The Apple Pie Wars

Mr Grumpy isn't speaking to me. He's sitting in the lounge sulking in front of a blank TV screen, in order to stop me watching a recording of a property programme. The argument started thus...

I announced that I wanted to use up some nice organic apples and that an apple pie would be a good idea. I went upstairs to my computer. When I came down, some shortcrust pastry was defrosting and so was a jug of frozen Bramley apple slices. "Oh no!" I wailed. "I wanted just my apples in the pie, I don't want to mix organic with non-organic." Fair enough, I would have thought. After all, it was my pie and if he had the idea of using up his crappy old frozen stuff in it, he should have asked me first. Especially as my apples weren't even Bramleys. I suggested we made two separate pies.

Well, Mr Grumpy went into one. He hurled his apples into the bin and yelled at me for 'assuming' that he was intending to mix them. Then he told me that last time we'd made an apple pie, he'd sneaked his frozen Bramleys in and I hadn't even noticed. I held my tongue. I was trying to keep calm because I was just about to eat lunch and if you've got an ulcer, eating while you're tense or angry is the worst possible thing. But Mr G wasn't going to let it go. "You're always assuming things. I've had to put up with it for the last thirteen years!" he bellowed. Actually, it's twelve. It's obviously felt like longer to him. To me, it's felt like a life sentence.

I'd previously expressed my desire to eat lunch in front of the telly in order to watch one of the programmes I'd recorded that he's always complaining I never watch - simply because he won't let me. I can only watch 'my' programmes after he's gone to bed, and then I'm normally going to bed too. And I'm not allowed to watch them in another room because, quote, "I don't see you all day as you're always on the computer." The fact that I am working and trying to earn money doesn't seem to enter his head. Anyway, he sat in front of the telly to prevent me from watching, and played with his mobile phone. For two whole hours.

Methinks we are completely incompatible, red roses or not. And as for the apple pie, I know he won't eat it if I make it with 'my' apples (there is no 'our' in this household, just his and mine) so mine are on their way into the bin to join his.