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| INTRODUCING MAMMY WALSH, mother, wife, homemaker, trouble shooter. She won't dress it up, she won't tone it down. Mammy Walsh tells it like it is. |
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Dear Mammy Walsh, I am writing to you because I have no-one else to turn to. I think my wife is having an affair. We've only been married seventeen months, but five times in the last month there have been tyre marks in our drive that aren't from my car. They might be from a Saab. (I drive a Ford Mondeo.) Then I found a small piece of foil wrapper under my pillow, it looks like it belongs to a condom packet, but not a brand I use. Also my next-door-neighbour has taken to looking at me very sympathetically, like someone has died, and he has never been that pleasant before now, he didn't invite me and my wife to his homebrew evening. I really love my wife and this suspicion is doing my head in. I've asked her straight out if anything is going on, but she has denied it. What should I do?
David. Dublin
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Dear David from Dublin, you're in luck. I can indeed help you. My youngest daughter Helen is a private investigator and she specialises in just this kind of work. I believe her rates are quite high, but this is because she is amoral and has no fear of breaking the law. However, I can ask her as a favour to me if she'll knock a couple of euro off. She gets great results; she sets up cameras in bedrooms and catchs people up to all kinds of shenanigans. Also she hides in garden hedges and photographs people going in and out of houses. I wish she wouldn't do this, she's forever catching throat infections and I'm the one who has to listen to her whinging. She also happens to be very 'good-looking', men are forever falling in love with her, there's a chance that you might too and the situation with your wife would no longer matter. It's only fair to tell you however, that in such an eventuality, Helen will still charge you.
PS I spoke to Mr Walsh and he tells me that Saabs are very good cars, much better than Ford Mondeos. Actually he said Saabs were 'sexy', which I find highly annoying. Everything has to be 'sexy' these days. Tell me, how is a car 'sexy'? Bottoms are 'sexy' (or can be.) Eyes are 'sexy.' Not white couches or risotto or indeed cars… Sorry, I lost my train of thought there, where was I? Oh right, Mr Walsh says - and I can only apologise if this sounds harsh but I'm just passing on what he said - he said if he was a woman he'd sleep with the man with the Saab.
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Dear Mammy Walsh, I wonder if you could advise me. I have a boyfriend whom I love very much. We've been seeing each other for over two years and recently we moved in together. Last night he told me that his parents, who live in Nottingham are coming to spend the weekend with us. This is not really a problem, the problem is that he says his mother will expect me to cook a large roast on Sunday, and I am a vegetarian. I find meat disgusting, and the thought of even touching it makes my skin crawl. However, my boyfriend is quite insistent that I must do this, his mother won't approve of me if I don't, he says. What should I do? Should I insist that he cooks the roast lunch and pass it off as my efforts?
Angie, London |
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Are you off your skull? Do you want your flat burnt to the ground? Men are hopeless in the kitchen, everyone knows that. No, you need to cop on to yourself and knock off that vegetarian nonsense. My middle daughter Rachel was a vegetarian for a while, but she was only looking for notice. Then she became a drug addict and tried to kill herself and was able to stop being a vegetarian because she got all the attention she needed. The thing is Angie, is that meat is delicious, there is no point in a dinner without it and you need it to get iron and other essential nutrients. Otherwise, you'll get ear infections and dropsy, and who'll end up running up and down the stairs minding you? That's right, your mammy. Start with some chicken, Marks & Spencer do some very tasty all-in-one dinners, and before you know it you'll be on the fillet steak! Good luck!
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Dear Mammy Walsh, you seem like a devout, respectable woman, with very high standards, yet you swear like a trooper. I have often heard you use the expletive 'fecking'. I don't understand.
Byron. Auckland. |
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Byron pet, you're not Irish, are you? Let me explain. 'Fecking' is a lovely Irish word our Lord gave us when we're irate enough to want to say 'fucking' but we're in polite company. 'Fecking' is a beautiful, effective catchall phrase that you could say to a bishop. As a result I almost never employ 'fucking.' Rarely, very rarely. Like the time when Margaret arrived home to tell me she'd left her droopy-drawers husband, and even then I waited until I was in my bedroom and only said it to Mr Walsh. (I believe the exact phrase I used was, "For fuck's fucking sake, why can't just fucking one of my fucking daughters stay fucking well married for five fucking minutes? And Mr Walsh replied, "Fucked if I know." And then I said, "No fucking need for language like that." Then we had a little laugh because you have to under those sorts of circumstances.) I hope this clears the fecking matter up for you.
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Dear Mammy Walsh. My problem is that I'm addicted to chocolate. I have to have something every afternoon around three-thirty (usually a Hazelnut Caramel or a Biscuit Boost.) I mean, I HAVE to have it. Then, coming home from work, if I'm a little later than usual and hungry, I sometimes buy something for the walk from the bustop to my flat. (Often a Time Out or a Twirl.) But the biggest problem of all is with boxes of chocolates. Once I open a box I can't stop. I literally can't. I keep saying, this will be the last one but it never is and the next thing you know the box is empty apart from the coffee cremes and those yukky strawberry ones that - weirdly - are my sister's favourite but I hate them. Sometimes we get given boxes of chocs at work and they're handed around and everyone takes one and goes back to work, but I keep thinking of the open box with all the uneaten sweets and can't concentrate on anything. Last week, under such circumstances, I sneaked the box into the stationery cupboard and ate eleven - I counted - eleven chocolates in under five seconds. That really worried me. I do have some abandonment issues from my childhood and I wonder if I should see an addiction counsellor.
Fran, Newcastle |
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I am sick to the back teeth of all this addiction stuff. If you're not addicted to shoes, you're addicted to drink and if you're not addicted to drink you're addicted to Pringles. In my day, Fran, you didn't have 'issues' (unless it was of Woman's Way magazine) or twelve-step programmes or 'co-dependence' (whatever that is when it's at home.) Nowadays you want to be addicted to everything and it's only because it's fashionable. Not so long ago it was fashionable for you girls to be lesbians and before that it was vegetarians. Chocolate is lovely, everyone knows that. Only a 'weirdo' doesn't love it. We have a tin in our house, with a great selection in it and I myself enjoy a funsized Twix with my cup of coffee every morning, and most days after lunch Mr Walsh and myself share a Kitkat. (Not the chunky kind, the old-fashioned four-finger ones. I actually bought them for Helen, she was in bed with a throat infection and asked me to get her Kitkats when I went to Dunnes. However, being Helen, she didn't specify that it was actually Chunky Kitkats she wanted and when I arrived home with the non-Chunky variety, she nearly ate the head off of me. It was so bad that Mr Walsh got back into the car and drove around till he found the chunky ones. Since then we have been working our way through the non-chunky ones and very nice they are too.) |
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