Saturday at dawn, I suggested to The Loved One that she might be having difficulty getting to sleep at nights if she was trying to make a mental list my virtues.

She said that she had indeed struggled to get up from zero to one, but would possibly make it from one to two, if only I could

i) get out of bed right now

& ii) brew her a cup of Earl Grey.

joe bialik says ...

the best two low-down dirty emotional blackmailers cliches he can think of, after a fine education, are:

"you've really let us ( the school, the headmaster, the staff, the caretaker & cleaners, society in general ) down rather badly"

and

"now look what you've gone & made me do"

which is probably out of the original laurel & hardy primer

day one between sneezes

"There are seven deadly sins ... & the eighth & worst is EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL"

I began our early conversation on Sunday morning, baking-hot beneath two duvets, before we had opened our eyes, with this gambit:

“If you really loved me, you’d have taken my bicycle before dawn, & cycled, still in your pyjamas, with a machete clenched between your teeth, to the tropical hot-house at Kew Gardens to shin up a palm tree & bring me a fresh coconut.”

The Loved One, obviously fully alert, but sounding very bored;

“I think I’ll have to eat those last two astonishingly delicious Anton Berg strawberry & champagne chocolates myself this morning.”

Myself, badly deflated by her expert counter-punching;

“You’ll miss me when I’ve joined the Foreign Legion.”