Sweets For My Sweet

I spent last weekend up in Glasgow looking for a few days of peace but working my buns off instead on various projects before settling on Saturday evening for a good old fashioned fish supper from the local chippie.

Now the Glasgow diet is a bit like The X Factor – bad for you, tasteless in some places, sickly sweet in others, but ultimately irresistible. However, even I was surprised when one youngster ordered his Saturday dinner. “Chips with cheese and curry sauce”, he said before adding as an afterthought “and a deep fried pizza on top.”

Tony, the shop owner, has now stopped doing deep fried Mars bars after a harrowing incident when three teenagers recently ordered “a deep fried Mars, same for a Twix, and a deep fried Toffee Crisp as well.” The Toffee Crisp exploded sending fat everywhere and I have a picture in my head of three teenagers licking the walls.

Having been brought up on that diet you can see why chocolate features so heavily in my life. I recently wrote a blog complaining that I have to hide chocolate from my wife who steals it and then lies that she has no clue what I’m going on about.

Debbie then posted her blog on her QVC web page and was inundated with women backing her and saying that, as we’re married, what’s mine is hers. She asked me to write a reply, so this week I’ve put this on her page. I’m expecting the sisterhood to torch my car any day now.

Reply

I recently came across an animated movie, made in 1998 by an American called Bill Plympton, which seems to sum up my life. I’m not recommending the plot as it is ridiculous, with an everyday normal bloke gaining special powers after two birds fly in to his satellite dish while making love.

So, as I don’t have special powers, how does this film sum up my life? Well, partly because every day I wake up wishing I had the super power to hide chocolate successfully, but mainly because of the movie’s title – I Married A Strange Person.

As readers of Debbie’s blog know she has no willpower whatsoever when eating chocolate and I have to hide the stuff as an act of charity. It’s not that I want it all for myself you understand. I’m simply stopping her ruining her teeth and ballooning to the size of a small village – like Manchester.

After Debbie told of my secret, the reaction and comments posted on her blog would have hurt me deeply if I had feelings. My obvious charity work in keeping my wife slim and healthy is going unmarked by you all, ‘though I did notice that all the comments came from the (un)fair sex.

So I’ve now changed my hiding places and, so far, Debbie’s none the wiser. Trust me that this way is better as we can now enjoy some chocolate when watching TV rather than the cupboard being bare and us making do with Ryvita or, if I’m very lucky, the special treat of a girly apple.

If you study the bible closely you’ll find, as many scholars already have, that Adam took the apple in the first place simply to dip it in a QVC chocolate fountain that Richard Jackson had left as a feature in the Garden Of Eden. Women have been getting men in to trouble ever since.

If you don’t believe me that I’m the good guy in all this then all I ask is that you put my case to any male partners or friends you have.

Debbie appreciated your support but I’m the injured party and it’s not fair. I know, of course, that I am the mature one in this dispute and that I have to take the moral high ground and behave sensibly. I do have a proper sense of perspective on all this.

Or so my divorce lawyer tells me anyway.

You Little Thief

I wish to report a crime.

Regular readers will know that I was stuck in Dubai recently when the Icelandic volcano erupted, and while stealing ten days of my life is a crime in itself, it just got worse this week in a mini crime wave mystery that Sherlock Holmes himself would have found taxing.

After I returned home from the Middle East, the company I was working for in Dubai very kindly sent me a box of luxury chocolates as a “thank you”, and if you know anything about me then you will realise that presenting me with chocolate is like giving me gold wrapped in hundred pound notes inside Louis Vuitton himself.

To say I like chocolate is like saying Lionel Messi is fond of a kick about, Simon Cowell likes mirrors, or Romeo had a wee bit of a fancy for Juliet. If I ever find a magic lamp then the genie will be busy turning the world’s glaciers in to Walnut Whips and the seas in to melted chocolate, and global warming will lead to nothing more sinister than hot chocolate on tap everywhere.

I get this small weakness, or very great talent as I prefer to call it, from my Mum who has a sweet tooth bigger than a giant vampire dragon’s fang. Unfortunately, the older I get the more attached I get to chocolate which, now that I think of it, is fair as it seems to be getting more attached to me - especially around the waist and chins.

Anyway, back to the crime I want to report. This box of chocolates from Dubai was very expensive and only available in the Middle East. The individual pieces were thick and crunchy and promised luxurious melting experiences on my tongue so, of course, I hid the box in a place at home where it would never be found. Or so I thought.

You’re ahead of me now, aren’t you?

At the weekend I was watching TV and said to my wife we should eat the chocolates just to make the evening complete. I searched every hidey hole I have in the house and couldn’t find them and, when I asked, Debbie and the kids insisted they hadn’t seen them. Debbie even swore blind that she knew nothing about them and I never had them in the first place.

Then today I found the box hidden behind a bag of flour in a cupboard in our utility room. And the box was empty!

Actually, to be truthful, it wasn’t completely empty as it had two and a half chocolates remaining. I challenged my wife who burst out laughing and said she’d started on them when I was on a trip two weeks ago and just couldn’t stop. The half of one chocolate remaining was because she didn’t like it and hoped, if I ever found out, that having a half would mollify me. The remaining two were on the execution list but she hadn’t had time to polish them off before I found them. I was desolate.

When your wife lies to you about something as serious as this you know that trust has gone forever and the divorce court beckons.

I suggested to my lawyer that stealing and lying about chocolate were grounds for divorce, but he seems not to understand and has informed me it would have to be something less important, like adultery.

So, adultery it is. I just have to find a chocolate lover who wants to join me.