FOUR FINGERS AND THIRTEEN TOES – BEWARE THE PERILS OF INTERNET … SHOPPING

Last week, after disposing of the Christmas cardboard, the Christmas cards and thankfully polishing off the remnants of the chocolate selection box – the bars that no-one else likes, Steve decided we needed a Board meeting to discuss our corporate strategy for the coming year.

So, with the view from the office window resembling a dismantled winter wonderland, with muddy foots marks and tyre tracks on the ice covered drive, we sat down and started the meeting.  Like most good finance managers, the first thing Steve noted on the agenda was paying the credit card bills from the Christmas spend.  Oops, I hadn’t realised how much had so generously been donated to Play.com or to our friends in that faceless superstore otherwise known as Amazon.  How easy it is to get carried away with click of a mouse, when the house is glistening with the glow that comes from the Christmas tree and the obligatory seasonal CD, is reminding me of how I used to dress when Slade were top of the charts, Abba produced their obligatory seasonal video and Jonah Louis kept on telling me to Stop the Cavalry.

But I digress.  Having agreed to spend less next Christmas and that painting the house would have to wait for another couple of months, the cheques to pay the credit card bills were duly written, with a firm promise from both sides of the board room table that we wouldn’t be so generous to those “Dot com” people next year.

But then the door bell went.  No great occurrence in our house.  The door bell is always going.  Off Steve went into the hall, and a moment or two later there was the sound of jovial banter coming from the porch.  It was then I realised to my horror that internet shopping has a major peril.  My husband of 21 years had another person in his life.  No it wasn’t the leggy blond who lives just up the road, but the postal delivery man.  I wouldn’t have believed it, had I not heard it myself.  There was an exchange about what Christmas and New Year had been like as if they were old friends.  And then I realised it.  In the space of a mere four weeks, the FedEx man had become an integral part of our family.  He knew exactly where to put the parcels in the hallway and was on first name terms with Steve.  He was so familiar with the Moriarty-Simmonds family that he declared a Christmas miracle had taken place in the house when Steve went to the door on one occasion without using his wheelchair … I was utterly amazed when Steve confessed that this humble delivery man fell to his knees and worshipped the man of the house, when he had seemingly “taken up his bed and walked” !!!

The Board meeting was hastily cancelled, and a rather sheepish husband offered to go into rehab.  We don’t have a “Priory” clinic in this part of the world and I decided that having spent so much on his Christmas presents, it would be shame if he wasn’t in the house to use his new Ken Hom wok !!  So I told him that rehab wouldn’t be necessary.

But how was I going to cope with this devastating revelation … Should I fix up an interview with American Chat show host Jay Leno, or should I go for an exclusive with Jonathan Ross on the BBC … It would be such a marketing opportunity … maybe another book – “Four Fingers versus the FedEx Man”. 

Then I looked at my man, all forlorn and bereft without his FedEx fix.  And it dawned upon me in a blaze of light, rather like the angelic hosts appearing to the Shepherds, I would do what all scorned wives do at a time like this.  I would sign up for a reality TV show.  Yes that was it … Wheeling on Ice.  Watch out Heather, I’m hot on your heels !!!