God my life is rubbish without my wife. It's clever of her to spend a week away so I realise how lost I am without her. I am just about OK when I have gigs to distract me. But today I had nothing urgent to do and no show at night and I was right back to my bachelor life. Sounds like fun, but as all but the most eligible bachelors know, it's just sitting round, wishing there was someone to talk to, making yourself basic food and playing computer games. This was pretty much every weekend for me in the mid to late 1990s, although then I was hoping someone would call me and say they were going out for a drink, whereas tonight I was happy enough to stay in, vegetating. But if my wife doesn't come back on Monday I think I might have turned into a marrow or a tree or more likely a fungus of some kind, somehow managing to stay alive out of the sunlight, but inanimate, almost dead and useless to anyone.
The only other positive that has come out of this week alone is that I can fart in bed without worrying about infuriating my wife. And yet even after our relatively short marriage (though we've lived together for three years now and been together for five) she has got me trained like a dog, because in the early morning as I wake and absent-mindedly let out a tooting reveille I then flinch and await the admonishment that I deserve, before recalling that I am alone and so can let out the other farts in blissful safety.
I guess though that if I am expecting her to be there, but still fart that that means she doesn't have me all that well trained. There is still a spark of freedom in me (luckily a metaphorical spark or the bed might explode).
But I don't think having the license to guff whenever I wish is enough to make up for the absence of my missus. In fact it's a reward that comes with its own punishment, because even though my farts are pretty nice smelling for farts (to me at least, my wife disagrees) they are still farts and thus it's not brilliant having to live with the aftermath. And my farts can't talk to me (well only in a very unsophisticated and childish manner and every comment seems to be expressing nothing but disdain) or kiss me (though I suppose the wetter ones give it a go) or watch Mad Men with me. All in all I am glad I married a woman rather than a fart. And if I was forced to marry a fart I'd want to marry one of my own, which society would frown upon (I think correctly) for it being intestuous.
I frittered away another precious day, mainly watching 24 hour rolling news of the events in Boston. The civilised part of my brain hoping that it would reach a quick and safe resolution, but some horrible part within me encouraging me to stay in my seat in the hope there would be more explosions and excitement. Of course, rationally I didn't want that at all, but the problem with rolling news is that it makes real life into a voyeuristic entertainment. You half forget that this is real. It's easy to criticise the stations for being sensationalist and clearly hoping for more gore, but really we're watching it for partly the same reason. It did show why the TV show 24 isn't really realistic though. Even in a news story as eventful as this there was still an awful lot of policemen standing around doing nothing at all to look at. In fact as much as I persisted with it I pretty much missed out on anything actually happening. It was like in a football match where the teams only score when you're making a cup of tea in the kitchen.
Not to try and trivialise the story (the rolling news teams have already don that) but it does speak of human nature. And when a story with this much newsworthiness is so boring to watch it does make you question whether there is any need at all for news channels to cover anything in this depth. You're left with pointless speculation, people outside of a situation needlessly asking people inside it if they are scared (and wanting them to be so because that makes for better coverage). It didn't make me feel any better about myself that this was how I was spending my day, or that I was using these terrible events as an excuse to bunk off the work that I probably should have been doing. I even went out to buy some snacks at one point, like we used to for the FA Cup final. It's a special occasion so we're allowed to have treats.
The human race is screwed isn't it? Because of the kind of fuckwits who think it's a good idea to blow up children and the kind of fuckwits who try to turn it into entertainment and the kind of fuckwits who will sit back and watch that whilst stuffing their face with Kettle crisps. And also because of the global warming that is being brought on mainly by the excess farts I do whilst my wife isn't around to catch me.
