God Save The Queen - Sunday

‘So no real reason then.’ I state to my wife as she fusses over which blouse to wear and I vacillate over unlikely shorts this time of year, or trousers.

‘It’s just nice to do.’ She replies, tilting her head in the mirror then turning towards me. God I haven’t a clue which one, I think as she sees the look and decides not to ask. She goes back to the wardrobe as I tug the shorts off. They seem a bit snugger round the waist since the last time the sun came out.

It’s another ill-fated, much rain-delayed autumn barbecue, which will still probably end up with soggy attendees huddling under a leaky gazebo, a couple of kids heading for casualty after bouncing off the trampoline at unexpected angles and a beer-fuelled argument about property prices. I don’t really want to go as I could happily live without seeing the majority of people coming, for at least another year – probably longer. But my wife and her cronies still arrange the twelve-monthly gathering of friends, neighbours and even ex-neighbours, who have the sort of lifelong membership usually reserved for Wimbledon winners and those who make double centuries at venerable cricket grounds. I’m not bowled over by the prospect.

‘Most people wait for a jubilee or a dead monarch to have these cheesy garden parties.’ I grumble, as I notice the jeans are a bit tight too and that’s before a carnivorous chow-down on burnt burgers and incinerated ribs with less meat on them than Kate Moss. My wife glances at me with what eighties warblers ABC definitely wouldn’t call The Look Of Love, although no doubt someone will be playing them, along with Simply Red and the f***ing Lighthouse Family before I’m sufficiently pissed to care. My Clash, Sex Pistols and The Damned compilation was swiftly ousted by a woman who loved Michaels Jackson a couple of years ago. Her husband looked like an albino chimp appropriately enough, and it was after I inadvertently called him Bubbles that the first argument started.

‘Just be pleasant’ Coaches my wife as I decide against any shirt with even a hint of Hawaii about it and plump for something loose and plain – the best way to get an easy screw according to the serial shagger I ended up drinking with last year.

‘Hi great to see you.’ Gushes a pasty-faced man as we enter the chosen garden clouds gathering, and I try to hide the cheap lager I brought with me in the pile on a wobbly trestle table.

‘You too mate.’ I fib, wincing at the unconvincing term. He must know, as I do whenever the disingenuous word is used, that I can’t remember his name or what he does. The man has worn horribly and looks as grey and washed out as a pair of old underpants. This sort of barefaced deception would get me prosecuted under the Consumer Protection Rules if I applied the lie to a worn out three-bed semi detached house presented, immaculately.

My wife seems to be circulating effortlessly while I get stuck with bores bigger than North Sea oil rigs can muster and a new couple who are wetter than the weather is about to get.

‘So you’re the estate agent?’ States the scrawny wife as her underfed husband with the limp handshake looks on attentively. He looks in need of a good meal but as she’s already told me she’s decided they should both be vegetarians, he’ll get no sympathy - or sausages - from me.

‘We think we paid a good price for our house.’ Continues the woman in what sounds like a challenge. They didn’t buy it from me so there’s no duty of care. I mention a similar one we’ll be marketing in a week or two at less money and leave.

‘Christ these people have aged.’ I whisper to my wife when I go for a top-up - of someone else’s beer.

‘We all have.’ She replies tartly.

‘Which family have those bloody cats?’ I ask, glancing at a portly man carrying more timber than a lumberjack’s trailer, wearing a suspiciously hair-covered fleece

‘You won’t be crapping on their lawn.’ She tells me decisively.

God save.

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The Country Life - Sunday

‘Not sure if this is for me either.’ I tell my wife hesitantly as we try something new. After so many years of marriage you need a bit of variety but this might be a step to far.

‘Just give it a go, or you’ll never know.’ She urges, as I wish I’d stayed in bed this time.

‘I just think I’ll feel uncomfortable.’ I tell her realising even as I utter the words I’m sounding like a spunkless bore with no taste for adventure.

‘God thousands of people do this every weekend.’ She informs me tersely. ‘Just relax and you’ll enjoy it.’

A grey-haired man in a hi-vis jacket waves me forward and we swing into a field.

‘We’ll get bogged down here.’ I grumble as the wheels spin and the traction control light winks on the dashboard.

Another officious looking character with a walkie-talkie and that zealot’s control-freak look about him, bids me join a raggedy line of cars disgorging more sparsely covered craniums and cellulite-blotted legs, plus several picnic hampers.

‘We’re too young for this.’ I hiss to my wife, as a couple in matching Berghaus jackets and sensible footwear ease out of a Volvo estate - onto the estate.

‘Nonsense.’ She corrects. ‘They’re probably all about our age.’

Now I’m depressed. As we walk towards the imposing country house I realise belatedly I spend my working week looking at homes I can’t afford - so this isn’t the best choice of weekend recreation. I know it’s rude, but I can’t help staring at the other crumblies around me shuffling towards the entrance booth of the National Trust property. I’m much younger than this lurching stick-carrying, premium-outdoor-clothes-wearing bunch of fifty and sixty-somethings. I used to pogo to The Damned I think angrily, as a woman in those lightweight travel trousers with more zips than my bondage pair used to sport, smiles politely at me, something that doesn’t happen much Monday to Friday. I decide not to spit at her.

‘If we join today,’ gushes my wife looking at the leaflet once we’ve gained access to the main grounds. ‘We get our entrance fee back and a pair of little binoculars.’ The woman behind the counter had been affably saccharine-sweet, the sort of gushing faux friendliness you only find in volunteers, Bible-bashers and estate agents short of new instructions.

‘I don’t think we belong here.’ I tell my wife in a familiar refrain, still scanning the elderly crowd for someone who at least I feel looks my age and doesn’t dress like some in-bred minor royal posing for a picture in Country Life. It’s the way I feel when I value a home that is usually the preserve of the top-end agents. The types of braying weak-chinned Charlies who have double-barrelled surnames, a minor public school education yet manage an understanding of how to milk the common agricultural policy grants. Where a home must have at least a Grade Two listing, a drawing room doesn’t have toddler’s scribbling pinned to a fridge by magnets and the livestock isn’t just a yappy terrier trying to shag your leg.

‘Oh my God it’s lovely.’ Coos my wife as we walk up to the grand Palladian-style mansion some long-dead industrialist built on the back of exploiting workers somewhere in the world. Coal mines or textile mills on this island, tea or cotton plantations once you get past the Isle of Wight. I can feel the old punk anarchist ethic still bubbling under despite three decades of conformity, several house moves up the ladder and the uncomfortable memory of all the worthless endowment mortgages I helped flog.

‘Don’t say, we must have it.’ I tell my wife mockingly. Echoing the cry of a hundreds of other females I’ve watched urge their partners to overspend on a flashy kitchen and newly installed sanitary ware.

‘Wow this is how the other half live.’ Continues my wife as we enter another high-ceilinged room, walls covered with paintings and tapestries pillaged from third world countries for little more than sparkly smoke and mirror tricks and the promise of a God that still hasn’t turned up.

‘We’re not joining.’ I say firmly.

As it happens the mini-binoculars are rather good…

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