Musing on meat and burglars: Conversations with The Boyfriend

Missing Meat.

The Boyfriend: (on spotting sausages in the fridge) So it’s over then?

Me: What’s over?

The Boyfriend:  No meat week.

Me: excuse me?

The Boyfriend: Yeah – I’ve been craving a bacon sandwich all week, and I've realised it’s because we’ve had vegetarian food all week.

Me: Come on, that lentil curry was lovely.

The Boyfriend: Oh of course. Just not as lovely as say – a chicken curry.

Me: Love, you had black pudding yesterday.

The Boyfriend: So I did.

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If I had a hammer.

Lounging in the bedroom, front door bangs with the wind.

Me: Oh, don’t worry it’s just the burglars.

The Boyfriend: Well if it is, I've got protection.

Me: What?

The Boyfriend: Yeh, the other night I thought I heard someone breaking in, so I got a hammer – it’s under the bed.

Me: Right.

The Boyfriend: I’ll show you. (reaches under bed and produces hammer.)

The Boyfriend:  But don’t worry – I put some tacs down there too – so if ever anything happens and I have to use it, we can just say that I’d been hanging pictures.

Me: That’s alright then.

The things we do

 I have signed up for boot camp. This is wholeheartedly out of character for 3 main reasons.

1.       I do not like being told what to do.

2.       I do not like being shouted at.

3.       I do not agree with group punishment.

And group punishment this is. We assemble in a local park. White van men yell helpful encouragement such as ‘left-right-left right’ through their windows as they drive past. We run, squat, lunge and burpee – all hideously painful torture techniques designed to make women realise that the perfect body is definitely not worth this level of effort.

We leap up and down. I watch women’s bottoms wobble furiously and jump higher. Because it is damp, we are inadvertently ‘bringing up the worms’ in a kind of mad exercise worm -dance.

We must now ‘drop and give him 20.’ I am horrified that I am paying good money to be given this kind of instruction, but not quite as horrified as when I find I have my hands and face in wormy wet grass.

I am now rolling around in mud. Actually rolling - as I do a press up, and then flail around on the ground until repeating. My hoodie has grass stains on the elbows. I am inhaling grass and wondering if we have any Vanish stain remover left under the sink.

Oh shit, I’m going to be sick.

That would be really embarrassing. Luckily someone has already thrown up by the tree. But she is hard-core and has now resumed the jumping squat. I would have to go home, and never return.

I am not sick.

I do not like burpees. No-one has ever looked back on their life and thought ‘I wish I’d done more burpees.’ I think wars might have started over enforced burpees.

And then it is over. I limp home – damp, yet victorious.

I walk in the flat and am so hungry that I eat an entire lump of cheese straight out the fridge. I have walked wet muddy grass all over the carpet and created a damp patch from my large wet bottom on the sofa.

If only I had energy left to clean.