[Simon Hunt]

(aside to Jim: "kick into touch" is a football/soccer idiom, meaning approximately (American) "kick out-of-bounds". "Touch" is the area surrounding the playing field...)

Hi Jayne--

I'm not sure I'm ever going to be crazy for this one. Its gender-take feels uncomfortably old-fashioned and anti-feminist to me: the wife's occasional ("hysterical"?) excessive emotion (her only crimes are being "miserable" and crying too much) is not something to work on constructively, but a problem that both husband and wife wish to be rid of.

But I do think it has some clever turns, and I do have a few suggestions for it:

I agree with the others that the title is good.

At line 2, would "her" make more sense than "one"? If you change this, I think you would also want to rephrase "the bad one" in line 3.

I really think you should rework line 4. It seems to me that the charm of this is increased the longer you can delay revealing who the other woman is. The present line 4 rather gives the game away, if parenthetically.

In line 14, I agree with the others that "rules the roost" is too cliched to be a good use of those syllables. Even if you keep it, I think the verb needs to be "rule" since it has two subjects.

Cheers,

--Simon

P.S. I think Roger (below) and I posted almost simultaneously with very similar takes.