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Things, I thought, were better. I walked into the kitchen to make a coffee. She was sat at the kitchen table working on papers. I saw her hands dart beneath the table and the suspicion leapt within me. “Are you having trouble with your eating?”

She looked up and smiled “No. I’m Ok”.

“What do you have under the table?”

“Nothing” she said and lifted up her hands and waved them to prove that they were empty. I relaxed with a sigh, allowing myself to breathe again. I was thankful that she had reacted so well to my graceless suspicion.

I took a step forward and she adjusted her seating position and I realised immediately it was a lie. Perched on her knee was doorstep of bread smothered in butter and jam. She sat up and looked away from me.

“It’s difficult tonight. I’ll throw it away. I promise.”

I speak her name.

“Just stand over there” she implores. She doesn’t want me to be there when she brings the food out into the light. Somehow then there will have been no lie. Somehow it won’t be quite real. I stand still. What is better: to spare her the pain of embarrassment or to make her confront what she is doing to herself? She sits very still, eyes locked on a point on the kitchen wall.

“Please” she says. First silence and then I refuse. Slowly she pulls the bread from under the table.

“Please” I say in turn “it’s not the eating, it’s the lying”. But it sounds trite and it is trite. Things are more complex.

She thinks I will love her less if I know. But I do know. I find the crisp packets in the sock drawer. I know about the loaves of long life bread hidden behind the pots and pans. I notice the packet of biscuits that was bought yesterday has gone. I can’t avoid the scum on the water in the toilet. I don’t love her less. I couldn’t. Since we met my only option has been to love her completely.

It tortures me to think of the black subterranean river of unhappiness that runs through her. A Lethean tributary trickling without end. I am not hurt I am jealous. When she feels small and scared it is to this old friend of hers she turns for comfort and not to me. My love is impotent to help her.

It ends as it always does, with a long hug, tears and a promise she can’t keep. 

I’ve just had a call to inform me that I have been elected to the Committee of the Employment Law Bar Association. Now this represents only a tiny quantity of power so I am not, at present, able to institute the reign of terror that, as you know, I have long been contemplating.

For the present, I will have to concentrate on some mild cronyism and corruption and build slowly towards the subjugation of all earthlings. That, of course, gives you all a period of grace within which generally to throw off your puny human forms and cleave to me in subjugation. There is a special subjugatee “early-bird” deal, the details of which are available on application.

Now begone from my presence … you there … crawl out backwards you worm! I must be left alone to practice my maniacal cackle BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I have lots to write about and no time to do it. I give you, therefore, an embarrassing moment from the life of Moobs. An amuse bouche to tide you over. Feel free to try to top it.

One afternoon I was working on some papers in P’s house (it was shortly before we were married). She had gone out to meet someone and, as is the way with men left alone, my mind started to wander. I had been wearing some shoes that generated massive amounts of static as I walked across the carpet which had then discharged with a little spark when I stroked our cat “Vinny”.

I was intrigued and found that if I held my hand over Vinny’s back his fur would rise slightly. How far could this phenomenon be taken I wondered. Faced with an opportunity for work avoidance like that I threw myself into it.

That was how P came home to find me dressed in lycra cycling shorts, a reliably static-inducing Chelsea replica football shirt and my “special shoes” rubbing the cat on my chest.