The best picture of a man casting his repast across the room that I could muster at short notice.
Picture this little domestic vignette. A hard-working, well-meaning family man arrives back at his domicile after a hard day on the building site, or directing traffic in a busy city centre, or perhaps earning his crust by destabilising the currency of a developing nation or two. He is tired, he is jaded from the stresses and strains of his chosen profession, but most of all, he is ravenous. His stomach is labouring under the misapprehension that his throat has been cut, such is the depth of his hunger.
On entry, he finds that the repast cooked by his significant other is imprisoned behind the oven door, slowly drying out with the oven set to 85°C, whilst his partner attends to the bedtime routine of their misbehaving, giddy children. He rescues the burnt offerings from their arid tomb, pops the hot plate onto a tray, runs cold water over his scalded and blistered hands, grabs some cutlery, douses the indiscernable, steaming mass in salt and pepper to taste, sits down in the armchair endowed with the gentle patina of five years straining under his arse, turns on the television set, and settles down to gratefully devour the product of his partner's domestic science education whilst watching yet another repeat of the "QI" televisual strand on "Dave".
All our man wants is to satiate his hunger and empty his mind of anything resembling thought; he craves nothing more than peace, quiet, and a full tummy.
His partner, however, has other designs. She "wants to talk". Beneath the veneer of her faded, weather-beaten allure lies a bubbling, critical mass of hormonally-driven ire. Her darling children have got on her sagging tits all day, the one day off a week she has from her dreadful non-job in Customer Services at Marks and Spencer. The door of the washing machine does not close properly. The bathroom is full of dirty laundry. The ceiling in the hall needs painting. There is a mass of bric-a-brac which must be taken to the local recycling centre. Her "friends" all have well-paid, rewarding careers, and their conversations made her feel inadequate when they met up in "Ask" earlier that day. One of her friends has a pretty new dress that flattered her figure beautifully. Nobody gives her a second glance in the street anymore. Her face is increasingly lined, her arse looks like a vanilla blancmange in tights, she "has the painters in" in three days time. Everybody else's life seems so... perfect. Whilst hers is shit.
All of this stoked-up tension is looking for an outlet. And our man is the unwitting victim.
She enters the sitting room. Our man grunts, through a mouth laden with chicken, mashed potato and spinach, in order to acknowledge her presence. She is filled with nothing but contempt for this slighty overweight, seemingly uncaring troglodyte in the armchair. An exploratory verbal sortie begins; an inquiry about the hall ceiling is met with a curt "yur, I'll do it at the weekend", as is the news that the washing machine door has malfunctioned.
Après ceci, le déluge. All bets are off at this point; our man is swamped with the full force of the hormonal, emotional tsunami, as he is blamed for everything from the fact that she can't get into her jeans to the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict by this screaming, combustive harridan. His dreams of peace and quiet lie in tatters; he must now carefully choose his response. He can put his meal to one side, sit next to his partner, place his loving, manly arms around her, and try to calm her down in tactile fashion whilst listening to her litany of complaints, offering tender words of reassurance and understanding. But fuck that for a game of soldiers, he's knackered and she has chosen to push all the wrong buttons.
Alternatively, he can simply stand up and land a massive swing right onto the point of her jaw, sending her sprawling across the settee. However, our man (though angry) is not of such neandrethal stock that he would choose to counter a verbal beating with a physical one. After all, they have been through a lot together, and he still remains fond of her, despite her increasing disquiet about the miserable state of her existence. Besides, he could find himself serving a custodial sentence. And, when all is said and done, things could be worse; she could be Ms. Sinead O'Connor.
But wait. There is another option, a "third way", if you will, one which is oft overlooked in this age of equality and the "new man"... and our man takes it. Without saying a word, he stands up, takes the dish in his right hand, and lashes it against the far wall, before grabbing his coat and stomping out of the house to visit his local pub for a pint. This emphatic demonstration, on the face of it, seems to be the ultimate in childish futility; he has messed up his nest, he has allowed his emotions to get the better of him, and his dinner is now in the dog (and all over the chocolate brown, faux suede drapes). However, this simple, puerile act strikes to the very core of the female psyche; the rejection of the fruit of her loving domestic endeavours by the hunter-gatherer is such a viscerally profound gesture that it brings her up short. It conveys the irrefutable, insistent message that the delicate threads that serve to bind their relationship together, though complex, are fundamentally fragile; akin to cobwebs, as it were, and just as easily swept away.
Sobbing, as she cleans up food remants and broken crockery, she takes stock of her actions; by the time she has finishing rubbing the "1001 Dry Foam" into their oatmeal Wilton in a semi-circular, anti-clockwise motion against the weft of the pile, she has realised that all of her issues are mere trifles, and she has resolved to be a nicer person as well as a more sympathetic partner to her hard-working, much-maligned protector. Sure, her partner has made a bit of a mess in the lounge, but in doing so he was merely reasserting his position of dominance at the head of the household, and she secretly harbours erotic fantasies in which he assumes an ultra-assertive demeanour. She might even let him have a bunk-up when she pulls the plug out next week on the strength of that.
Our man, having consumed six pints of Guinness on an unline stomach and endured a drab Champions League encounter between Bate Borisov and Viktoria Plzen on the television in his local hostelry, is also in reflective and conciliatory mood; she is not such a bad old stick after all, and this inspires him to demonstrate his love, affection and appreciation for her efforts in keeping the household together via the gift of "The Kebab of Peace". But that gift, dear friends, is quite another story.
Have others found that lashing their dinner has proved to be the unlikely salvation of their relationship?
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