by Tim Dowling
There is, of course, still plenty of rough water ahead. Our children are nearly grown and poised to jump ship (like rats, if you will), a point in the journey where lots of previously well-navigated marriages seem to run aground. Our vessel may be a bit leaky (at this point I feel my tortuously extended marine metaphor could go two ways: if the “vessel” is the marriage, then the “leaks” are arguments, bouts of impatience, forgotten anniversaries, periods of alienation, cruel things said when drunk, etc.; if, however, the “vessel” is our house, then we’re talking about actual water coming in through the cracks. Your choice), but it’s all we have. I certainly don’t want to be anywhere else. As far as I’m concerned, I’m aboard for the duration.
I mean it: lash me to the mast.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my friend and agent, Natasha Fairweather, and her American counterpart, Elyse Cheney, for supporting this book, and for their unending patience.
I am also deeply indebted to everyone at Blue Rider Press: David Rosenthal, Aileen Boyle, Phoebe Pickering, and Eliza Rosenberry. They were models of kindness and efficiency throughout, and also patient. Let’s just say that everyone I mention from now on was also patient.
My UK editor, Clare Reihill, was a great source of encouragement and advice. My friend Martin Thomas, because he basically explained to me how this book should be structured while we were on a walk near his house, and also because he married the Miranda from page 24, thereby throwing my English girlfriend’s living arrangements into disarray at a very opportune moment for me.
Seven of the Forty Guiding Principles of Gross Marital Happiness made their first appearance, in slightly different form, in an article in Guardian Weekend magazine from February 2013.
I owe many people at the Guardian thanks (including Merope Mills, Melissa Denes, Malik Meer, Tim Lusher, Clare Margetson, Emily Wilson, and Rob Fearn), along with apologies for late copy, lame excuses, and letting my phone ring and ring.
My three sons, Barnaby, Johnnie, and Will, have been eerily understanding about my writing about them over the years. I stole their childhoods, and I gave them an Xbox 360 in return. That was the deal. Then I wrote a book and ruined Christmas. That wasn’t part of the deal. I’m sorry.
Above all else I would like to thank my wife, not just for still being my wife (at the time of going to press), and for reading this book at various stages and being frank in her assessments, but for being someone to turn to during crises, panics, and other low moments. On at least four occasions I came to her wild-eyed and raw-voiced, moaning that the book was beyond me, its failure certain and giving up the only sane option. And each time she would look at me calmly and say, “I can’t really deal with you when you’re like this.”
Sometimes a little impatience goes a long way.
About the Author
TIM DOWLING is an American journalist for the Guardian. He writes a weekly column for Weekend magazine. He lives with his wife and three sons in London.
*Sweat one chopped onion, two finely chopped garlic cloves, one finely chopped chile (deseeded), one diced celery stalk, and one diced green pepper in a little olive oil. Add some scissored-up bacon if you have any. Tip in one and a half teaspoons sweet Spanish smoked paprika, a handful of frozen peas, two handfuls of those tiny frozen prawns, and a leftover chicken breast from lunch. From here you must choose one of two paths: my wife boils the rice separately and adds it after; I chuck it in dry—about a mugful—add water, stir, and put the lid on for ten minutes. Serves five people, as long as two of them don’t really like it.
*The drilling of a shallow conical depression, using a drill fitting called a countersink, to allow a flat-headed screw to sit flush with the surface of the wood into which it is screwed. Since you ask.
*They include Phantom Phone—a creaking hip that makes me think my cell phone is vibrating in my pocket—and Cold Mouse Hand, which is self-explanatory.
*Of the two coinages in this sentence, I would most like to apologize for the second.
*Though I fully accept that I am The Man to an extent, in that I benefit from the patriarchy even as I am being disadvantaged by it, and that I am almost certainly coming out ahead in comparison to other genders, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic groups, and probably at their expense as well. This, I think, is what I’m being asked to bear in mind whenever someone tells me to Check My Privilege, an unfortunate imperative to which I always long to respond with the words “Make me.”
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