Atch Does 41

Atch celebrated his 41^st birthday yesterday running after his rambunctious sons at the mall. And then he dragged half a burlap sack of garden soil home so I could experiment with the heretofore unexplored regions of my dubious green thumb.

I got him a litre of Carlos Primero, and a litre of Johnny Walker Black, plus a bottle of Carlo Rossi Muscat for the both of us. He scolded. He frowned. He complained. He flexed his well-defined skinflint muscles. So expensive, he said. Three bottles! Too much.

He finally shut up when he opened the Johnny Walker box and discovered it came with two personalized whiskey tumblers.

Say thank you, I urged.

Thank you, he finally said, giving me a smooch and an unsuccessfully disguised pleased smile.

Earlier, the bank's HRD department had ordered him to take a vacation leave. They complained that he was present everyday, in all sorts of weather, eschewing his leave credits to loom over his stressed employees with his dark frown and watchful slits.

In typical Atchbund fashion, he choose his birthday week to take off so he wouldn't have to treat his co-workers to a birthday snack. My husband, the cheapskate.

Still, he channelled his bank manager personality over the household, harassing Woog as the boy lingered over his meals, growling at Eli for being so stubborn, and telling me off for being late for work.

Relax, L'Atchy-poo, I told him, you're on vacation. He glared at me, glancing meaningfully at the clock. It seems the only time he has ever relaxed is when he snores in deep sleep, or right after spilling his seed. When I come to think of it, one is synonymous with the other.

Today, the three bottles remain untouched, still in their boxes. I've texted him to chill the Carlo Rossi, and to pick me up for work so I could treat his thick unglamorous toes to a much-needed pedicure.

He is going to complain about the expense again, I know, all the while trying to keep his mouth from lifting at the corners – my very own “Oscar the Grouch”.

Happy birthday, L'Atchy.

Edited to add:

Grrrrr....

He picked me up after work and had to reverse a couple of times to avoid hitting the curb, drunk out of his mind.

He had taken it upon himself that morning to visit one of his old drinking and pot-smoking buddies a couple of cities away (I'm on vacation, Aifee!). That answered my question about why Woog called me at work earlier, looking for his Tatay:

Maybe he's in Greensville at Auntie Inday's house, Mom. Do you have the number?

Go check, Woog. Take this down. 708_ _ _ _

Maybe he's at Bata with Manong Kylot?

Try and call Bata, Woog.

Ok, Mom. Dubby!

But no. The dearly beloved birthday celebrant had gotten himself good and sloshed, celebrating his birthday with friends at a corner sari-sari store, even before celebrating with his family. I practically had to steer his feet in a relatively straight course to the salon to have his toe nails done, where he plunked himself down into the lounging chair and went straight to sleep.

Mouth ajar. Leaking alcoholic ectoplasm, and loudly vibrating with drunken apnea.

The girl who did his nails did try mightily hard to stifle her giggles (he sounds like an outboard motor, no?)

And of course there was no chilled bottle of Muscat when we got home. No intimate and mildly inebriated conversation over sisig. He went straight to bed, leaving his Aifee fuming, fuming, fuming....

Over Beers

There we were, hunched over our sisig and chicharon bulaklak, and nursing our beers like a couple of co-conspirators plotting the downfall of an absent drinking buddy. Or maybe two people in the midst of an illicit affair having a clandestine date. We certainly didn't look like parents discussing the household budget or child discipline issues. Not your a typical mom-and-pop operation, it looked like.

I was picking up the tab this time, having received some modest remuneration from one of my freelance writing gigs. When he called me earlier that afternoon, he sounded tired and throaty, and I thought I'd liven up our Friday night with a visit to one of our usual haunts. He didn't sound like he cared: head straight home and drop off to sleep, or down a couple of beers and exchange a few rare words with his Aifee.


But it was one of the unusual times I was offering to pay, and not wanting to miss this goldmine of an opportunity, my skinflint of a husband readily acquiesced.


So there we were, on our second bucket of San Mig Lites. We had wound our way through spirited discussions about the boys and work, wistful forays into the possibilities of our dream-home-to-be, and the inevitable summing up of income and expenditures.


We had finally come to the point where I was silent, chin propped on one palm, listening to him talk and talk and talk. His eyes, already silty to begin with, were at half-mast. With a lopsided smile on his face, he was yakking his face off and falling halfway towards drunk.


Funny how time has tweaked a good number of things. When I met him, he had a full head of hair, a golden tan, and an ego that rivalled some of the worst monsoon winds I have ever come across. These days he goes around saying I am partly responsible for his obscenely widening forehead. Years of slaving away at the bank have leached away most of the colour of his skin. And the ego? It's about the only thing that remains constant, it seems, except it has died down to a moderate gale.


Standing up in the middle of a watery belch, he wended his way towards the men's room, changing course midway and tromping off into the parking lot greenery where he bent over and regurgitated the contents of his stomach in between the company car and a blue Toyota SUV. My elegant and dignified banker, Atch.


As he walked back to the table with a vapid grin on his face, I was struck by how very fragile he looked in his rumpled uniform barong and his glasses slightly askew on his oily nose. Wasn't it only yesterday when he strode so confidently and energetically toward me with his arm stretched out imperiously for me to latch on? Didn't he half carry, half drag me on board a ferry at the ungodly hour of 4am for the trip back across the strait after we partied at a bacchanalian wedding feast and consumed Lord knows how many bottles of beer/whisky/wine? He steered, he directed, he commanded, and I practically kowtowed to this diminutive alpha male. A man now pale and bemused, looking old and tired. My husband.

Mrs. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

I paid the bill and we drove home in silence, his gear-shift hand resting on mine. The years may have been kind, but never before now did our mortality – his mortality, loom so close before my eyes. The realization gave me pause for thought and I shivered. And in the car's frigid air, his hand tightened over mine.

Once Upon A Hot Dark Night

I finally had the boys all to myself when Atch left for Cebu on a conference over the latter half of last weekend.

For the most part, I dreaded having to fend for myself as soon as our self-appointed family driver and resident cook boarded his plane Sunday morning. I did plead with him to stay and cancel his trip, but he hemmed and hawed and all but told me to shut up and quit acting like a child.

Sniff.

And so being the childish and utterly spoiled female that I am, I rang my father who jumped at the chance to spend a rare Sunday with his grandsons, with me tagging along like an extra leg. He agreed to pick us up. The boys were ecstatic. They were probably wary about me taking over the cooking again.

While waiting for our “substitute caregiver” to pick us up, I was able to get some work done on my writing while the boys tumbled about in the living room. Their play area spread outward to my minute office, and pretty soon I joined in the fun. Funny what a camera phone game (stuff-three-faces-into-the-viewfinder) can do to liven up a lazy Sunday morning.

My Tatay finally arrived and we piled into his car for the drive to our refuge-for-all-seasons, my parents' house at Bata, and we spent the rest of the sleepy afternoon doing nothing in particular.

Totally unproductive, Atch would have said. And he would have been well-vindicated: the power failed at Bata that night and we were duly chauffeured back to our tiny apartment where the electricity died exactly 10 minutes later. Payback time for missing Sunday Mass, Atch would have smirked.

So there we were in the family bed, the boys in their 'jamies, writhing and sweating miserably on the sheets. I sat at the foot of the bed, fanning them with the sturdiest cardboard folder I could find while the single candle cast grotesque shadows on the walls.

Woog, ever resourceful, had taken off his shirt and lay on his back spread-eagled, looking for all the world like a lab frog awaiting dissection. Eli just wailed. The heat was stifling, even with all the windows open, and he refused to be divested of his pajama top.

And so I fanned and fanned, sweating rivulets and swearing silently at the local power company that gifted us with cringe-worthy per kilowatt rates and consistently unreliable service.

Woog lay in silent resignation. Eli wailed. I fanned and fanned. We all sweated rivers. An hour and a half’s worth.

Outside, the neighbours came out and loudly cussed the power outage, perhaps in a bid to drown out Eli’s cries. He crawled towards me, my poor hot baby, and pressed his clean sweaty self upon my dusty sweaty self while I tried to manoeuvre my aching fan arm to get some flurries of air into everyone’s faces.

Atch was, post-conference, relaxing with bottles of beer in some snazzy Cebu bar with a live band and arctic air conditioning. He texted me a cherry “how are you”, and fanning the boys in a frenzy, I bitched back that he could’ve at least stayed. He maintained infuriating text silence after that.

Finally, just when I thought my arm would fall off and Eli would lose his voice, the lights came on. My younger son’s bawling was suddenly cut short like a guillotine falling on some 18^th century French noble’s neck. He chuckled through his snot and tears and clapped his hands like a toddler possessed. Woog merely sighed like a long-suffering martyr whose trials and tribulations were finally over, and wriggled back into his shirt.

The hell with the electric bill, I turned the air-conditioning on full blast.

_________________________

All of this I confided in a muffled voice into Atch’s armpit during a family hug when he arrived the following night.

“Poor Aif,” he said as he stroked my hair, not sounding very sympathetic at all.

In Tribute to Philip Pullman's Lantern Slides *

Woog, arguing hotly over the phone about why he isn't allowed to watch tv while eating his lunch. It is 2 PM and he has been home from school for over two hours. This is his mother's second check-up call and lunch does not seem to be on the radar of his consciousness. He is complaining about Yaya not giving in to his request for a piece of toasted bread smeared heavily in butter. For lunch. His mother tries not to lose her temper, instead suggests he wait...just wait...for his father to call. She hangs up the phone gently in the middle of his whining protests, and puts her head between her hands. In front of her, some puzzled clients spare her glances of pity and consternation.

Yaya Rose, returning from retirement, much to everyone's surprise. She has just turned 18. A year before, she quit her post as Woog and Eli's nanny, bowing to the dictates of her father. But poverty and her father's need for liquor found her seeking employment once more, and for a time she was nanny to Woog's cousin next door. For pretty much the same reasons, her father's whims sent her packing for home again. Now, she is pleading to be taken back, and she cannot meet anyone's eyes. How many children like her are forced, by poverty and feudalistic-minded parents, to come down from the hinterlands and seek work in the cities?

Dondi, reclining in bed. She is dead tired and her limbs are stiff. She asks for a backrub and her husband willingly complies. He gets behind her, and for a time, all is silent as he kneads at tight muscles. But he has other motives in mind, and he begins to grope and pinch where no groping and pinching are needed. Dondi is frustrated beyond all reason. To add to her sorrow, Eli demands her attention by jumping up on her aching thighs and doing an unsteady bruising cha-cha.

Eli, sitting on his father's lap. The overhead light glares at an ugly purple knot on his forehead. He has been pushing a footstool across the floor again, running to evade his Yaya's grasp. In his haste to escape, he has collided with the hardwood arm of the sectional sofa, and raised a bump the size of Mount Kanlaon. There is a scratch underneath his right eye where he has scrubbed furiously away at his tears. His mother tries to figure out why he ignores his toys, and prefers instead to forcefully upend chairs and shove them around by their upraised legs.

Dondi, late at night. She is slack-jawed in front of the computer and wondering how some people manage to post updates on more than one blog Every. Single. Day. This after clocking in more than 10 hours at their day job, or attending to a houseful of their tantruming snot-faced children. Perhaps they spend the whole day walking around in Compose Mode? She wonders if she will ever have an uninterrupted slice of time without the baby slamming his palms on the keyboard while clamoring to be carried (“Up! Up!”), or the older son needing help with his homework. She knows she can ill-afford to lose out on more sleep, lest her zombiefied self cause the menfolk to complain about being late for next day's school and work. She sits at the computer and stares, clueless. On the wall above her, the clock strikes midnight.


* Philip Pullman, ending each of His Dark Materials trilogy with vignettes of stories lurking behind stories: lantern slides. Dondi looks forward to reading his Lyra's Oxford and is eagerly awaiting the release of The Book of Dust. She speculates on whether Lyra and Will ever see each other again, and fervently hopes Pullman doesn't sue her for borrowing heavily from his literary style.

My Name is Frustration

Atch was urging me to take five days off from work. “Let's go on a long vacation,” he said, “let's take the boys and go to the beach.”

“But we just came from the beach,” I protested wearily, “and five days? That's too much!”

Atch was insistent. Atch was persuasive. Atch was a big spender, at least for the moment. He had filed a vacation leave from work for five days and asked me, nay...commanded me to do the same. “Let's go to this beach,” he said.

“But we went there when Woog was little, remember? We had car trouble, remember? The car died on the slope, and you swore never to go to that beach again. Besides, it's expensive.” That was me, ever the damp washcloth. Always the thundercloud over every bright summer's day.

“There's another road going up to that place. Why don't you research their rates over the Internet, then call them, and we'll talk about it tonight.” That was Atch, adamant and implacable. Never taking no for an answer. Not even from me. Especially not from me.

And so the dutiful wife filed a five-day leave, and hunched over her work like someone possessed, making sure no backlog took a chunk off her ass upon her return. The beach resort was called, the reservation made, and an accounting duly presented to the head of the household.

“There are lots of other things we can do instead,” I ventured hopefully, “I was thinking about scrubbing the bathroom and dusting the blinds. And you have to seal my leaky washtub and glue the straps of Woog's red slippers...” But he wrinkled his nose asked me whether I'd prefer the second floor hotel room or the ground floor one. “Whichever's the least expensive,” I sighed.

But it didn't take long to get into the mood of summer. I started packing away our sunscreen and beach wear, charged the camera's batteries, and modeled my bikinis in front of the boys, hoping to find one that didn't amplify the inappropriate bulk of my tummy and thighs. Woog volunteered to take pictures of the wings of excess flesh on my back, while Eli dragged everything out by their strings, baptizing them in his mouth, and pronouncing the damp scraps of fabric fit to wear.

Excitement's not an easy thing to come by, at my age, but the stirrings of anticipation swelled at my breast like waves upon the seashore, and I started looking forward to baking under the sun, lazing around with nothing urgent to do, having a Thai massage, and sipping a margarita at sunset. Maybe even get busy with the husband once the boys fell asleep.

I went to the office for my last day at work before the beach trip, buoyant, bubbly, and giggling at no one in particular. Until I opened my email. It was Personnel, no less. “You cannot take five straight days leave from work. You are only allowed three. Email back with the days you have chosen.”

Just like that. My bubble had burst.

But no matter. A three-day vacation is better than none. I updated Atch, and called the resort to change our reservation.

Only, a few hours later, the skies fell.

Rain, such as no rain we had ever seen in the middle of summer, grayed out the horizon and drenched every living thing for miles around. We Yahoo'd the weather and the forecast reported scattered thunderstorms until the following week.

Atch and I could barely look at each other, and Woog bemoaned our fate by giving voice to such a howling and whining that lasted a whole week. Atch and I pretended we didn't want to howl ourselves, and equally reassured and reprimanded Woog for adding to the damp. Eli didn't care. Water was water. He spent most of his time hanging around the downspout with his hands upstretched, and splashing on the puddles in the courtyard.

As for the bathroom, I did get to clean it. Scrubbed the toilet, as well. And dusted the blinds. And wiped the walls with disinfectant. And changed the sheets. And took the boys to a childrens' birthday party. And watched an Angelina Jolie movie marathon with Atch while we drowned our sorrows in rum. Played nookey. Had a massage. All three days worth.

“Maybe it was meant to be,” I told Atch, trying to look convincing. My poor alpha male looked deflated without all his belligerence. And I looked at the rain, and it pounded and pounded and pounded. And I wasn't able to convince myself at all.

Murderer In Our Midst

There are a lot of reasons why my mother adores my husband: they both smoke the same odorous brand (Winstons) and freely filch from each other’s supply; they both share the same people management angst, and Saturday nights often find them railing against the horrors of dealing with incompetent staff, a cloud of smoke over their heads.

It has lately come to my attention that murdering mosquitoes is apparently one of reasons that draw them together, like to like.

Mom bought one of those electric insect killers shaped like a badminton racquet, with electrified strings to fry the little winged suckers into oblivion. Remembering her favorite (and only) son-in-law, she decided to buy two.

Atch was ecstatic. Not only did the device call to mind one of his favorite racquet sports, I suspect it brought back fond memories of the days when he used to electrocute poor hapless cockroaches in a basin of water by touching live wires from a voltage regulator to the surface. How they danced, he recalled with glee, his own eyes dancing with the possibilities of his new toy.

My mom is a notorious insect-killer herself. In her youth, she has smashed medicine cabinets and glass-topped tables in pursuit of this quest. She still holds the record for decimating the most number of common houseflies with a single rubber band, all within the space of minutes – a feat yet to be broken by any member of her family.

The night Atch received this gift was a night rife with opportunity. He went from room to room, turning off all the electric insect repellent lights (yes, he had them installed In. Every. Room.), waving the racquet in front of his face, Woog fast on his heels.

Ooooooh, they went, each time it hit some unfortunate flying body, cackling like crazy at the crackling sounds of said body frying on the wires. Woog begged for a try. For this potential insect killer, it beat having to wait for the sputtering sound from one of the stationary lights.

Late that night, Atch stationed himself downstairs in the dark with the tv on, electric mosquito racquet in hand. Aren’t you coming to bed? I asked for the umpteenth time.

In a minute, Aif, came the distracted reply, let me just finish this show. But his eyes were avidly scanning the perimeter, his racquet arm poised eagerly for the kill.

I sighed. This was going to be one long night.

Atch in action

The Brotherhood of the Ar-'cave'

When Atch was little more than a snivelly thirteen-year-old, a provincial lad from a sleepy little town to the south, his forward-thinking and highly optimistic father sent him off to the big city to get a high-school education. Left to his own wits and devices save for the guidance of his sister barely a year older, Atch took it upon himself to learn the ways and means of the city boys his age. That was when he discovered a mentor in the person of Monsieur Pacman. Also, Sensei Atari, and last but not the least, the highly celebrated brothers, Señors Mario and Luigi.

Atch spent his every spare moment (and often, most of his allowance), with these mentors, honing his skills in the downtown district's video enclaves. And might I deduce, although he may violently deny it, that he logged countless classroom hours there as well.

It was during one of these aforementioned days that Atch emerged, disoriented, from the encompassing dimness of the gaming consoles and beheld the dimness of the late afternoon sky. He had spent the better part of the day ensconced in another world (or worlds) and time had fled from him, fleet of foot. Behind him, an unnamed man approached, and pressing the point of a blade at his back, demanded his valuables. Perhaps this man thought a boy who could afford to play video games the whole day had money to burn. And Atch, this terrified provincial lad of thirteen, ignorant of the dangers of the streets, ran.

He doesn't recall how far he ran before the man, older and slower, thrust the blade into his back, piercing through his knapsack and his shirt, before slicing into his flesh. The feel of the cold blade gave Atch the much-needed spurt of adrenalin, and he pumped his legs almost half a kilometer more before winding down with a stitch in his side. That was when he started to feel the pain and the seeping of blood from the wound.

He crept back to his boarding house, cleaned and doctored himself, not letting his sister know. He carries the scar to this day.

Fast forward to the present.

Once a gamer, always a gamer. Or the mango doesn't fall far from the tree. Whichever way one puts it, the true test of paternity will show itself in the way a child will automatically gravitate towards a father's old habits - all but dead and forgotten - almost as if the child were genetically predisposed to follow a certain behavioral pattern.

Woog mysteriously disappeared after a chicken dinner at the new mall. Nobody really gave much heed because I was feeding the baby the last of the mashed potato, Yaya was gathering a mound of bones for the doggy bag, and Atch was getting ready to go out for a smoke.

"Where's Woog?" He asked.

I waved my hand around vaguely, thinking our four-year-old was somewhere in the store, pestering one of the servers as was his wont. But Atch was having one of his premonitions, and he walked out of the outlet with a frown on his face. He came back ten minutes later looking bemused, leading Woog by the scruff of his neck.

"Guess where I found him...." Atch began.

"Mommy, I went to the ar-cave!" Interrupted his son.

"The ar-cave?" I shot Atch an amused glanced.

"The ar-cave." They both said in unison.

So we packed up and walked across the way, three doors down, and sure enough, a video arcade sat there in all it's dim-lighted glory, looking for all the world like some futuristic cave with flashing lights and bleeping sounds emanating from within.

We pushed our way through a multitude of kids and teenagers while Atch and Woog bought themselves some tokens. Soon they were engaged in some sort of electronic shoot-out:

Woog & his Tatay in a battle versus the evil dead

"I aim with my heart. He who does not aim
with his heart has forgotten the face of his father..."
(from The Gunslinger by Stephen King)

It went on and on while Yaya and I gawked around us in pitiful bewilderment, clearly out of our element, surrounded by a sea of gamers, Eli included:

Starting the baby's training early

He's already got that floaty disoriented "don't-bother-me" look

In the haze of all the zinging, bleeping and flashing lights, I suddenly had a vision of what the future was going to be: the boys will have reached their tweens, and as expected, the house will be empty on a Saturday afternoon. So do I know where my boys are? Yes, of course I do. They're in the video arcade, under the parental supervision of their father - who has taken up his old hobby (don't you know, it's like riding a bicycle) - where they improve their hand-and-eye coordination and work on their lightning reflexes. Meanwhile, the purchase of arcade tokens will take up a large part of the household recreation budget, and so will twice-yearly visits to the optometrist to renew eyeglass subscriptions. At least we won't be worried about bailing them out of juvenile detention facilities.

Finally, it is nearly 9 pm and none of the boys (baby included) show traces of tired. Yaya and I exchange a glance, and I began my quest to urge them homeward. We got home near 10 pm and we had to wake the sleeping baby for his bath. Somehow I have a feeling that this is going to be a weekend event.

Ah well, what goes around, comes around.

...To Remind Me Why Atch Cannot Stay Up With the Baby

Atch means well. He usually does. He is a consistently reliable provider, a supportive partner, a loving parent, the family chauffeur, a fixer of all things broken, and most importantly, he cooks. But if the good Lord giveth talents overflowing, He also provideth chasms of fantastic incompetence, as I was reminded all too clearly the other night when Atch volunteered to stay up with the baby.

I was feeling under the weather at 3 o'clock in the morning when Eli commenced to wail as per his two-hour alarm schedule. Atch roused himself, weaving his groggy way from bed to crib. Three quarters asleep, I was witness to the following "conversation" :

Eli: Waaaaa-aaaaaah-aaaaaah!

Atch: (lifting the baby off the crib and settling them both on the lounging chair) It's okay, sleep, sleep (humming "Moon River" under his breath while patting the baby's bottom).

Eli: Waaaaaah!

Atch: Sleep, Eli, sleep.

Eli: Waaah...*whimper-whimper*....waaaa...

Atch: Shhhhh..... (immediately falling asleep himself and snoring into the now quiet baby's ear)

Eli: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Atch: (starting awake and commencing to pat the baby furiously) Sleep! Eli! Sleep! $%^&*#+##$!!!

Eli: Waaaaaaaaaaah!

Atch: If you don't sleep, I'll whup you!

(Whappak!)

Eli: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

At this point, unable to take any more, I forced myself to get up and take the hysterical baby away from his brutish arms. Atch made his way back to bed and was snoring in 2.5 seconds.

As Eli settled down in my arms, sleepy memories trickled back of the one other time, centuries ago, when I pleaded with Atch to sooth a screaming baby Woog (forerunner of the every two-hour infant alarm clock). The screaming never abated and I opened my eyes to Atch violently swinging the crib on its wheels around and around the room. He said he was rocking Woog to sleep.

Eli & his Tatay on the infamous lounging chair

The following morning, Atch ruffled Eli's curls as he sat on his high-chair for breakfast, "Who got whupped last night?" He teased.

Eli flashed his two-tooth gums at him and gave a delighted gurgle.

I am so glad babies have such short memories.

An Idiot's Guide To Cock Smashing. Or Husband Smashing. Whatever Works For You.

The tingle running up and down your spine that you used to have on every first day of school? Yes that's it. The notion that you've forgotten everything you've learned the previous year and the sinking feeling that you'd have to start all over? That's exactly it.

Rusty. You could almost feel the hinges of your joints squeak-creaking like the heavy doors in all those horror movies. Your palms are clammy and your grip slips...

Swoosh! You slice the air...and the cock sails harmlessly across your head, its crown feathers tittering in your ear in the mocking sing-song

(you'll never catch me... you'll never catch me...)

of kids who used to goad you at playground tag.

"Aifee, eyes on the ball!” Atch hisses through gritted teeth. “Move your feet!”

The score is 11 – 2 in favor of the opposing team and Atch is losing face in a big way.

It is our first badminton game in three years and we are playing doubles against two of Atch’s co-workers. Two of Atch’s young co-workers. They are lithe and quick and energetic, and above all, (did I mentioned this before?) young. How I envy their quicksilver forehands and monumental smashes. They rush forward and lunge and sidestep, their feet seeming like blurs on the rubberized court. They also call me “Ma’am”. (Oh, the shame!)

Finally, the game is over. The opposing dream team has won, 15 – 2. We walk back to the bench. I am out of breath and my cheeks are on fire. Atch has put on his poker face, but I can feel him seething, seething, seething.

So like Atchbund to make me feel unworthy without uttering so much as a word. I look at him and suddenly my crumpled self-esteem manages a modicum of outrage. “I haven't played in a long while, Atch, “ I blurt out defensively. “I haven't even had time to practice.”

“I know.”

His face remains as impassive as any heavily pancaked Japanese geisha's and so I try again.

“Its just a game, Atch, why are you acting like it's a life and death thing?”

Atch looks at me like I should know better, “its competition, Aifee. You just need to concentrate.”

What?! I join your frooking badminton game to have some fun and to raise my heart rate a little

(said heart rate not having risen this much since you got me knocked-up for the second time)

and I get the old “le visage blanche” for my trouble?

I immediately feel like putting his face through the strings of my old reliable second-hand Dunlop and I tell him as much.

“So why don't you?” He is bullish. The Atch-hole.

On the drive home, after half an hour of silence, Atch reaches out to give my hand a reassuring pat, “You just need to concentrate more, that's all.” And after a pause, “'Wuv-wuv, Aif!”

Remaining quarrelsome and resentful, I glare at him.

The following weekend when we go out to buy some newly-pirated 8-in-1 DVD's, I get a copy of the Badminton For Everyone. I make him pay for it.

He does.