Published on April 26, 2020 · Posted in MY BOOKS
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With the glimmer of hope that we’re emerging from hibernation, what will life be like after lockdown?
Imagine it – no more supermarket queues so long there are Cro-Magnons at the front. The only lines will be for waxing salons. (Like most middle-aged women, I didn’t like my beard at first – and then it grew on me.) Casual sex will now be over too. Yep, sex will be as formal as possible – nasal swabs, thermometers, doctors’ certificates, lie detectors, the works. At least I won’t have to serve any more penis pasta for dinner. (After hoarders stripped supermarket shelves of staples, sex shop websites of novelty pastas became my secret source.)
Another upside is that there’ll also be much less crime. Apparently the police caught the majority of their Most Wanted gangsters because they were self isolating at home with their families watching Netflix. It gives a new meaning to a “captive audience”. In fact, from now on, when masked men enter a bank, we’ll just be so relieved to realise that it’s only a stick up.
What else will change? Some people will emerge from the corona cocoon with gourmet cooking skills. Others will find it hard to self isolate from the gin bottle. Besides the zoom boom, there’ll also be a baby boom, a spate of very bad novels and a huge upsurge in divorce. At least that’s the trend in China – and where Wuhan goes, the world does tend to follow.
The cause of this sudden increase in husband-ectomies is mostly domestic. It seems a woman’s work is never done… Not by men any way. Suddenly deprived of their cleaners due to lockdown, women quickly realised that their spouses were not pulling their weight on the shopping, mopping, cooking and cleaning front.
I do all my research in an in-depth, scientific fashion – over cocktails with girlfriends. (On-line cocktails, during corona, obvs.) And what became clear during quarantine is that giving a room a sweeping glance is the closest most men come to housework. (Not all men, obviously. I wanted to get that in before beardy blokes start pelting me with their homemade quinoa quiches.) But generally speaking, it’s true that the enlistment of labour on a subsistence basis is now forbidden except in one state – the holy state of matrimony.
Consequently, most wives I know are ready to impale their hubbies on a fork prong. Having prepared three meals a day for months, a mother’s current favourite recipe is chauvinist pig, roasted slowly on a spit.
Resentments may have been assuaged if men had helped more with the home schooling. But most hubbies seem to have taken on the role of PE teacher, which consists of getting the kids to ride their bikes up and down the street whilst Dad plays games on his iPhone. In many marriages, kids are the glue that keep couples together, but with home schooling things have come unstuck. When frazzled Mums take conference calls with their teams while simultaneously making scale models of the Acropolis out of sustainable materials for overdue history assignments, sniffing the homework glue becomes a very attractive option. Followed by a tutorial for fractious offspring on the guppy approach to parenting ie;- eating your young.
One of my girlfriends has announced that she’s finally decided she doesn’t want to have children… She’ll be telling them tonight, straight after dinner. Then she plans to divorce her husband before he embarks on yet another ridiculous home project which he’ll get bored of halfway through and move onto something else (watching telly probably) leaving his beleaguered spouse to clean up the mess. How many women do you know who have a half sanded dining room table that she’s not allowed to put anything ‘hot’ on until he finishes it – in, oh, about 2033?
Before lockdown it was easy to turn a blind eye to a partner’s annoying habits and general failings. But in lockdown, Helen Keller could see them coming.
Is it any wonder so many women are now practising social distancing – in their matrimonial beds. “Lay, lady, lay” is simply a tune to be warbled at the backyard chooks your husband bought on impulse and with no discussion so you could be self-sustaining… If only he’d got around to finishing the coop because the escaped chooks have just dug up the educational veggie patch you painstakingly planted with the kids. This, you’ll tell your divorce lawyer, was the um, coop de grace.
I think I speak for all mums when I say that it’ll be so nice to get back to work to have a rest. But until then, wives are self-medicating with chocolate and chardonnay and, if blokes don’t lift their domestic game, huge doses of HRT – Husband Replacement Therapy.
Oh, and by the way, that just happens to be the name of my new comic novel. Have we ever needed a laugh more? Not only is laughter the best medicine, it’s the ONLY medicine we have right now – and a tad more effective than bleach. I hope the book tickles your funny bones – and other parts of your anatomy. I mean, just because we have to stay sanitised, doesn’t mean we can’t have a dirty mind…
Buy your copy of HRT: Husband Replacement Therapy now!
What do women really want in bed? Breakfast. Oh, and a good book.
If you’re looking for a funny, frivolous yet feisty new read, do slip between my covers. Satisfaction guaranteed.
I’ve added my fave pics of the people who are my human wonder bras – uplifting and supportive and make me look bigger and better. Plus the odd snap of me too. There may be a few faces you recognise – but nobody two-faced, that’s for sure.
I think women are each other’s human Wonderbras – uplifting, supportive and making each other look bigger and better.
If he wants breakfast, tell him to sleep in the kitchen.
Men think monogamy is something you make dining tables out of.
Many marriages break up for religious reasons – he thinks he’s a god and she doesn’t.
Love prepares you for marriage the way needlepoint prepares you for round-the-world solo yachting.
Boys will be boys, and so will a load of middle-aged boys who should know better.
Ladies who lynch.
No wife ever shot a husband while he was vacuuming.
I think therefore I’m divorced.
All husbands think they’re Gods. If only their wives weren’t atheists.
Happy wife = happy life.
I couldn’t ask for a better husband… as much as I’d bloody well like to.
Statistically, 100% of divorces begin with marriage.
Marriage is nature’s way of promoting masturbation.
Marriage is a fun-packed, frivolous activity – only occasionally resulting in death.
It’ll be an amicable split. You’ll both get 50 % of the acrimony.
A new invention is required. The monogamous husband. Patent Pending.
How Do I Hate Thee? Let me Count the Ways.
My wedding vows didn’t say To Love, Hoover and Obey.
I’m having my period so can therefore legally kill you.
You are going to enjoy this marriage, even if I have to divorce you to do so.
A happy marriage is like an orgasm – many of them are faked.
All this emphasis on women faking orgasms, but what about men faking foreplay?
Why do men like intelligent women? Because opposites attract.
Why don’t women tell jokes? Because we marry them.
What does a woman really want in bed? Breakfast.
For women, life is full of lies – I mean doctors maintain that wrinkles don’t hurt.
Legal aid cuts prove that the Tories believe a person is innocent until proven destitute.
Sexist men are so stupid it makes you want to take the ‘men’ out of Mensa.
If a man ever tells you that women fall at his feet – it’s only because he gets them drunk first.
A woman must always fight back. Never just lie back and think of Canberra.
The best cure for menopause is the toy boy diet. A case of having Your Beefcake and Eating It Too.
I don’t fake orgasms. I’m faking being six foot one and seven stone.
Trophy wives tarnish quickly and then get left on the shelf.
Lawyers work 24/7. The partners of lawyers suffer from a bad case of subpoena envy.
Most shrinks should book an appointment with themselves.
The question on the minds of most women is – why doesn’t chocolate go straight to your boobs?
Don’t fall for a man’s puppy dog look… Just get him wormed.
It’s been so long since a man has touched me, not even medical science will want my body.
My top tip for keeping your youth? Lock him in the pool house.
I told myself that it took forty-two facial muscles to frown and only four to stretch out my arm and bitch-slap the witch.