Where is Life is a 1944 thing by smarty pants physicist genius Erwin Schrödinger. It’s a solid book we’d give it 3/5 on Goodreads and then get criticised in replies for being stupid (or something).
Anyway, we much prefer the deeply autobiographical book Where is My Wife? by Derek Smith from Preston of Lancashire. It’s a story of how he and his missus went to the Fishergate Shopping Centre in Preston, got lost, and spent an infuriating 17 minutes trying to find each other again.
Getting Lost at the Mall in Where is My Wife?
In Schrödinger’s similarly titled work, he explained how organisms differ from inanimate objects, during which he opines over the “paragon of orderliness” and what this may mean for life on Earth.
Derek Smith, meanwhile, opines over his lost wife after he headed to Greggs for a pork pie and bottle of coke. In the moving introduction, written in 1999 (one year after the publication of the work, two years after the specific incident in question), he states:
“Went to Greggs. Standard. Done that a lot in my life, born and bred in Lancashire, but never in my former ’80s mullet did I think I’d lose me bleedin’ wife at the Fishergate Shopping Centre, home to some of the best deals in all of Lancashire. Except on that dark, dark day. Bad times was had.”
The book is some 400 pages of rambling about this misadventure. Smith makes it very clear it was not his fault and, indeed, could never be his fault as his sense of direction is superb:
“Me sense of direction is superb. Second to none. So I don’t see how I could get lost in Fishergate, it’s not like it’s the bleedin’ Trafford Centre now, is it? I call foul play!”
That’s in the opening chapter. Subsequent chapters go on to explain the myriad reasons why none of this could ever be Derek’s fault. He blames:
- Communism
- Immigrants
- Socialism
- Marxism
- The lack of available maps in the shopping centre
- The lack of a customer service desk in the shopping centre
- The lack of a personal assistant
- His wife’s stupidity
- His wife’s lack of direction
- His wife
- The wife
The final 100 pages of the work are an angry rant about his wife’s “dismal” sense of direction. The book abruptly ends with a torrent of swear words and typos, suggesting Mr. Smith was drunk on beer as he concluding what he dubs his “masterpiece”.
The Rebuttal: The Wife Responds With a Podcast Series and Film
Derek Smith’s wife, Diane, responded to her husbands book belatedly. In 2020, she began a podcast series called Why My Ex-Husband is a Tosser (the couple divorced in 2018). Consisting of 10 minute episodes, Diane lists out everything she detests about her husband.
In 2022, the podcast was adapted into a film of the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Derek and Davina McCall as Diane. The low-budget production was a box office failure and amassed only £32,000 at the global box office. Schwarzenegger called it the “greatest embarrassment” of his career.
Diane Smith later confirmed she regretted the podcast series, film, and had avoided the Fishergate Shopping Centre for over 25 years since the incident. She now only shops in Lidl.
