We've never spent that much time together, me and The Lady. Since we've met, we've always been pretty much stuck fast upon that old treadmill of work.
In the last six years I've directed, written or devised forty-four plays and short films. All of them, bar three or four stinkers, have been really quite good, have hit their deadlines* and have generally been lovely and touched with a sort of befuddled genius. Of course, I've blown all the goodwill you get from doing excellent work by being rubbish at paperwork, forgetting meetings and not paying people on time because I've lost their invoices, forgotten their names and accidentally set fire to them.**
The Lady has been more productive, she has got a proper job with a proper company and been promoted and earned real money. Her role is to organise things, plan projects stringently, inform people of their roles and ensure that jobs are done in the correct order to the relevant time-scale on the right day of the week. She is very good at this sort of thing. Frighteningly good.
And now we are both at home together while she takes her maternity leave. Working together to look after two babies. Of course it's going so well, I mean our working methods are so similar....
I've always boasted to friends that we don't really argue, we talk through things rationally. What usually happens is this:
1) I state my case.
2) She pulls off a simple trick of emotional blackmail.
3) I apologise and cook supper.
This has worked for us for years. There is no point actually entering into an argument with The Lady anyway. She is convinced that she 100% right 110% of the time. Once, when she had left a broken glass in the sink and I cut my hand cleaning dinner-detritus out of the plug-hole, she asserted that it was my fault for (and I quote) "Cooking food with too many bits in."
As she will not take the blame for anything, I've developed a thick skin and selective deafness over the years. This has helped us both deal with what I regard as her minor mental illness.
But lately, what with two babies to take care of, a house to keep clean and time on our hands, we've just become hyper-sensitive to each other. Conversations now seem to go like this:
Lady: Pass me my glasses.
Me: What?
Lady: Don't you ever listen? God. PASS ME MY GLASSES
Me: Okay, where are they? Did you leave them upstairs? Are they in the car?
Lady: THEY'RE THERE! JESUS! I ONLY ASKED YOU TO PASS MY GLASSES!
Me: WELL, I ONLY ASKED WHERE THEY WHERE... Come on lets calm down a bit, you seem quite stressed.
Lady: WILL YOU STOP SAYING I'M STRESSED.
Me: Well, you are coming over a bit stressed.
Lady: WILL YOU STOP SAYING THAT. IT'S YOU THAT'S STRESSED!
Me: No, I fine.
Lady: YOU ARE. EVERYTHING YOU SAY SEEMS AGGRESSIVE AND SARCASTIC
Me: Like yeh,
Lady: THERE YOU GO AGAIN! FULL OF STRESS.
Me: I'm not.
Lady: STRESS...
Me: LOOK, WILL YOU STOP SAYING I'M STRESSED. I'M FINE. I'M NOT STRESSED. IT'S YOU THAT'S STRESSED. CAN'T YOU SEE, IT'S YOU... YOU'RE PROJECTING YOUR STRESS ON TO ME. GOD, THIS IS FRUSTRATING GRRRRRRRRRR. ANNNGGGHHH. BAHHHHHH.
Lady: Will you calm down Jake.
Then I apologise and make supper.
* Oh apart from that breakthrough commission three years ago - where I got writers block and went to the pub for six months.
** Actually only one person, and it was a small fire.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Saturday, September 10, 2005
An Anthology of Infant Turds
What a shitty few weeks we have just had.
A new baby at home, a toddler with a stinking case of the wild shites, not to mention my own forays into the world of demi-vegetarian irritable bowels. It's the stress, you see.
This home has been host to the 2005 shit-olympics. Main events include arse*- wiping, mopping, gagging, bagging, retching and slam dunking the little cornish-pastie** shaped nappies*** into the bin. Not to mention the most important event of all - shirking. Finding exactly the right time to leave the room: which is just as two pre-school botties blow a-blast, leaving your partner to deal with the whole debacle.
The prolonged direct contact with cack has instigated my scientific mind to categorise the various substances I have discovered lurking deep within a baby's underwear.
I proudly present to you: An Anthology of Infant Turds
1) Meconium
This is the Nosferatu of all shits. It's the default, factory-setting poo that comes ready installed in your baby before you get it out of the box. An intense black blob that strangely emits a luminous yellow juice. It is best avoided. If you do come into contact with it, the blob is viscous enough to be craned away with a single cotton bud. However, the juice is all-pervasive and can only be removed with an orbital-sander.
2) Shit-Tsunami
A 'normal' shit will fill a nappy. The Shit-Tsunami fills the room, or at least the baby-grow. How the hell does a two-week-old baby produce enough muck to reach the arm-pits? By sheer willpower? I don't know, but I am considering moving house.
3) Whole-Grain Mustard
Speckled yellow filth. Do not spread on frankfurters.
4) The Stinking Walnut
Has the baby just done a poo? You check the nappy: No it must have just been a fart. But why does the smell not dissipate? Half an hour later you discover the Stinking Walnut lurking guiltily, deep within the nappy.
5) The Odorless Pat.
This is the exact opposite of the walnut. No smell whatsoever. A pound and a half of fresh manure awaits casual inspection. Often goes undetected for hours, if not days. It may need chipping off with a chisel.
6) Poo-dini
The escapologist poo. Has many sub categories including The Runny Omelette, The Chocolate Football and my favourite: The Shitey Slingshot - employed by older babies with the necessary motor skills needed to flip bum-chutney using nappy-leverage.
7) Three Course Meal
During the second stage of weaning, food stays quite undigested. You can clearly identify individual meals, often within the same stripey stool. "Oh the apple pudding looks nice!" Bring a spoon. Waste not want not.
8) Kinder Surprise
Lets face it, every day has something new to offer the bemused and bewildered parent. A different variation every four hours. Something for everyone!
If anyone else was coming to stay in your house who continually shat themselves, screamed for food and was regularly sick upon your shoulder, you'd make polite excuses. But you put up with it gleefully for your progeny knowing full well that as soon as you enter a similar state, they'll stick the house on the market, bung you in a home and take an all inclusive holiday in the Caribbean on the proceedings.
Parenthood hey, all things considered,
it's mostly shit.
* For US readers: this is english for ass. Ass - meaning bottom, not asiatic mule or donkey. Arse is so much more of an expressive word. It's long vowels give much more room for manoeuvre of emphasis. Ass is over before its begun, it has too much assonance - making it sound a wee bit camp.
Speaking of bottoms, the Americans call them fannies, which is our term for front-bottom. It's time we got the whole pan-atlantic bum-thing sorted out for good!
** Or burrito perhaps in the USA.
*** If you are American, I mean diapers. But what's the point of speaking English if you keep on making your own words up? Come the next millennia, you'll have invented new words for absolutely everything and will have created an entirely new language based around requests for carbohydrates and animal fats - but by then it won't matter, the Chinese will rule the earth and will have requisitioned your fat arses to make char-sui dumplings.
A new baby at home, a toddler with a stinking case of the wild shites, not to mention my own forays into the world of demi-vegetarian irritable bowels. It's the stress, you see.
This home has been host to the 2005 shit-olympics. Main events include arse*- wiping, mopping, gagging, bagging, retching and slam dunking the little cornish-pastie** shaped nappies*** into the bin. Not to mention the most important event of all - shirking. Finding exactly the right time to leave the room: which is just as two pre-school botties blow a-blast, leaving your partner to deal with the whole debacle.
The prolonged direct contact with cack has instigated my scientific mind to categorise the various substances I have discovered lurking deep within a baby's underwear.
I proudly present to you: An Anthology of Infant Turds
1) Meconium
This is the Nosferatu of all shits. It's the default, factory-setting poo that comes ready installed in your baby before you get it out of the box. An intense black blob that strangely emits a luminous yellow juice. It is best avoided. If you do come into contact with it, the blob is viscous enough to be craned away with a single cotton bud. However, the juice is all-pervasive and can only be removed with an orbital-sander.
2) Shit-Tsunami
A 'normal' shit will fill a nappy. The Shit-Tsunami fills the room, or at least the baby-grow. How the hell does a two-week-old baby produce enough muck to reach the arm-pits? By sheer willpower? I don't know, but I am considering moving house.
3) Whole-Grain Mustard
Speckled yellow filth. Do not spread on frankfurters.
4) The Stinking Walnut
Has the baby just done a poo? You check the nappy: No it must have just been a fart. But why does the smell not dissipate? Half an hour later you discover the Stinking Walnut lurking guiltily, deep within the nappy.
5) The Odorless Pat.
This is the exact opposite of the walnut. No smell whatsoever. A pound and a half of fresh manure awaits casual inspection. Often goes undetected for hours, if not days. It may need chipping off with a chisel.
6) Poo-dini
The escapologist poo. Has many sub categories including The Runny Omelette, The Chocolate Football and my favourite: The Shitey Slingshot - employed by older babies with the necessary motor skills needed to flip bum-chutney using nappy-leverage.
7) Three Course Meal
During the second stage of weaning, food stays quite undigested. You can clearly identify individual meals, often within the same stripey stool. "Oh the apple pudding looks nice!" Bring a spoon. Waste not want not.
8) Kinder Surprise
Lets face it, every day has something new to offer the bemused and bewildered parent. A different variation every four hours. Something for everyone!
If anyone else was coming to stay in your house who continually shat themselves, screamed for food and was regularly sick upon your shoulder, you'd make polite excuses. But you put up with it gleefully for your progeny knowing full well that as soon as you enter a similar state, they'll stick the house on the market, bung you in a home and take an all inclusive holiday in the Caribbean on the proceedings.
Parenthood hey, all things considered,
it's mostly shit.
* For US readers: this is english for ass. Ass - meaning bottom, not asiatic mule or donkey. Arse is so much more of an expressive word. It's long vowels give much more room for manoeuvre of emphasis. Ass is over before its begun, it has too much assonance - making it sound a wee bit camp.
Speaking of bottoms, the Americans call them fannies, which is our term for front-bottom. It's time we got the whole pan-atlantic bum-thing sorted out for good!
** Or burrito perhaps in the USA.
*** If you are American, I mean diapers. But what's the point of speaking English if you keep on making your own words up? Come the next millennia, you'll have invented new words for absolutely everything and will have created an entirely new language based around requests for carbohydrates and animal fats - but by then it won't matter, the Chinese will rule the earth and will have requisitioned your fat arses to make char-sui dumplings.
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