Fail 2: Ready, aim...
It might have been a midlife crisis. It might just have been a God-complex. Whatever it was that caused him to do it, I think we both later agreed that it shouldn't happen again.
Most men my husband's age just seem to take up aggressive cycling, but Lee has already got a bike, which two whole years after I paid a rude amount of money to have overhauled and serviced as a ‘thoughtful birthday gift’, still has not been ridden.
No, Lee's mid-life crisis took a much more unusual form.
I first noticed that something had come loose in his mind upon entering the office one day. You might remember from last weeks newsletter that I no longer visit the office with any frequency due to the sheer amount of stupid shit that lee has bought on eBay and put near my desk, but in this instance, needs must.
The front door out to the carpark was wide open. This in itself is not unusual. It's a converted barn in a rural yard, so about as safe from passing opportunistic theft as you could get. Annoyingly, this 'door wide open' state of affairs is also a slightly more common than I'd like occurrence at my actual house too, which, whilst still in a pretty safe village is less than ideal really.
Normally it's Lee's fault (obviously). I'll come home to find the door, not even just unlocked or ajar, but flapping wildly in the breeze as if he'd just remembered he had an actual job and should leave the house in a wild hurry. In the interests of full disclosure, it was (once) me too. I had very conscientiously and carefully shut and locked the front door. What I hadn't done was lock, or even close, the enormous run of bi-fold doors right next to the locked door, meaning that if you'd wanted to, you could actually have driven your car right inside my lounge without too much fuss, let alone break in.
Ah well. So. The point was, that arriving at the office, things seemed relatively normal. Thus far.
Entering our office, you go through a little reception room, into a short dark corridor, where directly ahead is the internal door into the main office.
The corridor is dark. Without the lights on, and with both doors closed, it’s very dark. So this made it all the more obvious that a single, narrow beam of light was illuminating the corridor this day. Closer inspection revealed that the shaft of bright light was emanating from a perfect, circular hole roughly the size of a five pence piece, slap bang in the middle of the office door.
Odd, I thought.
Why is there a hole in this door? I thought.
My brain grasped for plausible explanations. Maybe the landlord has been doing some experimental hole drilling? I mused on why this would be in the second or so it took to push the door open and enter the room, where I found...
Lee. Sitting at his desk, feet up, laughing. He’s alone in the room, but has clearly noticed my confusion at the new hole in the door.
Me: Hello. (gesturing) Erm, how did this happen?!
Him: (smirking) That hole? How do you think?
Me: (inspecting the perfect spy hole) I don’t know? Is it extra security? Did the landlord want to put in some kind of, I dunno, security peep hole? Do we even need a peep hole?
Him: (giggling) Nope!
Me: (beginning to suspect I would not be entirely pleased with whatever the explanation turned out to be) Ok. So?
Him: You really can’t guess??!
At this point I begin to lose patience, as I spot that there’s another identical hole in the wall to the side of the door.
Me: LEE, what the fuck is going on?!?
At which point, he very slowly unfolded his legs from the desk, stood to his full height and from the side of his desk triumphantly produced... a fucking crossbow.
That's right. A modernised, mechanised, medieval hand-held killing machine.
I hesitated to write this story, only because now having seen a demonstration of what happens when you fire this crossbow, I am 99% certain that it must be completely illegal to own one. I mean, it would take your fucking head off. I reckon our office is at least ten metres long and this bad boy punched a hole completely though a two inch thick wooden door without issue.
After a few more completely unnecessary demonstrations of quite how dangerous this thing actually was and a couple of hundred pounds more damage to OUR OWN OFFICE, I demanded to know what he was planning to do with this very literal weapon - the correct answer to which should have been 'hand it, and myself, in to the nearest police station, and then delete ebay forever'. This didn’t happen.
After sheepishly mumbling something about thinking he could use it to 'discourage' the noisy rooks near our house from nesting close enough to wake us up at 5am, there was a beat of silence as we both looked at the shot holes now decorating most of our walls.
I didn't really even need to spell out that 1. disturbing a nesting bird is actually an offence even if you're not using military-grade weapons to do so and 2. I'm not sure our neighbours will appreciate being shot at.
The moral of the story is, quite obviously: DO NOT ALLOW YOUR HUSBAND TO PURCHASE MEDIEVAL KILLING MACHINES ON EBAY, mid-life crisis or not.
So hello from this second edition of The What Now, and especially hello to all the new subscribers who signed up after (presumably) chancing across the last edition.
In case you're not sure who I am and why you're getting this, The What Now is a newsletter by me, Lindsay, of And Other Idiots, and will arrive in your inbox every two weeks with another story of idiocy to hopefully make you smile - god knows the world needs it after the election has comprehensively ruined Christmas thus far...
What I'm into this week
If during this hellscape election you've still not come across comedian Michael Spicer, I suggest you look him up immediately. He is hilarious. He's become known for his 'Room next door' sketches - which is the brilliantly simple premise that for every bumbling fuckup of a politician's speech, he is next door feeding them lines (or not).
I've spent most of my work time this week writing lots of video scripts for a quite serious, global, multinational firm, so I dream of the day I get to write a campaign video quite as brilliant as this advert that Michael Spicer has also written. Well worth a watch.
If you're stuck for a Christmas present for someone you could do a lot worse than buy them Adam Kay's new book The Nighshift Before Christmas. His first book, This Is Going To Hurt is one of the few that's actually made me actually snort out loud with laughter, and having seen excerpts of his new one, it's much the same. He's extremely funny.
I've spent a lot of time (I mean A LOT) of time having a stupid amount of Christmas fun recently. If you too are planning on getting Christmas Pissed, notable highlights which I can heartily recommend to everyone are:
This brilliantly kitsch bar in London called Blame Gloria. I knew I was amongst my people as soon as we arrived, and I got sidetracked vogueing with some strangers before I'd even made it to the bar. Top night out.
Pete Tong and his heritage orchestra playing ibiza classics. This is touring the country and was absolutely INCREDIBLE. I danced so much that I broke my shoe. Go - you won't regret it!
Some Voices, which is billed as ‘choir without the boring bits’. I go to their Christmas concert every year with my buddy JD, and we've never had so much fun. This year was 90's hits presented by... Pat Sharp. I mean, come on. It doesn't get better than that.
So that’s it for this week! If you enjoyed this, please forward it on to your friends, and if you are reading this and want to get it directly in future, you can subscribe free here: