Square One

Back to yesterday’s crucial moment:

Do you remember the fairy tale about the three wishes? If anything will put you off coupledom it is this one: A man and a woman, starving in the discomfort of their shabby four walls, when – for reasons which escape me for the moment – they are granted three wishes.

The woman, being very hungry, asks for a coil of sausages; her desire fulfilled immediately. As stupidity goes hers stretches a long way indeed; however, and this is marital harmony for you, her husband, annoyed about using the first wish so unwisely, shouts: ”I wish those sausages stuck to your nose.” Which happens promptly – so he doesn’t score on intelligence (emotional or otherwise) either. Since you do not wish to live with someone, for the rest of your life, with a string of wilting sausages trailing behind you there was no choice but to undo the whole disaster with wish number three. Cruelly they were back where they had started (only now a knot of deep regret adding to their daily misery).

I don’t know what the moral of the story is – other than: Act in haste, repent at leisure; think before you speak; grow your own vegetables; consult me first before you do anything, particularly if it involves shacking up with anybody; stop believing in fairies and bag yourself a witch instead.

U