Sometimes my wife accuses me of being sexist but I really don’t see how this can possibly be because a) I’ve acknowledged for some time that I consider women the superior species in every way and b) because I’m totally up for the idea of being a kept man.
I’m sure if I were a male chauvinist pig type I wouldn’t think that way at all. I’d be all: ‘Get behind that sink, woman, and make sure you’re wearing that kinky French maid’s uniform when I get back from the pub after a hard day’s bringing home the bacon or you’ll feel the rough side of my hand.’ The idea of being bankrolled by a mere woman would, I am sure, be anathema to me.
But that’s one of the great things about living in the aftermath of the feminist revolution. We men don’t have any male pride left — it’s forbidden — which means we’re now free to accept, without embarrassment, whatever largesse liberated womankind wishes to dispense to us.
In my case, I was hoping it might be one of the Fawn’s books that did the trick. She’s been writing this old-fashioned children’s adventure about buried treasure and Dark Ages Britain, which sounds quite promising. Certainly promising enough for me not to make the mistake that Portuguese first husband of J.K. Rowling did. You’ll never catch me flouncing off with an ‘I’ve had right about enough of your “huddling for warmth in the café scribbling” nonsense. How are we are ever going to afford a cleaner if you don’t pull your weight?’
Just, lately, though an even more thrilling possibility has arisen. It’s an iPad app called ‘Into Gardens’, which the Fawn has been beavering away on for the past year with the garden designer James Alexander Sinclair. I can’t say that before now I’d given it much attention. As you’re probably aware, I’m an exceptionally busy man, what with all the time I have to spend on Twitter provoking wars and working out witty ripostes to people who’ve said horrid things about me, and then seeing what’s happening on Facebook. Also, being liberated, I think it would be offensively patronising of me if I were to feign undue interest in my wife’s work. It’s like with your children: you really don’t need to go to the bother of seeing them play the recorder in the school concert to know they’re the next Louis Armstrong.
Still, you can’t put off these things forever, so the other day, after the Fawn had nudged her iPad subtly towards me for the umpteenth time — a bit like Daisy our puppy does with the ball she wants you to throw for her — I finally thought I’d better look and see what she’d been up to all these months. A bit of constructive criticism never goes amiss, eh?
‘Bloody hell!’ I said, after I’d tinkered around with it for a bit, running my finger around the screen to make various windows open and close and do clever, amazing things.
‘What?’ snapped the Fawn.
‘Bloody hell, as in “Wow! It’s really good!”’
All right, possibly I am biased, but ‘Into Gardens’ is perfection on a stick. It’s like the prettiest, lushest, most exquisitely shot, glossy gardens magazine you’ve ever seen but done for the internet age, with flowers you can learn about (or buy online) just by touching them on screen, and filmed segments which show you how to grow kale or make squash risotto, and Icelandic photo features that make you go ‘Wow!’ and witty, quirky items like one on the first roundabout in Britain (1909 — Letchworth Garden City) and Jeremy Clarke’s hilarious piece on… Go on. Have a guess. Suppose you were to ask Jeremy Clarke to write something on horticulture, about which particular plant do you think he’d choose to wax lyrical? Yes. That one.
Anyway, if ‘Into Gardens’ does do well — and I think it will, once word-of-mouth has got round about how good it is — that’s me sorted. Never mind all those ambitions I once nurtured about being a great novelist, or writing a successful screenplay: ambition is a young man’s luxury. All I want now — and is this such a big ask? — is to have enough money to do what I want, when I want, and not to have to worry about a hideous old age in which I live on wine-box wine and dog food and die in penurious agony because I can’t afford medical treatment. Whether that money comes as a result of my efforts or the Fawn’s, I really couldn’t care less.
This is why, to all male potential purchasers of ‘Into Gardens’, I offer this as an incentive. Buy my wife’s app and for just £2.99 an issue you will be purchasing not just a great product in its own right but also the chance to live vicariously through me as I dedicate the rest of my life to riding to hounds, shooting pheasant, playing Call of Duty, smoking weed, re-reading War And Peace, learning to fly a helicopter, skiing in the Andes, scuba-diving on the Barrier Reef, etc.
And to all female potential purchasers of ‘Into Gardens’, I say this: ignore the above paragraph, which is just a typical, selfish puerile male fantasy. What you’ll really be buying — besides a pretty, shiny thing which you can click on in order to buy even more pretty things — is the chance to liberate one of your own from her joyless marriage to a worthless husband, so that she can end up with Eddie Redmayne as her toyboy. Go on! Go to www.into-gardens.com, download, strike a blow for the sisterhood — and get vicariously to shag the winsome Old Etonian star of Les Misérables!
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