Contemplating my Future as a Husband

Now that I am to be a father of a baby child, I must take my place in this world more seriously. My carefree batchelor days will soon be over for I must now wed the art tutor Carol Doocot whom I impregnated. If I am to offer stability and a healthy upbringing to a baby child, it will be essential to have some form of wife who can feed it milk and help it learn quadratic equations and such.

Although a mere quirk of fate has cast myself and the Art tutor Carol Doocot together forever, I must confess that I rather like the idea of owning a wife, baby or not. I will be able to visit public houses and talk about my wife to other men. I have decided that although I will doubtless dote on my wife in private, when I discuss my wife with other men I will adopt a tone of comical downtroddeness and refer to her as "She Who Must Be Obeyed" and "The Old Ball and Chain" and similar epithets because that will make me appear to other men as though I am unemotional and that I would not necessarily have chosen to get married but was somewhat coerced into it by circumstance. This routine will engender a sense of camaraderie with other married men, who might buy me a pint of bitter and eventually invite me to join them in a game of golf and ask me to their family barbecues, etc.

Although Carol Doocot is obliged by her pregnancy to accept my offer of marriage whether she likes it or not, it is not my intention to be a boorish husband. I am keen to show her that I am thoughtful and caring by giving her an engagement ring and kneeling, which I understand is considered romantic. Once she has agreed to be my wife, she can move into my Dundee home at once and prepare the house for my baby's arrival by cleaning my rooms and redecorating the bedroom upstairs, which has needed a lick of paint for some years now.

A comical metaphor for married life that I will employ to appear worldly in front of other men