Carol’s Column

No coffee perks in my direction

MY HUSBAND is a mystery. We can be stuck in the middle of the vast Kalahari with not a landmark in sight, and my spouse will narrow his eyes authoritatively, gaze at the burning sun, and say: “We must go that way.”

Alternatively, we will be scuba diving 30 metres beneath the sea, surrounded by coral reefs with snapping moray eels glaring from each crevice.

Commandingly, he will check the air supply, gesture upwards and unhesitatingly lead me directly to the boat. His sense of direction is miraculous.

Which is why I cannot understand the following inconsistency.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked the other day.

“Yes, I’d love a cup,” I trilled with ecstasy. Experts advise wives to trill occasionally, it injects a note of enthusiasm into marriage, they say.

As I sat in the bedroom, I heard the sounds of much clattering from below.

“Dammit, where’s the coffee?” yelled my husband.

“In the usual place,” I replied. From the original trill evolved a shriek.

“Where’s the usual place?”

“In the cupboard next to the stove,” I shouted.

“Right. Where are the cups?” he bellowed.

“The cups are where they always are.”

“Where are they always?”

Then: “Where’s the sugar?”

“You know where the sugar is. In the cupboard with the salt and pepper.”

“Which cupboard’s that?”

The banging increased.

“I don’t believe this,” I screeched. “We’ve been living in the same house for over 20 years and you don’t know where the coffee is kept.”

“Don’t confuse me,” he retorted, “just come and show me.”

Which was not possible due to the fact that I had just applied a do-it-yourself leg wax to my lower limbs. At the height of the missing coffee excitement, I’d inadvertently crossed my legs and they were now concreted together.

It is not easy to make coffee in such a position. In fact, it is almost impossible to move.

It took a painstaking six hours to prise my legs apart whereupon I sighed with relief. As did my husband.

“Right, now you can make us a cup of coffee,” he said.

It is at times like this that I regret I am not the Sister Superior of a Carmelite convent if not monastery, which I suppose, might be more fun.

I mentioned this to a friend.

“In the same way that children suffer from selective hearing,” she said, “husbands suffer from selective vision. For example, you can be sure he’ll know exactly where the beers are stocked.”

“It’s extraordinary,” I said to my good friend Betty. “This is the man who can guide me across the mountains of Lesotho without a map, the man who will solder a Landrover together with a cigarette lighter, who will sail a dinghy in a howling gale and return safely to shore. And yet, he can’t find coffee when he’s on familiar terrain.”

“A cup of coffee’s nothing,” she said. “Try him on dinner. He’ll turn your kitchen into a war zone that makes Iraq look like a picnic. Be thankful that he doesn’t imagine himself the Clement Freud of Parkwood.”

Meanwhile, this coffee thing is getting me down because for the past week, coffee making has ground to a halt. As a matter of principle, I won’t even boil the water, whereas my husband maintains he’s misplaced the taps.

Then, only yesterday, I found the solution — a shining automatic coffee machine with compartments for coffee, milk, sugar and water. To activate this cunning device, you push a button. And voila, a cup of delicious coffee emerges.

“This,” giggled the salesperson, “will even replace your husband.

Quite.

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