Pimms And The Post-Modern Woman

I've been to Wimbledon today. Not physically, you understand, just emotionally - courtesy of Mrs Pither.
By way of background, let me say that my Soon-To-Be Ex-Wife went to SW19 on Tuesday with some pals to watch it rain - it's different down there, you know? - and then
she went on to her mother's in Cumbria to watch the said "lady" play in some crunch rugby league match.
After my Soon-To-Be Ex-Mother-In-Law had enjoyed a few arm wrestling sessions with the lads down at the Duck and Gynaecologist after the game and then dubbined her boots she joined Mrs P in a bit of a Wimbledon-fest, watching three solid days of it on TV.
Now the current Mrs Pither is a pretty good tennis player and used to play for her county (I bet you wondered where you'd heard my name before!). Consequently, she LOVES tennis and Wimbledon is to her what Fiesta Readers' Wives is to me. However, being Catholics, she and her mother have to play "the lying game" all the time they are together. This involves Mrs P not drinking or smoking at any time, despite the excitement of the on-court action, so that her mother will think she is neither a drinker nor a smoker. For her part, her mother pretends to revel in her daughter's apparent rejection of the grape, the grain and the weed. The fact that her mother KNOWS she smokes and drinks and that Mrs P KNOWS she KNOWS and her mother, in turn, KNOWS she KNOWS she KNOWS is all part of growing up and being Catholic.
Anyway, the upshot of this temporary abstinence is that, when STB EW returns from a trip to Arthur Mullard's sister's place, I get the brunt of the, shall we say, "slight over-compensation" which follows. I greeted her as she charged through the front door at lunchtime today with a cheery "Hello dear, had a nice time?", only to be barged aside as she ran to the fridge muttering "I need a sodding drink!!"
I left her to top up her levels for a while and then, late this afternoon, having fixed the central heating, I decided to have a soak in the bath. Unbeknown to me, as I relaxed in the water, looking down on the unemployed, Mrs P cracked open a large bottle of her favourite Wimbledon-time tipple - Pimms. The advert jollily proclaims that, whatever the time is, it's Pimms O'clock. Well, to me, Pimms O'clock coincides exactly with the time that Hell freezes over and I cease to have a hole in my arse! I would rather drink my own gastric juices than have so much as a thimbleful of that muck. Still, STB EW seems to like it and so she got stuck in, watching the ladies singles final.
I was aware of a few whoops, oohs! and "good shots" drifting upstairs from the lounge but there was nothing to get alarmed about and so, when I gathered from all the applause that the final had finished, I nodded off in the bath. I was awoken a while later, however, by Mrs P in full, drunken voice, screaming things like "way to go!!!", and "woohoo!!" and "that's it, smack it!!" It turned out that the ladies singles final had not been the end of play after all. It was apparently followed by the post-op singles final and the hermaphrodites doubles or something.
The result of this extended play was that Mrs P managed to quaff buckets of Pimms and was somewhat loud, tired and emotional by the end. She came up to the bathroom to describe in achingly boring detail how Britain's deputy great white hope and some bloated man-woman creature from the Balkans had made it through to the genuinely mixed up doubles final.
I am now, once again, relaxing owing to the fact that, steamed as she was, STB EW has gone out for the evening. She has taken to fag hagging of late and has gone to the evening do of a civil ceremony for a gay guy we both used to work with. He is a lovely chap, don't get me wrong,
but the thought of standing in a Big City gay bar listening to I Will Survive until 3 in the morning while some bloke criticises the curtains and Mrs P crawls around on her hands and knees imitating a retarded sealion fills me with dread so I am having a quiet night in.
Ho hum. What to send? Well, Pimms can go to Grantham for a start and I might as well send the after effects of the tennis at Wimbledon there as well because I am fearing the worst when the wee small hours roll around.