
When I picked up and casually dropped into the shopping basket a triple DVD starring John Wayne without even the slightest hint of opprobrium from my life's partner - I really should have known! Instead, I just went along with it, buried my head in the sand and told myself that peoples' tastes can change. We watched the elegiac The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance, followed by The Sons of Katie Elder (not so good I think, but the wife seemed to enjoy it), then True Grit (The John Wayne version and though not faithful to the book still the best I think) again. I only really started to become suspicious when she let it be known that she wouldn't be at all disappointed to receive a darn good western in her Christmas stocking.
Huh!!!!
I tested it out, took her at her word and gave her a copy of John Ford's The Searchers - she loved it! What was perhaps even more disturbing than this was that in my Christmas stocking she had given me a copy of High Noon and expressed genuine enthusiasm about sitting down with me to watch it. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable! But there was more to come, and this previously unheard of appreciation for the western genre hasn't let-up yet. A week ago we watched The Magnificent Seven and when I recently arrived back from Wales with a copy of the appropriately named The Outlaw Josie Wales, I was instructed not to watch it without her.
Would anyone know how I could get in touch with Mulder and Scully, or their counterparts in real life? However, in their defence, I must say the aliens who replicated her did a damn nearly perfect job. For instance, I still get told off for being untidy and for cluttering up the dining table with my writing stuff. But after thirty years of living with someone the western thing was the aliens' big mistake. In real life such a change just doesn't, couldn't possibly happen! So once again I reiterate, could the aliens who abducted my wife please return her ... but ... then again, it has been nice watching all those cowboy films on Saturday evenings ... and in every other way she is exactly the same ...