Familiarity Breeds Power

After eight years together, there are few things I haven’t seen, heard or smelt when it comes to my beloved. When you reach a level of familiarity whereby performing a routine colonoscopy on the other wouldn’t be considered an awkward situation and the only thing left to the imagination is what it would be like to sleep without having two fingers inserted up your husband’s nose to muffle the snoring, there really are few surprises left. However, this kind of knowledge of one’s spouse can also be very useful.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I enquired to a shocked Accountant who hadn’t heard me tiptoeing up the stairs to catch him lying on the bed reading his newspaper. Exactly the scene I’d anticipated following his “just putting Chickie down for a nap” disappearance.

“Supervising Chickie” came the response.

“But he’s asleep!” I pointed out helpfully.

“I know but I was just making sure he was okay”

“Right” I said, marvelling he would even waste his breath on this farcical explanation when we both knew he was trying to avoid painting fence panels.

Earlier that morning, when Chickie was awake and actually needed supervising, I couldn’t help but wonder how he had managed to eat a bucketful of mud under the watchful eye of such an attentive father. Chickie’s increased interest in fashioning food from household and garden materials is a bout of worms waiting to happen.

As fast as you apply his suntan lotion he’s licking it off, he wipes the Sudacrem off his bottom sucking it off his fingers like he’s just enjoyed a rack of bbq ribs. Playbark, sand, mud, leaves, gravel – they’ve all been sampled with utter disregard for mummy’s yelps of “NO!”, “PUT THAT DOWN NOW”, “DON’T PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH”. Short of fitting a muzzle, I’m at a loss.

As the weekend was to be spent doing more gardening (yes, I’m still sodding doing it), Chickie was considered too pesky to remain at home after leaving a small yet highly identifiable handprint on mummy's freshly painted fence panel and attempting to eat more soil, so was taken out by a highly amenable Accountant.

Unfortunately, there was no one around to praise my relentless efforts and hard work or to mention that I had a snail sat on a leaf on top of my head. (I really did!)