I had an interesting afternoon the other day.
I’m not sure whether it’s old age or what, but one thing I am sure of is a slight change of attitude in Old Mate.
I was doing my usual daily bird-butler duties which, on this occasion, was vacuuming.
I was on the deck, happily plugging away, when dear wife starts telling me some bird story, but I couldn’t hear over the hoovering noise.
I might add that if I was to tell her a footy story when she was vacuuming, she would tell me to “shut up, I can’t hear you – can’t you see I am vacuuming?”.
Obviously, the rules are different for me. So, there I was.
Because I couldn’t hear, I quickly turned my head in her direction … and cracked my eye and forehead on a really nice corner of a rough-faced house brick.
The pain was agonising and, as I stood there squealing, with blood going everywhere, she feigned concern through intermittent laughter.
“Geez, you must be getting old – that wouldn’t have worried you when you were playing footy or when you were head-butting things when you were drunk,” she said.
By that evening, I had a nice bruise and a massive plaster above my eye, enjoying a couple of beers until the pain had subsided.
Old Mate served dinner, actually yelling out: “Your dinner is on the bench” from her chair in the living room.
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I grabbed a good-looking roast and some unidentified vegetables, whacked them on a tray and headed for the TV room with George the dog.
As I sat down, the plate went flying across the room, smashing to bits.
I spent the next few minutes trying to beat George to the meat before I cleaned the mess up, with just a disgusted sigh coming from the next room.
Her attitude has changed somewhat, as normally she would have been in there, up my ribs about what happened, which A – would have distracted me from beating George to the good stuff, and B – made matters worse just by hammering me.
Did I mention I cut my finger on the broken plate, so there was blood everywhere as well?
As I write this, I have two wounds, a new mat on my tray for better traction, and a wife who maybe has accepted her fate.
Ashley Robinson is the manager of Alex Surf Club and the chairman of the Sunshine Coast Falcons.
