A couple of days ago I retired in the afternoon for a “well-deserved lie down
“Arun, what are you doing! No! Stop that!” My wife has a wonderfully authoritative voice when she puts her mind to it. Almost perfect BBC pronunciation that would make her Majesty blush.
It was clearly having no impact on Arun: “Stop it I said!” she hollered.
This was quickly followed by, “No, put that plate down!” From what I could tell from upstairs, this part of the instruction Arun did follow to the letter as I heard a smashing sound.
“You’ve been very naughty!” My wife continued, “You just sit there quietly whilst Mummy tidies up!” I can assure you there is little in life that makes Clare so grumpy as having to tidy up.
At this point I heroically decided that discretion was the better part of valour and courageously continued with my interrupted “well deserved lie down”.
About twenty minutes later I ventured downstairs to a scene reminiscent of the custard pie fight in “Bugsy Malone”. The only difference was that instead of custard everywhere, it was chocolate mousse.
Earlier that day I had made a batch of chocolate mousse for that evening. A very fine, smooth and elegant chocolate mousse made from the finest organic chocolate, double cream and whipped eggs. From what I could tell, it had somehow been involved in a minor nuclear explosion and had been splattered everywhere around the kitchen.
Arun was covered in chocolate mousse, pretty much from head to toe.
There was chocolate mousse on the sink, the dishwasher, on the cabinets, on the freezer, the fridge and, of course, the floor. What-is-more there was chocolate mousse on the contents of the fridge and, remarkably, the freezer as well. The eggs, the butter, the fruit juice and the fish fingers were all smeared in chocolate mousse.
In fact, rather than telling you where the chocolate mousse was, it is simpler to tell you where it was not. It was not in the desert bowl that had originally contained the chocolate mousse.
“What happened?” I innocently asked my wife, “It was very hard to enjoy my well-deserved lie down with all that commotion going on.”
“Your son,” she said with ice cold razors in her voice, “decided that he wanted to do some messy play with the contents of the fridge. He smeared chocolate mousse everywhere and broke two eggs before I found him. Then he broke a plate helping me to tidy up.”
She sighed and I decided that now was not the time to be mischievous.
“Do you need a well-deserved lie down?” I asked as I gave her a hug.
