Housewife Regrets Mundane Anecdotes

With Home and Away droning on interminably in the background, Monday afternoon was the same as any other for housewife Carol Smithfield from Leighton Buzzard.

As she sat there ironing her husband’s shirt and contemplated how to iron around the emblem on its chest (it is inconveniently shaped and has unusual contours), the phone rang.

But Mrs Smithfield wasn’t prepared for what happened next. “I was talking to my friend Laura about the kids and whatnot, and the conversation turned to items of clothing that our children always lost. I was saying how my little one had lost three pairs of gym socks that term, and that she was always losing them, so I’d started buying cheaper pairs of socks from Oxfam. And then suddenly it hit me like someone suddenly stapling my areola to my nipple: who honestly gives a flying monkey’s? And you know what? I couldn’t think of a single person.”  

Mrs Smithfield was so disorientated by this revelation, that she simply fell silent on the end of the line. “I think Laura was really concerned,” she said, still visibly shaken by the ordeal, “After all, we’d been talking about the prices of lemons in Sainsbury’s only minutes before, and then about what a nightmare it is finding decent dermatological detergent, so it wasn’t particularly different in that respect. But something had definitely changed.” 

Mrs Smithfield is still recovering from the realisation that her life is vapid and monotonous, and has enrolled in a class at a local college to combat the tedium. “I thought to myself, what have I really achieved? I may be a dab hand at the numbers game in Countdown, and twice in recent memory I’ve beaten the winning contestant to solve the conundrum, but it’s an empty experience unless someone’s there to hear you shout out the answer.” 

Mrs Smithfield has resolved to do charity work to compensate for all the endlessly tedious anecdotes and yarns which she has shared with other people. She feels that her pointless stories, which usually peter out rather than ending on a high note, have inflicted unnecessary boredom on countless people.  

“I’d be sitting on the train talking about scouring brushes or something, and I’d always notice people on the carriage looking at me and shaking their heads. At first I thought that they were as dismayed by the situation of scouring brushes as me, but actually it turns out they were slowly losing the will to live. I’m devastated.”  

Mrs Smithfield is currently writing an autobiography entitled My Boring Life, available shortly in all good, bad and indifferent bookshops.