Kiss with a fist

On Saturday evening, my wife tried to kill me.

Her weapon of choice? A blue, flowery beach bag recently purchased in Ibiza. Little did I know that the bag had been transformed into a full on killing (or at least, wounding) machine, weighed down as it was with trumpet mutes, a folded-up music stand and all manner of unlikely objects carefully packaged for maximum impact.

It had been such a quiet evening and I had, even if I do say so myself, been a rather generous (perhaps even magnanimous – always wanted to use that word) young man by agreeing to provide a lift to and from a concert venue that took me a full ten minutes to get to. I had even bought a friend a portion of chips, grilled a couple of gammon steaks and treated him to insightful comments such as ‘we really are rubbish, aren’t we?’ while watching Team GB limp out of the Olympics on penalties against South Korea. In short, I’d chalked up a few heaven points and was surely more due a pat on a back and a hearty word of thanks than the fate that actually awaited me…

The scene: I reversed the car into position on the driveway, stepped out of the car, opened the front door and returned to the rear of the car to shut the boot door once my wife had removed her belongings. Perhaps I should have been taking them out myself in the evening’s final act of magnanimity or perhaps I should have never been there at all, but it’s too late now to contemplate what might have been. All that’s left to me is a memory – a hazy, head-throbbing memory of brutality that will live with me for many a year.

At the foot of the car stood the cat, innocently brushing her fur against the legs of my wife in a timely reminder of our forgetfulness in leaving the house earlier without feeding her. She looked so – what’s the word? – huggable. So…pickupable. So…

It was at that moment that the bag struck. Swung with merciless abandon, the full force of the loaded weapon smacked against a face that was focusing on nothing other than the furry beauty of the cat below. Staggering backwards, I clasped a hand to my head, half-expecting blood to be seeping out. Staring back at me, with a look of mingled shock and amusement, my wife slammed the boot into position, thankfully missing the inquisitive head of the cat, and assessed her work.

To her great disappointment, I was still standing. I was even denying the need for apology, saying ‘no, no, this was my fault. Don’t worry about it’, while words such as ‘delayed concussion’ and ‘people have died from lesser blows’ competed for dominance in my already-clouded mind. Within minutes, the cat was fed, the car was locked (by me) and a glass of water was in my hand. Healing water. Washing away the pain.

A day and a half of concussion later and the attempted murder seems to be wearing off. In fact, I’ll probably even make a full recovery and will be in a good position to seek retribution the next time a flowery beach bag is in sight. But, then again, if there’s a cat to be stroked, picked up or simply pointed out, who knows what might happen?

And so, having been dragged back from the light at the end of the tunnel, I wonder what your experiences are? Have you too been close to death – I’m using ‘death’ in the broadest sense of the word here… – at the hand of a spouse, partner or cat?

Please tell me I’m not alone.