Onan the Fishwife

Back in 1982, when I attended my first ever Glastonbury festival (headlined by Judy Tzuke no less) I came across a number of things - it was that kind of festival - however, one of the running jokes was a poem called Conan the Fishwife, which particularly tickled me as I was a fan of comics at the time and the idea of Conan the Barbarian as a mithering old woman constantly moaning and groaning about stuff was particularly funny. I have spent years trying to track the poem down, but I believe it is lost to the ether of time.

To the right is a picture of the crowd at Glasto that year; I might be in the picture!

Obviously, nearly 30 years later, I have my own personal fishwife, oft mentioned in these pages. This morning at 6.55am, the wife finally got to see why I call him that.

The wife is off work for a few days; we've got some stuff to do, but essentially it's a good excuse for her to get a few well deserved lay-ins. At 6.55 this morning, Fishwife decided to take all of his wheelie bins down the alley between houses. This set Lexy off, who yodels rather than barks and subsequently, we got woken up. The wife, huffing and puffing decides to let the ducks and rabbit out and trudging downstairs and into the garden in her dressing gown and slippers, bellowing at Lexy to 'shut the fuck up' - she's got a lovely way with words when she's angry - she inadvertently walked straight into the clutches of early morning fishwife; who is the same as any other time of the day fishwife, but far more annoying.

"Wah Wah Wah Wah Waaaah?" He says.

"I dunno, #####," she says.

"Wah Wah Wah Wah Wah Wah Waaaah Wah Wah Waaaah?"

"I. Don't. Know. #####!"

"Wah Wah Wah Wah Waaaah. Wah Wah Wah Wah, Wah Wah Waaaah?" No response from the wife. "Wah wah?" Back door slams. She comes trudging upstairs, kicks her slipper off and it goes flying into the bedroom knocking the contents of the dressing table everywhere.

"Fuck! Mutter grumble fuck mutter grumble, arsehole..."

"The fishwife?" I asks from my cosy warm side of the bed.

"Jesus! Is the man an imbecile or what?"

"I've told you what he's like."

"God, I didn't know he was that bad. He's just full of banalities and stupid fucking pointless questions."

"He only has the kids to talk to, that's why if he sees one of us he's at the fence."

"He was just asking me questions about the bin collections. I told him I didn't know, so he just went on about it anyhow, 'if they're not collecting the black bin that'll be another two weeks before it's collected' - at fucking 7 o'clock in the morning I really don't give a shit. The man is a twat. It's like living next to Flo again!" Flo was one of our neighbours in Wellingborough who was old and lonely and subsequently whenever she saw you in the garden would come and talk at you. She was so bad we stopped going into the garden until my Dad erected a big fence between the gardens, which in turn made her hate us - but that's a different story.

As it turned out, it was a good job he did mither at the wife the way he did because we discovered that our bin collection day was Tuesday rather than Wednesday. The new collection details are clearly put on the washable plastic fridge sticky thing that the new collection agency sent us last week - brown bins this week and every two weeks after, black bins next week and every two weeks after that. He's put his black bin out as well. The wife is right, of course, the man is indeed a twat. but I'd rather have him than Fuckwit (who, incidentally now only has one car and still manages to park it everywhere but in front of his own house!).

Actually, I'd rather live in the middle of nowhere with just a field of sheep for company. The bleating would be better than the constant Wah Wah Wah Wah Waaaah you get from next door, or the high-pitched Wah Wah Wah Wah Waaaah you get from his son.

One last thing - anyone coming to our 25th anniversary bash in September seen referring to the fishwife as 'the fishwife' will be forced to spend a weekend in a room with him naked with no earplugs.