My wife is away. Bye-bye tofu, hello chops and raw potatoes

My wife is flying out to walk the Larapinta Trail with friends. So tonight I’m going to shuck off the persona I’ve adopted as her husband, this mask of appeasement, this accretion of tiny surrenders, this piece-by-piece annexation of the man I was. I’ll become me again. I think back to the ’80s … those nights in The Thunder Lounge and the screaming freedom of it all, waking up in one of life’s foul anabranches, eyeball-to-eyeball with a scented cretin. Those were the days. It’s not like that now. She’s changed me.

But tonight she’s gone, and it’s time to let loose the heedless young rebel that still dwells within. My first move when her car drives out of the street, and it’s a bold one, is to shelve the vegetarian cookbooks. They won’t be needed. Beer, meat, Chokitos, wine, and Glen Campbell singing Jimmy Webb songs … that’s Holy behaviour, and I will not deviate from it.

No one pretends to enjoy a bean curd nosh-up more than me, but while living alone the mask of pretence can be shelved along with the tofu recipes. A man needs his chops. And if you can see the chops as a metaphor for free thinking and abandon then you understand the chops perfectly.

Alone, I cook my meal on the barbie. But the gas bottle runs out when the potatoes are in the confusing interzone between indigestible and invigorating. If she were here I’d get a torch and a spanner and change the bottle and cook them through. But isn’t par-cooked a thing? It is. It means half-raw, and it’s chic, or thereabouts. So I’ll eat potatoes par-cooked and change the gas bottle tomorrow … or whenever. Postponement is one of baching’s freedoms. It’s a buzz to see how far you can take dissipation. And there are worse things to eat raw than potatoes, anyway. A narwhal, at a guess.

Since I got married the TV has become a demagogue. It’s been all one-way traffic. I used to argue with it, dominate it in fiery debates that left it sparkling with spittle and whisky. Tonight, with her out of the house, I can reprise those mighty denunciations.

Settling down with my chops, a news story comes on saying women are about to get period leave. Normally I’d let this slide. But tonight, baching, I address the screen with Withnailish scorn. “Christ, they’ll be back to riding sidesaddle soon. Period leave, pregnancy leave, menopause leave … they’re raising a new caste system using the uterus as leverage. A week to menstruate in the comfort of your own home while some schmuck pays you full odds as if you’re at the coalface?”

Being alone with my raw potatoes I naturally enough pretend to be Serena Williams phoning the CEO of Wimbledon. “Lady Sally, hi, it’s Serena. We’re going to have to postpone the final for a week, hun. It’s my time.”

“But, Serena, my dear, the strawberries and the Duke will be past their use-by date…”

“Can’t be helped, Lady Sally. I’m downing tools for my monthlies.”