Lately I have been spending what I guarantee you to be an inexcusable amount of time contemplating what I suppose is the folly of a modern marriage but then again, all marriage regardless is folly. That I engage in this the highest of intellectual pursuits largely on my employers’ time should quite obviously be cause for alarm but that is only until one considers that if I were ever to present a paternity leave form for approval, then certainly a great deal of thought would have preceded the filling of it. Anyway, the institution that is a modern marriage now holds what can only be described as a morbid fascination for me ever since I took up wearing rose-coloured glasses to enhance my imagination as one half of a happy couple. Marriage to me is a little too much like buying an 11 year old boy a chemistry set and then sitting back to see just what happens. In my case, the boy is Crompton’s William and the chemistry set of a variety that contains the necessary ingredients for the manufacture of nitroglycerine in large quantities.
Take 2 people, preferably of opposing sexes, as alike as kindergarten chalk & a well-ripened Camembert. They hardly know each other as well as they ought to and in a fit of absolute lunacy clouded by clumsy passion, proceed to fool first of all themselves and then the rest of us into believing that they are going to make it to their 40’s without inflicting grievous bodily harm, bankrupting or generally pissing on each other on the way. “Those 2? PAH! They stand about as much chance as a butterscotch sundae in the bowels of hell’s infernal forge. We’d be better off backing a 3-legged rocking horse at Ascot”. Sometimes however, poor old broken-down Pollyana her legs bound together with lashings of epoxy glue and masking tape does go on to occasionally take the cup.
Some of my friends are married; invariably to women of whom much is expected, perhaps more than is human…………………..or prudent to give. The women, turned wives whom I have had the privilege or misfortune if you like, to observe fall broadly into two categories; the charming, witty ones who make for delightful, if challenging companions and the dreary ones whose dim view of marriage likens it to a chore that one must dispense with all the grim efficiency of a German stationmaster armed with a large bar of carbolic soap.
How Dull.
There’s a third, hidden category …….the shrews, but that is a can of worms for another day. Do put away your silly placards and constitutional court summonses O Ye guardians of all virtues feminine. Yes, I am perfectly aware that my own mother and sister are in fact, women but this is a discourse on personality and that is where objectivity flies out of the window. Save the slogans for a cause that counts.
I digress. Right, where was I? Ah yes, friends and footstools. The tragedy for some women is to get caught somewhere in between……….forever in the transit lounge between a warm embrace and a lip curled in distaste. It’s all quite confusing really. Some men make an art out of keeping the women in their lives seesawing helplessly in the playground of their affections. Until inevitably, she falls off and with all the fury of Congreve’s scorned woman (which hell hath not)……..proceeds to eviscerate him, preferably with a firearm.
Audiophile: Asa – Subway
Off my shelf: A woman of no importance – Oscar Wilde
Midday Matinee: No country for old men (2007)
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson and Kelly Preston
Directed by: Joel Cohen, Ethan Cohen
