Women: You can’t live with ‘em & you can’t kill ‘em (Part 43)
Mrs FM is a living exponent of the old adage “look after your kit & your kit with look after you”. Indeed, the manner in which for example, her several cubic hectares of sailing equipment is stowed would gladden the heart of even the most tattooed & rum sodden Chief Petty Officer. Think of any type of a sail & I can almost guarantee you that we have at least three sitting in the grain store - cleaned, loosely folded, in a correctly marked sailbag & stowed in the order that they will be needed. Her neatness extends to just about every aspect life in FM Towers. Even shirts are put in my shirt draw in order so that the most recently laundered are at the bottom of the pile. When I am feeling brave, insanely brave, I sometimes throw both caution & the continued use of my legs to the wind & take a shirt from the bottom of the draw …hellfire & damnation follows as surely as a Labour Government raises the tax burden.
Maybe it’s a function of having had a Forces upbringing.
Maybe its because she was sent away to boarding school at the age of eight. Maybe, just maybe, it’s because of some deep rooted dark personality disorder brought on by being a navy brat who was sent away at a young age but at times, all this neatness boarders upon the creepily obsessive.
Numbed as I now am, by twelve years of marital bliss (or is that martial bliss?) I these days tend to take a more alcohol-fuelled & sanguine view, generally from the sofa of sloth, of this sort of anally retentive behaviour, regarding it as the normal reaction that a very organised person must feel, every time that she looks at her blithering shambles that is her husband.
But there is an upside to these tutonic levels of personal administration. Because she is so organised & is genetically predisposed to look after things, Mrs FM’s kit tends to have a half life longer than the average Carlos Santana guitar solo. That is true pretty much across the board with one notable exception … watches.
Whilst everything else in her procession lasts for years & years, Mrs FM breaks watches like Gordon Brown breaks election pledges. Not cheap watches mind you, decent ones to boot. She is the watchmakers’ nemesis … actions, cases, faces, straps buckles & clasps … the whole nine yards. She hasn’t so much as destroyed them as left a wake of carnage & devastation that could cause the entire population of Switzerland to question the very basis of its timekeeping achievements. She is a one women Hiroshima, vaporising chronograph & wristwatch without distinction & without mercy. This is way, at any given moment, the top draw of my office desk will have on average at least two watches in it, waiting to go for repair. Indeed, many of the jewellers that I have used over the years have taken early retirement off the back of our annual spend.
So this year, I finally decided to call an end to horological madness & with a birthday forthcoming, buy a really decent robust watch that would endure the slings, arrows, seawater & mud inflicted upon it by its owner. After all, the received wisdom is that if you buy a good watch it should save you money in the long run. & so
Research commenced …
Expert opinion was sought…
Learned advice was heeded …
& I ended up buying a second hand ladies Breitling.
It seemed in good order. Even Mr Breitling said it was a good’un … & there I was thinking to myself that this was going to be not just a winner, but a move that would receive plaudits from even the syndicate to credit card companies that finance our lives.
Anyway, the fateful day arrives & the gift is handed over. The box is opened
& written right across her face was that ‘look’ …
All husbands know what I mean by that ‘look’. It’s the look that will plunge even the cheeriest spouse into the desolate & bottomless pit of despair. Sometime later on that evening it transpires that what she wants for her birthday isn’t a decent watch … no sir. What she really really wants for her birthday is a new pair of Wellingtons. I give up. I really really do. For moments such as this there are only two things; booze & Ebay.
Comments
Funnily enough my wife managed to lose the first watch I got her although it was nothing special; since then she has not lost but has attempted to drown a couple of fine Swiss watches. She did however get a good pair of Wellies (French I have to say French) for her birthday.
Posted by: bill | March 19, 2008 9:30 AM
Mine doesn't wear a watch. Or jewellery. For her birthday this year (14th May) she wants: "bricks".
For the pathway she's going to build to the front door. (The existing one looks worse than one of Mrs. FM's watches.)
Posted by: Kim du Toit | March 19, 2008 12:09 PM
Bill,
Do the French call them Wellingtons?
Posted by: The Remittance Man | March 19, 2008 1:35 PM
Bill,
Do the French call them Wellingtons?
Posted by: The Remittance Man | March 19, 2008 1:36 PM
According to my Collins-Robert dictionary (circa 1980)the French call them "botte de caoutchouc" (rubber boot(s))but that i probably pre-Franglais. In interesting article on the histoy of Wellington Boot in wikipedia which covers the French angle. I have always been a bit anxious about buying French stuff but havre to say my wife's "Aigle" boots are excellent. But then my Hunters are over twenty-five years old.
Hope the weather is OK down your way. My sister is in the Kruger Park at the moment.
Posted by: bill | March 19, 2008 5:17 PM
Buy Mrs. FM a Rolex
Posted by: ratty | March 19, 2008 11:41 PM
The only thing the wife likes better than shoes is watches...all sizes, all colors, all types.
She has at least a half-dozen Skagan's in various finishes. There are so many watches she can't possibly wear them all but requires they all be in working order.
My battery bill looks like the mileage between stars
Posted by: trainer | March 20, 2008 1:24 PM
If she kills the Breitling try a Casio divers watch, mine lasted for years at work in the workshop untill I caught it hard with a 9 inh grinder, then it was ok for diving even with a groove half way through the mineral glass but succomed to low pressure on a plane.
Posted by: chris Edwards | March 20, 2008 8:22 PM