As far as I know, Mikey Ryan didn’t venture home to the wife as yet.
Oh, sorry you are probably not fully acquainted with reports of certain marital dissentions, which recently reared their ugly head, here in our rural, politically forgotten town.
To better explain; we were above in the Arch Bar in Liberty Square, Thurles last Monday, when a most dishevelled Mikey desended in, much later than usual.
To give him his due, Mikey, ordinarilywould be the sort of a guy to spruce himself up when heading out “on the tear”. Mikey, for all the years I have known him, usually appears with his face as smooth as a baby’s bottom, togged out in a pinstriped suit, with a striped, blue tie, foiled by a rather crisp, white, starched shirt. Indeed, it’s as if all of his clobber had been plucked straight out from the front window of Stakelum’s Menswear in Friar Street. Now add to this ensemble; that splash of Old Spice; top it off with a Sunday best, white, Panama hat and add a pair of highly polished brown shoes and you can see at a glance, even if only in your mind’s eye, the type of person that is our Mikey.
But last Monday night it was a different kettle of fish; he turned up in a truly scruffy state. To describe him as displaying a rather “slept in look” could be more rightly seen as being a sort of exaggerated benevolence, to say the very least. Pat, the Arch Bar proprietor, wasn’t even sure that he was worthy of admission. Indeed, were it not for the fact that he was a regular, it would have been a “No way Jose” scenario regarding admission rights, as Pat warned me quietly afterwards.
Mikey arrived through the bar portals like a man who had been found absent when his house was searched by the Criminal Assets Bureau or a relative of the Hutch-Kinahan criminal gang.
“Was she in tonight,” Mikey queried hurriedly, glancing continuously over his shoulder.
“Who are we talking about”, says I.
“That sadistic bitch of a wife of mine”, retorted Mikey.
It was only then through my persistent questioning that I learned that Mikey, following advice, had not dared to venture home in the last few days, choosing instead to sleep (if that is possible) on a two-seater sofa in the front room of his sister Bridie’s house.
From what I can gather it all began in the latter half of the previous week. According to Mikey, his wife had come home from a doctor’s appointment she had been granted, regarding worrying chest pain, and was now grinning from ear to ear.
“What’s making you so happy”, Mikey asks, “Why the ‘pleased as punch look’ on you”.
His wife smiled again, “The doctor told me that for a forty-five-year-old woman, that I have the breasts of a eighteen year old virgin.”
“Oh yeah?” quipped Mikey, “What did he say about your forty-five-year-old fat arsehole?” to which she is supposed to have replied, “Trust me your name wasn’t even mentioned in our conversation.”
But it wasn’t until Saturday that the real difficulties came to the fore, Mikey forgot their wedding anniversary. His wife was furious, informing him in no uncertain terms that, quote, “Tomorrow morning, I expect to find a gift in the driveway that goes from 0 to 200 in 6 seconds and it had better materialise”
Living in fear and dread all night, Mikey arose early next morning and left in his van for work, having placed a gift as directed. When his wife woke up, she looked out the window and sure enough there it was, a box beautifully gift-wrapped sitting, as requested, in the middle of their driveway.
Confused, the wife put on her dressing gown and rushed out unto the driveway, narrowly missing a somewhat now startled postman. Bringing the box back into the house she opened it to find that the contents contained a brand-new, state of the art Weight Watchers, Designer, Precision, Electronic, Bathroom Scales.
Don’t ask me how I know, but personally my feeling is that Mikey may end up sojourning on the sofa in Bridie’s house for just a day or two longer.
Women; sure I could never understand them either.
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