‘Last night my mother said that you’ve been behaving like a teenager.’
‘What’s she talking about? I’ve been helping out, looking after our daughter and I’ve helped her with the cooking.’
‘It’s because you left your wetsuit in the guest shower last night.’
‘Really?’ In hindsight I wish I had taken issue with that because I cannot imagine the mother-in-law would’ve been much happier if I had dragged a dripping wetsuit through the house. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll take it outside after breakfast.’
I was lying on my daughter’s mattress on the floor whilst she was with mum in the large double bed, snuggled up together.
She continued: ‘Well, it’s also that you’ve been lying in.’
‘Lying in? Since when does 7.15 count as a lie in. I’m supposed to be on holiday! I’ve taken week off to be here and I thought your parents would want to spend more time with her rather than faffing around with the clothes horse and the window blinds.’
‘Well, we’re at breakfast at seven which means that by 7.15 we’ve already made breakfast for your daughter and fed her and you then come down and just, sort of, sort yourself out. There’s just no reason for you to come down late.’
I cannot deny the fact that I fancy staying in bed for a few more minutes. Then a thought occurred. I opened my mouth and said, ‘Actually there is a reason. Sometimes I wake up with a raging hard on, like right now. Not too sure your mother would be very impressed if I walked to the breakfast table with a huge bulge in my dressing gown and said good morning to her.’
She rolled her eyes. The mention of ‘huge bulge’ made her go ‘ugh’, she picked up our daughter, opened the bedroom door and closed it again.
Behaving like a teenager? What next.
I lifted the blanket with my left hand and reached down with my right hand and began stroking. Actually felt quite pleased myself – I had a good retort that time. And seeing as I’ve now established that I need ‘a few more minutes’, I might as well …
The door swung back open again.
What now? For a moment it looked like the misses had just aged by sixty years and turned into an old hag. Jesus – no, it’s mother-in-law. What’s she doing here. She looked down at me, clearly unimpressed that I was lying in her grand-daughter’s bed, holding the blanket up – which disappeared almost immediately whilst my hands carefully retreated back up over the blanket.
‘Just so you know,’ she said, ‘I’ve taken your wetsuit and hung it up outside.’
‘Oh okay. Thank you. I was going to …’
She then glared at me. ‘Can you start taking responsibility for YOUR things!’
‘Oh! Sorry’.
She left.
Jesus Christ that was unacceptable, I thought. Unacceptable! The wetsuit’s dry now anyway. How the heck am I supposed to walk to the breakfast table now even without a hard on.
I got dressed and walked downstairs and could hear them all tickling our daughter who was giggling. I glumly sat down next to my daughter who was still holding her slice of toast. The mother-in-law was acting like nothing had happened, came over stuck her head between us and put her arms round both of us and said, ‘my two little poppets’.
Did she feel bad about having a go at me? I’ve never been called a little poppet before, but I guess it cleared the air a bit.
I had breakfast and then followed pretty much the exact same dreadful routine as the previous few days which consisted of:
- make breakfast, sit down, tidy up, go for a walk,
- make lunch, sit down, listen to endless drivel about the Government, tidy up, go for a walk,
- make sure the clothes horse has got direct sunlight,
- make cup of tea, listen to complaints about the Government, tidy up,
- make dinner, sit down again, more complaints again, more tidying up again.
So there I was, at dinner, listening this time to complaints about the council.
The father-in-law had just emptied a tin of mussels on to a plate including the briny yellowy oil slick that they were drenched in. It looked like a pile of bleached yellow slugs in tractor diesel. He took some bread an started dipping it into the yellow brine! He then pushed the soggy bread into his mouth which was already full of food. I couldn’t watch this, I thought. I couldn’t even bear to look at the mussels. I couldn’t stop myself from saying something. I opened my mouth, ’That looks vile. What is it?’ I said.
The mother-in-law looked at me and then the plate. ‘It does look disgusting. James, it’s disgusting. Can you stop putting the sauce on the plate. What have I told you.’ She turned back to me.
‘Anyway, as I was saying, my brother Bernard has been complaining to the council for some time now about the stench coming from the next door neighbour’s. But the council cannot do anything until they go round with a device to measure the smell. So they went round to measure and it turns out that Bernard’s house smells even worse than the other house and and now the council have threatened to evict him within a month unless he cleans out his house. Can you believe that?
‘I don’t know what to say, I mean …
‘Well, it’s not going to be possible to clear the house – sorry to interrupt – but it’s not going to be possible to clear his house in a month. He’s been collecting all that stuff for years! He’s a hoarder! I think there’s something wrong with him’.
Just him? I was looking at the people at the table – was it just me that found that hilarious and ironic?
The father in law suddenly awoke from his self-induced daze from eating too much bread dripped in brine, sat up straight as if a rod and been pushed up behind his shirt, and then walked out into the patio and started extending the awning.
I looked out the glass doors and then at the misses and with my eyes pointing to him as if to say her, what’s he doing? There’s no sunlight left. She shrugged.
He came back in and sat back down. What on earth had clicked inside of him. Clearly, extending the awning is ‘his job’ but he’s got the time of day wrong. He started dipping his bread into more brine.
I couldn’t take anymore, I was going to explode. Our daughter started making a bit of noise.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘That’s it. I think I’d better take her upstairs to let her calm down a bit.’
‘No, she’s fine!’
I grabbed her and took her out of the high chair. She started screaming but at least I didn’t have endure that scene and risk saying more things I’ll regret.
After five minutes of screaming in my ear, we both came back down again. I felt so much better then before despite the pain in my ears. Thankfully the mussels were gone and the conversation had moved on. I helped tidy up and took our daughter to bed.
After that pathetic day I concluded that the only way to finish today would be with a wank. I went upstairs to the ensuite bathroom.
I needed to go to the bathroom anyway so I walked in, closed the door and sat down and rested my head against the tiles.
No sooner had I sat down but I could sense that someone was walking around outside the door. From sheer magnetism, I just knew it was the mother-in-law so I quietly double-checked that the lock was secure and I started making a bit more noise (coughing, tapping my foot) just in case she started enacting another obsession which was turning lights off and unplugging cables – and the bathroom switch was on the outside. She carried on walking around impatiently, evidently waiting to go to the toilet or desperately unplugging something. No chance of a wank now.
I flushed the toilet and then noticed that it looked as if a dirty fat slug had just lazily slid down the toilet bowl and left a long trail dark slime. The ergonomics of the toilet were clearly inadequate for its sole purpose to receive something which was dropped from above, being almost equally curved on both sides of the bowl.
Nonetheless, after all these complaints about me ‘behaving like a teenager’, I’d better at least keep the toilet clean. Where’s the toilet brush. No toilet brush. I looked everywhere in the bathroom. I calculated that I can maybe flush one more time but if I need to, I cannot keep flushing repeatedly till the mess is gone if she’s waiting outside. She’ll just think I’m behaving like a teenager who’s flushing the toilet on purpose because I’ve got nothing better to do with my life. I had no other option but to grab some toilet paper, dunk my hand into the water and wipe the toilet clean by hand.
I wanted to finish the awful day with a wank and twice now she’s interrupted my wank twice and, this time, I’ve ended up with my hand in the toilet bowl.
I walked out of the bathroom and sure enough, she was waiting for the bathroom even though there were three other bathrooms in the house.
The bathroom stank as I left. If only the council could come round with their measuring device right now and take some immediate action.