Showing results by narrator "Andrew Hayden-Smith" in All Categories

Jack and Karen are an ordinary, happily married couple. They've been together for years and are convinced every problem can be worked through. Until Karen finds an odd text on Jack's phone, and her confrontation leads to a shock revelation: Jack is gay, and he wants a male lover. Seeking stability for themselves and security for their teenage children, they settle on a 'closed loop' arrangement, whereby they stay together and Jack has a boyfriend. So begins a new type of marriage, where small deceptions and unspoken fantasies are replaced with radical honesty.

Neither Jon nor Alice feels like they are getting enough and the frustration is tangible. If the other can’t help then who can? Best friends? Colleagues? The corner shop/kebab house owner? Fighting for the remote are Jon and Alice, a twenty-something couple living together in London. Alice enjoys socialising; Jon hates meeting people. While Alice is climbing her career ladder, Jon is quite content on the bottom rung of his.

Alice gets her one client, Camp Raymond, a career-boosting gig reading his best-selling children’s novel on tape, leaving Jon at home to clean the house (with a little help from his sci-fi fan friends). While Jon is embroiled in an all-day Star Wars marathon, Alice battles with Camp Raymond’s expressive eccentricities to distract her from wondering where her life is going.

The dangling testicles of fate have tea-bagged me yet again." Alice and Keren are coming to the end of the three-hour getting-ready ritual, in preparation for a rare big night out with old mates. Jon is trying his best to get out of it with the help of the not-so-bright Grub. As the countdown begins, the wine is drunk, the hair sprayed stiff, and Jon made to change his shirt, but who will make it out of the house in time?

A bitter round of Pictionary ends in a drink-to-the-vomit drinking game after Alice claims she can beat Jon at anything. The rug of Alice and Jon’s host gets in the firing line, rekindling rivalries from the past as well as the present. Jon declares he is not a loser and embarks on a mission to prove it by any means possible.

"God, I need to be bereaved. I could do with losing a few pounds". Jon, Keren, and Grub accompany Alice to the funeral of a uni friend called Boris. Jon wants to know how good a friend the deceased was; Alice wants to know how he died. Will their respective quests for knowledge end in tears or laughter?

The Future Mother-in-Law Predicament: "Why did we have to let her in? Could we not have just posted her a duvet through the letter-box?" Alice’s Mum comes to stay and Jon is not happy. A house-proud woman with a bosom as pronounced as her carefully annunciated consonants, she cleans, criticises, pokes and potters until not even Alice can take it anymore, forcing her to call on reinforcements with equally masterful diction.

I remember when we used to have a life and not just a "Lovefilm" account" Jon and Alice’s latest dinner party attempt results in some guests glad to get away. Alice is nostalgic for the past, but realises some things have always been the same.