A pint for the anti-hero

14st 0lb; zero alcohol yesterday; only 1,310 more days to go, thank God; The Big Dipper.

A friend kindly texted me early this morning to warn me not to buy today’s Daily Telegraph, as it would depress me. But sadly I already had it on order from the village shop, and am much too set in my ways to change the habit of the last 20 years or so. Well, apart from the six months or so a while back when the Telegraph’s business coverage became so irritatingly selective that I felt obliged to overcome my aversion to Mr Murdoch and switch to The Times, only to find that I was missing a number of general news stories and that there weren’t anything like as many laughs in the obituaries, and who the hell wanted to be spotted on the train reading a tabloid, for God’s sake? So I switched back again.

My friend meant, of course, that I would be cast down by reading the feature on the “star blogger … whose lament as a lonely, uprooted housewife has found international success.” Why should an obscure male blogger in the same part of the world care about that? Good luck to her, I say, though I freely confess that the appeal of her extended whinge is an utter mystery to me, which is why I started this alternative saga of misery in the first place. In particular, I am baffled by the blurb “I howled with laughter”. I have read her stuff from time to time and have yet to crack a smile. Yet each of her remarkably infrequent postings is greeted by literally dozens of comments confirming that she is an absolutely brilliant writer who is doing wonders for sales of incontinence pants as her delighted readers lose control of themselves in their hilarity. Whereas I have not received a single response to my daily posts since 27 May, and that bore no discernible relation to what I was actually writing about.

It has to be said that all the ardent fans of Wifey do appear to be women. Even the LTCB, rather disloyally, professes to enjoy reading her. So maybe it is another one of those “Men are from Mars …” things. Like the insightful Compatibility Analysis I despatched to the Tall Cheshire Blonde in April, which any male can instantly see is a clear and honest expression of a distinct lack of interest, but which both the TCB and the LTCB interpreted as a splendid joke.

I must say that Wifey’s husband seems to have treated her quite appallingly in dumping her up here with the kids, then carrying on with his own important job in London. I must seek him out and offer to buy him a pint.