Reflections by Bob Baynes
I just don’t believe it! Write about a happy marriage he said. I ain’t got much appreciation of grammer and stuff, but I do know an oxy moron when I see one; a bleeding happy marriage? That’s like saying I had poor sex the other day; sure some is better than others, but there ain’t such a thing as poor sex, on the other hand I s’pose it might be poor if it’s with another bloke, ha ha.
So how could a marriage be happy? I mean, that’s a bit like saying we like being in the European Union, which is like a marriage but in a political sort of way and it don’t take no genius to see where that’s got us. Thank gawd for bleeding Winston Spencer Boris I say, he’s not afraid to stick it up ‘em is he?
I s’pose liberal pinko lefties like what’s infesting the BBC these days can go with this marriage stuff, but quite frankly what’s the point of marriage if you ain’t got no balls, ha ha. I mean, what’s in it for married people, apart from regular sex whenever you feel like it, someone to clean the house for you, do your washing and all those unpleasant sort things blokes are not good at?
I mean, I can understand its appeal when it was like in my grandad’s day. Then, you married the girl down the road who might even have been a virgin in those days, can’t say I’ve actually met one myself, and then she gave up her little secretarial job which earned her sweet FA anyway, and became his slave for the rest of her life. Grandad went out to work in the docks and brought home what was left of his wages after the pay day piss-up in the Lord Nelson by the docks, and she stayed at home bringing up the next generation of soldiers and sailors who made the Empire great. Social structure, that’s what it’s all about.
However, those days are gorn. The trouble with this daft idea about treating women as equals is that they very quickly get to think they’re as good as you are, and that leaves no structure at all, and causes nothing but grief and confusion for the one poor kid you’ve managed to find the time to sire. No wonder kids these days can’t make up their minds whether they’re blokes or birds, and spend at least 25 hours a day playing games on computers.
Anyway, I have to go now. Aggie will have my supper ready, the kids will have done their homework, and then we can all sit down in front of the tele and watch the next episode of Game of Thrones. I must admit, not publicly of course, that our life could be worse. Nothing’s been the same since Aggie sat down and wrote those block busting, tear jerking, bodice ripping novels and got all the film rights and everything and we moved into our mansion in the country. Course writing isn’t actually work, is it, so that’s OK then. But obviously a good structure and knowing who’s the boss is what it’s all about.
An energetic piece!
Great comedy. Fun to imagine the grumpy and disenchanted blasting off and moaning about everything. Good turn around at the end.
From Simon: Oh, how refreshing Political Incorrectness can be! This is a nice monologue with the narrator very clearly defined throughout. He is a vivid character who any actor would love to play. And, of course, because it’s fiction, he can say things that have become unsayable… but are said on a nightly basis in every pub in the country (at least, those pubs in the country that are open). The narrator’s unreconstructed views about gender equality ring true. And, inevitably, they raise the question that all such fictional diatribes raise: ‘Is the character expressing his own views or those of the writer?’ This is always the danger of creating a bigot. Famously, Johnny Speight created Alf Garnett to satirise a form of right-wing intolerance, but a lot of the television audience took him seriously and endorsed his views, missing the satire completely. And this piece, of course, has a nice, ironic turnaround. The bigot sounding off about how women should know their place is in fact a kept man. It’s his wife’s literary earnings that enable him to enjoy an enviable lifestyle in a ‘mansion’. And I love his justification, that ‘writing isn’t actually work.’ A very neat pay-off to a vigorous character study.