When Judy skipped into the kitchen for breakfast today, I knew that the mockery would not stop.
‘I would have thought that you’d have got tired of that by now,’ I said.
Judy’s lips did a fair impression of shocked. ‘Me grow tired of skipping? My dear Richard. So long as it give you great pleasure, I will continue to skip.’ And with that she skipped across the room to the fridge.
I’ve been suffering this teasing since last night’s show. After watching Meryl Streep skip through ‘Dancing Queen’ in the new film version of ‘Mamma Mia!’, I had said one totally innocuous line. I’ll quote it in full just to show you how innocent it was.
‘For a man,’ I said, ‘there is nothing nicer... and I mean pleasanter, for a man to see and admire in a woman or women, is when they skip, no matter how old they are. A skipping woman is a sweet sight.’
And I maintain that skipping is a sweet sight that fills a man with incalculable pleasures.
Now, I know I’m opening myself to scoffing here. There are some who might even say that skipping merely highlights the shifting contours of the female blouse as it goes bouncing around the room. And I agree. A buxom woman skipping wouldn’t be sweet at all if you look at like that. I merely meant to say that the pleasure of the skip reveals the innocent within us all. Happy go lucky, carefree, it is the child within all of us momentarily escaping the burdens of adulthood. Skipping is to be seven years old again when the greatest worry is whether your pet butterfly has died in the night. Skipping is coming home from school, the first day of the summer holidays. Skipping is going to the corner shop with twenty pence in your hand and knowing that you can buy a bar of chocolate and an ice cream with pennies to spare.
All of which I explained to Judy over breakfast.
‘Oh, Richard,’ she said, laying her hand on my arm. ‘I didn’t realise that you were such a sensitive soul.’
‘Well, I am,’ I answered. ‘And I hope this means you’ll end this horrible mockery of what was an innocent remark.’
She smiled and gathered the empty plates together. ‘Of course I won’t,’ she said and skipped off to the sink.
Some people just ruin skipping...
4 comments:
I can't believe you mocked the tragic death of Ermintrude. My pet butterfly. After her tragic death at the hands of the cat, I have never been able to skip again. Aaah, lost innocence and youth - will it ever skip again?
Ermintrude? I didn't even know that Ermintrude existed. I was thinking of my pet butterfly who was called Boris and lasted all of one summer's afternoon. I found him dead the next day at the bottom of the jam jar.
And I wasn't mocking Ermintrude's death. I was saying it was sweet. Not the death, I should add. That just sounded grotesque. Cats rarely catch butterflies but when they do they make sure they are particularly cruel. Mind you, the jam jar wasn't much better.
And I maintain that skipping is a sweet sight that fills a man with incalculable pleasures.
Thank you, Richard. It is a compliment I'm happy to accept...
I wouldn't have imagined, Selena, that skipping was your thing. When I visited your blog recently, Judy forced me to clean my browser's cache for fear of what might be found there.
However, I can see that I might be wrong. Legs like that might well have been honed via skipping. In which case, skip on, dear Selena. It is a sweet sight, indeed.
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