So there I am; it’s about 4:30 in the morning. I am snuggled up (can a 41 year old man use the word “snuggled”?) under my Pure Egyptian Cotton 300 Thread White Company Duvet quietly dreaming about Cindy Crawford on a white sandy beach. It’s just Cindy and I. Oh yes. The sand is soft and the water is lapping at our feet. And just as Cindy is about to surrender her bikini top to me, a voice from the heavens invades my subconscious splendour: ”It’s ticking….”
I haven’t a clue what to make of this; and neither does Cindy. We both freeze mid-embrace and look skywards! And then the voice again; this time more of a boom….”It’s TICKING!!” Cindy disintegrates into a white watery haze, my tropical island beach disappears and my left eyeball opens to the real world! (My right tries vainly to stay closed in the desperate hope that Cindy will make a re-appearance.)
Alas-and-alak, it’s not to be.
My right eyeball eventually follows suit. Very slowly both eyeballs start tracking left and right. My brain (which is working at about one brainwave every hour at that time of the morning) tries to process: was the voice some warped part of what was proving to be a “Top 10” dream or something else entirely? Something way more terrifying? Something that I ignore at my peril? Something that would make Cindy run screaming for the proverbial hills?
Eventually both eyeballs catch up with each other, track across the bed and my worst fears are confirmed. Mrs H (looking rather splendid, if not a little fierce, for that time of the morning) is trying to communicate with me. She looms up beside me from the comfort of our Pure Egyptian Cotton 300 Thread White Company Duvet like some sort of supernatural spectre and points at a spot just above my bedside table…and again – this time in a low hissing voice that indicates increased irritation - “IT’SSSSSSSS TICKING!” (Think Gollum in Lord of the Rings only much better looking)
My brain rapidly starts connecting a few cerebral circuits together: 1. Clocks usually tick 2. It could therefore be an alarm clock 3. Alarm clocks aren’t usually stuck on walls; 4. And probably most importantly I don’t own an alarm clock. So what in Cindy’s good name could possibly be the source of this ticking noise? And then a light bulb in a cobwebbed recess of my very small brain glimmers briefly; Mrs H is pointing at the contraption that regulates the under-floor heating in our bathroom!
Now before anyone starts thinking how hoity-toity I am for having under-floor heating it came with the house ok? And the device that regulates it; well, lets put it this way – whenever I go into our bathroom I avert my gaze because I find that it intimidates me. It seems not to have any buttons or things that you press. It has a knob which I have turned both clockwise and anti-clockwise yet nothing seems to happen. It has a digital screen with lots of indicators that seem not to bear any resemblance to what it is designed to do – heat my bathroom floor!
So on the buying the house, Mrs H got involved (as wives are prone to do) and it seemed that her intervention was successful (as they usually are!). She fiddled with the dial and soon thereafter our bathroom started feeling warm and snuggly(!) I got that knowing, slightly superior look as if to say: “If you want anything done around here, leave it to me….” Which to be honest was fine by me; I don’t define my manhood in terms of my under-floor heating capabilities, so I was happy to let sleeping dogs lie warmly, so-to-speak.
Fast forward to 4:30am on a cold autumn night; the Hodsons are snuggled up tight as two buggles (our term of affection for each other) in a ruggle and then…..
Tick….tick…….tick……tick…...tick……tick…..tick….tick.
So then my brain makes the next, more defiant, (and potentially very brave) leap. “NOT MY PROBLEM KIMOSABE”. Now of course I would never refer to my wife as a character from the Lone Ranger (it is purely for literary effect) but in essence I was saying that “you broke it, you fix it”. I nestled back down under our Pure Egyptian Cotton 300 Thread White Company Duvet, both eyeballs firmly shut, set on enticing Cindy back to our warm tropical isle.
No Sir.
Mrs H was having none of it. Blinding white lights on. Stomp, stomp, stomp on the luxurious high pile carpet around to my side of the bed. Lots of muttering with the occasional swear word thrown in around how useless I am (by this stage I had withdrawn further under the covers). I daren’t crack any one of my two eyelids in case that signalled that I was ready to help solve the problem. No, I told myself, best to maintain a low more comfortable profile; discretion being and the better part of valour and-all-that.
To cut a long story short (I mean this is about an under-floor heating regulator after all), Mrs H managed to solve the problem and I managed to quietly drift back to my island paradise only to find that she had booby (easy there!)- trapped the entire beach so there was to be no more early morning shenanigans with an 80’s supermodel. I bet Mrs H had that knowing (Don’t mess with the big daawwwg smile”) when she climbed back into bed. Aaaah well you win some, you lose some!
OUT.