We’ve been together for almost three weeks now, 24/7, and sometimes it starts to show. Our individual idiosyncrasies become magnified, at home in the city there are distractions and time apart, at home in the caravan there are not. Humour is the best antidote to annoyance and anger.
Hence, ‘He can’t help it’ and Eeyore.
‘He can’t help it’ is what Johanna and I say about Colin when he eats in public and always ends up with food around his mouth, or on his chin or the side of his face, when he drinks coffee and has a milky moustache at the end, when his clothes don’t match…… It is what Johanna said today when he picked his teeth with his fingers at a café after finishing his burger (after she castigated him on his appalling manners) and when he put the end of the icecream cone on the tip of his nose and pretended to be a pecking bird (the icecream was finished, we are thankful for small mercies).
And Eeyore (of Winnie the Pooh notoriety) is what we call Johanna when her pessimistic comments come forth – it is too windy, there won’t be any waves, there’s too many people in the water, it will rain, it’s too hot...... It is what I called her today as we stood all by ourselves on a deserted beach and watched the wind make patterns with dry sand blowing across the damp; beautiful pale yellow shapes gliding across the beach and becoming lost in the breaking waves. The beauty of the moment was lost on our little Eeyore, for the discomfort of the sand pinging against her bare legs was far greater than the wondrous sight before her, that was, until Eeyore was so named and she could laugh about it and really ‘see’ what was before her.
And my own idiosyncrasies, well someone else will have to write about that!