life I am definitely coming back as a dancing lesbian.

Then the dance class part of the evening proper starts and me and the Missus are woefully bad so we retire to the bar with the Other Woman and laugh at how bad we are.

Then it strikes me... after 12 years and 279 days and 2 hours together I finally discover something that me and the Missus have in common. We may be poles apart in music, film, art, theatre, TV, literature and other interests but the thing that we have in common is that we are utterly useless at dancing. Douglas Barder (post-accident) would look more graceful with dancing shoes on.

It is a small triumph in a night of ballroom carnage.

Moving Stories: Part Three...

I am worried by the Missus. She has started knitting and is collecting apples from the apple tree in our garden and threatening to bake pies.

I approach her about this and she starts pondering our move to the country and how it may affect her in future.
'Of course now I've moved to the country I'll probably start wearing gingham and behaving like a Stepford Wife...'
'So you're mine to command?'
'Absolutely...'
'So you won't be quite so opinionated, sarcastic, vicious and demeaning towards me?'
'No...
'Brilliant. Well... for my part now you're a country wife you can forget about those female orgasms. You'll have no need for them now you're out of London. So you can forget about your fancy metropolitan sexual ways...'
'Between you and me, love, I forgot those about the same time we got together...'

Ouch...

Moving Stories: Part Two...

The wardrobe was something we bought as part of a costly splurge on expensive bedroom furniture about four years ago. Sadly when it arrived at the new house there was no way it was going to fit up the stairs so it spent the first few days in a downstairs room.

Then I had a brainwave and thought I'd reveal my scheme to the Missus.
'I've had a look at the wardrobe and I think I can dismantle it, take all the bits upstairs then put it back together again.'
My idea is greeted with silence and a look that suggests I've just asked her to let me sleep with her best friend while she makes us a finger buffet for afters.

'I said I've...'
'I heard what you said.'
'I think I can do it...'
'Do you remember what that wardrobe cost?'
'Yes.'
'And you realise it was built by trained craftsmen with years of experience?'
'Yes.'
'And your qualification for undoing the work they did in assembling it then putting it back together is?'

I rack my brain then remember the words my Mother uttered to the first girlfriend I brought back from college in a bid to impress her.
'There was nothing I couldn't make out of lego when I was a kid...'
'Lego?'
'Ask my mum...'
'Lego?'
'It's the same theory. I'll just pretend it's a big lego kit and I'm eight.'
'It's not happening...'

An hour later the Missus pops into the back room and I have the first door off and the look of horror on her face is a picture. But with one door off we're in too deep and she now has to help me finish the job...

Three hours later the wardrobe stands in our bedroom. Everything is in place, it all works and it's solid as a rock. I am golden, I am Hercules, I am the Man Who Knew Too Much, I am eight-year-old Lego builder made good. Even the Missus is impressed...

Then a day later I try to hang a picture using dodgy hooks and it falls off the wall and smashes the frame and the triumph of wardrobegate is all but a distant memory.

I am now Bomber Harris, at one time lauded a hero but now confined to the pile entitled scumbags of history because of one small oversight...

The Best Joke Ever...

Q. How do you get a fat woman into bed?
A. Piece of cake...

Even better I sent this gag to my Other Woman and she told me she wasn't that fussy and would probably hit the sack for a biscuit.

I'm a lucky man to have such low-rent, slatternly chums...

Moving Stories: Part One...

Me and the Missus are now settled in our new home in Guildford.

The original plan was to sell up in London and, with the Boy at university and just me, the Missus and the cats to house, downsize and not have a mortgage, therefore freeing money up for having fab holidays and living the good life.

Then the Missus saw THE house...

Consequently all plans of having no mortgage flew out the window and we are now living in a very beautiful detached Victorian villa in a very posh street in Surrey's favourite market town.

Fortunately it is an utterly beautiful house and we both had a week off work to get settled in and start the redecorating process, which is now well under way. Adjusting to a new commuting routine sans cycle and dans train, however, will take some time and getting used to living in a new house will probably take a bit longer as well.

In fact for the first few days I was a bit like the cats, wandering around the house late at night trying to find my bearings and marking the bits of the new territory I want to claim as my own. Unlike the cats, however, I didn't run into the nearest room and urinate in a corner. Not yet anyway...

The first night sleeping there was very strange. It was deathly quiet without the constant hum of London or the glow of street lights in the background. Waking up and seeing countryside was also quite exciting too. Even the cats declared a temporary ceasefire to their usual hostilities and both slept on the bed without trying to tear lumps out of each other.

But it's nice and relaxed and quiet and I'm pretty sure we're all going to be happy in our new abode. The constant hassle of London is now a memory and in its place anything seems possible yet again...