In The Round

So it's August, which like oysters is impossible to pronounce in French.

I am waiting in for a kitchen table to be delivered. I got cold feet about making a table. I think I was punching a little above my ability as a carpenter on this one, having only ever made a box that didn't close properly in woodwork at school about 25 years ago. I also figured out why I wanted to make the table in the first place.

When I was at university I was really in love with a girl who had what I thought was rather a pointless boyfriend (well I would wouldn't I). He was always turning up at weekends from London and either whisking the object of my desires off to London, leaving me to listen to Smiths records (LMTLTSR) or hanging around at her place at university, LMTLTSR. Anyway, they finally split up just after we graduated, and I went round to her place on her birthday in August with a gift (almost certainly a Smiths record). But that (*(*&^% had made her a table for her birthday, and it was very very beautiful. (I bet his wooden box closed properly too.) They got back together.

So in some mad way, I have always thought making a table would be the most romantic thing any man could do for any woman. But back in the real world, I figured that it did not justify me spending money on wood that I was only going to turn into a giant game of Spillikins/Pick-Up-Sticks.

Now, as you know mrs househusbandnot does read househusbandnot. And you may be thinking that I should not be writing about people I used to fancy for her to read about. But she admitted to me last night that she was so in love with a bloke at school that she helped him finish his play about a group of people who survive a nuclear war, and took it to the Edinburgh Festival. It was called Behind The Sun or something equally meaningful. And they performed it 'in the round' so that the audience would feel more closely involved with what was going on on stage (less able to exit to pub before first interval more like).

I don't think there is any moral to these tales of hand-made tables and ham-made dramas, unless I am missing something. I did ask mrs househusbandnot if she would dig out Behind The Sun for review, but she was not playing, unless I made her a table, and matching chairs, or a life size replica of HMS Victory.

In other August news, I have my birthday this month. Same day as Martin Amis, Elvis Costello, Ivan The Terrible, Claudia Schiffer and Cardinal Richelieu (who presumably could order oysters in a French restaurant without the waiter thinking he was inhaling a wasp).