Louisa Simmonds

One of Kurt’s greatest pleasures in life, apart from winding me up, is watching FailArmy videos on YouTube.

These are videos of those idiots (usually men) that derive pleasure from doing wacky, dangerous stunts, the insanity of which more (often than not), land them in sticky situations, if not hospital. Typical stunts might include jumping out of a window into A swimming pool – even funnier when the pool’s empty (Not!) – risky skateboard tricks that you just know are going to go horribly wrong, and innocent family outings that usually end up in the drink.

I’m sure you get the picture, and being a typically boring, middle-aged parent, they’re not exactly my idea of entertainment, but watching them with Kurt provides some rare and precious bonding moments with my son.

Our very stylish picnic hamper!

Anyway… I digress. What made me think about Kurt’s obsession with FailArmy, is mine and the old man’s attempt last night at a Valentine’s picnic.

You see, I thought I was being the epitome of perfect wifey when we discussed our plans for Valentine’s Day, and when he came up with nothing I suggested a picnic. An old spark of …something I haven’t seen in a while… lit up the old man’s eyes for a brief moment when he realized that the picnic could be the cheapest celebration we’ve had so far on this commercial day from hell that rivals Halloween, so much so that he went all out and splashed on a bunch of semi-alive flowers from the local deli to celebrate, that almost rivalled my sad box of Celebrations which he complained had too many Bountys for his liking in it.

Sadly, however, the art of romance seems to elude us, when at the end of what was a hot, stinky day in Sydney, having mistakenly assumed that the temperature would cool down to the perfect balmy evening for romance, the wind suddenly changed direction and conviction and decided to blow a force 8 cyclone directly onto our square metre of grass.

It wasn’t cold exactly, but it was very breezy, which meant that we had to hold our plastic wine glasses tightly in our hands all the time –making eating and PDAs very difficult – or the glasses fell over, risking the serious threat of wine wastage. Then, every time I unwrapped a new food delicacy the wrapping from it would fly away and glue itself to the faces of the people at the picnic next to us before I had the chance to catch it. But even more disastrous, that fucking wind ruined my hair, congealed as it was for most of the evening with the food in my mouth.

If I’m honest, the plan was all a little too spontaneous for us and served to demonstrate once again our complete lack of preparation and style when it comes to romance. We don’t own a picnic hamper such as the ones you see beautiful people lolling over on The Bachelor or that the astronaut produced for NC, full of exotic delicacies that you pay a fortune for at David Jones, but that no-one actually eats. No, our picnic was hastily bought en route from the deli and served out of a plastic bag as we sat shivering on damp-from-our-earlier-swim towels because the old man threw the picnic rug away during his last clear out.

I fear picnics will go the way of camping, festivals and outdoor gigs in our future – another of those things we did when young love blinded us and we were green enough and stupid enough not to care about the uncomfortable reality of being outdoors.

Back to the safety of the balcony where luckily we had the Princess to help us out with any leftover delicacies.

When a Labradoodle puppy bounded over to us, squatted and crapped in front of us, we decided to call it a day and relocated to the safety of our apartment balcony to be joined by Kurt, who has about as much romantic sensitivity as Kanye West and Ben Affleck put together and who remained oblivious to his new status of third wheel.

However, when he then informed us of his recent decision to change his name by deed poll to Rudyard Finch Simmonds – a moment even the finest video from Fail Army couldn’t match in terms of hilarity – it confirmed to us that our son is either going to be famous, end up in a looney bin or prison and that the entertainment factor of Valentines Day is as we suspected, seriously overrated.

#Romance #Humor #love #valentinesday #Relationships #Parenting