The life of an ironing board

It is a grey Monday afternoon here. So grey I am going to have to put the light on and it's only 3.15.

gray - see grey

grey or (esp N Am) gray, adj

It sounds as though it should be gray, but grey is more the norm (except N Am).

Anyway, I've just finished my ironing. On my new ironing board.

Husband was going to the shop the other day to buy a new toaster and I said, 'Get me a new ironing board at the same time.'
'Why?'
'Cos mine's broken.'
'I'll fix it.'
'No, just buy me a new one.'
'Another new one?'
'What the second new one I've had in 28 years of marriage?'
'Yes.'
'We've had twelve toasters!'
'Toasters are electrical; you expect them to go wrong. Ironing boards can be fixed.'
'Get me a new ironing board.' (This said through gritted teeth, with an or else hanging unspoken in the air.)

He got me one. Then grumbled that it cost all of £20. 'Could have fixed the other one.'

He's not really mean; he just doesn't understand how ironing boards can have a limited life span.

Of course what I really need is not a new ironing board but an ironer.

When we were first married, my granny came to have Sunday lunch with us every week, before spending the afternoon doing the ironing. She enjoyed ironing, and liked to be useful, and it's not as if she had to do it before she got her dinner. I'm not that horrid.

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Last night we went to see The Shout. They were on at the theatre in the university - you know the one that hosts the avant garde and unusual, poorly-attended arty productions.

I think we managed to pass ourselves off as intellectual left-wing academic and spouse. At least until I tried to force the ice cube from my glass into my plastic coke bottle.

But The Shout were very good. They're described as ' ... a choir armed with attitude, sixteen megaphones and astounding voices,' and they performed at the Proms this year apparently. Using their voices and home-made percussion instruments they created an amazing range of sounds all around the theme of protest. They began with a Hebrew slave lament and went via the Jarrow marchers to the lost of New York who live in the unused metro tunnels, to a rant about the disappearing English apple. (Many apples were destroyed in this production.)

Even if we didn't understand some of it the sounds made were brilliant. You can tell you're in with the intellectua when the leader introduces one of the singers as, 'to the Shout what Naomi Klein is to the anti-globalisation movement'. Yes, right - that's good is it?

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Over the last months I have been helping a friend through a difficult time. All I want to say on the subject is that I earnestly pray that justice will be done. At the moment I feel like slapping a devious little sonofabitch. (I never use language like that normally but this is not a normal situation; please excuse me.)