Two significant things happen

Two things of particular significance happened last week. So I'm combining them into one big entry in place of the two I should have added then. Hope that's ok?

One was Babe’s first assassination attempt. And I was the assassinee. Does that word exist, I wonder? There is nothing like speaking baby talk and pigeon English at home to make one’s linguistic abilities disintegrate.

Anyway, it followed Other Half cooking our evening meal for the first time this year. It wasn’t fish, or ‘lamb in the oven’ (as opposed to on a piece of fence railing in the back garden - more of that another time), it was what I like to call his ‘omelette surprise’. And yes, not a very witty joke to crack, but the surprise is just how disgusting it is, even with practice.

Other Half’s favourite food, by the way, after fish and lamb, is aubergine cooked by his mother. Which is frankly a pain in the arse. In part, because clearly I am not his mother and therefore severely disadvantaged before I even step into the kitchen, but also because there is only so much you can do with an aubergine, and I know, because I’ve tried. But I digress.

So, on Wednesday last week, it was omelette surprise, cooked by Other Half while he watched the Croatia V Austria match. And given that the TV is not in the kitchen you can imagine what a catastrophe it was. To save himself time, he chopped the veg in front of the TV, then filled a pan with oil on the hob, and forgot to wait for it to heat before dropping in the mushrooms etc. It was a dripping oily sludge and didn’t go down well.

In an attempt to veil its revolting taste, he added extra salt. And trust me, you don’t want someone from where he is from ever adding ‘extra’ salt to your meal. Which is why I woke in the early hours, for once not because Babe was wailing, with a terrible thirst.

I reached for the glass of water on my bedside table and gulped thirstily before something caught in my throat, causing my eyeballs to nearly burst from my head and a jet-stream of water to crash up my nasal cavities. Other Half was, of course sleeping in the spare room and not there to assist me in my hour of need.

Winded and terrified, I threw open the bedroom door, staggered across the landing and into his room. By now I was about to expire. I threw myself onto him, fists pummelling his prostrate body, and he sat up in bed, reaching for the large kitchen knife he insists on keeping on the bedside table during the night in case we are attacked by vagabonds. Luckily, he sleeps with the blinds open, to make the most of daylight hours (it’s hot and sunny where he’s from) and quickly realised it was me. I saw a flicker of ‘What the f*ck does she want now?’ cross his face before it dawned on him that I was in serious trouble. Whining like a horse caught in a trap – I assume that someone, somewhere does trap horses – I tried, frantically, to slap myself on the back, indicating what I needed him to do.

Thank God he had been forced through years of military school under a communist regime. Grabbing me from behind, round the waist, he began to crush my ribs. On the third attempt, something small and soft that I spat straight onto the floor dislodged from my throat. What blissful relief! Fresh clean air coursed through my being and we collapsed, gasping, onto the bed. (Yes, I know what you’re thinking, it has been a while since we did that.)

Some time later, I started whimpering helplessly and Other Half held me in his arms. (This happens quite a lot, usually around the middle of each month.) Later still, I decided to look and see what had nearly taken my life prematurely. It was foam, conical in shape, and orange. An earplug. And must have been left, discarded, under my bed many months ago until Babe found it earlier today, while I was scrabbling around looking for his ball. And dropped neatly into the glass by my bed, for once without knocking its contents onto the floor. Little bugger. Just wait until I put woodlice in his bottle…

***

The other thing of significance that happened, was us realising that Babe has started producing words in Other Half's second language, that he and I often communicate in. Other Half speaks to Babe in his mother tongue – which I can only produce the most basic of sentences in – as often as he can remember to, which isn’t that often. And he gabbles it really fast, giving him b-all chance, in my humble opinion, of picking up so much as a word. But Babe has, as I’ve said, started producing some words of our other shared language, in a whiny and irritated voice:

‘Come on, X’ (‘X’ represents Other Half’s name), and ‘Don’t!’.

Obviously, it is not me he has learnt these utterances from me; they reveal nothing of the dynamic of my realtionship with Other Half and I do not need to reflect on them or consider possible learning outcomes. Good night and sleep well.