The magic of Christmas

On watching the John Lewis christmas advert 

Me: so, what do you think? Were you moved?

The boyfriend: yeah, I suppose I was.

I'm really pissed off with the rabbit. I mean clearly the bear needs to sleep.

Me: But he'd never seen Christmas.

Oh, never mind.


If you haven't seen it yet you can shed a tear, or be annoyed at the hare, here

Solving one of life's mysteries: Conversations with the Boyfriend

On the contents of the washing machine

Me: Oh, I've been meaning to ask you. Do you know why there was pasta in the washing machine?

The Boyfriend: No. Well, I mean I did cook some pasta, and maybe some has got into the washing machine.

Me: Right. But I mean, any idea how it got in there?

The Boyfriend: Was it cooked?

Me: The pasta? Yes it was cooked.

The Boyfriend: But I mean, maybe it went in raw and cooked in the machine.

Me: I'm not sure a washing machine boils for 13 minutes.

The Boyfriend: Oh well, it's solved then. We know it was cooked before it went in.

Me: Yes, but why was it in the washer?

The Boyfriend: Oh that? Yeah I've got no idea.

----


For more conversations with the boyfriend, you should click here

Double standards

This weekend I painted some chairs. This was not a well considered spot of diy-ing. No, rather the case that I awoke on Saturday with the notion that our wooden chairs would look better if a different colour.

So I got up, went to the diy-shop, purchased paint, returned home and set about the task.

I understand that this is not the done thing with diy-ing. There is apparently planning that needs to take place. Dust sheets to buy and sensible painting clothes to adorn.

And so it is that I now have four newly painted chairs. And very nice they look too. I also have paint in my hair, all over my arms and a few spots on my clothes.

Oh, and there is a fair amount of paint on the patio too.

The Boyfriend comes outside and notices the large smears of paint on our slate patio.

“It’s fine” I say confidently. “Going to get some wire wool on it tomorrow.”

“Would it be fine if I’d done that?” he asks with a smirk.

I am silent. We both know the answer to that one.

On relocation

Me: You know how we like going on holiday to Cornwall?

The Boyfriend: Yeah.

Me: And you know how we always say that we should live there one day, what with the sun and beaches?

The Boyfriend: Yeah.

Me: Well how about one day being now?

Short pause.

The Boyfriend: Alright then.

------

And so it came to pass that we moved to St Ives. 

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

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.

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.

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

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.

A little holiday magic

I have just returned from a week’s holidaying.  I went to France where it rained and, owing to taking food with us, we ate Tesco cheese and drank Spanish wine. Philistines, I know.

The rainy days got The Boyfriend and me reminiscing about one particular holiday of note.

Our holiday in the Caravan of no Comfort.

Times had been tight. It was a Sun £9.50 holiday. You know the one where you collect the tokens. I remember the paperwork arriving. There were several upgrade options available. My then housemate, 'Big Dave', talked me out of parting with any more money.

“Rach it’s a con. You’ve bought the cheap holiday and now they’re trying to tempt you into spending money. (He read the paperwork) Look – it’s double the price. Don’t do it.”

I have still not forgiven him for this advice. 

The caravans that are given to the people who have collected the Sun tokens are not the ones you see in the brochures. No, they are the ones that were decorated (and last cleaned) in 1971.

A week’s rain on the roof of a caravan is relatively annoying. Especially when the bed is so hard you cannot sleep. And so narrow you cannot turn over for fear of going clean through the caravan wall.

The sofas were so narrow you could not sit on them.

The kitchen was so small that The Boyfriend almost set it on fire whilst cooking. Who knew kitchen roll was so flammable? Luckily it flew with ease out of the very small window. (Regular readers - yes, this is the same one that likes to torch pork chops during the night – I really should learn.)

The only thing on this holiday that was not small was the vast amusement arcade where hundreds of winking, bleeping, slot machines competed with the psychedelic carpet for our attention.

But don’t worry, all was not lost.

Seeing an illusionist fail to make his assistant re-appear at the Cabaret show made it all worth it.  All £9.50's worth.

PS. I know you’ll be delighted to hear that the Sun’s token holidays are still available. The bad news is that they’ve gone up in price. 

On Nagging

“You don’t know what you are letting yourself in for,” The Boyfriend’s mother told me when he moved in.


She was right. I didn't.


The Boyfriend produces a vast quantity of crumbs. To the point where I have begun to wonder if maybe he is a loaf of bread.


He keeps leaving windows unlocked – posing a serious risk of burglary. The other night he set the smoke alarm off at 3am due to a pork related incident.


I do not ask questions. But instead huff back to bed when I discover there is not, thankfully, a fire.


He tells me the following day that he thinks he ‘got off lightly for that one.’

Because to comment on being awoken at 3am, by the smoke alarm, owing to unattended grilled pork could only be the act of a NAGGING WOMAN, couldn’t it? 


Women get most of the bad press when it comes to rowing. Men, if we are to stereotype, occasionally explode in fury. Women are more frequently annoyed by so-called minutiae. We are ‘apparently’ the ones who niggle and poke and prod and berate all day… We are the ones, in short, who nag.



So why do we nag? Well, frankly it’s because we can see, in blinding clarity, the consequences of your actions. If you leave the window open and we are burgled, we will not be insured and will have to replace all our stuff. This is upsetting, expensive and completely avoidable.


So is burning down the house.


So Boyfriend, the next time I advance at you with a list of complaints, I am not trying to moan, nag or otherwise berate.


Rather I am trying to keep us alive.


Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some crumbs to tidy up. We don’t want rats now do we...

Early nights and veg

Can I ask you a quick question?

 

Am I boring? 

Just tell me if I am. I can take it, honestly.

Yesterday The Boyfriend said the following:

“Life with you is all early nights and (long pause) veg.”

Early nights and veg?

I’m 28. This does not sound good.

I mean it’s probably true that since our shacking up The Boyfriend’s vegetable intake has increased. We do eat a lot of broccoli.

And yes, ok, I like eight hours uninterrupted sleep. As I have a job to get up and go to, this usually involves going to bed somewhere around 11pm.

But does this make me boring? Isn’t this what everyone does?

Am I eating my five a day and getting enough sleep whilst everyone else’s week is packed full of nights on the town and riotous merriment? I went out two nights in a row last weekend, and it’s taken five days of quiet time to recover and restore my equilibrium.

Nowadays I’m more likely to be worrying about how I will dry the towels, (an ongoing saga) the cost of electricity, or when the optimum time is to exchange my tesco vouchers.

But it’s ok.

By getting enough sleep I am keeping myself well in body and mind. If you never eat any vegetables you will encourage particularly horrible cancers to take up residence in your body and you might die. I am avoiding this by eating my daily broccoli and, in turn, am prolonging The Boyfriend’s life. He should be grateful.

Anyway, the good news is we’ve found a solution to the towels.

We kiss over our new drying rack.  Fade-out. End.

The tables are turned

Regular readers and fans of the ‘ridiculous-things-my-other-half-utters’ posts may be interested to learn that the other half appears to be getting his own-back.

Yesterday, I stumbled across a piece of paper, on which my own words were written.

Turns out he’s been keeping a note of things I’ve been saying.

I am not happy with this sudden and unexpected turn of events, but thought I would share the single entry he’d written on a torn out page of my note pad.

Rachel: “Luckily for you, you are funnier than you are annoying.”

Me: (meaning him, not me) "Ha, great."

Rachel: “Considering how incredibly annoying you are, this really is quite the compliment.”

Gosh, I really do say the nicest things.

To see what I have to put up with, you can read my previous post right here.

It's only a metaphor

I like to think I have a pretty good sense of humour. Maybe saying that is like when someone says they’re ‘laid back.’ Anyone who says they’re laid back definitely isn’t.

Anyway, I always try to laugh at myself.  I laugh and smile often. My face regularly hurts from the above.

And just in case, the fella certainly keeps me on my toes with regard to whether or not I am taking myself too seriously...

Many people have messaged me to say that they loved the ‘s**t my boyfriend says’  post. So I’d been making a note of some of the more ‘amusing’ things he’d said with the view to compiling a second list.

They included the hypothetical

“Do you think our daughter would get your fat arse?”

And, after looking at some recent photographs,

“You probably shouldn’t wear that dress that makes you look pregnant again love.”

Yes. I think I can still laugh at myself. Thanks my darling.

But then last night he was out on the pop. When he came home we had the following exchange:

Him: “You know us; do you ever think that we’re only together because no-one else would have us?”

Me: “ Umm no. And that’s not a very nice thing to say.”

Him: “I’m joking.”

Me:  “What?”

Him: “Ok then, it was a metaphor.”

               

If you missed the first post in this series, you can catch up with it here

On getting pickier

This weekend I caught up with a couple of old girl friends. Not ‘old’ in age you understand, but in years of knowing. Although perhaps those things are intertwined nowadays. Jees, are they? We do all use eyecream after all.

Anyway, Friday night was a chance to catch up. We have known each other since 1995, when we started senior school. In 1995 I considered it ‘the fashion’ to hair-spray my fringe into individual strands, wear an Adidas drill top, and had my first kiss (with a runty boy named James) at the Grammar School Disco. I was, I recall, wearing a classic two-piece from Tammy Girl and lipstick from Miss Selfridge.

So, out came the old photo albums. We laughed so much that red wine was spilt all over the sofa. Luckily, because we are now grown ups we knew exactly how to deal with this situation and chucked the best part of a bottle of pinot grigio on after it.

After the spill, conversation turned to the old boyfriends. Luckily James from the Grammar School Disco did not come up. We’d only had one date anyway, on the 510 bus the following Monday morning. He went to the boys school, me to the girls. It was never going to work.

We remembered the days when one kiss consummated your relationship. Boyfriend and girlfriend you became. Criteria for the accolade of ‘boyfriend’ was limited at best. Two boys, two girls, and one question. ‘Which one do you want?’

Over the years we’ve really kissed an unfair share of frogs.

But at some point we developed an idea of what our boyfriend should be -  a list of criteria that our dream man must measure up to. This never quite panned out of course, most likely because our lists were utter nonsense.

Worryingly I have watched my friends dismiss lovely men because they didn’t match up to the romantic ideal that they had developed. On the other hand I have witnessed people dating absolute cretins because they apparently ticked all the boxes.

But on Friday, as we finished off the bottle, we all agreed that real relationships are bloody hard work. They are not one continual dream of romance, fluffy animals and mini-breaks. Love is not a big ring, or a box of thorntons chocolates.

 A man who sorts the rubbish and puts it in the right sacks for collection – well there is one that’s worth sticking with.

Of course, if he could also pick his towels off the floor, not make crumbs in the bed and know how to rustle up a risotto – well that would be super.  There are some criteria worth holding onto.

S**t my boyfriend says

There are a few things a lady prefers to keep to herself. Exactly what percentage of her clothes no longer fit her, for example, how many times she really wears a pair of jeans before putting them in the wash, how late she is in paying her credit card bill, or how knowledgably she knows the plot of Emmerdale.

But today (mainly because I threatened to do it and then he dared me) I am sharing the ‘top 3 ridiculous things’ my other half has uttered in the last few days.

1. Are you just going out with me for blog material?

2. Isn’t it funny how you’d rather I insult your intelligence than your weight?

3. Women’s magazines are worse than Mein Kampf.

I should add the third comment was accompanied by him reading passages from Zest Magazine aloud to me, at full volume, whilst on a plane, yelling words like ‘propaganda’ and ‘Nazis.’ Apparently he did not believe that the ‘Zest tips for a healthy lifestyle’ had any founding whatsoever in science, and that it was thus an insult to womankind.

When he is not yelling from a soapbox about the fate of womankind he’s rather lovely.

But if he could just leave me in peace to learn exactly how many minutes of squats it’ll take me to burn off this cake - I’d be delighted. Turns out I’ve got a high percentage of clothes that no longer fit me.

Needs a tumble drier.

I have moved in with a boy. Or more accurately, he has moved in with me.

He told his mother. She said to me, “You don’t know what you are letting yourself in for.” Encouraging this was not.

My flat is a small city flat with habitat cushions and candles which claim to smell of ‘fresh linen.’

He turned up with a broken computer held together by dirt (cables lost en-route), one suit,  some questionable household furnishings, his car – the ‘silver shadow,’ (which, I am told,  is named after Minder’s trainers) and a bathroom bin which reportedly cost him £6.

4 weeks in and my boyfriend thinks I am a nag.

I think that on the scale of womankind I am not a nag. He agrees with this. He does however still think that I am a nag.

Ok, so I do occasionally feel a little bit panicky about where we can dry the towels. Over the doors is messy. On the floor is horrific. I cannot live in a damp smelling abode. It really is a quandary.

I am a firm believer in getting a grip. If you are a regular reader you will know that I have been known to throw pans away to avoid washing them. However, the other night I found myself teaching him how to make a bed.

Please understand that he is quite capable and more than willing to make the bed.

It’s just that, well, it’s just not as nicely made as when I make it. Let me explain; he leaves the pillows underneath the duvet. The blanket is not folded perfectly in half along the mattress. The pointless scatter cushions are not scattered in exactly the right way. Half way through the lesson he asked me ‘And how important is this exactly?’ I concluded ‘not at all’, but just in case he is now fully trained in hospital corners.

I’m not all bad. When I returned home from work to find that he had shaved his beard all over the bath pristinely bleached just hours before by the cleaner – how I laughed.

When the removal man asked him for a ‘dust-sheet’ in which to wrap my old TV, he simply stripped the 800 thread-count Egyptian cotton one straight off my bed and handed it over. Only a nag would complain about that.

But it’s fine. We have agreed a place for towels, at least for now. And if the towels don’t smell of fresh linen, at least the candles do.

Later, I apologise in bed for caring at all about the location of towels. ‘No worries’ he says, closes his eyes, and promptly snores in my face. I of course wake him up, because I am awful.