Time for the hair-dryer treatment

Aug 21 2008 By Mike Lockley

"I know what this is about," I stammered, strafed by the heat of my tearful wife's verbal 'hair-dryer' treatment. "This is all about the time of the month."

There was a terrible silence.

I had again made the ultimate marital faux pas. I had again made reference to the affliction that must never be spoken. If it must be brought up, it should be described, in a whisper, as 'the time of the month': a mystical term along the lines of 'the position of the planets' or 'the time of the full moon'.

People rarely throw tins of soup at their partners because of a full moon, however.

Even worse, I'd dared to blame my wife's response to a fairly trifling domestic problem on 'the time of the month'. I just thought - wrongly, I admitted after being struck several times on the arm with an iron - that tearing down wallpaper with your chipped fingernails while wailing wasn't the best way of resolving the issue.

"You bloody insensitive pig," she spat out.

In a desperate attempt to soothe troubled waters, I agreed, grovelled that the phrase slipped-out and frantically strapped on body armour.

"Oh, no," she mocked, her moist eyes narrow with suppressed rage, "It can't be anything you've done, can it? You are so perfect. That's your answer to everything that goes wrong."

Not so. PMT played no part in the credit crunch or World War Two - both Adolf Hitler and Churchill were too old to be going through the male menopause. As for the rip in the ozone layer, I'm not sure...the wife's made a real mess of the wallpaper.

In the dark ages, women were flung in asylums during times of hormonal mayhem. It was a step too far, but at least gave them a real reason to feel depressed. Ring Amnesty International, weeping, because someone's eaten your Pot Noodle and they'll just laugh. Ring them, weeping, because you've been flung in a bare cell and they'll be round in a jiffy.

"You know who had terrible PMTs," confided Colin over a frothing pint in the Drum and Monkey's smoke-free snug, "that Bodicea."

I gave him a puzzled glance.

"It's true," he insisted. "Thousands of Ancient Britons died at the hands of the Romans, just because she wouldn't take evening primrose oil."

The latest household disaster, amplified by my wife's body cycle - and, my, didn't that dark time pedal round quickly - involves our teenage son and his newfound friendship with a youth who has gained a reputation as a ne'er-do-well.

He, it is believed, was the brains behind last year's garden centre heist - barring poaching, the only foul deed committed in our village since the Nazis dropped a bomb on the sewage works (they thought it was a heavy water plant, apparently).

The garden centre raider got away with a large cactus and 24 cans of Fanta. There was no hard-evidence linking the delinquent with the crime, but he was seen burping a lot next day.

That's good enough for me.

Julie returned home to find the rogue in our house and 'shooed' him out, much as one banishes a cat who's wandered into the wrong abode. A quick census of the family silver, to find out if anything has been swiped, revealed a tube of Immac hair removal cream was missing, she insists.

Maybe the lad gets high by sniffing Immac, she pondered?

What a terrible monkey to have on your back.

Memory loss is a harrowing effect of drug misuse. Chuck-in hair loss and you've got the ingredients for real human tragedy. And how do you spot Immac abusers, other than the fact they've got really smooth faces?

And there's always the danger Immac users will progress to waxing.

I told Julie she had gone over the top. "Didn't you hang around with people your parents disapproved of?"

"I did," she sniffed. "And what happened?" "I married him," she sobbed. "You know Joe," she blubbed, "and how he bows to peer pressure. He'll do what ever that lad tells him to do."

No I don't. I've told him to clean his room four times this week, but he still hasn't done it. I'm his dad - you don't get a bigger peer than that.

Julie's prepared to move, lock, stock and barrel, out of the village to ensure distance between our son and the ne'erdo-well.

We're unlikely to move to a safer community: we have only one drug dealer - the village chemist, and the nearest thing to a drive-by shooting happened last year when farm labourer Jason flung a turnip from his tractor at a bloke who swindled him out of a whippet.

The only time anyone 'shoots up' is when a pheasant passes overhead.

"I want you to tell Joe," she sniffed, "how disappointed I am in him."

That's her big mistake. She should start the day disappointed in her offspring, as I do, and hope to be pleasantly surprised. I seldom am.

"Joe," I bellowed, adopting the tone of a stern Victorian father, "both your mother and I are very disappointed in you."

"What for?" he protested.

"Your mother for hanging round with a hoodlum and I've got a list stretching back to 1991. I've crossed out two - being sick on my best shirt and urinating on my trousers - because you were teething at the time."

They're 'spent' convictions.