2006-06-06
Going back a week to why I was away on the Friday – which proved to have been tactically a good idea considering Jo’s temper the day before…I was away driving a white van for the my cycling colleagues again. We did a trip last September and enjoyed it so much that we decided to go again – unfortunately the organisation and the weather weren’t quite so good this time and it turned out to be a bit of a struggle for some of the party. As I say I was just driving the support van– haring around the lanes of Yorkshire trying to make sure no-one missed a turning, gathering up the strays who got dropped off the back, and dispensing fruitcake, water, lucozade and other tasty comestibles from the back of my van.
And apart from the swirling tension of not being able to escape my mind from thinking about Jo, I really enjoyed most of it. Apart from anything else it was just good to be away on an outing with a bunch of ‘boys’. And that’s what men are when they’re away on a trip like that. It’s times like that when it becomes obvious that males never really grow up, never really alter their attitude to life. Lynne goes away on weekends with her women friends and they seem to have (or of course maybe it’s just what she tells me) a civilised time of walks and conversations and a couple of glasses of wine but not too much raucous. I can’t imagine them being anything other than completely adult. Men together (even men in their forties like us) resort to swearing, drink, farting, extended defecation sessions, drink, porn, farting, lust, letchery, farting, drink…and when we’re not actually doing those things we’re talking and laughing about them. Especially the farting. Oh and a constant ‘assessment’ of anyone or anything female around us.
For instance there was an interesting brief discussion on the Saturday night as we waited for the steaks (inevitably steaks) to arrive, assessing the girls coming into the Wetherspoons pub. Jim’s line of conversation had descended into ‘She’d get it!’, ‘She wouldn’t get it!’ ‘She’d definitely get it!’, until inexplicably he came out with ‘Not sure about that one…’ Someone else chipped in ‘She’d get it..if only because she looks like she’d enjoy it…’ which was met with incredulity by half the party who felt that was an unnecessary criteria. So half of us (myself included) had been making the assessment on the basis of whether the female in question could be imagined to be joining in and enjoying whatever the (unspecified, but obviously sexual) activity was, whereas the rest were working solely on the criteria of whether they would be good to ‘experience’. And the latter group were definitely working on the theory that they would be doing her a favour. AS IF!
Having driven a white van I now realise how difficult it is to see out of them and how easily it is to drive like a plonker in one. Which means I have a little sympathy, only a little for the idiot who nearly killed me on my bike this morning. Standing in stationary traffic he decided to suddenly pull across to the right hand side of the road to park, just as I passed him. As it was he just clipped the back of my rear wheel with his bumper; quarter of a second later and I would have had a wing mirror wrapped round my face, half a second later and he would have been parking right on top of me! Near miss. Don’t tell Lynne!
Jo came in yesterday morning looking a little shaken. To start with she denied there was anything wrong apart from being kept up by a teething child. But I could see there was more. ‘Trouble’ at the weekend ‘ it’s you. You’re the problem.’ Apparently she’d been tired and a little irritable at home: not surprising since she’s back working, and dealing with two small children alone while Dave was away on business through last week. But it’s been interpreted as being dissatisfied with home and him in comparison to me. And as she says – it would have exactly the same if she’d been happy – that would have been seen as being over happy at being back around me. ‘He’s wants me put back in the box I’ve been in for the last year.’