The Squashed Man Who Married a Dragon Read Free Page B

me like a life sentence and a terrifying prospect. We then started to search for small, low cost cottages in the countryside, just north of Wigan, not an easy task even then.

MORE LOVEY DOVEY
    EARLY LIFE
    Now it’s all very well for a young husband to ogle his brand new wife, standing by the stove in a short mini skirt and tall heels, looking like the best Christmas present he will ever have, while she tries to conjure up something to eat. She looks fabulous – but what she finally serves up on the plate won’t yet match his Mum’s cooking by a long way.
    First came a series of burnt offerings and a few dodgy dishes. These are tender moments when a saint like husband will treat his wife with compassion and patience. Vicki’s early repertoire and her favourites – God knows why – included yellow fish drowning in a sea of hot milk and a sort of minced beef in a very thin soggy gruel with sloppy mashed potato. These were ultimately to be replaced with real food — thankfully she found her cooking form, in time to save us.
    My dear old Mum always, without fail, cooked the family a proper fried breakfast of eggs, bacon and fried bread every single day. When I started work she got up extra early so that I left the house, walked across Wigan – to catch the 8.22 train to Manchester – with something hot inside me.
    The light of my life had other ideas, whether or not this was entirely her own or with mother-in-law’s help I don’t know. The ways of women are conniving but she cooked for me every morning, fried eggs, crispy bacon and fried bread. No new husband could ask for more and even first thing in the morning she always looked fantastic.
    Breakfast just got better and better along came mushrooms, windy beans, tomatoes and after a week or two, black puddings and extra fried bread joined the plate. What a girl!
    The cunning trap was baited, set and after eight weeks of it I couldn’t look another fried breakfast in the face. She’d won…and for life too!
    Now the kitchen, although the hub of the home is not often a safe place for me, I don’t do cooking – yet a few of my male friends are really very good at it, then they have to do it again and again. I limit myself to toast with scrambled eggs or with cheese or baked beans. I can do these dishes in all sorts of mouth-watering combinations but beyond this – No! – except breakfast which is my signature dish which is handcrafted and served up wherever the lucky girl happens to be and not without some well earned bonus points.
    She first has a cup of very hot water – this she can do herself – but I bring her fruit juice in a quiet and servile way, followed by toast very lightly buttered and smeared with a small amount of honey (set honey)! Not that she is pernickety you understand – just bloody fussy.
    Now we come to the clever bit – I cut the toast into all sorts of different and romantic shapes: pyramids, diamond, heart shaped, modern art and even once with the aid of a toothpick and a piece of paper I put sails on her toast fingers.
    This is accompanied by very, very weak tea, so weak that no one else counts it as tea. It has by decree to be poured within seconds of being made. I know, I’m just a fool to this woman – but then there have been times when it has paid off. So I keep saying this to myself like a sort of mantra – “It will come good in the end.” I should have guessed by this time that Vicki was not normal; some strange, alien creature was what I had married.
    Love changes so many things but the unbelievable and most cruel of all, after we had been married a short while, she deliberately and on purpose grew another two inches in height! I suddenly realised, she was looking me in the eye, more or less on a level. To me, every inch of height advantage is precious. I looked down in a loving and guiding way on the chosen one, all gone! In high heels, I