Short Story: A Bad News/good News Kind…

Short Story: A Bad News/good News Kind Of Life

Nature and life work on opposites – light and dark, night and day, black and white; and, of course, good news and bad. My good and bad news is my husband, Bert.

He had a list of ideas to please me, with a tick box to keep track. When he got to the end he would start again. You know where I’m going with this, I’m sure. After a few months of Bert I could’ve put the kettle on for the ‘nice little surprises’.

The nice surprise on the first Friday of the month was flowers, the second Friday the arrival of a book package, and on the third came concert tickets. My life was reduced to the fourth Friday, the dreadful excitement of that surprise. Having done flowers, books and music, he had run out of clichés, so he had to do something different.

I used to like different.

My ‘different’ would be a city break in Paris, or a trip on a hot air balloon. Bert had a ‘more spiritual dimension’ in mind. Retreats to unheated cottages. Eco-friendly jaunts to youth hostels with no decent loo paper, where we had to be …well … jaunty. Or weekends to learn ceramics ‘with personal oven space provided’.

But mostly we meditated. Bert combined these weekends with a nerd of the north anorak, and stout walking boots. I am not a woman for whom the word stout as any allure – I haven’t eaten a full meal since I was 14, and won’t be doing any different any time soon. But he is my husband, so walkies we went.

It was then I began to notice changes creeping in, just before the ‘incident’ (as Bert likes to call it). On a book week he wanted to go on a retreat. I wasn’t pleased since I had, as usual, stuck my book request on the fridge door, so he would know exactly which books to surprise me with. There was a line in the sand between us when it came to reading. Bert didn’t do post 1900 and I didn’t do pre, hence the note on the fridge. I said ‘no’ to meditation, this was a chic lit weekend, not a freezing bum one.

But Bert went retreating and I was left, and I got a bit lonely, then a lot lonely, then not so lonely, then absolutely beezer fine thanks. I had just reached the beezer stage when Bert came home and caught us.

He forgave me and said he understood. This was just a passing ‘incident’. We had both been seduced – he by meditation and me by what’s-his-name.

The bad news is that on the first Friday he brings flowers, on the second the books, on the third the tickets. The good news is – no more surprises. Once a month we walk the hills - Bert declaims Tennyson and I keep my eyes down on my stout brown walking boots.