Fat Chance (17 page)

The poor buggers haven’t even got in the door yet and I’m already trying to undress them.

Such is my loud, decisive, caffeine-laced tone that Alan is removing his coat on the doorstep before he even knows it. ‘Er, thank you, Gregory,’ he says, handing it to me as he walks into the hallway.

‘No problem, no problem, glad to be of service!’ I bark and waggle my outstretched hand at my mother-in-law as she follows her husband in. ‘And yours, Barbara? Your coat? Can I take your coat? Give me your coat.’

Babs looks mildly terrified. She probably has some OCD-based ritual she usually goes through before removing an item of clothing, but I’m giving her no chance to do it tonight.

I more or less rip the long wool coat off her back as she hurries past me. ‘Thank you, thank you, well done,’ I tell them, as if they’d learned a new trick. I open the door to the cupboard and attempt to hang both coats up. The hooks are overburdened already, though, so I end up just tossing Alan’s over the ironing board.

‘Where is Zoe?’ Alan asks as I shut the door and offer him a hectic grin.

‘Zoe? Zoe? She’s in the kitchen, Alan, cooking us up a lovely meal. Well, cooking
you
up a lovely meal. I’m on this diet at the moment, you see. It’s called the Russian Air Force Diet. It’s very good; I’ve lost quite a bit of weight this week. The only problem is I don’t get to eat much at tea time. I’ll have finished mine off before you’ve even popped the first potato in your mouth, probably!’ I end my babbling diatribe with a rather hysterical chuckle. By the time this fades out we’ve reached the living room and I’m jiggling about on the spot like I need a piss. Which I actually do, of course.

Zoe appears from the kitchen and comes over to give her mother and father a hug. ‘How are you both?’ she says warmly.

‘We’re well, thank you,’ Babs replies. ‘Greg’s just been talking at us about his diet.’

I chuckle again and jiggle a bit more. ‘Yes, yes, yes, I have. Very good diet it is. Very good indeed.’

‘It’s certainly given you a lot of, er . . . pep,’ Alan responds.

‘Oh my, yes,’ I say and chuckle/jiggle once again. I couldn’t be more disconcerting right now if I was dressed as a clown and licking a paring knife.

Zoe sighs and rubs her eyes. ‘It’s the caffeine, Dad. The diet means he has to drink a lot of coffee, which he’s not used to, so . . .’

‘Ah, I see.’

‘Yes, yes!’ Chuckle/jiggle. ‘Lots and lots of lovely caffeine, every day!’ Chuckle/jiggle. ‘I’m not hungry, though, Barbara!’ Zoe’s mother blanches. ‘I’m not hungry at all! Well, I’m a little bit
hungry
, but mostly I’m just really, really happy and excited.’ I have the overwhelming urge to give Babs a hug, so I do. I feel her go stiff beneath my arms. ‘And I’m very, very pleased to see you both.’ Now I’m chuckle/jiggling and hugging my mother-in-law all at the same time. This whole thing has descended into levels of creepiness that may require some sort of religious intervention.

‘Leave Mum alone, Greg,’ Zoe tells me. ‘Why don’t you pour us all a glass of wine while I talk to them?’

‘Okay, okay, that sounds like a lovely idea!’

I vibrate my way out into the kitchen, giving Zoe a chance to explain, and no doubt apologise for my rather odd behaviour.

Not only does too much caffeine make you livelier than an
electrocuted
cat, it can also make you incredibly indecisive.
I discover
this rather unlovely side effect as I’m standing in the kitchen attempting to pour my in-laws a drink.

We have wine in all three shades in our house. Given the weight loss regimes that Zoe and I have both been on, not much of it has been drunk recently, but that hasn’t stopped people giving it to us over the past few weeks at parties similar to this one. This has led to something of a build-up, so I’m faced with having to decide between no less than three bottles of white, two of red, and one rosé.

I spend a constructive couple of minutes jiggling in front of them before I narrow my choices down to just the whites. This only partially helps matters, though, as I still have to decide between Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, and Sauvignon.

I’d better ask.

‘Excuse me?’ I say from round the kitchen door.

‘What, Greg?’ Zoe answers.

‘Just wondering which wine they’d like to drink. Only we have quite a lot. There’s Chardonnay, Pinot, or Sauvignon. I thought maybe the Pinot as the Chardonnay looks a bit cheap—you know, dear, it’s the one the company gave you for hitting those targets. Well done on that, by the way. Did I say well done already? I can’t remember if I said well done. Well done! The Sauvignon’s the same as that one we bought from Tesco at Christmas. The one I didn’t like. Remember? It was too sweet I thought, for a Sauvignon. Not that I’m much of a wine drinker, anyway. Always prefer a beer myself, but you can’t just drink beer at a dinner party, can you? It just wouldn’t be
right
, I don’t think. So I’ll go with the Pinot, shall I? Yes, I’ll just pour you all a glass of Pinot. That’ll be for the best.’

Without waiting for an actual response from anyone I
disappear
back into the kitchen again. It turns out you
can
make decisions on your own when high on caffeine; you just don’t realise you’re doing it at the time.

Ah, but will they want big glasses or small glasses?

Shit.

Um.

Er.

Big!

Big is always better!

I pour Babs and Alan the kind of measures that get you thrown in prison if you so much as look at a motorcar after drinking it. I’ve emptied an entire bottle with two glasses.

As we’re both trying to lose weight, I prepare two tiny glasses for Zoe and me. What I’m basically saying with my choices here is that I think my wife’s parents are a couple of raging alcoholics.

Judging by the shocked expressions their faces as I hand them the drinks, they think so too.

The next half an hour is agony. For the other three people in the conversation, anyway. I’m happier than a pig in shit.

The combination of caffeine and alcohol mixes nicely in the speech centre of my brain and I spend thirty minutes
verbally
bashing
my extended family over the head with a series of
conversation
topics
I can barely recall now.

From what I remember, I started off educating them about how much sugar there is in wine, then I moved on to how much sugar there is in cheese. Then I moved on to a story I’d read about a chair made of cheese, and
then
I moved on to a story I’d read about a chair made of beer cans. Then I moved on to how saying ‘beer can’ sounds like you’re saying bacon in a Jamaican accent, then I moved on to how Zoe and I want a holiday in the Caribbean—or maybe the Seychelles, or maybe Key West, or maybe China . . .

The rest is a bit of a blur, but by the time Zoe ushers me out into the kitchen to help her dish out the dinner, I have for some reason started singing the Ying Tong song, as made famous by The Goons.

‘Ying tong, ying tong, ying tong, ying tong, ying tong
tiddle-eye
poh,’ I merrily sing as I vibrate my way across the lounge with my incredibly irate wife.

‘Will you stop it!’ she hisses at me once we’re out of her parents’ eye-line.

‘Stop what?’

‘You’re acting like a drug addict. They probably think you’re really on cocaine, not just drinking too much bloody coffee.’

‘Well, you know technically, the original Coca-Cola drink did have cocaine in it, I think, so I guess that’s probably where the name comes from, so—’

‘Shut up!’

I do as I’m bid, though it takes a great deal of effort.

I manage to keep my verbal diarrhoea under control while Zoe and I prepare the meal. By the time we sit down to eat the food, though, I’m back on the babble train.

It would be fine if I had a decent amount of food to stuff in my gob and keep me quiet, but I wolf down the small steak in about ten seconds flat, leaving me plenty of time to flap my lips while my wife and her parents try their best to enjoy their meals, with my incessant talking as an unwanted accompaniment.

Things reach their final and shocking denouement as Alan and Babs finish off the crème brûlée Zoe had made especially for them.

‘Crème brûlée is a fascinating pudding,’ I jabber. ‘Caramelising the sugar properly is particularly difficult and takes a great deal of skill. Zoe’s very good at it now, but you should have seen some of the disasters she’s come up with in the past. Oh my, yes. Many times I’ve stood with her in the kitchen while she’s attempted another batch. The smell of burnt sugar really is quite horrible, I think. Our
extractor
fan could barely cope with it. Still, she’s got it down to a fine art now, as you can probably tell from the ones you’re eating. She’s a very talented cook, is your daughter. Much better than me, anyway. I’m sure she probably gets it from you, Barbara. I always look forward to coming round to you for a meal. She’s certainly a chip off the old—’

‘Shut up, Greg,’ Barbara says in a small, exasperated voice.

‘Sorry?’

‘Be quiet. Please,
please
be bloody quiet, just for a moment.’

I’m stunned. Barbara is usually a very polite, gentle woman. All that obsessive compulsive stuff leads to the kind of temperament ill-suited to confrontation.

‘I’m sorry, Barbara,’ I apologise. ‘I was only complimenting you on your cooking. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be offended by that. Mind you, it’s strange what some people can be offended by these days. I was watching the news the other day and there was this woman on there who was up in arms about something on the BBC last week. A show about religion it was. She was really unhappy about—’

‘Can’t you just stop talking?’ Alan interjects. ‘We’ve hardly been able to get a word in all evening!’

‘Haven’t you?
Really
? I thought we’d been having a lovely
conversation
tonight. After all, we’ve talked about cheese, and the
Chinese
, and The Goons, and beer cans, and China. Did I already say China? Well, we’ve definitely talked about it . . .’

I can’t stop myself. I am simply unable to prevent words from spilling out of my big fat mouth at an absurd rate of knots.

I’m also aware of a thunderous headache starting to form at the back of my skull.

‘Greg!’ Zoe snaps. ‘For God’s sake go and calm down upstairs!’

And so we have the final ignominy.

I have been ordered to go up to my room like a badly behaved child.

Alan and Barbara are silent as I push my chair back and stand. I start to apologise for talking at them so much, but I pause with my mouth half open. If I start speaking again now I’m likely to launch into yet another ramble and make things even worse.

I bend down and give Zoe a kiss on her red forehead before backing away from the table and leaving the lounge.

As I climb the stairs I can hear Zoe giving her parents the
apology
and explanation I was unable to provide. ‘. . . it’s the
caffeine
,’ she is saying. ‘He’s just not used to it. It’s like giving too much sugar to a five-year-old.’

I close the bedroom door for fear of hearing any more. The humiliation of it would be too much to bear.

I spend the next hour or so jiggling around the bedroom until I hear Zoe call up to me that her parents are leaving.

Like the aforementioned badly behaved child, I slope back down the stairs with my head hanging.

‘I’m sorry I was so silly,’ I tell Barbara and Alan as they put on their coats.

Babs puts a conciliatory hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s alright, Greg. Zoe explained how much of that stuff you’ve been drinking because of the diet.’

‘You do appear to have lost a lot of weight, though,’ Alan remarks, which puts a smile on my face for the first time since I was banished to the top floor.

‘Do you really think so?’ I say. ‘I’m so pleased you’ve noticed. After all, that’s why I’m on the diet. There wouldn’t be much point in drinking all that coffee if I didn’t lose any weight, eh? No, no. It would be a complete waste of time. It’s not
that
bad a diet, really. I haven’t felt all that hungry in days. Which is surprising for me, because the amount of food I used to pack away would suggest that I really would miss it more than I have. I guess coffee must be something of an appetite suppressant. Bit like cigarettes, I suppose. Not that I’d ever try cigarettes as a way to lose weight. I mean, all you’d be doing then is swapping one bad thing for—’

‘Greg!’ Zoe snaps.

‘Sorry! Sorry!’

I clamp my lips shut and give the parents-in-law a final goodbye that consists largely of hand gestures. Once Zoe closes the front door on them, I start chewing on one knuckle, knowing that the next few minutes of my life are going to be all about getting told off.

‘Well, thank you, Speedy Gonzales,’ Zoe begins. ‘Here I am trying to convince our loved ones that these diets are worth all the time and effort and you start acting like a heroin junkie.’ I open my mouth to respond. ‘Don’t say anything!’ Zoe barks, and slaps my arm. ‘Just keep your mouth shut and listen. God knows, your jaw could probably do with a rest. It’s a wonder it hasn’t fallen off with all that motor-mouthing.’