My toenails need cutting again! As I look at them, I'm turning a nice shade of pink in this hot bath and then a small thought accumulates, gathering its own momentum spoiling my bath: 'Why do your feet have to be such a long way from your body?' I still can't work out why I have these thoughts, spoiling something looked forward to by me all day! The weather is on its best behaviour as I get out of the bath: not too cold for the time of year, so you don't have the blue, shrivelled prune look as you skip out of the bathroom and into the bedroom to dry off and get your clean kit on. But first, the toenail clipping I have been putting off for a few weeks now — not that my toenails are at the long-and-digging-in-the-bedsheets stage of growth, but they are at the 'noticeable' stage. So, to begin!

The first thing to do is play 'hunt the nail clippers', which are always tidied away by my missus (hidden away out of spite, more like!), so after around twenty seconds of looking I give up and resort to the old shouting routine. 'Please can you tell me where the nail clippers are?' This is a projected shout aimed down the stairs and into the kitchen. Here my missus is sitting, reading the newspaper at the kitchen table. 'Mwuwuwuhahahuagh,' she replies, and the house returns to peace and quiet. My next response is to increase the volume and to speak the single syllables in time to some ancient male rhythm which, by a strange coincidence, is the cause of not being able to find anything a woman 'tidies away'. Again I ask, 'PLEASE CAN YOU TELL ME JUST WHERE THE BLOODY TOENAIL CLIPPERS ARE, THANK YOU!' I turn around, and a quiet female voice says, 'They're in the top drawer on the right, they have lived in there for the past 11 years and will continue to live in there after YOU have used them, Hoovered up the clippings AND PUT THE CLIPPERS BACK INTO THE DRAWER!' Well, I thought that told me. 'Thank you,' I said in a quiet voice. She never looked at me as she left the room, so I retrieved the clippers out of the top right hand drawer and sat down to do the clipping.

Now here's an interesting, if a little misunderstood, thing about male toenail clipping: the fact is, no matter how careful you are at clipping your nails, one always escapes and will inevitably find its way, drawn by some mystical force, to the alpha female of the household you're living in at the time of the clipping, no matter how many times you Hoover up afterwards. To this end I never try anymore, I just Hoover the once and know that as soon as the missus steps into the room afterwards, she will step on the clipping and, being a male by-product, the most disgusting thing on the planet, if not the universe, she lets loose a tirade of advice. She tells me that 'I should do it in the bathroom or outside', both of which I have tried and failed at, as she still found a toenail, quite unexpectedly! A male toenail clipping is a hardy thing — the one she found was out in the garden for around a week before she found it and when I inspected it, it was still in a good state!

I was packing the Hoover away after tiding up the bedroom, and I heard 'Mwuwuwuwuuh', shortly followed by 'Muhhhhhhhgghgha', which I translated into 'There's a cup of tea and some toast in the kitchen for you.' The trouble with being upstairs in a house is that you can't really hear what's being said, so sometimes the translation gets ever so slightly garbled, especially in the space called the 'hall/stairwell' and also when some electrical appliance is running. But what was really said was, 'I need you to go out to the garden and get some carrots and sprouts for lunch,' so I was in for a shock as I entered the kitchen and asked where my cuppa and toast was! I was informed of the task to be undertaken by me and also that she was going to take me to the doctors to 'have my ears syringed out'! I stomped out into the garden, to the unsuspecting veggie patch!

I arrived at the veggie patch, still growling from the lack of a cuppa with toast and the lack of understanding of the missus. I then notice that we have not got any sprouts ready for picking, but I lift the carrots and they're fine, so I wander over to the cabbages, cut two fine small ones to replace the sprouts. 'Nice,' I thought, turning them over in my hand, looking at the crinkly leaves. As I bent down to pick up the carrots to carry them back to the kitchen, a warm feeling of satisfaction arrived in me, knowing that I grew these veggies! The kitchen door was opened for me and there stood my missus with a plaster stuck on the sole of her foot! 'You found it,' I said with a smile, 'I spent ages Hoovering and looking for that one. It escaped, you know,' I carried on. 'Get in with those veggies,' she said, and then, 'MEN!'

The Rev Jack's Diary Archive

The Rev Jack Russell

10.11.05 Front Page

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