Well, I am still recovering from a night out with ‘the lads’ last night, and trying calm the teddy bears who are playing racket-ball in my head.
I told my ‘significant other’ that I would be home about 12, which for here isn’t very late, but to be honest the amount of alcohol I drank seemed to affect my watch somehow, and every time I looked at it, it was showing a different time or getting smaller or something.
Anyway I got home about 3am, when I finally found where the house had moved to. And God knows how, but I managed to let myself in AND close the door without making too much noise. I don’t usually turn lights on at night, unless I need to. No, not because I am too tight to pay the electricity bill, but I know my way around, and lights will just wake people. But isn’t it funny how noises seem to be louder in the dark than in the light? No matter HOW quiet you are, you always make a noise that you think will wake Elvis himself. And to top it all, the f*cking cuckoo clock that we got decides, right there and then, to start screaming its head off! I tell you, we don’t hear the bloody thing during the day. Even in the evening we wonder, at five past the hour, if he had bothered to come out at all and chirp his little heart out, in the interests of letting us know that another hour of our lives had just slipped quietly away. So why did it choose 3am to prove to me that it still had a voice box? (At least that’s Sunday’s dinner sorted, even if we will need extra veggies to make up for the little bit of meat it’ll provide).
So what the hell do you do when you think you have woken ‘her-who-must-have-her-sleep’? Well I knew damn well she’d be angry when she knew I was 3 hours later than planned (she worries about me, don’t ya know), so I did the most STUPID thing. I tried to ‘cuckoo’ 9 more times!! Look, I was hammered, OK? I don’t even remember where I put the keys, but they have to be around somewhere, and my shoes I took off outside the house, for some odd reason.
Well, either my cuckoo-ing worked, or she never woke anyway, because I managed to get into bed (somehow omitting to take off one of my socks), and don’t even remember pushing my head into the pillow and there was not a word said.
This morning she was up before me, and I woke to the smell of breakfast cooking. I hate fried breakfast. The smell of bacon is sickening, and all the grease is – well, I am concentrating hard to even type this, after a full day of the ‘D-day Landings’ re-enactment going on between my ears, so I am not going to stop to think about the grease…
But it’s amazing how you think things work out, even when they seem SOO unlikely to. She greeted me with a smile, and a good morning etc etc etc. Usual stuff. Asked me what time I got in, cos she was in bed at 11.30, yah-dee-yah-dee-yah. Then she looked past me and stared at the wall and said, simply, “We need a new cuckoo clock.”
There is nothing, realistically, that you can do about the feelings of guilt that rush over you at times like that. Even when you haven’t done something wrong. Know what I mean? Situation: Police car that’s behind you suddenly turns on its lights and you hear the scream of the siren and the first thing you think of is ‘what the hell have I done?’, and still feel guilty even when the cop goes tearing past you in persuit of someone who REALLY did something wrong. Admit it – it happens, right?
So she mentions the cuckoo clock, and I fight back the blood that is rushing headlong for my cheeks. Trying not to feel so bad, I just asked why.
She said, “Well, last night the clock cuckooed three times and then said ‘oh shit’. It cuckooed four more times, then cleared its throat. Then it cuckooed another three times, giggled, cuckooed twice more, and then tripped over the cat and farted.”
Life’s a bitch.