Rebecca Tyrrel
Days Like These: 'Everybody hates us. And if we met ourselves at a party, we'd hate us, too'
In March, Matthew instigates the "Why haven't you done anything about the garden?" row. In the middle of July, he asks, "How do you know I'm not anaphylactic if I've never actually been stung by a wasp?"; and in December we embark on the "We have no friends" debate. I knew this particularly festive discussion was imminent from the look on Matthew's face as he sat on the sofa, the twinkling tree lights reflected so prettily in his whisky tumbler. He was staring forlornly at the mantelpiece.
Recently by Rebecca Tyrrel
Days Like These: 'I identified the sound of Matthew's head banging against the steering wheel'
Monday, 15 December 2008
The phone was ringing when we arrived at the Dorset cottage that frosty, Friday night. And from its insistent, furious tone I knew who it was. Matthew didn't speak immediately but I could identify the sound of his head banging rhythmically in frustration against the steering wheel. He was clearly stuck in traffic in London, where he was remaining for the weekend.
Days Like These: 'I led the shaken driver in for tea and told Matthew to tread carefully...'
Monday, 8 December 2008
Last weekend, in the Dorset cottage, finishing breakfast, Matthew sat back contentedly and told us that after nearly seven months he is finally getting used to the absolute quiet and total lack of excitement in the countryside. And then, shaking the ancient, leaded window-panes, a noisy, alarming, bright yellow helicopter proceeded to land in the field 10 yards from our front door.
Days Like These: 'Matthew can't watch "I'm A Celebrity..." on the grounds of Kilroy-Silk'
Monday, 24 November 2008
Ours is not a family that does a great deal together other than watch television. Watching television is our forte. It is what we do and we are very, very good at it.
Days Like These: 'Esther Rantzen, I said, and the knife slipped into Matthew's thumb'
Monday, 17 November 2008
Matthew said, while slicing a lemon for his evening drink, that we must all learn from Barack Obama. "The man's equanimity is almost supernatural." he said, "and from this day forth I pledge to do all in my power to emulate him. Volatility is a thing of the past. Change is coming to my temperament and it is a change that we can all believe in."
Days Like These: 'Now that Obama's been elected, there is a giant hole in Matthew's life'
Monday, 10 November 2008
His eyes open slowly. His hand reaches, as it has done every morning for the past 21 months, down to the side of the bed, the laptop is placed on his lap and his fingers race deftly and surprisingly nimbly over the keys. He is like a sloth who happens to be a concert pianist.
'Days Like These: The polls, the polls... Matthew is begging us to make it all go away'
Monday, 3 November 2008
Matthew, who is always gifting us with his entirely unsolicited, wholly inaccurate impersonation of James Mason, has unwittingly come up with a new, far more entertaining party trick. And, in all the ways that he gets Mason wrong, he gets this one absolutely right; it is Charles Laughton as the hunchback of Notre Dame. The tone is spot on, the hunched, drag-footed walk is uncanny and it is only the actual words that are ever so slightly changed – instead of "The bells, the bells", what Matthew wails is "The polls, the polls".
Days Like These: 'Dermot Murnaghan has vanished from Eggheads. This is a job for Interpol'
Monday, 20 October 2008
Ours is a family that likes ritual and habit. Five years ago, Matthew was so upset by the removal of a ritual (not actually ours, but very much a part of our daily lives) that he threatened to file a missing persons report.
Days Like These: 'Our credit got crunched, so the takeaway sag aloo is banned until 2119'
Monday, 13 October 2008
The credit crunch finally struck home last week. I can't claim, as someone who recently answered the Weakest Link question, "What is 58 plus two?" with a confident "59", to be an expert on the finer points of the economy but I do know that there is trouble in the air when Matthew announces a crisis meeting. He said we needed "to discuss the implications of the current global fiscal crisis and how we should respond to it".
Days Like Those: 'Phew! The pole dancing isn't at our cottage, it's down at Fanny's Bottom'
Monday, 6 October 2008
Matthew didn't come down to Dorset with Louis and me the weekend of the big pole-dancing scandal. He stayed in London owing to a psychosomatic reaction to having had his car broken into. Generally he takes a laissez-faire attitude to the monthly assaults on his vehicle, seeing them as legitimate attempts at wealth redistribution. So long as the thief causes no damage, it's not a problem. But this time a wing mirror was smashed, presumably in frustration at the lack of satnavs or iPods in the glove compartment. Worse, a mat was urinated upon. Matthew's distress at this lack of etiquette had what he described as "a grievous impact on my immune system", hence the fever and thumping eyes that kept him in London.
Days Like Those: 'For Matthew, a log is not just a log. It's something that must be nurtured'
Monday, 29 September 2008
Matthew is something of a log expert, and I've been dreading his questions about the local wood suppliers for our Dorset cottage. We have a satisfactory, if inordinately expensive, log man in Shepherds Bush, but it took years of research and interviewing to find him because a log is not just a log. It is something that must be nurtured and monitored – reared to perfection. And when it is finally burned, each log must be placed separately on the fire and its final moments made meaningful, sombre yet joyous.
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