I approach most of my days off with a mixture of joy and apprehension. Joy at the thought of not having to rise at 6am. Apprehension at the thought of my wife mentioning 'THE LIST'. Immediately all husbands/male partners will come out in a cold sweat and want to lift the newspaper to cover their eyes so as not to catch the gaze of their beloved spouse. My 'List' includes a variety of jobs that need doing around the house. Now you need to understand how my good lady works when it comes to such requirements. She doesn’t actually say that I have to do them; she just raises the issue in passing and leaves the subject hanging in the ether. 'The porch light isn’t working' or 'The garage is getting cluttered'. Faced with such statements of fact I have the option to nod in agreement and do nothing about it; in theory at least. In practice the very fact that the words have been spoken is enough to place the burden firmly on my shoulders. My track record is not good when it comes to dealing with the list. I might well respond by visiting the garage and, after switching the radio on, move boxes around in an attempt to 'tidy' the space. In truth I spend more time getting the radio tuned into the correct station and examining the contents of my special box of oddments. All men have them and they are always a source of joy. They are the male equivalent of the large jar of buttons that that my mother kept in her sowing cupboard. This all seems a world a way now and a couple of things strike me as nostalgically amusing. First the idea of having a whole cupboard dedicated to ‘sowing’ and secondly, the thought of actually saving buttons. I can’t imagine that either of these too oddities would be part of modern life. I suppose that the main difference between my mother’s collection jar and my own over filled container is one of purpose. She actually did get round to using them from time to time. My assortment of nonsense just sits and calls to me every time I enter the garage. The container reveals much about the random way in which I choose to save things; it probably reveals quite a lot about the state of my mind too. It contains several magnets saved from fridge door toys. One piece of chalk formally part of a puncture repair outfit. A rubber foot from the bottom of a TV. One rechargeable battery: the charger being broken and discarded many moons ago. A plastic peg for securing a guitar string. One rubber ball from a computer mouse. One wing nut from an old magazine rack. Three replacement Christmas tree bulbs: kept even though we bought a fibre optic type four years ago. Two counters form an old game of Cludo. All of these are housed together with a collection of drawing pins, washers and paperclips. I keep the special box in the garage because periodically my wife has a ‘whizzing’ session and I have to dive in to save important objects before they are lost to the green, corporate world of recycling. The porch light was mentioned nearly ten months ago so I really do need to take the time to fix it. The problem is that it is completely enclosed and the wood around the fixing plate seems a little suspect. I am concerned that if I remove it I will be left with further work to add to the list, involving screws, nails, glue, varnish and other representations of real work. In reality it takes me seven and a half minute to fix; of which four were getting the step ladders off the wall and positioning them safely below the light fitting (I also had time for a sip of coke and a bite of my mid morning toast). 'How come it was so easy but took you the best part of a year to fix it' asks my wife, not unreasonably. 'It needed a coat of looking over first' I said and scurried off to play with my collection of magnets.
The List
The Offside Rule
Being the father of four daughters I am usually loathed to make stereotypical comments but it seems to me that some generally held views are difficult to deny. I like to think that I have had a positive influence upon my girls and am comforted that they enjoy some of the music that has become important to me. I too have had my eyes opened, or should that be my ears, to music that they have discovered. I still insist on a Dad's right to mispronounce the names of younger bands ever so slightly. When it comes to football, however, I have failed miserably in getting them to appreciate the beauty of our national sport. I spent many hours, during their younger years, explaining the offside rule at the dining table. Ask any of the four girls and they will tell you that it is when there isn't a pepper pot between the ketchup bottle and the vinegar at the moment when sprout is passed (as long as it isn’t interfering with the dinner). No matter, they are just not interested and even when they try to comply with my requests for family involvement in viewing an important England match, they never sound convincing. 'Those blue shirts don’t go with that players eyes', or 'Why have they taken the good looking one off and replaced him with an ugly player'. It is all too much and I am left retreating to another room to watch the game with just John Motson's voice for company. I have to face up to the difference between me, as the only male in the house, and my wife and daughters. There are those who, in an attempt to win equality for the sexes, perhaps confuse being equal with being the same. My wife and I have brought our girls up to soar in all that they want to achieve. For us equality is a minimum standard that our society should expect. Having said that, I am totally convinced that women and men see the world in different ways. The whole nature verses nurture debate is redundant in one sentence; both are true. This was never more evident to me than an occasion a number of years ago when we were at a family event where all the cousins were present. Both boys and girls were united in the common games of 'tick' and 'fill your plate with more food than you can eat'. I had taken with me a small electronic box with flashing lights and interesting noises for our kids to play with.One by one each child came to look at this new toy. Each of the girls carefully picked up the item gave it a looking over and placed it back down carefully on the table. The boys had a different method of exploring. Each one ran to the table as if about to trip and smash their heads on the corner. Picking up the game the shook it, bit it and bashed it on to the highly varnished surface. The girls looked and were mildly interested the boys wanted to know how it worked when you shook it, what it tasted like and would it break. On this occasion one of the young nieces gathered all the other children together and suggested with wide, excited eyes, 'Let's go and piss the cat off'. There was a gasp as the adults looked at each other in horror. The shocked silence was broken when the crowd of youngsters ran towards the cat making Pssssssssssssss noises. Most of us laughed. One or two, who were still eating at the time, splutted half chewed food over the others. Once we had given an old Aunt the Heimlich manoeuvre and wiped mushroom vol-au-vent off our posh clothes we continued to chuckle at such a happening.When the young girls had finished chasing the cat they went back to dancing the locomotion whilst the young lads flew imaginary planes. All the children, however, were united in stamping every crisp and peanut they could find into the carpet. It seems that everyone is equal but some are more able to appreciate football more than others.
Senta Nooner
When it comes to humour I am a creature of habit. I just can’t help myself from responding to certain situations with the same jokes. When at a restaurant and my wife encourages me to give the waiter a tip, I feel an honour bound need to say 'don't polish your brown shoes with black shoe polish' or some other useful bit of advice. There are other times too when the spirit of Eric Morecombe takes over. We were on holiday with some friends and it was time to wash up. There was a certain amount of burn on some of the pans so my wife asked me if I had the scrapers. My reply? 'No, I always stand this way'. A suitable response for a variety of situations I have found. It is the same at home. When my good lady asks me to turn the dish washer on it seems only right to walk towards the machine and in a French accent say 'Hey, you sexy little dish washer, you'.
I say all this to illustrate my point that humour is a matter of opinion. You may well have groaned at what you have just read, but I would happily place money on some of you repeating these sayings when the occasion arises. I know that I am not the only one to feel compelled by such things.
My wife and I were invited by some friends to go to the cinema on the largest USA air force base in England. On arrival we found that we were the only non USA residents in attendance. After standing for the national anthem (the one with stars and stripes, not the one with God and the Queen), we sat down to watch the comedy. There were times during the next ninety minutes when the whole of the audience rolled about laughing whilst my wife and I just looked at each other in puzzlement. There were, of course, other times when the whole place was silent and just us two Brits laughed, watched by a few hundred American eyes. Much to my wife's embarrassment, there were also several times when I was the only one laughing.
Humour? What can you say? It is in the mind of the beholder. On most occasions when I tell a joke or offer a jape my wife laughs dutifully and encouragingly. My daughter's, however, tend to raise their eyes whilst making tutting noises, hoping to stave off further offerings. I am never deterred by this, partly because I just can’t help myself and partly because I am determined to make sure that we manage to see the funny side of what it means to be a human being.
I understand that not everyone thinks this way and through limited empirical research I have discovered a few categories of response to humour.
1) People who groan politely but don not wish to enter the arena of your humour.
2) People who pretend to laugh even though they don’t get the joke
3) People who never laugh at jokes because they are too clever to lower themselves. In my experience they are the first people to re-tell the joke later.
4) People who make a joke out of everything.
5) People who have a well rounded sense of humour.
6) People who have no sense of humour.
When our second daughter was about three and having a paddy about something that had upset her I told her to get a sense of humour in order to defuse the situation. With under developed speech she replied with a phrase that has been constantly repeated in the Molineaux house, 'I have got a senta nooner'.
There are times that you meet people who clearly have not got one; those who are so intense and serious about everything, including themselves. You wonder if they have ever laughed with tears running down their faces. I think not.
Some of the best humour is found in real life situations when funny things happy to normal people.
I need to go now to polish my shoes, turn the dish washer on and wiggle my glasses on my face. Give me sunshine! Get a senta nooner.
