First published 12 May 2006
To paraphrase that infamous remark by Princess Diana, there were three of us in this marriage and it was getting a bit crowded.
I’m not in the habit of quoting the late royal, but her words do have a certain resonance with me these days. That’s because He Who Can’t be Named seems to have developed an obsession with another woman.
Her name is not Camilla, but I fear that I am at one with Diana in the crowded marriage department.
My own “trouble with three” started a week or so ago when He Who Can’t came home with a book written by the other woman. It’s a big classy publication with high-production values and explicit photographs, all in colour.
I knew we were in trouble when he sat down with his new book and started drooling over the breasts and thighs in the photographs. He kept muttering, things like “exquisite” and “mouth-watering.”
Whether he was referring to the artistry of the photography or the breasts and thighs, I do not know. It was probably better that way.
“Wow, look at that!” he trilled, as he happened upon a particularly fetching breast or thigh. “I’d really like to try that.”
Yes, I bet you would, Sunshine.
He was all over that book, dragging it around the house everywhere he went and sitting down with it in every spare moment. It was almost embarrassing.
“Is her book more amusing than my columns?” I asked one evening, hoping to snap him out of his spell. His absent-minded answer was “yes.” I suppose that could have been interpreted either way.
But then he piped up as if to continue the steam of his inner thoughts. “And do you know, it’s not just the content that amazes me. It’s the way she lays it all out. She’s a real stylist, you know.”
A stylist, too? What a little treasure this woman must be. Is there anything she doesn’t do?
And then things got worse. He started telling his male friends about his multi-talented other woman. And they, of course, responded as you might expect a male to respond to this sort of material. It was all ooohhs and ahhhs.
On one Sunday afternoon I caught him foisting the breast and thigh pictures on one of these male droolers who happened to drop in for a visit. If you could have seen the two of them cooing and salivating. There was no shame, so sense of impropriety, no attempt to hide their admiration for this woman from me. It was all drool. Honestly! Men!
That the woman obsessed over happens to be international cookery writer Donna Hay, and that the breasts and thighs in question at one time belonged to a chicken is of little significance.
As He Who Can’t put it: She’s a stylist. What this says to me is that I’m not a stylist. I guess that would be a reference to my exploding cup cakes in the oven. They aren’t good enough any more. And my overcooked chicken breasts and tough chicken thighs don’t go the distance.
My lack of – how shall we say it – interest in cooking has forced him into the recipes and pictures of Donna Hay and me into the role of jilted woman. We’re always the last to know, us women abandoned for the recipes, photos and food styling of cookery writers.
You know that expression hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? Well I’m going to put it another way: Hell hath no chicken simmered with juniper berries like a woman whose man is obsessed with Donna Hay.
Long live the other woman. Long live Donna Hay.
glethbridge@herald.ca
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