The Piano of Temptation

Phew, long week.  Had to organise a work event on Friday/Saturday which meant the days before were grizzly.  I am not designed to work long hours.  My brain acts like a mobile phone - at peak capacity when I wake up and unplug it from the power supply of snores, it then depletes in power steadily throughout the day.  By 4pm I'm on two bars, and by 7pm can only make emergency calls.

Which means when I get home around 10pm, as I did on Thursday, I am in a burned out and uncommunicative state.  I beached myself on the sofa and turned on Big Brother.  I was just thinking what a shame it is that Shabby is so pretty and yet so utterly deranged when the front door slammed open.  A lady-shaped shadow loomed over me and leaned in for a boozy hello.  "How much have you drunk?" I asked nervously.  "Beer AND a wine!" she announced with slurry pride.  "And I was too busy to have lunch and I didn't eat dinner either!"

Code Red.  A mixture of drinks on an empty stomach.  As she crashed onto the sofa I could hear a faint crackling sound.  Sure enough, there were sparks shooting out of her nostrils and ears.  Complete lady brain malfunction.

Under usual circumstances this sort of situation requires immediate preventative action, such as finding an episode of Gok Wan's Fashion Fix for her to watch.  I was feeling foolishly obstinant, however.  Man work hard.  Man tired.  Man not need to deal with loopy lady.  So I focussed hard on Big Brother while she tottered off to make some tea.

The Tree of Temptation was involved, which I always enjoy.  The Tree is a dismembodied voice in the bathroom that doles out unpleasant secret tasks and is very rude to the housemates (to posh layabout Ben - "Oi, Brideshead!").  As I was considering the witty retorts I'd have up my sleeve to counter the Tree if I was on the show, a gruff voice growled up at me from floor level in the gap between the back of the sofa and the landlady's piano.

"Hello!  I am the Piano of Temptation!"  The Piano of Temptation sounded far more feminine than the Tree of Temptation.  "I have a secret task for you!"  Appalling news - I was much too tired for a task.  I grabbed a nearby towel and swatted it in the direction of the Piano, which yelped and was silenced.

A short time after my girlfriend re-appeared.  I considered telling her about the Piano of Temptation but her mood seemed to have taken a turn for the worse.  My lack of general chit chat then only worsened it.  Time for bed.

I emerged from the bathroom to find my girlfriend sitting up in bed with her arms wrapped around her knees, frowning hard.  If a cartoonist had drawn the scene, he would have found it difficult not to add a small storm cloud above her head.  I opined that she might be in a mood.

Several minutes later, as her footsteps stomped down the stairs and the spare room door crashed shut, the point had been forcefully made that she was not in a mood.  I lay in bed, trickles of blood seeping from my ears, and considered the theory that often the best approach is to do nothing at all.  The short term benefits were compelling, but experience suggested that this would not be the best overall strategy.  I went downstairs to retrieve her and found that the volcano, whilst still spitting out the occasional lump of burning lava, had largely burned itself out.

I got home yesterday to find the flat cleaned from top to bottom to a standard unprecedented in three years of co-habitation.  She knows how to appeal to my innner Kryten.  How long this contrition will last for is unsure, and I suspect it may have evaporated at about paragraph 2 of this blog.  Maybe the whole thing was a task from the Piano of Temptation.  Maybe I'll have to pretend to be drunk next week.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this, which iTunes tells me I've played 28 times in the last three weeks.