My 'no-wife' life...

My wife has this recurring daydream - I would perhaps call it a fantasy, if the term wasn't so desperately inappropriate for what follows - about what my life would be like without her. She likes to describe this scenario in some detail, carefully outlining every single aspect of the heartbreak and misery that I will suffer through each day, in an fairly transparent attempt to make sure I know just how lucky I am to have her around. Sadly, she has overplayed this particular card, and I am now totally immune to it and find the whole thing amusing, which is even more aggravating:
"I notice you didn't load the dishwasher..."
"Didn't I? Oh, sorry, I forgot."
"You said you would...."
"Yes, yes, I did... but I also just explained that I forgot. I didn't do it to spite you."
"Well, it's annoying, because I did remind you."
"When?"
"Earlier. When you weren't listening."
"When was that?"
"All the time. You're never listening."
There is pause while I think carefully about this, seeking the correct answer. There doesn't appear to be one, so a switch of tactics is required.
"Could you actually tell I wasn't listening when you reminded me?"
"I had a pretty good idea, yes."
"It's not really reminding me, as such, then, is it? If you knew I wasn't listening? It's more just talking out loud with me in the room..."
"I shouldn't have needed to remind you in the first place."
"Well, why did you, then?"
"Because I knew you'd forget."
"Well, as we've established, I forgot anyway. Why didn't you remind me again, if it bothered you that much?"
"If I remind you more than once, you accuse me of nagging."
"Yes, but I have to actually hear you the first time for it to count...."
There is a another pause. It is clear that in this brief exchange, we have both swiftly moved to DefCon 3 and there is now a real danger of escalating hostilities. The pause continues, but with a different timbre: it's now the kind of menacing quiet that emanates from a loaded gun left carelessly on a counter top....
"I notice you still haven't done anything about loading the dishwasher.."
"We are lying in bed. It is nearly midnight. Do you expect me to pad downstairs and load the dishwasher now?
"No, I would have preferred you to have done it earlier..."
"Believe me, if I could go back in time, my failure today to load the dishwasher would be the very first thing in my life I would go back and fix..."
"Now you're just being sarcastic."
"...but just to be sure, I would then travel a bit further back, and remind myself to listen at the point when you reminded me."
"Do you know how lucky you are? Do you have any idea what your life would be like without me?"
"Oh Christ, not this again..."
"It would..." (dramatic pause) "...be shit."
"Yes, you've mentioned that before. At least 5 times. Possibly more, in fact, if you deliberately chose to tell me at other intervals when you knew I wasn't listening..."
"I suspect you would be dead. You would have died of a cardiac arrest from eating Pot Noodle sandwiches if I hadn't come along and starting feeding you properly."
"Is this the part when I get eaten by cats? Because last time you mentioned this, after I died of the heart attack, you said my body remained undiscovered, and got eaten by cats. Which is strange, as I'm allergic to them, so it seems unlikely I would have any around..."
"You would spend you whole life playing Nintendo, and farting..."
"I don't think you really addressed the cat question..."
"You got a cat to help with the loneliness. Because your life was so empty."
"That seems a poor decision on my part. What with my allergy, and you know, not actually liking cats that much..."
"Well, yes, but that's your life without me. A string of poor decisions."
Another pause.
"What is the cat called?"
"What?"
"What is the cat called?"
"Oh, I don't know, something hateful. Bumhole. Something like that."
"Wow, things really are grim for me without you, aren't they? Not only have I stupidly gotten a cat that I'm allergic to and don't even want, but I've called it Bumhole. That's going to make for some tough conversations at the vets..."
"You're not taking me seriously."
"Oh, I am, I'm getting quite into it. But on the plus side, if all I'm eating is Pot Noodle sandwiches, there will be very little washing up. I probably won't even need a dishwasher in the first place..."
"But you will have no wife, no life, and no children. And you will smell. Badly. And no woman will ever touch you."
"Well, at least I'll still have Bumhole."
"Who will ultimately eat you."
"I'm OK with that. I'll be dead, so I won't feel it. And I hate to think of him starving because in some crazed alternate world you just dreamed up, I failed to meet you. It wouldn't be fair."
"Look, just load the sodding dishwasher in the morning will, you?"
"Yes, I will. I promise."
It goes quiet. Conflict over. But I can't resist one last jab.
"Can you remind me, though? When you know I'm not listening?"

There's something (unpleasant) about Mary..

Dinner time. Neve is singing at the table, throwing her head back as she does so, so she can gargle her chicken and rice between verses. Unless forcibly restrained she will also bang out an accompanying rhythm on the table with her spoon. The noise is loud, bordering on being offensively so, though I notice with a trace of sadness that at 2 years and 2 months of age she can already keep in tune far, far better than I can (As my grandfather once pithily observed: "I wish you wouldn't sing out loud, you couldn't carry a tune in a bucket...")
"That's very musical, sweetheart" I say, "But you need to be quiet and eat your dinner".
"Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb!" she sings, oblivious.
"LITTLE LAMB!" confirms her sister, clearing up any lingering doubts I may have harboured about Mary's farmyard animal of choice.
"We got a new songbook out of the library, full of nursery rhymes to play on the piano..." explains Nini (and yes, that is a strong contender for the single most middle-class statement in the world, ever - though it just misses out on being a clear winner by not referring to carrying the book home in a recycled plastic bag)
"Fleece was white as snow...."
"...and Nevie is very taken with 'Mary had a little lamb'" Nini adds, somewhat unnecessarily.
"Yes. So I can hear."
"Mary had a little LAMB, little LAMB...."
"I think that's enough, Nevie."
Nevie clearly doesn't agree, because she slips off her chair, steps across to the piano, and begins to hammer away at the keys, in the manner of a jazz scat musician who is so into the groove they just gotta lay down a few bars, and just see where this jam takes us...
For a second, I am so perplexed that I don't know how to react. Obviously, on the one hand I'm thrilled she wants to develop her musical skills (so that later I can milk her talent as an international singer/songwriter by insisting I act as her manager) - but on the other, the noise is God-awful. And after all, at the dinner table rules is rules.
"Sit back at the table, Nevie" I insist. "No freestyling nursery rhymes on the piano during dinner".
She sullenly takes her seat. A moment of quiet descends, which her sister takes as her cue to add to proceedings.
"Mary did not have a little lamb..." she announces, portentously.
A pause. I wait, fork loaded with chicken and halfway to my mouth.
"She had... a little poo."
"YES!" shrieks her sister, delighted, thumping the table.
I put the fork back down.
I should explain: Amelie has reached that phase where she thinks bodily functions are funny. This is particularly difficult for me, because I do too, and half of the time I struggling not to laugh. Telling her off is difficult, as I am painfully aware that the only thing stopping her calling me out on my hypocrisy is that she has no clue about the concept - yet.
"No talking about poo at the dinner table" I say lamely, realising as I say it that qualifying the sentence with 'at the table' tacitly legitimises discussion of poo at all other times. Not that it matters, there is no stopping them now:
"Mary had a little poo..." they chorus, gleefully.
"Girls, stop..." I command.
"..little poo, LITTLE POO..."
I look at their mother. She is doing that thing she does whereby if she looks vacantly at the wall for long enough, she can tune everything else out.
"Mary had a little poo..."
"I said stop!"
"It's fleece was brown as poo!"
They dissolve into giggles. I feel I have lost control, and must regain the situation.
"That was a silly song", I announce, and I am unable to stop my inner pedant from adding: "Poo does not have fleece of any colour."
Nine comes out of her reverie in time to give me a special look that clearly says: yes, nice work, that was the main issue there - so glad you clarified that for them..
"Poo!" shouts Neve, vibrating with excitement. "Poo! Poooooo!"
"I think, " says Nini, ever the master of the diversionary tactic. "That we should sing Daddy a different song. Why don't you choose a song we all know, Amelie, and we'll join in?"
Amelie stops to think. An expectant calm descends, she is clearly choosing carefully. Finally she begins:
"Old Macdonald had a poo..."

Enjoy our fun quiz! Round 2.

Scenario: A man is lying in bed, 'enjoying' his Saturday lie-in, during which the noise of his children in the room below is pitched at exactly the right level to ensure that actual rest/sleep seems like it should be possible, but actually isn't.
His wife is also downstairs, listening to Radio 2, and Aretha Franklin's version of 'I say a little prayer' comes on the radio, which was the song chosen that the man and his wife chose for their first dance at their wedding. Unlike most of his wedding, which passed in a blur of flowers and relatives, the man can remember their first dance with crystal clarity, because somebody videotaped it and he has since watched it for himself. This is how the man has come to know, definitively, that he is not a dancer: one onlooker, presumably unaware that the event was being recorded, memorably described the event at the time as being like "an elegant swan leading a semi-trained bear around the dance floor"'. (The man harbours no ill-will to the unknown commentator for this description; in fact he thinks the comparison was fairly generous, as he thought that his 'moves' were strangely redolent of a man in a strait-jacket trying to kick his way out of an invisible sack.)
While he is thinking about this, the bedroom door opens, and the mans wife appears. She has been listening to the song, and fond memories of their wedding day have triggered a sudden surge of affection: as a result she has brought the man a cup of tea to drink in bed.
As the astonished man sits up and takes the cup, the noise of hurried footfalls is heard on the stairs...

Question 1: The approaching footfalls are those of the man's eldest daughter, who enters the room at 28 mph and launches herself at the bed from a distance of one metre. Given that she is of average weight and height for a 4-year old, and that this scenario occurs in standard gravity, approximately what downforce will be applied to the man's stomach and testicles when she lands on them?

Question 2: How many blows with a standard issue sledgehammer does this equate to?

Question 3:The man has been with his wife for over a decade, and has been thoroughly house trained/broken-in. Given that he knows the value she places on soft-furnishings, what is the statistical chance that he will somehow maintain the presence of mind to set down the cup of boiling liquid on the bedside cabinet before starting screaming?

Question 4: Although the bedclothes will remain untouched, how much hot tea will be splashed liberally over the mans hands and forearm? In the scheme of things, will he even feel it?

Question 5: Given that the man has suffered some form of testicular collision on an approximately weekly basis ever since his daughter learned how to walk, is there any chance the area will have somehow 'toughened-up' or calloused over enough for him to feel only minor discomfort, rather than gutwrenching pain?

Question 6: What will the mans wife say to him?
a) "Don't spill any tea on the bedclothes!"
b) "Oh, cowboy up, cupcake - she barely touched you."
c) "Don't swear like that in front of the children."
d) "Oh, get up, will you? We have things to do today..."
e) All of the above, in relatively quick succession.

Final question: How is the man most likely to remember Aretha Franklin's 'I say a little prayer' in the future?
a) "I remember dancing to this at my wedding..."
b) "I remember screaming in agony through this, that time when my daughter stamped on my nuts and I got third-degree scalding from the first cup of tea in bed I'd been offered in over ten years..."