Some people never have any rows at all. ‘Never a cross word in forty-seven years,’ they say, which I find hard to believe. I think it’s possible that they’ve long since given up rowing. If the dear chap just goes on picking his ear with a matchstick or tossing his dirty socks behind the boiler after, say, ten years of: ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that, Cyril!’ then the chances are he’s not going to change his ways in any future decades.
But if they really haven’t ever let the thunder clouds roll with a good old name-calling, grudge-unloading session, then either they just don’t care enough about each other or one of these gloomy, broody Sunday evenings old Darby’s going to be creeping up behind old Joan with a meat cleaver, you mark my words.
We all need to clear the air occasionally. And not just husbands and wives either. Sometimes (lots of times), one’s children can get right up one’s nose. Doubtless we’ve all discovered that it’s not a bit of good bleating away at them, nag, nag, nag, morning, noon and night. They simply coat their entire brain with a protective layer of unheeding wax. So how can we best tackle the inevitable stresses and strains of what they call happy family life?
All-out shouting matches may be the answer if one lives in a fairly isolated field. But it doesn’t really seem the ideal solution for those of us who live in built-up areas. I expect we’ve all been sitting quietly in the garden at some time or other and heard a neighbouring snatch of: ‘Have you eaten all the biscuits, you greedy cow?’ And the Battling Bickerskills are at it again, to the distant accompaniment of door slamming and engine revving and breaking glass.
But even this seems preferable to those households where everyone keeps on smiling, smiling and sitting straight on the edge of their chairs, until eventually one of them leans forward and hisses: ‘I wonder if I could have a word with you in private.’ Quietly, firmly, the door closes on their rigid backs and a terribly controlled whispering goes on for a long while in another room.
There are homes, too, where no one ever gets around to saying what the trouble is. It’s all a bit too pent up for my taste. And anyway, I could go around wearing a brave little smile until doomsday in our house without the slightest notice being taken. They already ignore loud groans, sighs and a fair amount of fist shaking. I’ve also tried dragging one leg along the ground, chewing my handkerchief and even lying down dramatically in front of the television. In fact, I often wonder how other folk manage to get treated for their nervous breakdowns. Mine just get: ‘Sshsh – you know this is one of our favourite programmes!’
I am fairly philosophical about it. I have to be. I knew, right from the Woolly Rug Incident in early marriage that this was how things were going to turn out.
I am a practical soul. I like to keep busy. So when, in a moment of early marital stress, I dashed from the house never to return, I automatically grabbed my current project – a huge, almost completed, fireside rug kit. Angrily I rolled it all up and tottered off.
A neighbour, peacefully trimming his privet, looked up in amazement at the sight of this great, shaggy bundle closely followed by my grim, unsmiling face. When the first full flush of rage wore off, however, it began to dawn on me that the thing weighed a ton and that I had nowhere to go.
Then it came on to rain. I didn’t really fancy a lifetime of rug-hooking in bus shelters so, sadly, the bundle and I retraced our steps; I was panting, the rug was dishevelled. The privet clipper was just packing up, but he turned and watched us, with an inscrutable expression, as we once more bobbed along past his hedge. ‘Been taking it for a walk?’ he said. And, well – you just can’t go on being furious once you get the giggles.
Perhaps the best answer really is to harness that first flush of outraged energy and quickly polish a few floors or turn out the garage; enough fury could spring-clean the whole house for you.
And if all else fails, you could always copy a family I heard about who set aside half an hour on Friday each week for their regular family row.
‘Right,’ screams the wife for openers. ‘I’m fed up with searching for my kitchen scissors ALL OVER THE HOUSE! And if someone doesn’t clean out that guinea pig’s cage, he’s going!’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t. Honestly, Mummy, I think that’s a really grotty thing to say.’
‘What about me? You said I could have a pet, too. She gets everything.’
‘It’s time you children started earning your pocket money. Your mother and I want to see keen, willing faces …’
‘I never have any fun. It’s all homework and jobs and rotten early nights.’
‘Oh, shut up all of you! Time’s up.’
And presumably, after this little group therapy session, they go whistling about their jobs and their guinea pigs, Mum’s scissors turn up in yet another quaint place and it’s all hugs and chuckles and sweet harmony until next Friday, and another week’s worth of aggro.
It might work for the rest of us, I suppose. Anyway, it seems worth a try.
‘Are you all sitting comfortably, my dears? Here we go then –
‘WHO FILLED MY KNITTING BAG WITH SAND??’