Strange Relationship – Version X Chapter 004: In The Car

Kitchen looking like the morning after Glastonbury; check. Clothes strewn over chair in corner of bedroom; check. Caitlin wearing expensive perfume and even more expensive underwear, which remains indecently undisturbed; check. Caitlin wearing expression displaying equal parts sexual frustration and annoyance whilst staring into darkness; check. The clincher – is there medium tending towards heavy snuffling/snoring from somewhere to my right? Of course there is. Once all the above boxes have been ticked, the conclusion can only be that Richard is spending the night.

At first I was quite pleased. In fact, it would not be unfair to say that a month ago I would actually have been quite excited by the prospect of having my boyfriend stay over for the night; something about it making us seem like a real couple. However, in view of the events of the past week or so, I am rather underwhelmed by today’s events, and distinctly underwhelmed by tonight’s lack of events.

It was nice that he called me at work to say that he was unexpectedly free tonight and wanted to come round. I might even go so far as to say that it put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. However, once I saw him unpacking supermarket carrier bags I knew that things were not going to go quite as I would like.

You see, Richard likes to think of himself as a master chef, some sort of experimental kitchen whizzkid. The reality is that if there were such a program as ‘Vaguely Incompetent Chef’ Richard would be stood on that podium every time – it’s not that he’s bad, but his cooking technique relies on pairing unexpected ingredients and hoping that the results pass FDA guidelines on being fit for human consumption. Think Dr. Moreau’s island for food, and you’re somewhere close.

But that’s not the worst bit, bad as it sounds. I haven’t got to the bad bit yet, but I needed to go through that preamble so that you would understand why the bad bit is quite so bad, and what it is bad in relation to, because it sounds fairly innocuous. Richard likes to have a glass of wine while he cooks.

He’s quite a burly chap so he thinks he can take his drink. Because it takes him so long to do things (which is strange, seeing as everything about his cooking style seems so spontaneous) Richard can easily go through a whole bottle of red, and is usually into a second before he even sets the starter on the table. Then we have a bottle or two with the meal, and another couple of drinks when we’ve settled down afterwards. At one point, I swear to God, I looked up at Richard and the grim reaper was stood behind him. But he wasn’t wielding a scythe, he was waggling a crooked little finger at me and grinning, and I knew that the curse of brewer’s droop had already ended any chance of sex for me tonight.

Still, I tried. I managed to get him into bed at a relatively early hour, before he had chance to complain about being tired. The red set with black lace came out, as did the Chanel. My attempts at seduction were as futile as George Bush’s attempts at apelling. Richard was already in bed when I came out of the bathroom, and snuffling/snoring by the time I’d got into bed. And that’s a full recap of my day, starting with unexpected and welcome surprise, veering towards domestic anarchy, and ending up with equal amounts of predictability and monotony.

Until my phone beeped to say I had a text.

Strange Relationship – Version X Chapter 002: Changing Room

Caitlin’s log: Sunday, 10 a.m. I’m lying in bed with a terrible, nagging ache. You’d be forgiven for thinking I’d gone ten rounds with a Cabernet Sauvignon, but you’d be wrong. The ache was spiritual rather than physical, the apocalyptic realisation that for the third night running I’d lain awake for hours before falling asleep, contemplating all manner of things related to re-igniting my sex life. See? That’s what I keep doing, dressing the issue up in euphemisms – “re-igniting my sex life”, “putting the excitement back into my love life”. I loved Richard, I really did, but I was reaching the point at which I could no longer handle being so ignored. Therefore, you could put it however you liked but in the end we’d still be talking about having an affair.

A quick walk on the park, fresh air and sunshine, would be the tonic required to revivify myself. I tried to help out my elderly neighbours when I could, and walking their dog was one of the ways I could offer my assistance, so after showering and dressing I nipped round to collect the dog (a Greek breed, the dog’s name was Candaules, don’t ask me why). I’d have a walk round the park – school playing fields, technically – drop in at the newsagent, and get back to start on lunch.

Strange Relationship – Chapter 3 Version VI

With a Sunday afternoon unexpectedly free – many thanks to Richard’s rabble of students, to a man seemingly unable to cope with the dual pressures of actually doing work and handing it in on time, leaving Richard with piles of marking to do – I decided to hit the bookshops. Sounds sad, I know, but I find little to compare with the simple pleasure afforded by wrapping myself in a good book! Internet sites are all terribly convenient, but for me book shopping should be a tactile, sensual experience. I need to pick up and flick through fifty books before I decide. Thus, opting for the tram over the car in case I fancied a glass of wine with lunch, I set off after a long lie-in, feeling distinctly smug that I was enjoying such a laid back Sunday whilst Richard slaved over a pile of hot books.

By two, and with five confirmed purchases already painted on the side of my shopping bag (making me officially a shopping ace) I trained my sights on my favourite Italians – a good red wine and a mushroom pizza! There’s a little place that I like to go for lunch, with the girls sometimes but more usually when I’m on my own, where there are some private little booths, and it was here I aimed to get through a couple of chapters/glasses at my own leisurely pace. The waiter smiled with recognition and, talking and laughing far too rapidly for any comprehension on my part as he showed me to a corner booth, with a single continuous semicircular sofa. I understood through his failure to bring me a menu that he would simply bring my normal order, and when he quickly reappeared with the actual ark that Noah built and begin filling it with red wine I knew he and I were in sync.