It's fooking freezing tonight. It's nearly April! It's supposed to be raining, not icy. It's global warming I tells thee *shakes fist at the sky*

So I froze my nuts off on the walk back from work (broken only for a quick drink - orange juice of course, 80 days sober and still going strong - with the people from work. Quite a few of the girls were out but I just didn't feel like being particularly sociable tonight. I must still be ill. I chatted to J - my semi-boss - and his friend for a bit. His friend was uber-familiar and after a brief exchange it turns out we both graduated from the same Physical Chemistry department in the same year. Small world.

I was rather impressed that I remembered his face and name after 12 years. Especially since I can't, off the top of my head, remember exactly which day next week my birthday is.... )

Anyway, I'm sure you're just here for more Mrs Ninestein stories, so....

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Not long after we got married i sold a business, and decided to have a year off. We moved into an apartment in the south of france, it was on a square, in a place called Juan Les Pins, which is about 10 minutes from cannes.

One day we were out shopping and wandering through the streets of Cannes, which is a lovely place to spend an afternoon.

So we have lunch, then she wants to go to zara and a few girlie shops. OK, says I, I'll just have a wander, a drink, then meet you later.

About an hour later I see a dvd shop, very hard to get decent english recent dvds on rental, so I go in and have a look.

There are loads, all the latest releases, so I think "great, I'll sign up"

In france they quite like their bureaurocracy and paperwork, so I'm told to provide ID, which I happened to have, and to fill in some forms.

The lady behind the counter is smoking, looks probably around 50 to be kind, sun dried skin like an old leather sofa and a wonky eye.

Just as I start to fill in this massive form I hear a familiar banshee-like scream just outside the shop. I turn round to see her drop her shopping outside the door (that's not a euphimism) and charge into the shop at me.

About 4 feet inside the door is a V shaped rack, holding approx 500 dvds. With quite a bit of momentum now, she runs straight into the rack, watched by me and the shopkeeper, and tips it on its side, grunting like a weightlifter.

She ripped her top (one of those floaty silk things), and cut her forearm on the metal of the stand as it fell.Then she calmly walked out.

I turned to the shopkeeper woman, said something like "Who the f**k was that?" to her, picked up the half-completed form and left.

I found her sitting outside a cafe along the road, drinking a kir royale and saying she'd seen me giving that "slut" my phone number and had lost control.

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[My favourite - RS]

A friend of mine lives in ghent in belgium, through him I got to know a good circle of people, all very nice, laid back, but not what you might call 'beautiful people.'

Anyway, one of them is this swedish girl, called thoren. She's been looking for love all her life, is 41 and finally meets someone special.

We (the whole crowd, including my wife) are all really pleased, and later in the year (she met him in feb) when we receive an invitation to her wedding party in Bruges we are really excited for her, and for the trip.

My wife and I arrived at the party shortly after most people, at around 8pm, in a nice big laid back bar right on a canal bank. The bar was set back and there was a decking area outside, then a long tow path past bridges into town.

After a fairly standard evening, being accused of fancying barmaids, passers by, horses and tables, we're pretty settled into a booth at the back of the bar.

Thoren, the bride, is wearing her wedding dress so all the guests could see what she looked like on the day (1 week previously). When she gave a short speech earlier she thanked everyone for coming, and because we'd given her a nice present (weekend in a friend's b&b in france) she gave us a special mention.

When she mentioned us though, she pronounced louise (my wife's name) a bit oddly, and it sounded more like Lisa (just picture a strong scandinavian accent.)

So, after I removed my beloved's nails from my forearm, we carried on with the evening, til we end up in the booth, tipsy, tired and happy.

At this point, things start to go a little awry.

My wife turns to another couple sitting with us and says "Do you think ninestein has f**ked thoren?"

We'd met them that morning.

The guy looks at her and laughs, thinking it's a joke, and I laugh politely, tensing my buttocks as I pray for the moment to pass. "What the f**k are you laughing at, you know he has don't you???"

Oh sh*t.

The guy is from belgium, and to his credit he's very polite and says something like "look, don't be silly, let's just have a drink and enjoy the night"

Bitter experience and the sight of my wife heading for the bride at the other side of the room tells me we are rather past 'enjoying the night.'

By the time I reach her, she's enthusiastically telling the bride's rather reserved father that his daughter is a 'whore, cocksucker, slut, has f**ked all the men in the bar, 'including my husband.''

I don't know much swedish, but my apology didn't seem enough at this point.

She then turns to me and screams "you f**king b*stard, you're always doing this to me..."

Before I can begin to calm her down she's running from the bar, and along the towpath. Several of the guests were watching her running at quite some pace down the path, from the decking I mentioned earlier.

So anyway, I am sick by this point, a friend stops me running after her and says "just let her calm down, don't chase her"

So I stand with him at the edge of the decking, and out of the corner of my left eye I notice the bride's bewildered father walking towards me, just as I see my wife leap from the low canal bridge, fully clothed, with trademark scream, into the very cold, very shallow canal.

The splash was surprisingly loud, most of the guests (about 80) were by now with us on the decking, the stragglers arriving just in time for her finale, which was to kneel in the 18 inch deep water screaming "ninestein" at the top of her voice.

Good canapes though.

Yes, i did have to fish her out of the canal, and walk her home, past the guests, who were clapping.

A big german guy had written a 6 on a table mat and was holding it up.

Hard to laugh when your wife's knickers are full of canal water though.

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Bit of an epic this one..

We went on a driving holiday through Europe once (another symptom of her unwillingness to fly) about 5 years ago.

Anyway, we had 4 weeks, so started with amsterdam for a couple of days, where we enjoyed the sights, although she did accuse me of f**king every prostitute there, we still had a nice time.

Anyway, we went through holland and germany, then into austria and the plan was to go through the mountains into italy, then venice, florence, rome and then home.

I miss the plan.

So, we're driving along the autobahn in germany, just north of the austrian border, and stop for supplies and a hotel for the night, in a town called Mittenwald. We book a hotel room, very nice, in this little place just outside town, and as we are walking into town (about 10 minutes) to get supplies from the supermarket, a car full of people, men and women, passes us, beeping it's horn, shouting, all that sort of stuff.

I laugh, and she goes absolutely beserk. She's wearing flip flops, a thin dress, and a sun hat, and runs straight into the middle of this pretty busy road, chasing a car that was doing about 50.

I just carry on walking as she is running down the white line, cars passing her on either side, screaming "f**king c**ts, b*stards wa*kers etc."

Ho hum thinks I, and eventually when she has given up I meet her further up the road."Who is she?" she asks

"Er, what?"

"Who is that in the car? Tell me who it is!" really quite aggressive now.

I just looked at her in disbelief and said "I'm 800 miles from home, on a road in germany, I have no f**king idea who they were"

She replies "They? not they, she - there was only a woman in the car, blonde slag, she recognised you, you f**ked her"

ok

Anyway we have to get the shopping, so I calm her down and we head to the supermarket, we buy some essentials, with her fuming at me all of the time, and head to the tills.

When I am putting the shopping in the bags, there's a group of rather large black women next to us, with what seems like a dozen kids, running around causing havoc. One of the kids, about 3, runs up to me as I'm bagging the last of the shopping and looking into the insane face of my wife he happily says "Dadda."

Oh dear

*Fairly important to point out here, it was more "Dah dah" than anything to do with dadda, but anyway...

I make a jokey comment to the lady about it all, and as I am blonde, blue eyed, there is no doubt in everyone's mind that this is just a funny little thing that the boy does to male adult strangers, and the thought of me being his dad is laughable...to most people.

My wife marches to the boy, gets on her knees to get down to his level and starts questioning him like a slightly deranged, sweaty gestapo officer.

"Have you met him before?"
"Who are you"
"Does your mummy know him?"

His mother wisely intervenes and walks the poor disturbed boy away and I pay for the shopping whilst she hisses about me having definitely f**ked at least one of the obese, black, german women and had a secret (black) baby with them.

As we leave the supermarket her mood is getting worse, and by the time we get back to the hotel she's hysterical, saying that's it, we're over, she can't believe I've f**ked this woman, and then obviously chosen the hotel because it's near to my long lost boy.

Fairly odd..

Anyway, she goes off that evening, and books trains for another epic journey back home to the uk, deciding she can't go with me any further now.

I think "f**k it, I may as well keep going" and as I have a) people expecting to have us visit in italy and b) had enough of her so need a holiday anyway, I decide to carry on.

I stayed in mittenwald again that night, drinking in the local bar and drowning my sorrows as she travelled up the country on the train in a haze of derranged fury.

The next day I set off for austria bright and early, and I'm approaching the border in the car when I realise my passport is missing from the side pocket of my bag.

Sh*t.

I pull to the side of the road, just as it widens for the border control bit, and start frantically hunting through my bag for my documents.

I then got out, took everything out of the car, went through it all, checked down the seats, everywhere, but no luck. By this point I was pretty sweaty, tears in my eyes, angry and really upset.

I got in the car, intending to turn it round and go back to the hotel, and started pulling away, only to have two policemen with semi automatic guns run in front of me and shout at me to turn the engine off and get out!

They came and got hold of me, one on each arm, didn't handcuff me or anything, but led me pretty forcefully into their office, where it was explained to me that the car which I was driving had been reported stolen that morning by miss louise timpson (my wife's maiden name)

It took me 4 hours to explain what had happened, and in corroborating the story they called my sister, her family and louise, who happily continued to say she didn't know who I was or why I was in HER car.

I drove back to the UK after that, she still beat me home, and when I got there she was sitting in our kitchen with her best mate, laughing at the hilarious 'practical joke' she'd pulled on me.

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That last one is a bit scary actually.....