I never imagined Armageddon would look like this. I certainly didn’t expect there to be so many shoes.
It began last night. The marriage ceremony had been short and relatively sweet. It had also been totally unexpected. I hadn’t planned on getting married this year, though if I had, my money would have been placed on a certain Romanian being the bride and there being a shotgun involved in the ceremony. Not that I would have expected Gabby to ‘be with child’, you understand. I just imagine that Gabby wouldn’t get married unless she were surrounded by friends, family, and her weapon of choice. Luckily, I didn’t place that bet. I’m now married to a woman called Trixy.
Gabby was at her judo class when the doorbell rang. I opened the door and saw a forlorn creature standing there, one shoe missing, and an overnight case in her hand. The rain had flattened the stranger’s spirits as well as her hair so I didn’t immediately recognise her.
‘Can I help you?’ I asked.
The woman smiled, brushed a stray tendril of hair from her eyes, before she collapsed into my arms.
‘Chip,’ she gasped, ‘it’s taken me ******* hours to get here…’
‘Do I know you?’ I asked, as I dragged her across the room.
She recovered before I could throw her over the back of the sofa. She pushed herself upright and gestured to my thong. ‘You are Chip Dale, aren’t you? Only you're more handsome than the photo on your blog.’
‘I get that a lot,’ I explained, ‘but I still can’t work out who you are.’
‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Trixy, from the hugely successful blog, “Is There More to Life Than Shoes?”’
I looked at her feet and the missing high heel.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Ironic isn’t it? I lost it when the taxi driver threw me out of the cab. I don’t think I should have called him a ****.’
‘Alas,’ I sighed, ‘isn’t that just the way out here in the provinces? What passes as a clever use of swearing in the highly charged arena of Westminster politics comes across as overly aggressive in Bangor.’
‘So it ******* seems,’ she said.
‘I hope you don’t think I’m sounding unhappy to see you, Trixy, but can I ask what exactly are you doing here?’
‘Oh,’ she said, relaxed enough to kick off her remaining shoe. ‘We’re getting married.’
‘Who are?’
‘We are,’ she smiled. ‘You and me.’
‘Are we?’
‘Well, technically, we already have. Many people already think of us as man and wife.’
I was confused. Moments earlier I had been sitting enjoying a cup of hot chocolate with Dragon’s Den. Now I was in the process of negotiating a post-nuptial agreement with a drenched London blogger with the mildest case of Tourettes.
‘It’s complicated,’ said Trixy. ‘The thing is: I went and ******* told Facebook that we’re married. I don’t want to go into the reasons other than I was looking for a man with fantastic good looks, a brilliant sense of humour, and with a chance of superstardom in the next two years. It was between you and Richard ******* Madeley but I preferred you because Facebook already recognises him as being married to Judy.’
‘Does that matter?’ I asked, thinking I was missing something.
Trixy laughed. ‘Does it ******* matter? Of course it ******* matters! A declaration of marriage on Facebook is a legally binding agreement in certain countries.’
‘Certain countries?’
‘Iraq, Peru, Norway and…’ she smiled winsomely, ‘Wales.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I said, not quite seeing. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’
‘I do, actually,’ she said, dropping her bag and opening it. Unsurprisingly, it was filled with nothing but shoes. ‘We have to get to either a sea captain or a priest before midnight. Otherwise I’ll have broken the rules of Facebook and they’ll kick me off.’
‘Is that a bad thing?’ I asked, not being, as you probably know, Facebook’s biggest fan.
‘It would,’ she replied as she slipped on a new pair of high heels. ‘I couldn’t live without my account on Facebook.’
‘Only,’ I said, nodding towards the TV, ‘Dragon’s Den is on and there’s somebody about to get the force of Duncan Bannatyne’s considerable Scottish wrath.’
‘Sod Duncan Bannatyne!’ cried Trixy. ‘We have a wedding to arrange.’
An hour later, an unreasonably sober man crossed the threshold of his apartment carrying a woman called Trixy in his arms.
‘Did you need to call the taxi driver a ****?’ I asked, as I dropped her onto her again shoeless feet.
‘Force of habit,’ she said as she sank into a chair. ‘How’s your back?’
‘Better than I would have expected after carrying you three quarters of a mile.’
‘I’m ******* exhausted,’ she said. ‘I’d grab a shower but I think somebody’s already using it.’
That’s when my blood ran cold. I could indeed hear the noise of a power shower.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Trix, as the new Mrs. Dale likes to be called.
‘It’s Gabby,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t know.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be reasonable,’ said my darling wife.
‘Have you actually read Chip Dale’s Diary?’ I asked. ‘I know plenty of people link but only a few read. But don’t you know what kind of woman you’re about to cross? I hope you have shoes in that bag that contain high levels of neurotoxins cleverly concealed in a sharped toe?’
She looked regretfully towards her luggage. ‘I don’t think I do,’ she said, and suddenly brightened. ‘But you make me wish that I did! We could always go out and do some late night shoe shopping?’
But it was too late. The power shower powered down and a small shadowy figure appeared in the corridor. It was wrapped in a bath towel that did a poor job of concealing duelling scars.
‘Chip? Where have you been?’ asked Gabby. ‘And why are you dressed like you go wedding?’
I looked down at my crushed velvet jacket and purple cummerbund riding high above my formal black CofE thong. Then I looked at my poor wife who seemed oblivious to the fact that we were both about to witness The End of Days.
‘Gabby,’ I said, ‘I don’t want you to get excited. I want you to listen because what I have to say might sound a little bit strange.’
‘Who is woman?’ asked my girlfriend, always quick to feel jealousy when I have a wife sitting on the sofa and picking confetti from her hair.
‘I’m not just any woman,’ said Trixy before she added, I thought a little foolhardily, ‘I’m Mrs. Chip Dale.’
The towel fell and I gazed down at a perfect Romanian body with at least three orifices concealing more arms than an IRA weapons dump.
‘Chip got married?!’ she screamed.
‘It was Facebook,’ I began to explain, backing towards the door and Birmingham. ‘Poor Trixy here went and clicked on the relationship option and accidentally married us and…’
How we managed to get out of there, I can’t reasonably explain. And how Trixy managed to escape with her shoes will remain one of the great mysteries of the century. I do know that we are currently hiding in a Travel Lodge outside Essington on the M54. We’ll be moving on soon so Gabby won’t be able to track us. There might well be more to life than shoes, but from where I’m lying, there seems to be more shoes than there are chances of my escaping this little episode with my life. I do know that it’s hard to flee Romanian justice when you’re loaded down with so many pairs of ******* shoes.
I’ve been away for so long, I wanted to prove that I’m still here in Bangor, living the high life. Actually, things have been pretty grim. Gabby never stops complaining that I do nothing but sit in front of the TV and watch ‘Deal or No Deal’. She says I’ve let myself go.
