Читать книгу William Walker’s First Year of Marriage: A Horror Story - Matt Rudd - Страница 59

Phoned Johnson about the inalienable rights thing. He says men lose all inalienable rights such as having a hot bath on a Friday the moment they say ‘I do.’ That’s the unwritten law, it’s just that women are too smart to point it out explicitly in case men notice and rebel. So they sneak in all the restrictions over the first year of marriage. Before you know it, you’re a house-trained husband, unable to recall whether the things you do, such as having a cold shower on a Friday, are your own idea or part of the new regime.

I suggest that I quite like having someone caring enough to challenge my inalienable rights. Goat’s milk is, after all, better for you than cow’s milk.

It won’t stop at goat’s milk, warns Johnson.

Went to bed with the papers, a cup of tea (goat’s milk, no sugar) and my wife at 10 p.m. Used to go clubbing on a Sunday. Well, once or twice. Now, I’m only a few notches off slippers at seven. Very happy.

Until I had another nightmare.

Isabel and I have somehow agreed to go to Saskia’s wedding reception (we weren’t invited to the service). Only we’ve been seated on different tables. I’m on the top table, in between Saskia, who is wearing nothing but stockings and suspenders, and her groom. Isabel is crammed onto a small table at the back with seven octogenarians: she’s the only one without an ear trumpet or a Zimmer frame. I try to move her cutlery onto our table, but the food starts to arrive: everywhere I step, I block whole squads of waitresses with their huge platters of lobster and inexplicable jelly towers.

The chaos is unimaginable; they fall over like dominoes and it’s all my fault. I just stand in the middle holding a knife, a fork and Isabel’s place name. The head chef, who is Gordon Ramsay, effs and blinds his way out of the kitchen, and starts bludgeoning me with one of the ruined crustaceans. Isabel is being held down by the octogenarians and only Saskia, standing dominatrix-style over everything, can help.

I wake up to find Isabel looking straight at me, an expression of utter disbelief on her face. Someone is shouting ‘Saskia, Saskia, Saskia’ and it only takes a few bleary seconds to realise that it’s me.