The lunchtime topic was “How to kill your husband”.
Ronnie Whitaker, a Durban wife, mother and author has discovered a nice way to do it.
She claims to have “a successful marriage” and I gathered the secret lay in what Ronnie and her husband call each other. They call each other long distance. Ronnie’s husband lives 10 000 km away in England.
The lunch was at the New Chapter Literary Luncheon Club at Sandton’s Hilton Hotel. The club arranges for authors to talk about their latest books and sell some at the door. The club has launched some of mine but the preponderantly female members have never fallen upon myh books with the salivating enthusiasm that they displayed for Ronnie’s “How to kill your husband” (published, appropriately, by Spearhead).
Ronnie says, “Women place for too much emphasis on being married – and not nearly enough on being widows.”
She advises women to make sure they get what is rightfully theirs – the old man’s life insurance.
She says she likes men, but that some are nicer dead.
Oh yes, I laughed and laughed. All we males laughed. Sort of high-pitched stuff.
And we dropped our food more than usual.
Ronnie was a little nervous of public speaking but as she warmed to the subject she began to appear more and more like Charles Adams disguised as a fruit sundae.
“I’m terrified of public speaking,” she said. “A recent study showed that 90 percent of people say public speaking is their greatest fear. Death came second.
“So there you go, people would rather die than stand up and speak. It figures, therefore, that the men affected (by the advice in her book) are lucky. All they have to do is die while I must stand up here and speak.”
Ronnie’s book is just like Ronnie herself. There’s a cynicism that is very very funny. There are recipes for “killer food”; recipes that are practically guaranteed to give the old man a heart attack, in good time. It’s not cold-blooded murder, you understand. There’s no blood involved. It’s good fun all round.
She said, “When my husband had a heart attack we weren’t prepared for it – he didn’t have enough insurance.” After virtually saving his life she got him to step up insurance payments.
“I agree, heart attacks are no laughing matter,” she says. “Well, at least, not until the estate is wound up,”
She says a woman spends 30 years of her life looking for her man’s lost socks and taking all his nonsense only to see him stricken by the “lolita syndrome” and go off with his 22 year old secretary. “And he doesn’t even wear socks any more. It’s slops and Bermuda shorts. He looks ridiculous. But she gets the money.”
She sounded almost serious when she said a wise wife ignores her husband’s affairs – “and certainly don’t divorce him because then the Viagra popping nymph chaser will give all his money to the bimbo”.
Affairs are stressful and stress is good for heart attacks. And nearly all men who die having sex do so while with the other woman.
So, she says, encourage stress and invest in lethal puddings. She offers some serious super-cholesterol killer recipes such as:
“Healthy Mangoes Ha Ha – liquidise a large mango with 125-150 mg mascarpone cheese. Layer between liqueur-soaked sliced mango and top with whipped cream!”
The funeral can be a tonic…
A drunken abusive husband died and the hired minister exaggerated the man’s almost non-existent good points so ridiculously that the widow began to giggle and eventually she and all her friends folded up in helpless laughter.
But I must go. My wife is cooking a huge eisbein – with chips followed by bread-and-butter pudding – again.
Filed under: General
