Bunty Takes Sanctuary at the Manor

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS FOR CYNTHIA AND CRICHTON

Why, oh why do I let Crichton us get into these scrapes? 

We attended the usual New Year’s bash at Bunty and Derek Gainsborough’s last night and I rather wish we hadn’t. The meal was delicious of course (Bunty is a marvellous cook) and the pile of empties pretty impressive, by midnight. We all sang Auld Lang Syne, and danced around in a circle, spilling our drinks on the carpet and the Shih Tzu.  

And then talk turned to resolutions. 

‘I intend to learn to play the ukulele,’ Monica informed us to cheers and groans, ‘and Douglas will be cutting down on jammy dodgers. He’s insatiable.’

‘I am,' he said and pulled a face, ‘but only for you, my darling.’

Inky said he’d just do his best stay alive until next year and Sally said she would try to be more tolerant; she is already the kindest person I know. I thought I'd better add something to the mix, so I told the assembled company that I would be keeping a diary as per my suggestion in the Christmas epistle. This didn’t arouse much interest and I wish in retrospect that I’d opted for something more spectacular, like running a marathon or learning Hebrew.

We had flopped out on the sofas by now and Derek’s single malt was doing the rounds. It’s at this messy stage in procedures that Crichton needs to be controlled. If I can catch him off guard, before the decanter reaches him, I can usually manage to muscle him out of the door and steer him towards home, before he gets into too much trouble. This time I was too late. He was already well past that turning point and into the home straight of silliness. Before I could stop him, he’d announced to the assembled company that he would join me in the diary keeping arena. 
I almost choked on my mint crisp. My husband has barely written a word, apart from signing cheques, since leaving school in 1979. He stood up on the coffee table waving a butter knife like a sword, and with his cardboard pirate hat over one eye announced. ‘It will be a doddle. Who’d like a few quid on me completing the task or not?’ 

There was a certain amount of jeering at this point and Bunty shouted, ‘We all know Cynthia can write, but  Crichton's, an illiterate. You’ll never do it!’

Well, I wasn’t having that. Bunty might be one of my dearest friends but there’s only one woman who criticises my husband and that’s me, Cynthia Trehorlicks. 

I drew myself up to my full five foot three and said that  Crichton was perfectly capable of writing a three-volume novel if the mood took him, and of course he could easily manage something as simple as a diary.

'Bet you ten quid he can't,' said Douglas.

‘Call that a bet?’ retorted Bunty. She always was a show off. ‘£500 says you each can’t write something every day for a year.’ 

The room went quiet. Even Derek looked shocked, and he’s be married to her twenty- seven years. He should be used to her antics by now. 

‘Don’t do it old chap,’ murmured Inky, ‘you know it'll end in disaster.’

Crichton ignored him, removed the pirate hat with a flourish, and bowed low.

‘I would be h-honoured to accept your challenge ’ he slurred, ‘my scheconds will call upon you in the morning.’ Then he fell off the table, banged his head on the coal scuttle and demanded that I call for his carriage.

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