Was out a wee bit too late last night and faced, at the point of ending the night, every modern husband’s dilemma. Should I stay or should I go home? To stay where I was meant a bed, a bit of a decent sleep and a stumble home in the morning. To go home meant almost certainly waking my lovely wife up far too early in the morning for her to go back to sleep before her work alarm went off, a better sleep for me and well, trouble, obviously. I chose the former option. The right thing to do, of course, is not to stay out at all like this. That’s always going to be the correct choice, even for a well kept man such as myself. Assuming that there has already been a breach of that basic etiquette, what is the best remedial strategy?
In the past many fellows would resort to flowers, perhaps chocolate and in some cases a dinner date. Me, I’m going to spend the rest of the day smashing a mattock into the soil’s thicker embedded roots, try to muster an evening meal and then last as politely long as I can after that before passing out. It’s not a clever technique. As I get older the requisite stamina seems harder to summon up. Trouble is, I have little other tactics in the bad husband bag. I just wasn’t brought up for this sort of relationship. No-one was. Thus us lot, the first generation of house husbands are caught floundering on a sea of non-existent advice and know-how.
I’m joking, of course. I know how to do one or two things. I can, for example, load both the dishwasher and the washing machine, with my stuff. I’m less handy on the culinary front. In our allotment garden project, my beautiful wife is the brains behind most of the planting scheme. I am the brawn. I have some uses. Apparently.