lifestyle. She was theatrically sociable to gain supportive friends, while I was studiously anti-social to preserve independence and fleeting quietude. She was a happy-clappy born again Christian buying a stairway to heaven, and I was an inveterate cynic critiquing the world with monotonous grumpy old man intensity. We quarrelled incessantly yet avoided one another where possible, and when we agreed to approach the solicitors one day, we probably knew we wouldn’t the next. Family visits to stately homes alternated with personal visits to estate agents, while heated exchanges vied with electrical silences to see which could have the more stressful effect. My wife spoke more to the guinea pigs than me, and I thanked them for the distraction. The only thing that remained of our hippy heydays, was a split cane rubbish basket next to the toilet. Still, continuing romance had its price too and I cheered myself up by remembering the man who told his wife to excrete daily in the public lavatories rather than the domestic loo, because her bathroom activities were spoiling his idyllic view of sex. “Morning” I said, when I arrived downstairs. “Hi” said two out of the three present. “Mum’s going to take us to see ‘The Three Tenors’ tonight” said my daughter. “Oh, we’re not that poor” I quipped. “I’ve already got four twenties and a fiver in my wallet, if you want to see them.” (silence). “And I’m doing a presentation at school today”. “A presentation!” “Yes, a presentation on ‘what it’s like to be a child in the 21st century’.” “But I thought everybody was an expert on that these days. Surely we don’t need any further explanation. Ha ha …..ha……er…...” (silence)
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