The net widens

I’m first home from work today and it’s my turn to cook dinner. Well, it’s supposed to be. I’ve other stuff to do. First of all, I have to fix my backyard goal. You know how much fun it is scoring a goal into an empty net with a hole in it? Not fun at all. The ball doesn’t even ripple the net. It just goes flying through it, especially when I unleash one of my trademark half-volleys from ten yards away.

No time for play this evening. I’m up on a stepladder with some string, a Swiss Army knife and various kinds of masking tape, trying to sew the net back together. It’s the most frustrating job and with each sort of stitch I make, I get angrier and angrier at the person or persons who vandalized the goal. It doesn’t help that halfway through my task, the wife arrives home.

Although no longer the number one suspect in this crime, she’s still a person of interest in my investigations.

‘Where’s the dinner?’ she shouts like some ravenous 1950s husband just in from a shift down the coal mines.

‘Can't you see I’m a little busy?’ I reply.

‘Are you telling me you didn’t cook because you are fixing that, that thing?’

‘Well, if somebody hadn’t ripped my net apart I wouldn’t need to do this,’ I say, while brandishing the Swiss Army knife for emphasis. Never a good look when the nosey neighbor in the house behind is out on her deck spying on us.

‘I’m not cooking tonight!’ she shouts, her face flushed with rage.

‘Nobody asked you to cook,’ I say in a calm voice that makes me sound so much saner than her. ‘I’ll cook as soon as I finish this sewing job or as soon as you confess that you committed this crime against my net!’

She walks inside in such a way that I can’t quite figure out if she’s running away because of guilt or anger.