Y.O.U?

I have a friend whose response to pretty much anything I say - from the mention that I once went to China to the fact I just texted someone - is "YOU? You've been to China?" or an equally incredulous "YOU? You know how to text?" So no big prize for guessing how she reacted when I told her I had created househusbandnot. (Hint: it started with "YOU?" and ended in "blog?".) Incidentally, you should check her blog at www.oneglove.co.uk It looks more like a website to me, but hey what would I ("YOU?") know.

I wish I was as surprised by me as my friend is. Being English - well Scottish actually ("YOU? You're..." yeah yeah yeah, alright already.) - I've usually procrastinated so much about everything by the time I actually do it that I am rarely surprised by anything.

There have been some recent exceptions to my no surprises existence:

1)Realising that there is absolutely no difference to the pleasure gained from eating a standard-sized Magnum to a mini Magnum (If you are reading this from America, a Magnum is an ice-cream over here rather than a gun. Ironic, huh?)
2) That monkey rescue centre I mentioned the other day.
3) www.oneglove.co.uk aka completelynutsam.
4) How infrequently househusbandnot has been syndicated to major newspapers around the globe since it bounced into the world a month ago.
5)A ginger-haired bloke on the bus the other day who was mumbling about "600 years of history, and still he hasn't come back". And if you'd seen him people you would know he was talking about Satan rather than Jesus.
6)blokeihaventseeninages' loyal reading of househusbandnot. He doesn't know this, but I still laugh most weeks about an afternoon I spent with him in a pool hall in Norwich 20 years ago making up comedy names for people we were at college with. Good training for househusbandnot.
7) How I swam two miles the other day, and managed to walk unaided to the changing rooms (where I collapsed in a puddle of blubbery self congratulation).
8) The strength of my wife's desire for me to like aubergine dip as much as she does.(Babe, it is *&(^%ing disgusting. It tastes like burnt monkey tail.)
9) How often the rules for recycling change. Take lids off all bottles, wash all clear glass, don't wash anything that is glass, magazines but no books, only put green glass in with your used mobile phones, no Pringles tubes please, dead polar bear collection only by special arrangement etc etc etc. It is truly surprising that they have not sorted this out yet. We want to recycle. Please make up your minds and we will do it.
10) Quite how short my previously quite long telephone conversations are with my mate Jim since I started househusbandnot - "youmentionedthatontheblog", "iknowaboutyournewtableireadaboutit", "youhavenoconversationleftgoodbye". Minutes, seconds of conversation, where we used to ramble on for hours.

I think there should be more surprises in life. Like caped villains, nature programmes, free things, puppies, and cocktails, you can't get enough of them nowadays. I'm going to go on a surprise hunt for the rest of this week.

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).