A Perfect Marriage With A Few Exceptions

Not long after my parents were married my mother said to my father “I want you to tell me all the little things I do that annoy you and I’ll do the same, because more often than not it’s the small things rather than the big things that add up to ruin a relationship.” I don’t know what was on either of their lists but it must have worked because their marriage lasted over 60 years. So, shortly after DK and I tied the knot in 1984, he and I did the same thing. My list was short: please push the chair back in to where you found it when you get up from the table; get rid of that ugly acid yellow cardigan your first wife bought you at Harrods; maybe one other, tops.

Den’s list, on the other hand, for me, me who can do no wrong, or okay, rarely, was—well. Imagine writer P.G. Wodehouse typing away—apparently he didn’t use sheets of paper, he used rolls, so that paper spewed continuously out and out around the room as he worked, piling up like ribbon candy until you could no longer see the floor. That was DK’s list.

“I do what?” I asked, about 12 times.

DK didn’t like to see coffee cups left in the sink with lipstick on their rims. He didn’t like the way I parked, he wanted me to go up to Tanza Road and turn around then come back and park, so the car was facing in the right direction next time we (he) needed it. He didn’t like throw pillows on the bed. He didn’t like…

And on and on.

Which bring us to this morning, almost 42 years after that beautiful September day in my parents’ garden in Massachusetts when DK and I were pronounced man and wife. I told DK that I was going up to my office to work. He asked what I was going to write about today, I said I didn’t know yet.

“Why don’t you write about how much you love me?” he suggested. Helpfully.

I said that would make a very short piece, too short, he said well, I’m only a very short chap, and so we laughed, because we’re so happy, still, after 42 years of him doing only three irritating things and me doing the six million, so I made a coffee, and came upstairs here to tell you about how much I love Little Denis King.

But first? I think perhaps a few small additions to that list I made back in ‘84:

• How is it possible, not to be able to distinguish between a white, almost straight sided Prep Bowl from IKEA, and a slightly larger and slightly more rounded white Cereal Bowl from IKEA, and which belong in different cupboards? And in fact are across the kitchen from one another.

• What chemical imbalance in the brain is it which prevents an Irish woolen throw from the back of a couch or chair being refolded after use and put back to where it belongs?

• The word “tasty” to describe what’s on your plate is, in my expert opinion, a poor choice, meaningless and, to be perfectly honest, annoying. As is any accompanying lip-smacking while you try to come up with the word “tasty”.

• There are a number of ways to carry a jacket or sweater and not look like an asshole. You can carry the jacket over your arm, casually, or sling it over one shoulder and hang onto it with couple of fingers looking cool like male models in magazines, and you can do the same with a sweater. Or wear it over your shoulders knotted loosely in front. Or indeed you can ask me to carry it. What you cannot do is walk along holding the garment way out in front of you like a flaming torch as if you’re lighting the way to the castle, or as if you have just fished the garment from the swampy area by the reed beds and it’s stinking to high heaven.

• On a similar note, carrying anything that has a shoulder strap, such as a travel bag, is easier if you make use of the shoulder strap. And your shoulder.

• What’s wrong with your shoulders, anyhow? Nothing seems to stay up on them.

• And why, when you do something you’ve done a thousand times such as being asked to show your ticket and boading card, do you say “Pardon?” like this is a wholly surprising request, and one which then sends you into an immediate panic, resulting in a lot of frenzied digging into bags and patting pockets?

• And let’s not even discuss card machines.

• No, changed my mind, let’s. The bill comes. You are presented with the card machine. You see the total. You push either 12 and a half or 15 or 20% for a tip, easy, you tap the card on the wifi symbol on the machine. Or, if dinner come to over £100, which I’m sorry to say it usually is, you insert your card and put in your pin number, which you know very well. Why do you continually act like Fred Flintstone seeing a card machine for the first time?

This is fun. I’m glad I started this.

• What is so exceptionally mystifying about putting a pillowcase on a pillow? Why can I do three and be well into The Duvet Challenge in the time it takes you to even find where the pillowcase opens?

• Or cutting fruit? Is it not obvious there’s a stone inside a peach? That one cannot cut straight across without mangling the thing? And then, why leave what you don’t eat, in the fridge, looking like a road accident, and incidentally directly on the glass shelf, not wrapped. Who taught you this?

One more.

• Towels need to be folded in threes, as do T-Shirts. Not in half and then half again. You do not want to see edges, ever. Why you don’t, I’m not sure, but you don’t. Edges. Yecch.

Okay. Another one more.

• Suffolk County Council’s New Recycling Scheme. Yes it is confusing, granted, not to mention stupid, badly thought out and highly inconvenient and I shall take that up with them directly at another time so let’s for the moment forget about the New Green Top Cardboard Only Bin and the Two Dumb Little Food Bins That They Never Empty And Let Sit At The End Of The Drive For Weeks With Everything Inside Turning Into Maggots and which by the way I refuse to use, for refuse, and will in fact be pitching into the Blue Top Recycling bin, an item I will now address along with the other bins that have been around forever and we are all well-used to after 20 years, except for those who cannot seem to keep what goes in what bin straight, and act like it’s news to them that plastic and cans go in the Blue Top Bin, that the Grey Top bin is for black garbage bags only and the ALL-Green Bin, not just the top green, ALL of it green, that one, is for garden waste. Only. And that glass ie bottles now do NOT go in that tiny bin from Dunelm that lives behind the checked under-counter curtain in the laundry room because the Blue Top is now doing glass as well as plastic. I mean, what’s so hard??

On a positive note, DK writes the most beautiful music, ever, and as I’m slaving away trying to get dinner looking for prep bowls and saying stuff like “What’s the old kitchen fork doing in the good cutlery drawer??” and DK’s automatically answering “It’s probably my fault!”, he is playing the piano, and maybe singing as well, and for a few enchanting minutes, I remember how lucky I am.

And how lucky he is, to have just got hearing aids, which he can turn down, or off, on his phone, if, say, he doesn’t want anyone telling him what he’s doing wrong for 42 years.