I was meandering peacefully through the supermarket the other day and had just slowed down to a pensive hover when a conversation hit me midway between the glacé cherries and the ground almonds. ‘Oh for God’s sake; you’re impossible! They’re only baked beans!’ screamed the furious wife, pounding her trolley with ashen knuckles.
‘Damn the beans, it’s the principle of the thing,’ hissed her husband, thrashing furiously at her rigid back with what appeared to be a cardboard metric converter, a slide rule and a pocket adding machine.
This is not at all an unusual state of affairs when husbands and wives go shopping together, particularly during the Christmas crush. The funny thing is that left to their own devices most wives can bring home the yuletide bacon quite adequately, along with sensible bargains in butter, sugar and tea, kilograms or no kilograms.
Many husbands, on the other hand, whether they be up and coming young computer programmers or poor little old aged granddads with their pensions carefully tucked into their tobacco pouch and strict instructions from their wives, tend to go a bit barmy when sent to the shops alone.
I recently stood behind a dear old chap peering thoughtfully at a list which said:
When his turn came at the check-out counter he gleefully presented the cashier with a tin of chocolate biscuits, some peaches in brandy and a box of petits fours. Somewhere in there between the mad lone spender and the pernickity bean calculator lie a great many shopping missions which aren’t quite as successful as they might be. For instance it is a considerable culinary challenge to have the casserole/the omelette/ the meat and assorted veg standing by because one has run out of salt and to have one’s partner come strolling back from the shops with an impulsive brace of kippers instead.
Or to go together to the butcher’s and have the dear lad suddenly boom: ‘Oh look, they’ve got chitterlings (and/or tripe/heart/brains/sweetbreads, etc, etc). We used to have those all the time when I was a boy. Couldn’t you find out how to cook them?’
But for true drama it is the husband and wife clothes-buying syndrome that really takes the biscuit.
I shan’t easily forget that day, in Marks & Spencer, when I stood not two feet away from a middle aged chap of trendy persuasion who became so enraged at the length of time his dithery wife was taking to choose a skinny rib sweater he finally bellowed: ‘What the hell does it matter, you silly old moo – with a bust like yours they all look rotten!’
And if you find that hard to believe, let me assure you that once, in the adjoining fitting room of a big department store I overheard a chap say thoughtfully, after a long rustly pause: ‘You know Ellen, I hate to say this but I’ve never been altogether satisfied with your nipples.’
Poor girl. I wonder if they squinted. Right now, during this party season especially, I wouldn’t mind betting that The Case Of The Red Face Wife, in all sorts of versions, is being enacted across the country.
Husbands come in such infinite variety. And in there, among all the widely differing types ranging from the Rudolph Valentinos to the Andy Capps of this world lurk your mate and mine, I shouldn’t wonder … Fastidious fellas insisting on soft, pearly, cross-cut crêpe to complement those incredibly subtle silver flecks in their beloved’s eyes/hair/teeth.
More-taste-than-money-lads zooming their lasses into Laura Ashley.
Jolly farmers crying: ‘Come on mother, let’s choose summat to show off yer nice curvy bum then!’
Intense types insisting on slashed red satin and heavy black velvet.
Power-crazed Svengalis turning their cringing fair ladies into something else again.
Average no-help-at-all chaps murmuring: ‘Yes, well, you always look nice dear.’ And legion upon legion of hard-up, bewildered, glazed-eyed souls, slumped on tiny gilt chairs and torn between wanting to make the little woman happy and wanting to run like hell to the nearest exit.
As one friend put it: ‘The really impossible part is finding a dress we both like, finding it quickly and finding one that makes my eyes light up because it actually fits and his eyes light up when he sees the price ticket …’
Of course there are lucky women – and I’ve just been staying with one of them – whose husbands travel a lot and bring home perfect kaftans, saris, sandals, etc, from around the world. But for every one who leaps through the front doorway with a length of pure silk to match exactly his true love’s eyes I bet, come Christmas morning, there are half-a-dozen presenting over-optimistic bras, unfortunately gasp-making knickers or well-meant cut-glass bottles of ‘Evening By The Docks’.
I’m not sure which is worse – to be a big, overflowing flannelette nightie type trying to look pleased about flimsy size-8 baby doll pyjamas or to be the slim, glamorous, sexy sort (like you and me, of course) drumming up heartfelt enthusiasm for heavily tasselled size 8 bedsocks.
So perhaps, in spite of the possible risks and red faces involved, it might be as well for most of us, where personal Christmas shopping is concerned, to take our espoused along with us even if it does turn out to be another Mission Impossible.