This week all I'm going to be doing is writing test scripts.

'Press button A. Did it beep?

Press button B. Did it beep twice?

Press button A & B together. Did it beep once slowly and once quickly?'

For. Four. Days.

Kill me now... :(

Harrumph. Anyway, more Ninestein stories, MORE!!!!!!

_____________________________________________________________________

When we lived near Cannes I used to just doss around a lot. Walks to the harbour, then out on the boat until mid afternoon, then while away the afternoons in the outdoor cafes along the shore, places like Golfe Juan, antibes and the like.

Doing this I got to know a lot of the local characters, and as the wife isn't the most sociable girl she would stay at the apartment, or lie on the beach sunbathing.

Anyway, quite often in the evenings we'd get a cab (about 10 minutes) along the coast and into cannes, where we'd go for a meal, then a few drinks and a screaming hysterical argument in a different location.

This one evening was my birthday, and we'd already shared a bottle of wine in the afternoon, so when she told me she'd booked a meal at a favourite restaurant of mine I was thrilled.

The taxi arrived at our apartment, we went to cannes, and sat in the window of the place, I had langoustines and oysters, she had soup, risotto and a bubbling psychological disorder.

So we finish the meal and go for a stroll along the front, smiling and chatting as we pass the old street sellers, musicians and artists, and avoiding the senegalise watch salesmen as I tell her how much I love her and how much I appreciate her booking the meal for me and taking me out.

It's about 12 midnight by the time we round the corner into the old town square where the taxis line up. We wait with the locals, drunks and fighting couples, and eventually after about 25 minutes we reach the front of the queue.

When the cab draws up I experience several emotions and some actual physical pain. I look in the window (as I'm the one who speaks french) and lean in to ask the price.

It's.A.Woman.

Having overcome the shock that a female could be driving us home, the accusations that fly around the cab on the way home range from the ridiculous to the really f**king ridiculous.

Anyway, I try to ignore her and start chatting to the driver, who has been asking me questions all of the way back, "did you have a nice evening, oh it's your birthday, do you live here permanently" etc etc.

We're about a mile from home when I, fairly p*ssed and very tired, slumping in my seat and staring out of the window, hear the door open on louise's side, then hear it close quickly but not slam. We're doing about 10 miles per hour at the time, rounding a tight bend that leads us up the road to our apartment.

As I pull focus on the empty seat beside me, and the sound of the taxi driver telling me my wife has just jumped out, I catch a beautiful vision of her pencil rolling down the middle of the road, with a beautiful cote d'azure evening in the backdrop.

I think "Shit, she's leaned on the door and fallen out" such is my simple and naive mind.

When the cab stops and I run out and reach her, she looks at me and says "you were totally ignoring me."


I paid the cab driver, who just smiled at me as if nothing had happened, then gave me a look I've seen many times, the look you might give to a terminally ill mother of a quadriplegic child.

____________________________________________________________________

My family were in retail for most of my young life, and shortly after I got married (at 24) they accepted an offer from a rival company to buy them out.

It was a big deal, and something they had worked incredibly hard for, I had worked in and out of the business for periods, so was really happy for them.

They decided to throw a party in one of the shops, to celebrate the handover, and about 120 people from both sides of the deal were invited.

The evening starts well (I say that a lot don't I?) with canapes, champagne, nice chats with nice people, and as I'm 'mingling' I notice my little nuclear-knickered psychopath cruising around the crowd, chatting and doing the same.

So there are some speeches, which I am happy to say pass without major incident, then there's a buffet and we've cleared a large area of the shop to use as a dance floor.

The people who are buying my parents' business arrive just as the buffet begins, they have driven a long way, and were held up, so when they walk in the buffet has been served and people are pretty p*ssed.

Now as is custom when married to a time bomb with no timer, I have to manage her emotions and moods as much as possible, so in between being a normal guest I keep going back to her, making sure she's ok, and that her next murderous outburst is some distance away.

I go over to the new owners of the business and chat to them enthusiastically. Ron is a guy in his early sixties, who plans to defer the running of the company to his management team. Linda, his wife is younger (DANGER!) in her mid fifties, rough looking, smokes like a chimney, and dresses in things she really shouldn't.

With this in mind and the potential of a flare up from my darling wife, I try to make sure that most of my attention/conversation is focussed on Ron, so we chat for about 10 minutes about the business, his plans, and how happy they are to have come in.

Using my well-developed peripheral vision, looking through the outdoor clothing department, I begin to notice that all may not be entirely well in the psychotic wife aisle about 40 feet away.

When I turn my attention from Ron and his wife I notice she's standing next to the buffet, where there is a big bowl of punch, and she doesn't look to steady on her feet.

Concerned and more than a little apprehensive, I approach her like a slow child might return to a recently lit firework.

"Everything alright?"

Silence.

"Just talking to Ron and Linda, they seem like nice people."

Silence.

Just as I'm losing my patience, and thinking of walking off, Ron and Linda, whom I didn't know had followed me, arrive at my side. As Ron opens his mouth and offers his hand to Louise to say hello, the first jet of warm tequila and grapefruit based punch spurts from my wife's mouth into my deadpan face.

The force of the blast means there is some deflection and damage to surrounding areas, and sadly Ron's beautiful suit jacket and shirt are amongst the casualties.

The second blast (she'd cleverly held some munitions back for a 2 wave attack) is less accurate.

As the lovingly-prepared summer punch misses my cheek and soaks my left shoulder, I'm confused by the relative look of calm on Ron's face while he dabs hopelessly at his sticky jacket lapel.

Louise says nothing, just walks away, and starts a conversation with a group of people on the other side of the room.

My lingering memory of the evening is of Ron, polite to the very last, trying to talk to me about golf as a mixture of fruit punch and my wife's saliva drips from his wife's cheek onto her dress.

____________________________________________________________________

Ok, as promised.

I like to call this one "No weddings and a Psycopath"

Jodie was a good friend of mine from back when I was 16. We used to go out drinking together, were good friends, and that friendship endured through the years.

While we were in france jodie sent me an email to say she was getting married. It was all pretty sudden, she'd met the guy a few months previously, he was from London and after a whirlwind romance they decided to get married that summer.

When I got the mail I told the wife, and after calling one of my best friends I arranged our travel (no flight again) back to the UK, to attend the wedding which was held in a place called boston spa, in yorkshire where her parents lived.

Jodie kindly asked me to give a speech at the wedding as I was her oldest friend, so I spent a couple of days putting it together and running through it on the balcony of our flat, with the wife editing and listening a lot of the time.

I was always fairly confused as to why louise wasn't more jealous of Jodie, she was good looking, and I'd actually had a relationship with her, so compared to the women she'd attacked/been concerned about in previous times I would have thought she was much more of a threat, but I was grateful for the peace and thought we could go over and have a nice time - (I am, after all, a massive fucking idiot).

The trip back to the UK from the South of France (10 hours by car, 2 hour ferry, 5 hour drive) passed without incident, at least if your definition of 'without incident' allows you to discount the bizarre 2 hour relay race we had with a lorry whilst she was driving, because I 'fancied the slag behind the wheel.'

No matter that the 'slag' in question was clearly male (I know that because I'm very perceptive, and the shape of his MASSIVE BEARD gave it away).

Compared to earlier crossings the ferry journey is a smooth one and I'm thrilled to drive into dover with my testicles and my passport still in my possession.

Anyway, it was friday morning now, the wedding was on the saturday, so we arrived in boston spa at about 3pm after a leisurly drive (for leisurely read tense and other-worldly), checked in to our hotel, and spent the evening with some friends getting p*ssed and accusing them of being adulterous sluts, respectively.

The night goes on and on, and it's 5am before we get back to our room. Throughout the evening we'd been having (I thought) a lovely time, chatting to mutual friends and just relaxing with the happy anticipation of the big day.

I had requested a call to the room at 11am the following day, as the wedding was at 12-45 and obviously I wanted to be there in good time.

I also had an alarm clock, and because I didn't trust that i had the alarm set on my mobile.

We collapsed into bed, approximately at 5-30am, p*ssed and cheerful.

When the alarm woke me at 11 I hit the snooze button. I thought it was odd that the hotel reception hadn't called the room as requested, but I rolled over and thought I'd have another 10 minutes, as I was really hung over and we had plenty of time.

Then I had this strange feeling....

It's hard to explain, but I just felt like it had been light for too long, or I had been in bed too long for it to be only 11am.

I grabbed my phone from the bedside table and checked, yup - 11.03, I then checked the alarm clock, 11.06, all seemed fine, so I had a snooze.

I woke up again after what felt like 10 minutes, and all the clocks in the room were saying 1pm!

Shit!!!

I get up, wake louise and start panicking, "come on, we've missed it we've got to go NOW!"

She turns over and starts getting up, I'm in and out of the shower in 10 minutes, and my phone keeps beeping with missed calls, which is weird, because it hadn't done that earlier I thought.

Louise gets ready, and we rush downstairs, I'm hung over and a little too hungry for it to be only 1-25pm. As we pass reception I look past the concerned receptionist to the clock behind her which reads 3-26pm.

I stop, and it feels like someone turns the volume down on everything, as I ask the receptionist if the clock is correct."Yeah, half three."

"FUCK"

There's no point going to the church now, so we head straight for the reception which is outside of the town, in a big restaurant/pub thing.

We run in flustered, and I start apologising to everyone, I find Jodie, and say how sorry I am, but she has that "you selfish twat" look in her eyes as I try to explain.

We get through the reception, I give my speech, Jodie warms towards us a bit more, and we spend a tense evening, me not touching alcohol and basically repeating the same apology for 5 hours.

I keep thinking back to the clocks, and the fact that the time later was the same on both, whereas earlier it had been 3 minutes different. I put this to louise on the drive home, and she eventually admits to me that she changed the time on my mobile and the clock because she 'hated' the people we'd been drinking with and wanted me to miss the wedding.

Apparently it was obvious that the women fancied me and vice versa, and she'd had enough.

I left her shortly after that.

____________________________________________________________________

And there's still more, which is shocking in itself.....