The Warburton Effect
Sometimes I search for cracks and crumbles. It can’t be right that there’s nothing wrong. I’ve watched a lot of marriages come and go and grew up thinking they all had to have a certain style and flair. So why aren’t we throwing things? Where is the screaming? Where are the divorce papers? Where is the adultery?
Luckily when I fall victim to paranoia and making-mountains-from-molehills behaviour, Gareth is incredibly patient. He’s also not afraid to point out when I’m being a moron, as I was the other night with the bread.
SHAUNA: Hey, I am just going to open up this new loaf of Tesco Multigrain loaf; I think I’ve had enough of the Warburtons Seeded Batch.
GARETH: Oh good! Throw it away because it’s boggin’.
S: What? Don’t you like it?
G: Nah, not really.
S: What? You don’t like it at all?
G: It’s alright, but I like the Tesco one better.
S: You do? But I used to have that bread at my old house in Edinburgh, and you ate it for breakfast for over a year!
G: Well, I didn’t hate it right away, it just developed over time!
S: But WHY didn’t you TELL me? You have to TELL me if you don’t like something so I can FIX it! Before it escalates into something worse! If I don’t know about problems, how can I solve them!?
G: It’s just bread!
S: But for all those months, you ate your toast and acted like you liked it when all along you didn’t!
G: It’s bread!
S: I wouldn’t normally buy the Warbutons, you know. It’s really like my Last Resort bread. I wanted to get Hovis Country Grain which is my Agreeable Substitute bread if we can’t get to Tesco, but they were out of that… OH! What about the Hovis Country Grain? Do you not like that either!?
G: It’s great!
Later on, around midnight, I was drifting off to sleep when Gareth suddenly mumbled in the darkness.
GARETH: I can’t believe they did it!
SHAUNA: Can’t believe who did what?
G: I can’t believe the other Beatles let Paul McCartney record Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da. It’s so shite!
S: Oh, I agree completely.
G: Mmmhmm.
S: So… you really don’t like that Warburtons.
G: Oh, man!
S: Well?
G: Nah. It’s just too squishy.
S: I don’t really like it either, you know. The bread is almost like white bread with a few seeds tossed in to pretend it’s healthy, but they’re not fooling anybody.
G: Yeah. It doesn’t toast well.
S: I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me. All this time I’ve been buying this bread, all this time you’ve been unhappy!
G: I’m not unhappy!
S: But don’t you SEE? If you can’t tell me you’re not happy with the bread, who knows how many other shitty things I’m doing, but you’re too polite to inform me about it? If you don’t tell me what I’m doing wrong, you’ll be stockpiling all these resentments for years and years until one day it bubbles over, and you run off with some blonde!
G: You really worry about this blonde, don’t you?
S: Well!
G: Hehe. Well, Oprah, it all started in 2005 when he confessed that he didn’t like the Warburtons Seeded Batch! But it really wasn’t about the bread at all!
S: Arrgh!
G: It was a symptom of something far deeper! A festering boil in their marriage!
S: !!!
G: I call it the Warburton Effect!
S: Ahh, shut yer guts.
