Joys of Christmas

When oft upon my throne I sat/Recalling this, recalling that ... " Barney, my rather farcical friend, said he had just been embarking on a rhymed poem (those were to be the opening lines) when his wife of two decades interrupted with some free verse of her own: "You still here? I thought you'd gone for the groceries!"

"All the rhyme in me dried up after that, mate," he complained, adding, "The next time I get poetically inclined I think I'd better hang a sign outside my study door that says, ‘When oft you want to have a talk/Upon the door I ask you knock.'" We laughed and agreed it might be worth a try seeing as this column has to do with Barney and other signs he has left hanging in his house.

With the stress of Christmas drawing nearer, however, Barney says it may not be tactful to pen words like ‘want' and ‘talk' in the same line, particularly because Mrs Barney ‘wants' quite a few things this Christmas and she intends to initiate some ‘talk' about it.

"It's got to do with a rash promise I made last year, mate; some jewellery and a watch. You know," he says, leaning conspiratorially close, "It's easy to promise the world when Christmas is 12 months away, but come November and she's starting to get the decorations up and unpack the gigantic Christmas tree my wallet develops palpitations, I swear it."

Barney says he tried  some time in August, when the fingers of panic were just beginning to tickle his anxiety to resolve the issue by means of a little subtle philosophising. He hung a little sign just above the headboard of their bed, more above his wife's pillow, which asked: ‘If you want something, how can you stop thinking about it?' This, he hoped, would give Mrs Barney pause for thought; maybe reflect on her hapless husband's weakened economic status given the recession. "I left for work that day," he told me, "I also made sure I hung the sign after she had left the house to get her nails done at the salon down the street. But you know how a working day possesses your mind, body and soul, so that you have no time to think of home at all during the work day?"

I nodded knowingly. I've been down that street.

Response

"When I returned home that evening," Barney continued, "all was pleasant. There she sat, nails polished to a glassy sheen, reading Women's Day Out and sipping orange juice. The usual hellos and enquiries about my day. All routine. She's thinking about it, I thought. Later, when I got to the bedroom I realised she had indeed given it vigorous thought, because on my side of the bed hung a separate placard asking: ‘If you don't want anything what is there to think about?'"

Barney said he soon responded with a more sober philosophical query, aimed at domestic rapprochement. This is what the next placard asked: ‘If you don't want anything is there anything to be angry about?' Mrs Barney had been sulking. She'd suddenly ‘forgotten' to make Barney's coffee and the cereal she prepared was made with a total lack of feeling (his words). Mrs Barney chose not to respond to Barney's philosophical placards.

"End of matter, I thought, mate," he told me, "but not a chance. What do I find on the dining table yesterday but one of her notebooks. Out of curiosity I opened to the blue bookmarked page and what do you think I find? She's writing verse, too! This one goes something like: "If promises were writ in water/How full my husband's lake would be/There he could sail with wife and daughter/His thoughts divorced of jewellery…"

All very nicely coincidental, as Barney pointed out, reaching into his pocket and extracting a velvet lined box containing earrings. "Yesterday being the day I received my pay cheque," he said, adding with a rueful smile, "Note the past tense."

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.