WATCH OUT HARRY, YOUR BRIDE WILL CHANGE YOU!
Our writers offer funny (and wise) advice
❝ Don’t you dare try to cook something exotic as a treat; you’ll use too many ingredients and it still won’t be as good
Fresh underwear every day. Socks too. And shower at least once. That’s once a day, mate, not once a week. What do you mean, you don’t do that? Well, you’re clearly not married then. Or, at least, not any more. And, going by the pong emanating from your armpit area, I wouldn’t sign up to Tinder just yet.
But wait a moment. My missus still got hitched to me, despite all the faults (of which, she maintained, there were many).
And, eight years later, some (I say ‘some’, she still says ‘many’) remain.
Is this a marriage, or a unilateral work in progress? Sometimes I wonder.
A friend of mine once had a partner whom he met on a raucous night out; they would share several more of those before ‘settling down’ — rather suddenly — to Corrie, matching slippers, mineral water and bed before News at Ten was over.
What happened to the chandelier-swinging, Drambuie-downing, all-night-dancing party animal who’d snared him?
“I only went out to get someone to sit in with,” she later conceded to my by-now barely recognisable, two-stone slimmer, no-longer-football-watching, teetotal — although, admittedly, well-rested — friend.
“But she keeps a nice prison,” he offered, rather feebly.
How much will Meghan change the burger and pizza-chomping grunge aficionado Harry? Quite a lot, considering the slimmer waistline and sharp suits displayed by the prince she’ll marry tomorrow.
At least he won’t be one of those husbands who moan that, post nuptials, their wives began the process of moulding them into the person they’d like to marry — even though they were already wed to them.
Twisted logic, you might think, but the problem is this: too many of us men believe that the wedding day marks the triumphant finale to the mating ritual. It’s what we wanted, it’s what we got, end of.
Ha! It’s only the start, pal. Begin by getting into the way of putting that toilet seat down. Yes, every time.
And the days of removing your jeans at night and leaving them on the floor — like a denim cowpat, someone once said — are long over.
That habit you have of transferring everything — coins, used hankies, bits of the radio you promised to fix — from your trouser pockets to the sideboard? Gone.
And don’t dare attempt to cook something exotic as a treat; you’ll use too many ingredients, employ superfluous kitchen utensils and it still won’t be as good as the one Mrs L rustled up in record time a few months back.
You want to be a dab hand at something? Try washing up, or vacuuming, or making the beds. No, don’t try it, just do it.
Remember, too, that that little daughter belongs to both of us.
Oh, and that pile of clothes won’t iron itself …
I like to think, after all this time, that I’m a better person. Well, better dressed at least, having come to accept being told what to wear and what to try on/buy in Fat Face and White Stuff.
Not a single item of unapproved clothing has been purchased in over a decade, and the once-occasional beard hasn’t had a single outing in that time either.
I’m certainly healthier; I gave up cigarettes a long time ago, and can’t remember the last time I drank alcohol. Mmmm … maybe she DOES want me around a little longer; this more thoughtful, less selfish, better groomed, tidier, cleaner, less smelly person — barely registering, these days, on the ‘need to be told’ meter.
But far from the finished article — and, after all this time, still possessed of one major, infuriating flaw.
Claire was reminding me what it was, the other night, but I wasn’t listening.