On Romance: Conversations with the Boyfriend

Champ

Watching Match of the day, relaxing.

The Boyfriend: You know, I’d give up Champ for you. 

*please note Champ is Championship Manager, a football computer game.

Me: Bloody hell, that’s big.

Long pause

The Boyfriend: Actually, I may have been a bit hasty there.

Me: What? So you wouldn’t give up Champ for me?

The Boyfriend: No. But I’d say that I would.

Long pause

Me: Thanks.

----------------------------------

‘Hilarity’

Watching tv dieting show, relaxing

Man on tv show to lady dieting: So your current weight is 31 stone.

The Boyfriend: Rach you’re no-where near that. 

For more Conversations with The Boyfriend click here

Hunting for supper

I love it when a simple walk turns into adventure. And food adventure is my favourite kind. So imagine my delight when, on a wander along the Water of Leith, I see blackberries growing in the shrubbery. Am I about to forage? I think I am.

Wild Blackberries in the shrubbery

The Boyfriend was on hand to throw himself head-first into the task. Not content with the blackberries growing right by the path, he insisted on scaling the bank. And on my taking his picture. Typical. 

Action shot

A bit of effort and a few thorny cuts (the Boyfriend told me to 'man up' at every thorny yelp) and we had a small bag full of ripe blackberries.

Urban foraging

Just the perfect ingredient for a crumble, wouldn't you say?

So a bit of sugar, butter and flour, the addition of an apple and a squeeze of lemon later, and we had ourselves a crumble. And all the sweeter it tasted for having harvested the fruit ourselves down by the river.

Blackberry crumble and cream

And as we finished the last morsels, I suddenly wondered if I hadn't got ahead of myself in all this foraging excitement. Were wild blackberries even edible? Oh crap. 

Next time I'll be googling first, but you'll be glad to know, we've survived.

For more information about foraging wild blackberries, here's a handy link. Found moments after I'd licked the bowl clean.

Technology fail

I have suffered a great loss. My 8 month old iPhone died. Apparently a leaking bottle of gin and an iPhone mixeth not.

It made an unpleasing electrical buzzing sound and even time spent in a bowl of rice (is this some kind of urban myth?) did not revive it. Neither did sealing it in an airtight container with silica gel. Nor a stint in the airing cupboard.

Ironically I was unable to google other options.

Thus I’m on the emergency phone. A Samsung slide-screen. Who needs 3G, internet connection or apps? I’ve got Bluetooth. 

It’s liberating being unable to check your emails immediately on waking. You do not miss the stiff thumb one gets from smart-phone-scrolling. And I can’t remember how to text by pressing letters, which is doing wonders for my phone bill.

Anyway, the release of the iPhone 5 means that my (broken) phone has been rendered obsolete.  So I might stick just with my ten year old Samsung.

After all, it doesn’t have an expensive intel core-processor that’s teetotal.

2050: not a moment too soon

I have become someone who only blogs about housework. Forgive me.

But god, when did cleaning start taking up such a high percentage of my life? Barely an evening goes by where something does not require hovered or cleaned or anti-bacteria-ed. The Boyfriend lives in blissful ignorance of the home the woodlice are making under our radiator, or the darkening rim in the bath, or the fact the oven needs cleaning.

It must be a happy world he inhabits.

A world where dirty washing reappears cleaned in wardrobes, the toilet magically smells of pine, and you have no interaction whatsoever with a toilet brush.

Let me be clear, The Boyfriend certainly does not think that cleaning is woman’s work, rather he does not see the mess. And when I point it out, usually with bottle of bleach in hand, a crazed expression on my face, and my voice a full octave above the usual pitch that I am,

 ‘fed up, sick of cleaning, is this really what you think I want to do in an evening? Yes I do feel put upon? Oh my god is that MOULD, this house is a TIP, how can you not see the crumbs everywhere? How have you got the new bin dirty?’ 

… He is usually quick to grab the hoover in a show of solidarity.

But I know that I am not alone. Worse still, change is hard to come by, and a study from Oxford University has found that men are unlikely to be doing an equal share of the vacuuming, dusting and washing up much before 2050. 2050. I’ll have retired. That is if retiring is still a concept in 40 years.

But he does try.

The Boyfriend: “I checked the laundry to see if it could be put away, but it seems to be getting damper.”

Me: “No love. That’ll be because that’s a new load.”

The Boyfriend: “ah.”

2050 you say? It’ll be here sooner than we think.

Am I a dreamer

I saw this wonderful sign today and it got me thinking. 

Am I dreaming or taking action? 

Which of these people are you?

F**k the Po-lice

It’s fair to say that housework is the bane of my life. I hate everything about it. I hate that dust gathers at every opportunity, that crumbs appear on freshly hovered carpets (although for this I blame The Boyfriend) and that skirting-boards require any attention whatsoever. I wish I could be one of those people who has a clean home that is ready for visitors at a moment’s notice.

But I’m not. I resent every loathsome minute I have to spend cleaning.

And now it’s gone and gotten worse.

Woodlice have taken residence. They march in, in their droves, taking cover under furniture, rugs and afore mentioned skirting.

As if this isn’t horrific enough, this weekend the following incident occurred.

I was hovering them up, kneeling on the sofa, stretching elegantly over the back, hoover attachment in hand.

And then.

God, what a funny smell.

Jees is that burning?

Holy crap the hoover is smoking.

Oh god, it smells electrical.

*Sees sparks*

Oh, that’ll be my plugged in laptop cable being chewed up by the angry looking smoking hoover.

*Moves at PACE to power supplies and narrowly avoids electrical fire.*

What does this incident tell me? That hovering is dangerous? That woodlice and laptops do not mix? That I really am that stupid?  I do not have time to answer. I have people coming round and a house full of woodlice. Yes, I forgot to mention that during its ‘meltdown’ the hoover spat out all of the woodlice I had spent the previous hour exterminating.

I must get to work.

Be a heroine

One of my writing heroines has died. Nora Ephron, New Yorker, screen writer and general wit died a week ago, aged 71.

As a blogger, I have been considering Nora’s famous piece of advice, “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. When you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.’

Nora had a knack of turning her life experiences into witty insightful entertainment. After being cheated on and left (in a very undignified manner) by her husband, she turned the entire episode into a hit book and film. She said, “I knew the moment my marriage ended that someday it might make a book – if I could just stop crying. One of things I’m proudest of is that I managed convert an event that seemed to me hideously tragic at the time to a comedy – and if that’s not fiction, I don’t know what is."

Here was a woman who lived by her own philosophy, “Above all, be the heroine of your own life, not the victim.”

Thanks Nora for your wit and words. I’ll end with the lists that closed what would become your final book, but right now I’ve got to run – I’ve got a bikini to slip into.

"Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was twenty-six. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're thirty-four."   ~ Nora Ephron.

What I won't miss

Dry skin
Bad dinners like the one we went to last night
E-mail
Technology in general
My closet
Washing my hair
Bras
Funerals
Illness everywhere
Polls that show that 32 percent of the American people believe in creationism
Polls
Fox TV
The collapse of the dollar
Bar mitzvahs
Mammograms
Dead flowers
The sound of the vacuum cleaner
Bills
E-mail. I know I already said it, but I want to emphasize it.
Small print
Panels on Women in Film
Taking off makeup every night

What I will miss

My kids
Nick
Spring
Fall
Waffles
The concept of waffles
Bacon
A walk in the park
The idea of a walk in the park
The park
Shakespeare in the Park
The bed
Reading in bed
Fireworks
Laughs
The view out the window
Twinkle lights
Butter
Dinner at home just the two of us
Dinner with friends
Dinner with friends in cities where none of us lives
Paris
Next year in Istanbul
Pride and Prejudice
The Christmas tree
Thanksgiving dinner
One for the table
The dogwood
Taking a bath
Coming over the bridge to Manhattan
Pie