Easy As Falling Off A Bike pt 661.
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(aka Bike) Part 661 by Angharad |
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“Hi, Babes, what can I do you for?”
“I’ve just had a call from Laura.”
“Who’s she?”
“Peaches’ mum.”
“Oh yeah. What did she want, you to collect her offspring again?”
“Not quite, she wants us to have Pea over the weekend.”
“What do you mean by, weekend?”
“From Friday after school to Monday morning, when returned to school,” I sighed.
“She’s got a bloody nerve.”
“I know that, Simon, her daughter as good as told me that the first time.”
“She did? First I’ve heard of it.”
“I did tell you, but you were probably thinking about sex at the time.”
“I think about sex, constantly,” he joked. I knew it was a joke–he only thought about it most of the time.
“Well, there’s a surprise,” I replied with feigned astonishment.
“I thought it would be a revelation to you, didn’t you realise that men think about sex, nearly as often as women think about shopping.”
“Is that food shopping or real shopping?” I joked back.
“I think it could be both, why?”
“Depending upon how much food we have in the house, I could think about shopping more often than I do when buying stuff for the girls or myself. If it’s just the latter, you can’t be that highly sexed.”
“What? You’re always shopping,” he protested.
“Compared to you–yes, compared to many women–no.”
“What even, Stella?”
“Stella is a special case, but before she was ill and a nursing mum, she could shop for England, and I suspect probably did.”
“No wonder the economy is in crisis, some coincidence that it was contemporaneous with Stella’s illness.” He sighed as if it was a profound thought.
“Oh speaking of the Arch Consumer, what was she on about wanting us to do at the same time as the wedding?”
“What wedding?”
“Thee and me, remember?”
“Remember what?”
“You asked me to marry you?”
“Yeah, but that was last week.” I heard him chuckle in the background.
“So am I released from my plight?” I asked.
“Why?”
“Well, I saw James Cracknell on the telly the other night, he looks quite a hunk.”
“I beg your pardon?” he said and I could feel myself blushing, at the same time I knew his blood pressure would be rising, even though he knew I was playing silly games, the same as he was.
“You know, the Olympic Oarsman, he could paddle my canoe any day,” I continued, goading him.
“Catherine Watts, you are practically a member of the aristocracy, please wait until you are before behaving so badly.”
“So it’s allowed then, is it?”
“Shall we say, we all turn a blind eye and cough politely.”
“So James will have to wait a few months then?”
“’Fraid so, if you want to do it properly.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him. Is that what you do?”
“Me? How could you? Remember our motto.”
“What motto?” I asked, unaware of it.
“Honour, Integrity–or the wife will kill me.” He roared with laughter the other end.
“So what was Stella on about?”
“How should I know, I wasn’t there, remember?”
“I know you weren’t there, that’s why I’m talking to you now. We had a whole conversation and I didn’t have a clue what she was on about…”
“Christening,” said a voice as Stella walked past.
“Thanks…doh!” I had betrayed myself, she’d give me hell for while now.
“Doe, a deer a female deer…” sang Simon.
“Oh shut up,” I pouted down the phone.
“What did she say?”
“Christening.”
“Oh yeah, she asked me earlier if I’d be a God-parent or something, to Puddin’.”
“Well it would fit the remnants of the conversation as I recall it.”
“Just sign on the dotted.”
“I’m an agnostic, how can I be a God-parent, whose role, as I recall it, is to make sure the child is brought up as Christian and encouraged to become confirmed.”
“Is it? What’s the problem?”
“I don’t believe in the Big Cheese.
“Ah, that could cause a small difficulty.”
“Which is why I declined the first time. Nothing has changed.”
“No, Stella is a bit one-track in the mind department.”
“So am I.”
“Yeah, bloody stubborn women, and you have the temerity to blame all the world’s problems on men.”
“If you mean, greed and war? Yes, I do.”
“Hang on a mo, missus, you and Stella, is hardly a cooperative is it?”
“Well it’s more that than confrontation, we just agree to disagree.”
“Yeah, like Afghanistan.”
“I don’t have a problem with Afghanistan.” I said moving to higher ground, at least morally.
“Well, I can’t see them allowing you to have the snip and then marry me, for one thing. They’d stone you to death or something.”
“Why?”
“For being different or just for being a woman. Can you imagine walking round like a Guinness bottle in one of those full size veils?”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“So there, see you do spend loads of brain time thinking about shopping.”
“How do you work that out?”
“I could hear your little brain trying to work out if Burberry made burkas.”
“Damn,” I said in mock indignation, “how did you guess?”
“Intuition,” he said and laughed.
“What about Peaches?”
“Yeah, get some if they look edible.”
“Simon, I’ll get you in a minute, what about this poor kid whose mother seems to dump her on neighbours and friends?”
“We can hardly refuse, can we. But only this once.”
“What if she does a runner, like Meem’s mother did?”
“Get a very large jiffy bag…”
“Be serious for a moment, Simon.”
“I am, deadly so. I have a book of stamps, you’re not going to keep her. If you’re getting broody, get a kitten.”
“What! I am not broody and I don’t want anymore children. I love the two we have. It’s enough for me.”
“Say, no, to her then.”
“Um, that might be difficult.”
“Why?”
“She’s walking up the drive with a suitcase.”
