Going solo

OPINION: In the interests of doing a bit more wriggling, and perhaps subconsciously in a vague effort to knock the constant jiggling of my various bits and pieces on the head, Mr mr and I splashed out on a badminton set this week, writes Sarah McCarthy in this week's Uptown Girl.

It's totally cute, comes in a wee special bag with a net and badminton sticks and badminton balls (and also a volleyball for some astounding reason) and is the best thing we've bought since those onion rings from Fergburger in Queenstown last year.

Anyway, we got the badminton kit home and after tea we spent a chummy 10mins putting the net up in the front garden.

Okay, so that's a big fat lie.

It took almost an hour and was so upsetting and tense that my cousin, who had just popped around to say hi, stuck around so she could watch the show. You'd think putting up a badminton net would be a simple, straightforward operation, but it was like separating conjoined twins inside a suitcase with a torch, a plastic knife and a packet of ready salted chips.

The instructions (which only I read, Mr mr of course just started throwing parts a, f and x around the yard in gay abandon) were in English, thankfully, but quite vague, as if the person who wrote them had only read the Cliff notes about the movie based on the book written by the guy who lived next door to the person who actually made the badminton net.

"Attach clips c and pi squared thusly-like" it said, showing a picture of the whole, entirely set up net taken by the Hubble telescope.

I think I worked up more of a sweat getting the bloody thing up than actually playing the game.

But in the end we put it up-ish (it sags, but at our age what doesn't, so at least it fits in with the rest of the household) and commenced a-playing.

And there went my carefully constructed web of lies and deceit.

I have always told Mr mr (and anyone else that has ever wanted me to play anything from social netball to Cluedo) that the reason I don't play games is because I hate it when people get competitive and wreck the fun, and that I am a bit unco and can't really play games/remember the rules. I tell them I prefer to play solitary games, like seeing how long you can hold your breath for while driving past the Mataura freezing works (dangerously exciting) or how fast you can eat a bag of Burger Rings.

But that is a lie. I am, in fact, a bit of a bad sport.

I sulk. I throw paddies. I throw balls over the fence ("Oops, silly, plumpty, un-coordinated me" I say out loud, "Ha ha, stick that you bugger, I'll teach you for getting me out" I say in my head) get a feral, John McEnroe mouth on me and generally turn into a squinty-eyed, well, bitch.

Still, Mr mr is pretty used to my appalling behaviour, so we're still playing after tea, as these glorious days turn into golden nights, adding to the noise in our neighbourhood of children laughing and horses clip-clopping by with our unnecessary grunts and me yelling, "you're not my ******* boss, you know, ********" and then hitting the shuttlecock high, high up into the tree. Suburban bliss.

» Sarah McCarthy is a Southland Times staff member.

- © Fairfax NZ News

Newest First

Oldest First