Not getting in massive trouble? Priceless!

"Nothing surpasses credit card fear" - Bill Swinyard

One of the great things about His Nibs is that after all these years together, he can still surprise me.

Sometimes by unprompted romantic gestures, sometimes by coming up with mad ideas or nutty schemes that make me think I've never known him at all.

And sometimes just by lighting the fire and handing over a Fruit and Nut bar when I've had a very difficult day.

These are lovely surprises, obviously.  Any sort of romance or chocolate is always welcome.  And even his mad ideas are, at worst, entertaining.

But there’s a difference between a surprise and a fright. 

I often think it's no harm to have a secret or two in a marriage.  Not the cocaine habit and prostitute type of secret, obviously.  But the never going into the bathroom and leaving the door open type. 

His Nibs doesn't really believe in secrets.  He thinks that we're both a bit odd, and that we should disclose our oddness as much as possible, to stop it getting out of control. 

Also, he knows me very well.  He knows that when he asks me whether I have any secrets, and I mutter mysteriously "maybe one or two, a woman should always have secrets" that I'm not referring to the secret that my hair is dyed (this is not a secret.  Also, my hair is currently snow white, so even if it was supposed to be a secret it'd be a really bad one).  He knows that if I have a secret from him it's probably for nefarious reasons, and that he should not rest until all is revealed.

 Last Sunday, I was sitting in front of aforementioned fire, replete with Fruit & Nut, and watching Netflix, when my husband burst into the room.

 "We're a family" he declared.

"Yes, we are" - I thought he was about to say lovely things about how we'd always be together and how happy he was.

"And as a family we should have no secrets".  Feck.   I tried to head him off at the pass.

"Well, not many secrets anyway.  A woman should always have a few little secrets" I smiled at him.

"No she shouldn't.  What are your secrets?"

"Feck off.  I'm not telling you my secrets.  They wouldn't be secrets anymore would they?"

"Ok, how many secrets do you have?" He looked straight at me, suspicion all over his face.  I started to feel a bit uncomfortable.

"One."

"OK, well we know it's not to do with another man.”  The cheek of him!  I could have a man secret, I thought to myself.  And then I realised I couldn't.  Sure we're never apart.  We work together, we commute together, we even walk the dogs together.  When would I get to see a secret man?  Anyway, my white hair, I'd imagine, would repel anyone. 

"And we know it's not one of those silly secrets about shaving your legs or something.”

I bowed my head in shame.

A silence stretched between us.  I kept telling myself not to say anything, that he was waiting for me to talk, that if I remained silent, he might go away.  The tension was palpable. 

"Is your secret to do with money?"

Fecking fecking feck.  He'd caught me.  The thing is, I can justify the keeping of a secret.  But I try to make a habit of not lying to the man I love.  A direct question, in our house, demands an honest answer. I sighed deeply, and waited for the storm.

 "Yes."

"Do you have a debt I don't know about?"

"Yes."

"Is it a bank loan?"

"No."

"Is it a money lender?" Jesus Christ, I thought to myself.  He doesn't think I'm a bit odd. He thinks I live a whole double life and have dealings with moneylenders and criminals in one life and with office hours and dog walking in the other.

"Of course it's not a money lender.Jesus."  But when I looked at him he was grinning.

"I'm only messing.  I know it's not a moneylender.  So it's something legal.  How bad can it be?  Come on, fess up."

My secret is a credit card. 

His Nibs and I got a credit card each about ten years ago, when we were going on a big trip and thought it might be useful.  His Nibs came home from the holiday, cut up the credit card he'd never used, and never got one again.

I refused to part with mine, insisting it might be useful in an emergency, and for years almost never used it.

But then the recession came.  And unfortunately for me, my desire to own new and shiny things didn't decrease when my bank balance did.  I didn't go out and buy a designer wardrobe, but I used it for little bits and pieces, now and again.  If I wanted to go away for a night to a spa, for instance, but couldn't afford it, I'd go anyway, put it on the credit card, and put it out of my head.

And I might have allowed myself to buy something I really, really wanted when I didn't have the money, under the heading of "I work hard, I deserve a treat."

And bit by bit, the credit card bill started increasing.  Because I never paid it off in full.  So now, even though I've stopped using it completely, I'm like a ninja around the fifteenth of every month, trying to get to the post and hide the bill before His Nibs sees it.

The trouble is, I was in this exact situation a couple of years ago.  I paid the bill off eventually, and swore I'd never use the card again.  

This wasn't enough for His Nibs, who insisted, rightly, that I get rid of it, that I wasn't able to handle it.

I may or may not have very strongly implied that I'd gotten rid of the credit card.  I may or may not have, instead, taken it out of my purse and hidden it from myself in a drawer in my house, so that I could never spend on it impulsively.

And I may or may not have, after one non-impulsive purchase, completely failed to hide it from myself again and instead carried it around in my purse, as if I was grown up and reliable enough to be in charge of such a dangerous item.

The last time we did our big grocery shopping, I thought I'd handed over my debit card, and used a PIN number which proved to be incorrect.  I'd tried to use the cursed credit card.   His Nibs was right beside me, packing our shopping, when I had to explain to the assistant that I was sorry, and change cards.

To my huge surprise, he said nothing at the time.  But my guess is that he saw exactly what happened.

Then, on Sunday His Nibs decided to review our financial situation.  It bothers him greatly that we both get up and go to work every day, and yet we don't seem to have two pennies to rub together.

I blame the weather.  Had it been a sunny July afternoon, he probably would have been out gardening and my secret would have remained safe.

The sorry tale of the secret card tumbled out.  He was nice enough not to mention that I'd told him that I'd destroyed the card two years ago.  He asked me the balance, and I told him the truth.

"I suppose you're going to start shouting?" I asked him.

"No.  I don't actually shout as much as you seem to think I do."  He was a picture of calm.  Maybe, knowing me as he does, he was relieved.  He probably wouldn't have bat an eyelid if I'd told him I had a selection of maxed out credit cards, numerous loans and had remortgaged the house.

"But I'm going to need that card."

He held his hand out and waited.  I swallowed hard.  But what could I do?  The game was well and truly up.

He chopped it up into little bits, in front of my very eyes.  Then he burned the pieces in the fireplace. Just as well I suppose.  I've never been able to bring myself to get rid of the card, and I'm obviously unable to handle it.

I've always thought, in the past, "but what happens if there's an emergency?"

Well, this is becoming an emergency.  The outstanding bill is high enough now that there really isn't enough credit left on it to fund a proper emergency anyway.

So I let it go, without a fuss.

And wouldn't you know it, after I put petrol in my car this morning, I realised I didn't have my debit card with me.  The credit card would have been a lot handier than ringing His Nibs for rescue then, wouldn't it?

You Give Me Road Rage

“I’m the worst person to be stuck with in traffic” – Larry King

The last thing I want to do with this blog is to get political.  But will whoever is in charge please, please, sort out the train strike so that we can go back to our usual sustainable level of commuter misery?

His Nibs and I had absolute ructions in the car yesterday, trying to get home from work.  There was a train strike.  So all the commuters who usually take the train from miles outside Dublin had to take their cars into the city, and we all got to sit in traffic jams for fecking hours, giving each other dirty looks and swearing to ourselves that we’d get a job down the country before this time next year.

His Nibs will admit that he is an absolute martyr to road rage.  This is surprising to me, because in general he is a laid back, peaceful sort of person who wanders only occasionally into anger.  Put him in the car, though, and he turns into the Incredible Hulk.  In a traffic jam he becomes incoherent.  He shouts so many swear words that I can’t pick up the actual gist of his sentences at all.

I know all this very well.  So yesterday, when we got to the car, I decided that I should drive home from work.

“I’ll drive today.  There’s a train strike.”

“I know there’s a train strike.  Why does that mean you should drive? I want to drive.”

“You don’t want to drive.” I was so insistent as to be annoying.  “You think you want to drive, but you don’t really.  I’ve checked the internet.  The road is like a car park.  You’ll just lose your temper.  Get into my car bed there, and go asleep for yourself.”

He wouldn’t be told.  This could be something to do with the fact that he cannot bear to watch me drive his car.  I don’t know why.  I’m not saying I’m the world’s greatest driver.  But I don’t think I’m the worst either.  I passed my test years ago (first time, as I often inform my unfortunate husband, he had to have two goes).  I have no convictions or points on my licence, although he alleges this is inexplicable, the cheeky git.  I haven’t been in any accidents.  And yet my driving seems to annoy my husband to infinity and beyond.

It all starts well enough.  I get in the driver’s seat, and remind him that I have a licence, that I often drive, and that I don’t need any help.  He doesn’t usually say anything, but I can practically hear him rolling his eyes in the passenger seat.  Then I start driving.  Within minutes he’ll pipe up that “You should change lanes.  It’s faster on the other lane”.  When we’re stopped in rush hour traffic on Dublin’s quays.

Things get worse from there.  His Nibs continues to tell me what lane I should be in to avoid any problems further up the road.  And because I’m difficult and stubborn and refuse to be told what to do, I deliberately stay in the lane I’m in, even if I had been intending to move.  Then he’ll tell me to take my foot off the clutch when we’re stopped, which is apparently a very bad habit, and one I hate being caught out in.  And he’ll usually remind me to change gears the millisecond before I’m about to change up anyway.  And again because I’m stubborn I’ll refuse to be told and we end up roaring down the N7 in third gear.

But there was no chance of us roaring anywhere yesterday.  Because Dublin, and the road out of it, were in total gridlock.  And His Nibs was in the driving seat.

There’s a left turn we take to get out of the city as promptly as possible.  As we approached this turn yesterday, His Nibs started yelping because there was such a back up of traffic in front of us.

“We’ll never get through Inchicore village” he moaned.  “If it’s this bad this far from the N7, we’ll be in the car all night.”

I said nothing.  Sure, what was there to say?  When he’s right, he’s right.

“Where does this road bring you?  If we don’t turn off?”

“Ballyfermot village”.

(For any non Irish readers, Inchicore and Ballyfermot are suburbs of Dublin city.  So is Palmerstown, which we will unfortunately get to later, both literally and in this story).

“Have you ever driven down there?”

“Yes”

“And?”

“And you get to Ballyfermot village, then you turn left, and eventually you join the N7.”

The N7 was where we needed to be, so His Nibs ignored his usual left turn, and kept driving.

I should say, I was on this road once, in my entire life.  Dropping somebody home.  Somebody who then gave me very clear directions on how exactly to get back to the main road.  And this was years ago.  I wasn’t half as confident in this route as I allowed myself to sound.  But His Nibs was starting to get a bit shouty.  And for some reason I thought that moving had to be better than sitting in traffic.  And in fairness, I knew I was right.  Common sense told me.  Eventually there would have to be a left turn that would bring us to where we wanted to go.

We drove along, moving slowly, for a few minutes.

“So is this Ballyfermot Village?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“And where do we turn off?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

I thought it was best to stop bluffing.  I hadn’t a clue.

“What do you mean you don’t know?  You said you knew the way.”

“I said you go down here and eventually turn left.  But I don’t know where.”

Well, dear readers, my beloved His Nibs instantly became absolutely furious.  It was impressive to see, actually.  He went from driving along, keeping an eye out for signs, to screaming and swearing like something out of The Wolf of Wall Street in a millisecond.

“Stop shouting and swearing” I told him.  “It’ll be grand”.

He went bonkers.  Blathering on about he should never have listened to me, and if he’d gone the usual way, he’d be stuck in traffic, but at least he’d know where he was, and now we’d never get home, and other dramatic nonsense.

In fairness to His Nibs, I was being annoying.  I’d very strongly implied that I knew an alternative route home, then admitted that I had no idea where we were, and when he started giving out, lay down in my car bed, with my blanket and pillow, and instructed him to be quiet, that I was going to sleep.

But he wasn’t going to let me away with that.  At every roundabout he asked me which way he should go.  And at every roundabout, I instructed him to go straight through, unless the left exit was signed Limerick, The South, or the N7.  I didn’t even look up.  He must have wanted to kill me.  But instead he yelped and shouted and threatened other road users, and deliberately disobeyed me by making an alarming amount of noise.  When we reached Palmerstown he seemed to get his second wind, shouting about how we weren’t supposed to be there, and now we were halfway to Sligo.  This was a gross exaggeration.  Sligo is two hundred kilometres from Palmerstown.  I know this, because it said so on the sign we were soaring past as His Nibs was shouting this information.

“Do you know” I said, lying back down and snuggling into my car bed “I remember when you were more fun than this.  When you had fire in your belly and adventure in your soul.  There’s no need to worry just because we’re not supposed to be exactly where we planned to be at this moment in time.  How much fun would life be if we were always on the right road?”

My eyes were closed and my speech already slowing into sleep as I preached at him.

“Well being at home with coffee and toast would definitely be more fun than driving around here for hours, going around in circles, wouldn’t it?” he snarled.  “Do that yoke on your phone, where you talk to it, and it turns into a satnav.”

I don’t know why he carries on as if he doesn’t know what Siri is.  He knows better than I do, even though he doesn’t have it on his phone.  We often question her, when we’re out and about in the world.

“It has no battery.  I’m sorry about that, actually” I told him, making it sound as if I wasn’t remotely sorry for sending him off on this wild goose chase in the first place.

We got to the N7 eventually of course, and peace was instantly restored.  Apparently, I’m not as foolish as I look.

Afternoon Tea

"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea" - Henry James

His Nibs and I were invited out lately, to afternoon tea.  I was delighted.  I never get to go out to fancy things.  We’re not very fancy in this house.  Sunday afternoons are often spent with me lying around in my pyjamas insisting it’s unreasonable to be expected to get dressed every single day, and His Nibs bribes me with promises of lunches and cappuccinos if I’ll only get fecking ready and go out and walk the dogs with him.

If I’d been born in the Downton Abbey era, I would have been one of those long suffering kitchen maids who scrub potatoes and clean fireplaces every day (and God Almighty knows that would be a fate worse than death for me).  But once I was invited to this afternoon tea I decided to become Lady Mary for the afternoon.

His Nibs had obviously worn himself out  trying to wake me up every morning that week, because he woke me up a couple of hours later than I’d requested on the Sunday morning.

He probably thought I’d wake up and get up and be ready to go.  The poor soul.  He’s so innocent sometimes.  I sat up in the bed and demanded coffee, a tweezers, and a mirror.  Then I started dragging my own eyebrows out of my head, yelping and moaning as I went.

When I got into the shower I nearly forgot to come out.  Then I had to blow dry my hair.  His Nibs was downstairs losing his mind, yelping about how we were only going for a bit of lunch, there was no need to carry on like we were getting married again.  So I yelled back that he wasn’t to shout at me when I was putting on liquid eyeliner, in case he made me ruin it.  So then he did a bit of roaring about how there was no need for makeup and I roared back about how he could save us both some time if he’d kindly iron me something to wear, but not my grey top or my red one, and not my pale jeans and on and on we went until we finally got in the car and he calmed down.

I didn’t discuss the fact that we were going for afternoon tea, and not lunch, with His Nibs.  I’ve never had an afternoon tea with him.  This is because I know him very well.  And I know that he is a good and kind man, but very, very practical. He doesn’t have any time for any sort of nonsense.  He knows the value of a euro.  And he gets very angry very quickly if he is hungry.

I quite like an odd afternoon tea.  Although I know it’s a bit of an indulgence, and that there’s probably better value to be had, it’s nice to go out and pretend to be posh every now and then.  But I usually go with a friend.  I never, ever go with His Nibs.

There was a gang of us, around fifteen, attending.  We ordered afternoon tea for all of us and waited patiently.

Eventually the food arrived.  The waitresses put a silver stand down between His Nibs and I, with sandwiches, a scone each and tiny bite sized desserts.  On top of each stand were little bottles of homemade lemonade “with a blood orange foam”, which made His Nibs’ eyes roll back in his eyes as though he was having a fit.

And then we moved onto the explanations of the food.  As we all listened and made oohing and aahing sounds and nodded and smiled, His Nibs kept up a running commentary in my ear.

“Why can’t she just say it’s smoked salmon on brown bread?  What do I care where the salmon came from or who fecking smoked it? “

“Right, so the scones come with clotted cream, lemon curd or jam, but we can’t have butter?  What’s that all about?”

Finally he was allowed to eat it.  He declared the coffee lovely, the cheese nice, the chicken weird, and the ham lovely, even if he thought the accompanying homemade apricot chutney was overkill.

“For Jaysis sake” he told me “we’re still in Kilkenny, this is getting out of hand now.”

I thought everything was absolutely gorgeous.  But the real fun was still to come.

He finished his sandwiches, and eyed his scone.

“Aren’t you going to eat it?” I asked him.  His Nibs is fond of baked goods, and God knows there’s not a lot of baking done in this house.

“I might wait” he told me.  “And have it at the end.”

“The end of what?”

“The end of lunch”.

I looked at him, he looked at me.  The time had come.  I had now to admit to my beloved husband that he wouldn’t behaving a lunch, as such.  Not as he thinks of lunch.  There would be no potatoes, no roast beef, he’d had what he’d be getting.

“This is the end of lunch” I told him.  “That’s it.”

“What do you mean that’s it?"

“That’s it.  That’s afternoon tea.  We’re finished eating now.”

“Cop on.  Sure, I’m not full.  That couldn’t be it.  It was only a sandwich.”

“Love, all jokes aside, you must have had some idea that you were getting a sandwich and a scone, followed by a roast dinner with all the trimmings, did you?”

“No.  I thought when the sandwich arrived that things didn’t look great.  But I assumed there would be enough to eat.  Sure they couldn’t charge the price of two roast dinners for a sandwich could they?”

I tried talking him around.  Which wasn’t easy.  Because I was hissing at him from the side of my mouth, but smiling at the same time, so that it didn’t look like I was giving out stink to him in front of everybody.  I got nowhere, so I had to start promising him things if he’d only be good.

I promised him I’d make him a nice dinner that night.  I promised that he was allowed to refuse to go to one function in the next six months, without question or trouble from me.  Finally I told him that if he didn’t behave himself and not complain about the food and sound as if he’d never been out before, I’d burst into noisy tears and tell everybody that he was a bad husband who had my heart broken.

“All right, all right, calm down.  I’m not saying anything.  But we might have to go to the chipper on the way home.”

It was a great afternoon.  We drank endless coffee and spent a few hours with lovely people, and had a little catch up.  We didn’t leave until we were hopping off the walls with caffeine and were worn out from laughing.

When we got in the car His Nibs told me that he hadn’t had such a good afternoon for years.  He’d really enjoyed himself, he told me, seeing everyone.  But he stated for a fact that he thinks afternoon tea is probably the Emperor’s New Clothes of meals.

“I mean to say, you pay three times more than you usually would for a coffee and sandwich, just because it comes on a fancy stand.  And we all do it because it’s the thing to do these days.  Talk about notions.  I hope you’re still making the dinner tonight?”