If you were thinking, 'ah good, a food-related passage with added interest for those of us in the legal profession!' sorry to disappoint, your Honour.
Apparently there's such a thing as 'Plenty-of-Fish'. It's not some sort of meal from a fast-food outlet with a marine specialisation; it's nothing to do with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and his fish fight (whatever that is) and neither is it the cry of a happy Grimsby dweller. Actually the last one is speculation, I've never been to Grimsby but when our local footy team played them at the Millennium Stadium in the play-offs a few years ago our chant was "You're shit and you stink of fish" to the tune of Go West, by the Pet Shop Boys (I think). I very much doubt that our side thought it up so there must be a pre-existing fish-related theme to Grimsby.
If you've read previous installments you'll know that Lodge lives at mine because he is very recently divorced and having sold the family pile and split the proceeds he needs an interim place to put his head down and to store all his rubbish whilst he plans his future. Now it seems he's desperate for some female company and fair enough, sex is a basic human need (unless you're getting enough, YKWIM ;-) ). Other than one night in May this year he freely 'fesses up that there's been absolutely nothing doing on that front for literally years, so after researching a solution to the problem we've found P-o-F on the internet. Having explored it we are presently/pleasantly engaged in hauling in a couple of trout (well, I'm not per se, but I may as well be, I get to hear all the gory details whether I want to or not).
Once the shackles of marriage have been removed you're probably not going to go on the celibacy wagon unless you're a particular kind of person, in fact probably quite the opposite. I believe it's a fact that three in every two marriages fail before they reach the wool anniversary (wool eh? maybe that's why the call it the 7 year itch!). As a result of this it seems there are large numbers of people out there with one thing on their minds and P-o-F is where they hang out. (Other internet-based dating sites are available and my reference to this particular site should in no way be taken to imply my endorsement above any other site, blah, blah, blah). A word of warning though: some of the alternatives are distinctly fruity but unfortunately they do seem to involve a lot of spam in return, which I'm having trouble explaining to the mrs. Currently she's buying the 'research' line, but for how long?
Given the masses of people out there indulging in this online love-in, when you start your search you need to set a few markers out to narrow the field, otherwise you'll be 'swamped with munters'. Lodge tells me that this is how to do it. First, the NO category:
No fatties; no smokers; no poor people; nobody with a Liverpool, Black Country or Newcastle accent, no Chavs, nobody too prim, and no one over 50. Then the MUST BE/MUST HAVE category:
Good looking; high IQ; high sex-drive; self-sufficient (see also 'no poor people' from the preceding list); eloquent whilst knowing when to shut up (shouldn't be hard: getting a word in edge-ways is more likely to be her main challenge); handy in the kitchen and interested in motorbikes.
So having set out the ground rules we sat back and waited. Amazingly the fairer sex don't seem phased by the high bar - perhaps they think that someone who can afford to be so choosy must have quite a lot to offer. Perhaps he does, who knows....? He tells me that having compared himself with his peers he considers he has aged extremely well, so maybe he is a scoop for some lucky lady.
At the moment we're waiting for first contact 'in the flesh'. As I said earlier, a couple are on the hook and I'm hoping it all goes well. I'm also hoping that if he gets to whichever base it is, that they don't bash in the plasterboard behind the headboard in my spare room. 6 months of pent-up desires means it ought to be all over in a few seconds, but assuming second helpings are on offer then I fear for my wall. Maybe I should drop hints about the quality of the carpet and whether or not he thinks it might be the carpet-burning type - it might sow the subliminal seed.
Chips featured in the tag line and of course there's more than one type of chip. Whilst I clearly like the potato variety, you may have guessed that the chips in this instance are the metaphorical type that go on the shoulder. To be fair it should say 'one or two chips'. Although the breakdown in the relationship that is at the heart of the matter is, according to Lodge his idea, we know that it was just a throw-away comment that escalated and ended up causing the implosion. There may have been underlying reasons but sometimes these can be worked out. Not many of us are willing to air our discomforts/foibles/hates/fantasies with some nosey-parker posing as a relationship counsellor but perhaps we should, 'for the children'. On second thoughts, bollocks to that!
So there's a big chip nestling away, namely that The Ex accepted the situation far too easily. This has lead to thoughts of revenge: they say 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' but whoever wrote that had obviously never met Lodge. The revenge has all been psychological: bitter text messages and emails, dodgy photo-messages (allegedly), barbed comments, etc. etc. Sadly these don't tend to reflect well on the creator (the creator of the messages and comments, not The Almighty) and can often lead to 'a brush with the law'.
This brings me round to the last part, 'the law'. We haven't quite finished our chips yet though and I don't know whether to admire his admire his style and nerve or condemn his actions but according to Lodge one of the middle ranking boys in blue clapped eyes on The Ex, whilst responding to her distress calls and immediately asked her out on a date! Talk about not letting the grass grow under your feet - incredible! If this is a sign of things to come under the economies imposed by the coalition government and we can henceforth expect them to bring such speed and dedication to bear on the resolution of crime, we can all sleep easy. Unless of course it's your ex wife they're concentrating on and you were hoping that despite having broken the matrimonial vase you might be able to glue it back together. So it's understandable that the police in general might have put another little potato through the chipper, joining the one held against acquaintances who may or may not have joined the
hunt a little too early.
With my would-be fisherman friend having launched a complaint against a member of the constabulary, one can only assume that should one of the P-o-F bites turned out to be from the same gang (and by her own admission the first one in the queue is), then we can probably tick her off without much further ado, unless she's that weird sort that I very much hope she is. If she aint, possibly she should make contact with her colleague, it sounds as though they might have something in common - both would like to 'do' Lodge.
I'm waiting with baited breath!
Claude
Magical...
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