Fancy a bit of soup?
My wife has started sending me saucy text messages; she is clearly trying to annoy me. My wife knows that I am terrible at this sort of thing. I sent three texts back before I broke down and asked her what was for tea.
I was in the worst possible situation to accept flirty texts because I was at work, and I’d just eaten some beef. Throw in a chocolate orange and I’d be asleep. At my advancing age, my libido is easily knocked off course by chocolate and meat. I’m not ashamed. I think if you gave Warren Beatty a beef baguette and a chocolate orange he’d struggle to chase you around the bedroom.
Every time my phone bleeped I became anxious, and then the thing actually rang. Thankfully, it was my builder with an estimate for repairs. He said that after extensive excavations (prodding) he had discovered the cause of the damp patch in the back bedroom. For a brief moment, I wondered if my wife had put him up to this innuendo. Then I wondered what my wife was doing with the builder. Then I wondered what was for tea, so I texted my wife again. Apparently, she was having a big sausage for tea, and I was having soup. I spent the next few minutes on the internet trying to find out which depraved sexual act had been recently nicknamed ‘Soup’.
The internet was oblivious to this new trend, so I asked one of the girls in the office. She seemed to think I was talking about food, until I asked her if she’d ever been ‘Souping’.
I returned home to find a letter on the table. It looked like it had lived a hard life. There was a dusty footprint on it, and a scribbled phone number underneath the words: ‘The Honey Man’. More worryingly, it was not in the usual pile in the corner, it had, for some reason, been singled out for special treatment. The tatty letter had been placed by the big bowl in the centre of the dining table. The big bowl is where my wife artistically arranges fruit.
I have seen letters like this before, so I approached with caution. On the top of the letter was a cute silhouette of a ballerina, and underneath were the words: Your daughter’s Dancing fees are now due. You owe: Just enough to hurt.
Turning my daughter into a dancing silhouette is usually funded by my wife. I fund my son, who wants to be the silhouette of a boy who’s had all his homework completed by robot servants.
The high-profile discarding of the letter was a subtle hint from my wife that I might want to start funding both kids’ activities. I do not have a letter that I can put up for tender like this; my son’s subscriptions haunt me electronically.
Some time later my wife burst through the door and splashed her house keys across the big table. I waved the letter in the air and asked: “Who is the Honey Man?”
“He’s the man who gives me honey.”
“Is that…me?”
“Do you want your soup now?”
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