THE DESPERATE DIARY OF A COUNTRY HOUSEWIFE
A Cautionary Tale
Daisy Waugh

For My Husband

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction

OCTOBER 2007

May 21st 2005 Shepherds Bush

June 2005 Shepherds Bush

2 a.m., July 10th Shepherds Bush

July 21st France

August 14th

September 1st

Monday September 3rd

September Paradise

September 20th

September 23rd

October 10th

Sunday night, October 21st

November 2nd

November 7th

November 8th

Tuesday November 20th

Thursday November 22nd

Monday November 26th

Friday November 30th

December 14th

December 15th

December 15th again

December 17th

COUNTRY MOLE

January 15th

January 18th

January 19th

January 20th

January 21st

COUNTRY MOLE

February 1st

February 5th

February 9th

February 10th

COUNTRY MOLE

February 14th

February 21st

February 22nd

February 24th

COUNTRY MOLE

Monday February 27th

Tuesday February 28th

Tuesday night

Wednesday

March 2nd

Friday 4th

March 7th

COUNTRY MOLE

March 14th

Friday March 18th

Saturday Very late Very very very late

Sunday Very very very early

Tuesday

Wednesday

COUNTRY MOLE

Friday

COUNTRY MOLE

Thursday April 12th

Sunday April 15th

April 16th

Friday

COUNTRY MOLE

Thursday

Monday

COUNTRY MOLE

Monday April 30th

Tuesday

May 7th

May 9th

Thursday May 10th Very late

May 11th

COUNTRY MOLE

May 18th

May 20th

May 21st

COUNTRY MOLE

May 28th

May 30th

June 1st

June 8th

COUNTRY MOLE

June 17th

June 21st

June 26th

June 28th

June 30th

COUNTRY MOLE

July 12th

COUNTRY MOLE

July 16th

July 18th

COUNTRY MOLE

July 22nd

July 24th

COUNTRY MOLE

August 1st

August 11th

August 12th

COUNTRY MOLE

August 17th

August 19th

COUNTRY MOLE

August 29th

September 3rd

COUNTRY MOLE

September 12th

COUNTRY MOLE

September 25th

October 4th

October 5th

COUNTRY MOLE

October 14th

October 17th

COUNTRY MOLE

October 25th

October 27th

COUNTRY MOLE

November 7th

COUNTRY MOLE

November 13th

November 15th

November 20th

COUNTRY MOLE

December 12th

COUNTRY MOLE

January 25th London

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

Two summers ago, Martha Mole and family moved from London to start a new life in the Country. It didn’t go as smoothly as planned.

She kept the following diary. It should be noted, however, that there may have been times when her imagination got the better of her.

OCTOBER 2007

About a year before our adventures began I dreamed of a house set in fields, with a moat round it. It was ramshackle and much too big, hidden away in a secret, sunny coomb that nobody but I knew about. I think it may have looked a little like a medieval castle, with tumbling ramparts and a drawbridge, and yet simultaneously like a large terraced house somewhere in Notting Hill Gate.

In any case, in my dream I knew it was the house we’d been searching for. Not only that, I knew that this beautiful dream house, though surrounded by rivers and fields, was also within walking distance of Hammersmith tube station. And it was for sale. And it was being snapped up—not by an annoying Russian oligarch, nor even by my brother-in-law, the amazingly successful banker. It was being snapped up by us. We—husband, the two children, myself, and a mysterious brown puppy calling itself Mabel—were trading it in for our ordinary terraced house in Shepherds Bush, with its views over three giant satellite dishes and a multistorey car park, and we were going to live there, a life of carefree rural bliss, happily and wholesomely, for ever after. I remember waking up feeling exhilarated. And the feeling lasted, as I waded hither and thither through the usual Shepherds Bush knife victims and sundry litter, pretty much for the rest of the day.

The quest to find a place more satisfactory than Shepherds Bush to raise our young children continued as it had before. The husband and I had bored ourselves to sleep sometimes, discussing the options: Los Angeles? Sri Lanka? Sydney? New York? Ealing Common?…Not all the suggestions were realistic of course, but because, like everyone else’s, the value of our ordinary terraced house seemed to quadruple each fortnight, almost every option we threw in, however absurd, felt vaguely, distantly possible.

And there was always one thing we seemed to agree upon—that pretty much anywhere would be preferable to Shepherds Bush.

So we talked and we talked. And we talked and we talked.

And we talked.

And then one day, suddenly, the talking finished. We had made a decision.

I wonder now, with the benefit of the awful year and a half behind me, whether we were simply defeated by the sheer boredom of it. There came a point, perhaps, where neither of us could endure the conversation a moment longer.

…New Orleans? Kirkbymoorside? Malibu? Pitlochry? Nassau? Switzerland? Isle of Man? Barbados? King’s Cross? Marylebone? Bordeaux? Lamu? Winchester? Westchester? Henley? Delhi?…

The South West.

The following diary has been edited slightly—I’ve obscured a few names (or changed them) and for obvious reasons I’ve removed any give-away clues to our precise location. Otherwise it stands pretty much as I wrote it, a fairly accurate record of one very urban woman’s foolhardy—idealistic—attempts to adapt to family life in the English countryside.

I’d seen the property programmes. I’d read the lifestyle magazines. I’d looked in awe—and guilt—at the happy, healthy faces of those young families who dared to leave the Big Smoke behind them. They always make it look so easy. Don’t they.

The following should be looked upon as a cautionary tale.

May 21st 2005 Shepherds Bush

We’ve found it. Finley and I have just got back from a day trip to Paradise, and the long, long search is over. At last.

This one may not have a moat around it, or any ramparts, and it’s probably a four-hour drive from London. But it has the same magical, forgotten feeling as the house from the dream that I had, and when I saw it—when I turned the final corner of that winding path and looked up, and saw it properly for the first time—I swear it was so lovely it took my breath away.

The house is in the middle of a small village and just three miles up the road from a beautiful, old-fashioned market town. It perches alone, big and solid and perfectly symmetrical, on a hill so steep and so high above the village road that when you look up towards it all the proportions seem distorted. Actually it reminds me of an Addams Family cartoon: quite grand, in a way, though clearly dilapidated; with a stone porch, and in front of the porch a stone terrace, and in front of that a stone carved balustrade, drowning in jasmine and honeysuckle and ivy.

It has more bedrooms than we need, and more sitting rooms, and more cellars and underground vaults and cupboards and attics and cubbyholes than we’ll ever know what to do with. But the children can build camps in them. That’s the whole point. Or they can attach a rope ladder to the wall at the top of the back garden, and escape into the fields on the other side.

Not only that; it’s only a few miles—almost bicycling distance—from the train station, which means, on a more practical note, that Fin can travel up and down to his office in Soho almost as easily as if he were taking the tube from Shepherds Bush. In fact everything about the house is so perfect, so romantic and so good for the trains, it seems quite peculiar that we can even afford it. Houses in this corner of the world are far from cheap. What with one thing and another—the beautiful, protected countryside, the trains that carry people so easily back and forth to Soho and the City—this is probably one of the most expensive corners of rustic paradise in England.

Maybe the fact that you can’t get a car to the door might put a few people off. We both positively like that. It makes the place feel more secluded. In any case, with or without the access, this house could hardly be described as a cheapie and we are fully prepared to encumber ourselves with a monumental mortgage.

God knows, of all the options we’ve considered, the South West of England is hardly the most adventurous…but. But. But. But. It works. The schools are good. The house—I think I dreamed of. And in any case, whatever happens, however it turns out, we’ve been festering in London for far too long. It’s about time we had an adventure.

We put our London house up for sale within the week, and made an offer for the Dream House that afternoon. It was rejected out of hand. So we upped the bid. They didn’t even bother to respond. Two days later we saw the house advertised in the Sunday Times. So we sulked for a few days and then upped the bid again. And again.

June 2005 Shepherds Bush

The horrible ‘vendors’—him with his self-important beard; her with her sour mouth and her chignon—have finally accepted our offer. Bastards. Their obstinate refusal to sell us the house for anything less than it’s actually worth has led me to develop a searing hatred for them both, and especially for the woman—whose chignon, by the way, isn’t elegant, as she thinks it is, but actually quite embarrassing. Never mind, though. In my new country persona I’ve definitely decided I’m going to try to stop being such a bitch. I’m going to focus on people’s positive sides. So.

On a more positive note, we’ve pretty much sold in Shepherds Bush. It was all very quick and easy. Slightly too quick, in fact. Unlike Beardie and the Chignon, we didn’t insist on getting the highest price. So now we’re about to exchange contracts, and we have to be out of this house by the first week of July…which leaves us homeless for about two months. Too long, really, to invite ourselves to stay with parents or friends. So we’ll have to rent somewhere. Maybe we’ll rent abroad, since the children are on holiday. Why not? I have the next novel due in before too long and I can write it wherever I like. In fact that’s one of the reasons we can move out of London. And Fin will be away filming anyway.

In any case, if all goes according to plan the Dream House will be ours some time at the end of August.

2 a.m., July 10th Shepherds Bush

Will I wind up wearing a chignon and having a mouth like an old cat’s arse? Or will it be worse than that? Will I turn fat and mousey, and never get out of my anorak? Or will I hit the bottle and never get out of bed? Will my friends keep in touch with me? Will I keep in touch with them? Will Fin get a lover in London and never come home? Will I—

I’ve been lying here worrying for hours, thinking maybe we’re making a terrible mistake, thinking maybe we’d be better off staying in London after all—and then I heard it, the old muffled smash, the panicky boot-shuffle, the ruffle-ruffle-slam: a series of sounds so familiar to Shepherds Bush night life I could probably recognise them from my sleep, integrate them seamlessly into any one of my dreams.

It is the musical sound of yet another car windscreen biting the dust. Not ours, though, on this occasion. It can’t be, unfortunately, because we still haven’t fixed ours from the week before last.

Maybe I should call the police?

Shall I call the police? Can I be bothered? It means getting out of bed, and then they probably won’t even pick up the telephone…Or if they do, they’ll get here too late to do anything about it. And I’ll have to give them my name and address and possibly even a cup of tea, and it’ll wake up the entire house and the children will never go back to sleep and the whole thing will be a waste of time. I can’t be bothered.

Maybe I should just knock on the window and give the little sods a jolt by shaking my fist at them? Or maybe I shouldn’t. Not much to be gained from being a have-a-go hero in this dark corner of the woods. A couple of boys kicked through the front door of Number 35 last week, with the owners inside and screaming. I certainly wouldn’t want to encourage that.

What shall I do then? Switch on the telly and pretend I can’t hear them? Except the remote’s broken. No, I think I’ll just lie here until it goes quiet out there and then, er, put down the diary and go to sleep. Next time they come, maybe I’ll call the police.

Except I won’t, of course, because there won’t be a next time. We’ll be gone. We’ll have left it all behind: street crime, parking fines, Ken Livingstone, London…We’ve had enough of it all.

I think we have.

At any rate I hope we have, because most of our belongings are already in storage half way up the M5. Finley, the two children and I—and the new puppy (called Mabel, after the dream)—we’re moving on. To a new and fragrant life in the slow lane. We will be joining that peculiar section of the human race that doesn’t get baity when queuing. Somehow. And there’s clearly not a single reason to be feeling nervous about it.

In any case the children and I—and Finley and his mobile, intermittently—have a good long break in France ahead of us, to mull the thing over.

It’s a rough old life.

July 21st France

Things have gone a bit crazy in London since we left. According to my radio there’s a suicide bomber hiding out on our old street, and the whole area’s been evacuated. Nobody’s dead. I don’t think the bomb even went off. But the terrorist is still very much at large. And in our street!

Should I call some of our old neighbours to commiserate, or would it seem like gloating? Don’t know. Would dearly love to discover whose garden he’s hiding in, though. Because if he leapt over the wall from the tube station, as they’re saying he did, he must be on our side of the road, which means he might even be in our garden. Ex-garden, that is.

In any case, it’s all very…exciting’s the wrong word, of course. Shocking. Shocking. Poor old London. I suddenly feel a bit like a rat deserting a sinking ship. Awful. On the other hand it is slightly annoying, after ten years putting up with all those boring, unsolved low-level mini-crimes, to be missing out on the big one. Our old house might even be on the news.

Ripley and Dora found a drowned hedgehog in the swimming pool earlier this morning. Their obsession with all aspects of the ongoing—and apparently endless—embalming-and-burial ceremony is teetering on fetishistic, I think. Dora claims she’s been studying the Egyptians at school but it’s the first time she’s mentioned it, and I don’t know what R’s excuse is. Last I saw, he had covered the wretched animal in yoghurt and very small lumps of Playdough; and Dora, in mystical monotone, was invoking ‘voodoo and death spirits’ over the body. Is that what people did to the Pharaohs? I think not. In any case I’m finding it faintly disturbing. Also wasteful of yoghurt and needlessly untidy. Perhaps this news from home might distract them a bit.

August 14th

Still in France. Lovely. Bad economics, perhaps. But we had to go somewhere. The Dream House is due to become officially ours exactly two days after we get back. We exchange and complete simultaneously. Which means—as Fin so wittily insists on pointing out—we could still duck out if we wanted to. We could still change our minds.

Except we don’t want to. Everything’s going to be wonderful.

Also, Hatty called this morning. Took a break from her very important job looking after other people’s billions to tell me she had read somewhere, possibly in Heat, that Johnny Depp had just bought a small stately home in the same area as our Dream House. The article didn’t say exactly where it was, but apparently JD and the wife, who I know is famous but can’t remember her name, have been touring all the schools in what is about to be our local town. Which means they’ll have done a tour of Ripley and Dora’s school. Which means—perhaps—that Ripley and Dora and the little Deppies could wind up being in the same classes together, which means they could wind up being friends! Which means we could be friends!

I picture us now: JD—and the wife—and all the other new friends we’re going to make…I can see us relaxing on our beautiful terrace. The children are upstairs, snoozing. (Perhaps the little Deppies are upstairs with them, having a sleepover.) And we’re drinking wine, we’re talking films and novels, we’re basking in the warmth of our outdoor heaters, watching the stars in the big, open sky and then maybe…God, I dunno. Perhaps Johnny produces a couple of grams of—

Dora, Ripley and I are going to bake cakes together, and pick apples together, and speak to each other in French. We’re going to build bonfires and learn the names of wild flowers, and plant a Christmas tree so we can use the same one every year. We’re going to learn to ride, and I might get some geese and a little Jersey cow, and every day after school we’re going to climb up into the fields and the woods behind the house, and—yes—go kite flying. And we’ll have picnics together, and read old-fashioned novels out loud to one another: Swallows and Amazons, for example. Black Beauty. Treasure Island. Little Women. Maybe, when they’re older, even a bit of Dickens…

I’ve not been a perfect mother up until now. I’ve been chaotic and impatient and always in a hurry and usually hung-over and constantly preoccupied, if not by my work then by chatting to my friends on the blower. I hate cooking. I hate making angel get-ups out of cardboard. I never remember whose friend is coming to tea on what day, or when the term starts. I love it when the children watch DVDs. And I always forget to go to parents’ evenings. Mea culpa. That’s enough of that. They know I love them, I suppose.

In any case all that’s going to change from now on. It is.

For example, I’ve ordered the sew-on nametags. There’s something special about sew-on nametags, of course. They’re a sort of ‘From a good home’ branding mark; possibly a ‘My mother doesn’t work’ branding mark, too (but I mustn’t be bitter). Either way, they shout of stable upbringings, balanced diets, selfless parenting and time management at its best. So I’ve ordered the nametags and if it kills me, I am going to sew them on. It will be the first step in what I fully intend to be a long and glorious transition from hassled, incompetent and very slightly selfish urban working mother to laid-back earth-mother-style Domestic Goddess. That’s right.

I will still work, of course. But I’ll do it when the children are asleep or at school. Or something. And after school the children will be free to play in the fields, and I won’t sit on the sidelines muttering to myself over the newspapers. In fact I may even give up reading newspapers altogether. And the time that I save not reading them I shall now spend playing with the children because from now on—and this is a promise—

I am going to be a completely different human being.

September 1st

On the ferry home at last. Lots of fat, bored, hideous teenagers wandering around eating crisps and shouting. Is it possible that Ripley and Dora might one day turn into flabby, oral-fixated morons just like these? And if so, do I really want to be stranded with them, day after day, deep in the English countryside, while my husband travels up and down to Soho? Possibly not.

Ripley and Dora have gone to explore, by which they mean find the sweet shop. Fin’s reading a film script. He has another one resting beneath it, ready for him to read after that. And it occurs to me I’m feeling more than a little bit irritable. Not surprisingly, perhaps. We’re due to exchange and complete on the new house the day after tomorrow, and we’ve neither of us set eyes on it since May.

Thousands of people do what we’re doing. Families move out of London every day, and they all claim to be very happy about it. They can’t all be lying. Can they? It’s going to be wonderful. It’s going to be better than wonderful.

I wonder if Johnny Depp plays tennis?

Monday September 3rd

Filthy weather. Bloody England.

The estate agent made it clear he didn’t want us to visit the house this morning. He tried hard to sound too busy to fit us in, but it was obvious he had nothing else to do. I got the distinct impression he was suppressing a yawn for the entire conversation.

So we left the children with Finley’s parents and drove over. Looking at the map, we thought it would take only about forty-five minutes but—fresh to this bucolic existence as we are—we hadn’t fully taken into our calculations the tractor factor.

In any case the journey took over two hours, just as Finley’s father had always warned us it would. He says the journey could never really take less than two hours because if there aren’t tractors blocking the way there’ll be a couple of oldies, killing a little of their excess time by driving somewhere unnecessary as slowly as mechanically possible, specifically to annoy the younger people who are running late in the long line of cars behind them. Well, no, he didn’t say that exactly. In fact he didn’t say it at all. He just said people drove slower in the country, and to be careful of speed cameras.

Goodness, though, there do seem to be an awful lot of elderly persons in this corner of the countryside. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course. Of course, of course. Oldies have to live somewhere, don’t they? And so on.

The last time we saw the Dream House was on a beautiful sunny day back in May. The grass had been freshly cut and there was honeysuckle growing in vast, sweet-smelling clumps all over the terrace balustrade. It was breathtakingly pretty. It was beautiful.

This morning the honeysuckle was long gone. The sky was low and black, and it was raining. Not only that, the garden clearly hadn’t been touched since the day we last came to see it, nearly four months ago.

We found Richard the estate agent waiting for us, yawning and stretching, managing to look simultaneously self-righteous and half asleep. We trampled up the path towards him, apologising for the tractors and the old people and the resulting need to reschedule (we had called to postpone the meeting). It all seemed to be going down OK—in fact he almost cracked a smile—but then, just as Fin and I climbed the final step to the front porch, I accidentally trod on a slug.

It was the size of a small serving spoon, I think; possibly even larger. And I screamed. I couldn’t help it. I was only wearing thin canvas trainers, and so my foot had clearly experienced each stage of the slug’s final moment: the pathetic, rubbery resistance, the deathly squelch…It was not good. So I screamed. And the other thing I did, unfortunately, was I shouted ‘Fuck!’ Once again, I couldn’t help it. Sometimes these words have to come out.

Richard the estate agent looked at me as if I’d just brought out a machete and threatened to cut off his cock. Wish I had, actually. Might have livened him up a bit. In any case I apologised profusely, of course. But some people just won’t accept apologies, will they? He could hardly bring himself to look at me after that. Sulkily, he turned back to the front door, slid the key into the lock—and then paused.

‘The office just called, by the way,’ he said. He had to shout over the sound of rain gushing from the broken gutter above our heads. ‘You’ll be delighted to hear we’re ahead of schedule. You and the vendors exchanged and completed contracts about half an hour ago.’

‘Ooh sugar!’ I chortled (trying to suck up, obviously, after the swearing débâcle. Richard the estate agent would be getting no more fucks from me). ‘Don’t suppose we can sidle out of it now, then, can we?’

‘Not easily, no,’ he said drearily, looking only at Fin.

Fin said ‘Fantastic!’ or something similarly delightful. I could see Richard’s sullen shoulders slowly relaxing. Once again he very nearly smiled.

Fantastic Fin—always says the right thing in the right way to the right person, and wherever he goes he always leaves a trail of slowly relaxing shoulders behind him. But sometimes (I happen to know) he’s being Fantastic on autopilot. He’s actually not paying the slightest bit of attention to all the Fantastic words which are bubbling so agreeably out of his cakehole. Sometimes, for example, he’s exchanging text messages with a film financier in Canary Wharf at the same time.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s too late now. And the fact is I wasn’t texting financiers at the time, and it didn’t occur to me either—or not until just now (back at Fin’s parents and after a long bath)—but I now think Richard the estate agent was probably lying when he said the house was already ours. We’d not been due to exchange and complete until the day’s end, or so I had understood. And frankly, what with the rain and the broken gutter and the outrageously neglected garden, the house wasn’t exactly looking…

Well it’s still beautiful and everything, and big—and it’s going to be lovely. I’m sure it’s going to be lovely. But this morning it wasn’t really looking its best. It was looking pretty awful. In fact there was a moment, as we stood on that leaking porch, and I still had bits of giant slug attached to my foot, when all I really wanted to do was run.

The feeling didn’t last. Of course. Of course not. In any case the house is ours now, for certain. Gordon Brown has taken his monumental Stamp Tax. He has already tossed it into his big, black hole, never to be seen again.

And the house is ours. There can be no turning back.

September Paradise

We’ve been in Paradise ten full days already and the sun has shone for every one of them. The sun is shining now. It’s beaming down on us, and there are no slugs anywhere to be seen. Dora and Ripley are outside, and I can hear their squeals of laughter. Both seem to be very happy at their new school. Their new classmates are sweet and welcoming, and noticeably more innocent and less bratty than the little Londoners we left behind.

Ditto the mothers, actually.

Not one of whom, incidentally, seems to work. Their husbands, like Finley, commute back and forth to the capital, and they stay at home, just being mothers, and being really nice. Oh dear.

I’ve noticed they don’t like it when I swear.

Fin is in London again, and plans to be all week. But I’ve just ordered the box set for Series 5 of The West Wing, and I still have three episodes of Series 4 to go, so I won’t miss him…In my next life I plan to be a press secretary at the White House, with no children, sadly, but lots of clever colleagues and lots of Armani suits. In the meantime, all is good in Paradise. Tomorrow, after school, Ripley, Dora and I are going to pick blackberries in the fields behind the house. For the first time ever, I think, I begin to feel almost smug about my mothering abilities, and the children’s upbringing. It’s all so wonderfully wholesome it makes my eyes water.

I just wonder why we didn’t move down here years ago.

September 20th

The children’s nametags arrived! Unfortunately I’ve got to do a book plug/radio interview all the way over in Plymouth this evening—assuming, that is, that Fin arrives back from London in time to babysit. Desperately need to get hold of a regular babysitter from somewhere—but where? I’ve asked numerous mothers, but they all seem to use the same person. Or there’s one other girl somebody suggested, but she lives twenty-five miles away.

Any case, I will sew on the nametags tomorrow. Failing that will definitely do them over the weekend.

September 23rd

Fin’s train was delayed, so I had to cancel the radio interview. Shame, as I said to Fin. Among numerous other things. But it made me stir my stumps on the babysitting front, and I think I’ve found someone at last. She’s only slightly younger than I am and she has a couple of children, though she was a bit vague as to their whereabouts. I think maybe they live part time with the father. She has a disconcertingly soft voice so I can never hear a word she says. Also, she is strangely lifeless. Almost slug-like, in fact. Without being rude. Doesn’t seem to react at ordinary speeds—or at all, really, to anything anyone says.

But I’m sure she’s fine. Got her name off a card in the launderette and she showed me a couple of references. Funnily enough she looks incredibly familiar. I’m convinced I’ve met her before somewhere, but she denies it.

Not that we have much call for a babysitter at the moment. Or, to be honest, any call at all. But the Plymouth thing was annoying. I’d been looking forward to a few bright lights and so on. A bit of flattery. In any case, it’s reassuring to know that we could now call on someone if, by some happy chance, Finley and I had the extraordinary good fortune ever to be invited anywhere again.

Every time I turn the corner and look up at the house I feel my heart lift. Because it’s beautiful. And because the children are happy here. And because we have finally, at long last, escaped from London.

We had planned to wait and get all the refurbishment work done before we invited friends down to stay with us, but now that we’re more or less settled I can’t really see the point. Apart from the fact that we seem incapable of finding any builders, the house is perfectly comfortable as it is. It may be a bit short on furniture, but who cares? We’ve got a big sofa. And a telly. I’m going to buy a couple of extra beds and some sleeping bags and persuade Hatty (and family) to come and stay as soon as possible. I miss her. I miss all my friends. It’s the only serious blot on an otherwise blemishless landscape.

October 10th

Bit of a culture shock at the weekend. Maybe it doesn’t signify anything, but I can’t stop thinking about it. The Mothers had told me about a stables which they all swore was the single riding school in the area worth using. So. The children have been desperate to take up riding. I rang the place up. And a woman at the other end advised me, with a certain amount of relish, that beginners’ lessons were 100 per cent booked up, now and for the entire foreseeable future. She said that, for £10 per name, children could be put on to a waiting list. I complained, but it didn’t move her much.

She softened a little, though, once I’d given my credit card details, and suggested it might be worthwhile just turning up one weekend and waiting around, on the off chance of a late cancellation. So—Finley was away. That’s what we did on Saturday.

Horrible! It felt like we were walking into a Barbie Doll theme park. The yard was so tidy it ought to have had a pink plastic logo swinging over the front gate. Also it was teeming with lady-clones, all of them sporting the same tasteful blonde highlights and clean, green, calf-flattering Wellington boots. There must have been fifteen fourwheel drives in the car park and fifteen super-mummies milling around, fixating on the buckles of their children’s safety hats. I recognised a handful of the women from school, of course. The question is, though, Where did all the others come from? I had no idea there were so many in the area. And I’m not sure whether to be depressed or very depressed by the discovery. What the hell’s going on?

In any case, the children and I hung around for about an hour, patting ponies and being pretty much ignored, until finally a lovely, rosy-cheeked teenager came over to talk to us. There had been no last-minute cancellations, she said, but she offered, out of kindness, to put the children on top of an old donkey and lead them round the yard a couple of times.

Ripley and Dora were having the time of their lives, squeezed together on top of the old donkey, giggling blissfully as it slowly plodded along. They’ve never ridden before. They were thrilled. Rosy Cheeks was giving them a little impromptu lesson, and the love was flowing between all of us, Rosy Cheeks, Ripley and Dora, the donkey, even me.

But then suddenly, careering out of nowhere, there came a very thin, very angry woman. She was screaming at us because Ripley and Dora, approximately 3 feet off the ground, travelling at significantly less than 1 mile per hour, and with an adult ready to catch them on either side, had not been strapped into safety helmets.

Rosy Cheeks turned purple and looked like she was about to cry. I tried to point out how entirely undangerous the situation was for all concerned, and that I was positively grateful that my children had been allowed to go bare-headed. ‘It’s nice to feel some wind in the hair occasionally,’ I said. Which was perhaps a little provocative. Or maybe not. In any case, at that point the Pipecleaner turned her great ire solely onto me. This wasn’t about danger, she sneered. Danger had nothing to do with anything. It was about liability. ‘And you…people…always sue.’

Do we? Do I?

Anyway Ripley and Dora were forced to dismount, which they did with great stoicism and dignity, I thought. Ripley gave the old bag his most baleful glare, but she didn’t appear to notice. And we left the stable yard under a great cloud of disgrace. We headed back to our car, past all the super-mummies standing white-knuckled with fear while their precious offspring, in full body armour, plodded clockwise round the schooling ring.

They stared at us as we scuttled by—at my hatless children in pity, I think, and at Rosy Cheeks and me as if we were murderers.

Dora giggled. ‘I don’t think she liked us at all,’ she said.

I opened up the sun roof as we drove away. I think I must have been doing it to bait, because I knew the children would immediately poke their heads out of the top. I ordered them to sit down. But I didn’t really mean it, and the children could tell. They rolled back their hatless heads and roared with laughter.

Ripley and Dora now say they want to go riding again, which is good in a way, I suppose, but also slightly depressing. Unless, of course, I can ferret out an alternative riding school, where the super-mummies and their fun-sucking safety obsessions haven’t yet cast a pall.

Sunday night, October 21st

Hatty, Damian and the Psycho Kids just left. Thought I’d feel a bit wistful, seeing them head off back to the Old Smoke. But no. Far from it. Truth be told I was quite relieved to see the back of them. It’s been a long weekend.

Poor Hatt. She and Damian aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye at the moment. In fact, now I think of it, I’m not sure they even glanced at one another for the entire weekend. And Damian’s a pretentious little git. (Even Fin agrees, and I can’t usually get Fin to be horrible about anyone.) But there’s no denying he’s handsome. Now that Hatty can’t even bring herself to look at him, I don’t see how she can draw any pleasure from their partnership at all.

Damian writes screenplays for a living. Rather, he writes screenplays. He does about two hours’ work a day, according to Hatt, and never, in all the time she’s known him, earned a single penny from it—or from anything else, either. He spends most of his energy whining about President Bush, and then, when he’s drunk a bit more (which he usually has), whining about the creative strain imposed on him by always having to scrounge off Hatty. Hedge Fund Hatt. She earns a fortune, it has to be said. But still.

So Damian doesn’t really work, and he doesn’t help much, either. He sat tight on that bony little arse of his the entire weekend. Didn’t lift a buttock. Didn’t clear a coffee cup. He barely spoke at lunch or dinner, and even in between times he didn’t move from the kitchen table. He just sat there silently, occasionally clicking his tongue over the right-wing bias of the newspapers and calling for cups of tea.

It occurs to me suddenly that he may be suffering from depression. People often get fixated with current affairs when they’re depressed. Or maybe it’s the other way round. In any case, poor guy, I’m sure he didn’t used to be quite so dismal. In fact, when he first came on the scene, and he was still full of ambition and hope and spunk and all, I have a fuzzy memory of his occasionally even being quite attractive.

As for the three children (‘the Psycho Kids’, as Dora calls them), I’m not sure what their excuse is. They have a nanny with more qualifications than a neurosurgeon during the week, and an adoring mother who dedicates herself to their every need at the weekends—and, truthfully, they’re awful. They refuse to eat anything except bread and ketchup; they won’t address a word to anyone but Hatt; and they never go to bloody bed. On Saturday afternoon Hatty and I took them for a walk by the stream, and Lucia (aged 8) got her boot stuck in a puddle. For some inexplicable reason it sent her into a blood-curdling tantrum, the like of which I have never witnessed. I would have left her there, frankly. We were only a couple of hundred yards from home. But Hatty, who deals with tens of millions of pounds every day, or probably does, and is without doubt the most effective human being I know (as well as being my best friend), was almost in tears about it. Anyone would have thought the girl had trodden on a landmine, not in a puddle. In the end Lucia managed to make life so unpleasant for everyone we all had to turn round and go home.

…Hard not to feel a bit conceited about Ripley and Dora by comparison. All those years of slapdash, badtempered parenting and intermittent bargain-basement childcare seem to have done them the world of good.

So. That was our first attempt at weekend entertaining. I discover it’s not quite so easy. Partly, I suppose, because we haven’t really unpacked yet. But mostly because the whole process takes a hell of a lot more work than I’d realised. It’s nobody’s fault—certainly not Fin’s, who more than pulled his weight—but I feel like I’ve been skivvying pretty much solidly since they arrived on Friday night. We spent £200 on food and slightly more on alcohol, I’m exhausted, and not even specially convinced anyone had a very nice time.

Other news…

Hatty’s been muttering for ages about raising funds to put one of Damian’s unwanted screenplays into production, and I never really took her seriously. But I forgot: Hatty isn’t like other people. One way or another she’s now pulled together £50,000. She says she’s raised it through her work connections, but I have a feeling she’s saying that to protect Damian’s feelings. I think she’s raised it from her own bank account. In any case, it’s enough to get the script for his five-minute short, called Goodbye Jesus, turned into screen reality, and with Hatty at the helm it looks like it might really get made.

Not only that, it turns out that Hatty’s sister went to school with somebody who claims to be the best friend of the great Paul Bettany, and Hatty seems convinced that on the strength of that—let’s face it—pretty feeble connection, Paul Bettany is going to play the lead part in Goodbye Jesus, and for free! Under normal circumstances I’d laugh, but knowing Hatty she’ll probably pull it off.

Anyway she’s been asking Finley for advice about filmmaking all weekend, which—I can’t help noticing—he’s been more than happy to provide. Now she’s asked him over for dinner next week, in London. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she said to me, and she was grinning. It was meant to be rhetorical. A joke. Of course.

‘Mind? Moi?’ I cried, laughing uproariously.

But I do mind, actually.

Two months away from London, and already I’m turning into a neurotic, jealous hausfrau. Too much time surrounded by fields, I suppose. Too much time to think. Hatt’s my oldest friend, for Heaven’s sake.

Seriously. How pathetic is that?

November 2nd

Fin got into London an hour late this morning because the earlier train was cancelled. He’s already called me twice to complain about it. But what am I supposed to do?

He said it meant he was forced to miss a very important meeting, but—as I so hilariously pointed out to him—he has at least thirty very important meetings every day. Can it really matter if he misses one of them? I was being funny. I think. On second thoughts maybe I was just trying to annoy him. Any case, he didn’t laugh, and now I need to ask him something about scaffolders because a gust of wind just knocked a massive chunk of lead guttering loose and it’s swinging across the front of the house. I keep calling but he’s refusing to pick up his telephone. Either that, of course, or he can’t pick it up because he’s in a meeting.

Wish I had a few meetings to go to.

November 7th

Got a hot date with a new friend called Rachel White. She is the ex-sister-in-law of my London accountant and she and her new husband, who is also an accountant, have invited us over to dinner on the Saturday evening after the Saturday evening after next. Fin’s in New York at the moment, so I haven’t confirmed it with him, but if he’s not around I can just go by myself. I accepted for both of us in any case.

Our children go to the same school, though they’re in different years, and I suppose my accountant must have mentioned something to her because she came over while I was lingering at the school gate, friendless and hopeful as ever, and very kindly introduced herself.

She was wearing tweed trousers with sensible brown slip-on shoes underneath, and a burgundy fleece with some sort of financial institution’s logo sewn on above the left knocker. She has mousy grey hair, cut astonishingly badly, and a broad, ruddy, friendly, well-meaning face.

Christ. It’s hardly Johnny Depp, is it? But we’ve got to start somewhere.

Talking of Johnny Depp, Clare Gower (of the school gate: her son, Joshie, is in the same class as Ripley; plus she has another, called Tanya, in the year above Dora) says she thinks she saw him in Waitrose on Tuesday! She’s not sure it was him, though. In fact, on closer questioning it became pretty clear that she didn’t really know who Johnny Depp was, nor had the faintest idea what he looked like. Nor much idea of anything else, either, come to that. Nevertheless, she said, and I quote:

‘I wouldn’t say I was absolutely certain, of course—wait a minute, Joshie, Mummy’s talking. But, he certainly looked familiar, and if it wasn’t Mr Deppy then it was the other chappie. The fellow in Batman. I mean Spiderman. Oh shoot…What’s he called, Joshie, can you remember? That nice actor-man Mummy saw in Waitrose on Tuesday. Joshie’s like a little fact machine, aren’t you, Joshie? He’s Mummy’s little brainbox…Oh goodness, what’s the fellow called? Leonardo Something. Leonardo Thingamajig.’

Clare Gower has invited me to a coffee morning next week, and I am happy to say that I have accepted.

R’s lost his school jersey. Must do the nametags before anything else goes missing.

November 8th

Well whatdderyaknow? Just got off the blower with Hattie, who’d just got off the blower with Paul Bettany, who’s apparently in London and ‘at a loose end’ for three days next week. He says that if she and Damian can pull the rest of the cast and crew together in time—and they will, or rather Hatty will—he’s agreed to play the lead in her film. For free.

She says he’s lovely, and I’m sure he is. I told her I’d seen him perform once, before he was famous, in a play at the Bush Theatre. He was brilliant, I said, and I would have been happy to expound a little, or even a lot. But she wasn’t that interested. In any case she was in a rush. She mentioned that Finley was being incredibly helpful: that she’d been calling him up about twenty times a day the last couple of weeks—which is news to me—and that apparently, out of the kindness of his heart, he’s given her the name of a young producer and some hot new director and a whole bunch of other people to help bring the project together. Fantastic. As Fin would say. God, he’s so delightful.

Anyway, Hatty’s leaving Damian in London to cast the leading girl, and she’s taking time off work and flying out to Los Angeles tomorrow to meet up with Bettany. She giggled when I asked what she was going to talk to him about. She said she hadn’t the foggiest. ‘I’m really just going there to see if I can buy him dinner,’ she said. ‘And to thank him.’ Ho-hum. Lucky thing.

Fin’s in LA at the moment, of course. I have to admit I toyed with the idea of not mentioning that fact to Hatty. Not sure why. Well. Yes I am. In any case, I did tell her. And she already knew it. She’d just been speaking to him. In fact he’d advised her to check in to the same hotel. ‘If I can’t get Paul Bettany to have dinner with me which I probably can’t…’

‘He’s got a very beautiful wife, by the way,’ I said sourly.

‘Exactly. Which is why Fin and I are almost certainly going to meet up for dinner tomorrow night. He says he’ll take me to the Ivy to cheer me up.’

Tuesday November 20th

Fin’s just called to ask where he should buy a new sofabed. He says the one he has in his office is too lumpy, and given how many nights he’s spending in London at the moment (‘with the trains as they are’) he wants to invest in a new one. He says he won’t be coming down to Paradise before Friday again this week.

I decided not to kick up a fuss, mostly because, as Fin cleverly reminded me only this morning, it was my idea to move out to Paradise in the first place.

Doesn’t matter, anyway. Got loads of telly to watch. Plus at some point I seriously ought to do some work. I’m so behind with the novel now it makes me feel sick whenever I think about it. Plus I’ve got an article to write about white wedding dresses (Yes or No?) and, though I distinctly remember injecting enormous amounts of passion into the discussion when the piece was commissioned, I’ve forgotten whether said passion was in favour or against, and since it’s now almost two weeks overdue I’m hesitant to ring up and check. Also, much more excitingly, I have a cunning plan to write a newspaper column all about my strangely adventureless life out here in the sticks. Why not? I’d enjoy it, even if no one else did. It would almost be like having someone to talk to.

Truth is, though, I’ve slightly lost track of my laptop. This has never happened before. In London I used to write on it every weekday, like a normal person with a job to do. Plus I couldn’t survive twenty minutes without checking my e-mail. In fact I virtually slept with the laptop under my pillow. Now I’m not even sure how many days ago it was that I last saw it. So what the hell’s going on?

Might this be a first indication of a new unhurried, unworried persona emerging from my desiccated urban shell? I sincerely hope not, actually. Apart from the rest of it (and I’ll need to make a real effort with the journalism if I’m to keep myself from being buried alive down here) there’s the next novel to be delivered in three and a half months, and pretty much everything I’ve written so far looked like complete drivel, last time I read back. I think I’m going to have to start again.

Thursday November 22nd

Computer still not turned up. Ditto the nametags. Where did I put them? Ripley tells me he’s lost his blazer, which I bought new for some incredibly stupid reason, also about forty-five sizes too large, so that it was virtually unwearable anyway. I wrote his name in biro on the label while I was waiting for the bloody nametags to arrive, but now he tells me the label was ‘a bit itchy’ and he cut it out.

£60 down the shit-hole, then.

I wonder if there’s an agency somewhere that will sew people’s nametags in for them? There must be. If I could find my wretched laptop I might be able to find out.

Monday November 26th

It occurs to me that I haven’t laid eyes on my computer since that peculiar carpenter came round to measure up for bookcases over a week ago. I think he may have snuck it out with him when he left. Which explains a lot, actually. At the time he certainly had me fooled. I even felt a little sorry for him. Now, of course, I’m beginning to wonder if he was actually a carpenter at all.

He spent hours measuring up; literally hours, and then at the end, while he was still blowing gently over a stonecold cup of tea, I asked him, not unreasonably I thought, how long he thought he might need to build the things. And he looked astonished. He looked quite put out. Five minutes passed with him carefully adjusting the position of his mug on the kitchen table, scratching on his fleabites and so on…

Until finally, very, very slowly, he said: ‘Fact ezzz, Madam [Madam!] I can’t say…Not in so many werrds…I wud if I cud, believe me…Much as I’d love if I cud, see…As the saying goes, How long is a piece of string?’

And that was it. Beyond that, however many times I asked, whichever way I phrased the question, he simply refused to be drawn.

I got his name off a card at the launderette, but that’s hardly a solid endorsement, is it? If my laptop doesn’t turn up soon I think I’m going to call the police.

Friday November 30th

Called the police. Funny. Ten years in Shepherds Bush and I never bothered to contact them once. Three months down here in Paradise and I’ve already got the number for the local station on speed dial. What does that say? Not at all sure, yet. But it must say something, mustn’t it?

I had already explained how I wrote novels and magazine articles and so on, and about Ripley and Dora and the new dog called Mabel, and the move down from London. I’d explained that my husband was originally from Quebec but that he didn’t really speak much French any more. I think I told him about my 2.1 in history, my antipathy to the London Olympics, and about my recently deceased great aunt who was allergic to oysters. So I was on the very point of handing over the carpenter’s name and telephone number—when I spotted my precious laptop, nestling happily beneath a large dictionary on my, er, desk.

Luckily, I managed to get the policeman off the telephone without his suspecting anything. He’s suggested I go down to the station to make an official statement. Which obviously I can’t now, can I?

Shame.

Never mind. Tonight I have the mysteriously nonresponsive and familiar-looking babysitter coming round. I’m going to dinner with Rachel White and her husband the accountant and, truth be told, I can’t wait. I’ve not been out for so long now I don’t think I’ve looked forward to an evening so much in years.

Unfortunately Fin’s not going to be able to make it. He just called. One of his financiers pulled out this morning and the film is on the point of total collapse. So. He has meetings to go to. I hope Rachel doesn’t mind. It’s not his fault. There’s really not much he can do about it, anyway. And she seems very nice. I’m sure she’ll understand.

!!!!! She CANCELLED me! She bloody CANCELLED me!

I saw her at the school gate so over I scuttled, all smiley and super. I should have realised that things weren’t going to be simple from the start, because I opened with a friendly-but-casual ‘Hello, Rachel! Still on for tonight?’

And she definitely looked offended. ‘Goodness, I should hope so,’ she said.

I ploughed on in any case, friendly-but-casual as before.

‘…He’s so sorry,’ I said. ‘He was looking forward to this evening so much, but he’s stuck in these awful meetings the whole night, and it was a choice, really: make the dinner party or save the film! So I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with just me!’

She shook her head, and I could tell before she spoke, by the shape her lips were making, that I’d got it wrong. I’d got everything completely wrong.

‘Oh, what a shame!’ she cried, almost as if I’d told her I had to amputate the leg. ‘Oh, goodness, what a shame. Oh, that’s such a disappointment!’ The skin around her nostrils went red, and I realised with a chill that she wasn’t looking at me any more.

I said, ‘Rachel, he’s so sorry. And so am I. But still I’m so looking forward—’

She said, ‘Don’t be silly. There’s no way we’re dragging you out in the middle of the night on your own. Certainly not.’

‘But—’

‘No. We wouldn’t think of it. We wouldn’t dream of asking such a thing.’

‘But—’

‘No.’

‘But, please—’

But, no.

No.

And that was it. She said she’d make another date ‘when Finley’s schedule is a bit clearer’, and she suggested we meet for ‘a coffee’ one day next week.

December 14th

Fin went to the screening of Hatty and Damian’s short film last night. He said it was very, very good. Dying to see it.

I sent them a bunch of flowers for luck. Wonder if they arrived in time? Any case I’d better take the dog out. She’s making funny coughing noises, and all the chocolate biscuits have gone missing. Got a feeling she’s about to be sick.

December 15th

Half the builders I telephone don’t even bother to return my telephone calls. The rest make appointments, and then never turn up. Can’t quite work out what I’m doing wrong.

Fin, needless to say, has had a little more success. Somebody in London gave him the name of an Irish woman called Megan, who apparently once did some work for one of the Rolling Stones and who consequently (he’d been warned) presented herself very much as a Builder to the Stars.

He contacted her last Friday evening, and she hopped onto her broomstick there and then, arriving at our front door, hunchback and shoulders fully relaxed, dyed black hair perfectly coiffed and stout little body positively dripping in eighties-style jewellery, within an hour of his making the telephone call. How does he do it?

Sadly, however, we had to reject her. Or maybe she sadly rejected us. It was pretty clear from the beginning that we were singing from different hymn sheets.

‘I can tell you’re a woman with discerning taste,’ she muttered to me, leaning her broomstick against the porch and shimmying into our untouched, half-lit, empty hallway. I felt quite aglow for a moment—until I looked up and down and around and about and realised she had absolutely nothing, at that early stage, upon which to base the observation.

Anyway. She took the briefest of glances round our bomb-site of a house and then, suddenly, looked at her watch and announced she had to leave. She couldn’t possibly discuss budgets or plans with us, she said, until we had inspected the property she and ‘her boys’ were currently working on in a village about twenty miles away.

We went to look at it the next morning. A Saturday. It was a house belonging to a couple of art dealers from Seattle, neither of whom was present. Nevertheless I think she was quite put out that we tipped up with the children. It’s possible she was quite put out that we tipped up at all.

The tour, which was made unnecessarily stressful by her rampant irritation with our fairly well-behaved children, seemed to go on forever. Fin and I were forced to admire every tap, every door handle, every eco-friendly window fastener in the building. And it wasn’t easy. Somehow, and clearly at unimaginable expense, Megan and her team of boys had transformed what was once, presumably, a perfectly pretty village cottage into something that looked more like an industrial greenhouse.

At some point (about an hour in) she was distracted from her boasting by an improperly fitted cupboard latch, and we managed to slip away. She found us a couple of minutes later—Fin, me and the children—sardine-packed into what was meant to be her pièce de résistance: an aluminium, bean-shaped lavatory capsule, cleverly suspended above what would one day be a dining room. We were giggling quite a lot, testing out the motion-sensitive toilet flush. Or the children were. Or, no. We all were, in fact.

I think it dawned on Megan about then that we were completely out of our depth. The art dealers from Seattle were spending on a single, motion-sensitive lavatory pod about three times what we had to spend on our entire house.

Nevertheless, at the end of the tour we hugged each other passionately. We reconfirmed our various e-mails and telephone numbers and swore we’d speak again before the weekend was out, just to confirm budgets and dates and so on. That was over a week ago now. Obviously we’ve made no attempt to contact each other since.

And I never even asked her about Johnny Depp. As the West Country’s designated Builder to the Stars she ought to know if there’s any truth behind the rumours. I wish I could say I forgot to ask her, but the fact is she’s slightly scary, and I didn’t quite dare.

The good news is I now have another builder up my sleeve. He’s called Darrell and he’s coming round this evening. I saw his card pinned up in the village Co-op (as opposed to the launderette, where clearly the calibre of cards isn’t up to scratch) and he sounds lovely. Quite sexy, actually. He says he’s built hundreds of kitchens before. Not only that, he’s available to start on ours immediately.

December 15th again

Bit drunk. Darrell has just left.

Darrell. Darrell. Darrell. Is about 6 foot 3 and outrageously good looking. Also he has amazingly long eyelashes. Also he’s outrageously good looking. He’s unbelievably good looking. Also—very sexy. He has a very sexy laugh. He stayed for two beers. Which he drink from the bottles. I think I knocked back five glass of wine, which I may have glugged a bit too quickly. Anyway, Darrell says he can start the kitchen on Monday. Christ. Things are looking up.

Also Dora says she left her swim kit somewhere. I called up, but nobody knews shag all about anything downethere.

Nametags tomorrow. Nametags nametags nametags nametags nametags namtags namtags namtagnametag-gssnamteags

Goodnight xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

December 17th

The prospect of the children’s Christmas holidays, looming ever closer, has finally spurred me to get down to work. Written and filed the wedding piece, to resounding silence; which, I’ve decided, is a good sign. Also been asked to write a piece about my attitude to Advent calendars. Do I have one? I think not. Never mind. Most importantly, the Novel’s finally moving along OK and I’ve even managed to write the first of my dummy country columns. I’m going to offer it around to newspapers next week. See if anyone bites.

Sooperdooper.

Wonder if Darrell and Co. want a cup of tea?

We’ve decided we’re going to spend Christmas in Andalusia after all. Dad’s still a bit ropey, but Sarah’s pretty much adamant she wants us to come out and try to cheer him up a bit. I’ve told her we’ll stay at the B&B in the village and she put on a very good show of saying no, but I think she was relieved when I insisted.

It means the great Christmas tree tradition (planting/replanting, etc.) will have to be postponed until next year. I’ve slightly gone off the idea anyway. Too many slugs. In any case, truth be told, I’m looking forward to a bit of sun.

Fin’s in London again. Has been all week. I don’t think I’ll bother to mention my anonymous column to him, even if I sell it. It may inhibit what I want to write about him at a later date.

COUNTRY MOLE

Sunday Times

January

We did it. We made the break. We sold the place in Shepherds Bush and left the Big Smoke behind us. It took us years to make the decision, months to organise the move, but we escaped, finally, on July 4th 2005.

Seventeen days later one Hussein Osman (a.k.a. the Shepherds Bush Bomber) used our ex-neighbour’s garden to hide out from the police, and our street was evacuated for three days. So, you see, while our children were gambolling among the daisies, befriending wild hedgehogs, filling their rosy cheeks with organic vegetables and so on, their old London muckers were camping out in a community hall somewhere in Acton, waiting for the bomb detectors to allow them back into their homes. It is impossible to communicate how smug that made us feel. How smug it continues to make us feel. And I need to hold on to that.

Because here we are, now, in our West Country idyll. Or here am I, to be more precise. The children are at school, the husband’s in Soho, working. My friends and colleagues are all in London, chatting away. And here I am in my West Country idyll, lungs bursting with fresh air and good will—and nobody to share it with. Except you. Reality is beginning to bite.

It’s mid-morning. I’ve done the school run. I’ve admired the view from the sitting-room window; I’ve taken a turn around the utility room, and felt the usual little surge of pride. I’ve even ventured into the garden, albeit briefly. (It was a bit cold. Plus there was a slug.) I’ve checked the answer machine for messages. None. And the e-mail. None. I’ve taken another turn round the utility room, which, after nearly twenty years of hanging clothes on the banisters, never fails to soothe. And I’ve looked at my watch. Many times.

But heck, it’s awful quiet around here.

And it will be, I suppose, until around lunch time, when the builders come. One of whom, by the way, is truly exorbitantly good looking. They—the handsome one and another one—are building us a kitchen in what used to be the second sitting room, and I keep popping in there in case the handsome one needs biscuits. Which he might, one time. He’s always saying no. Yesterday morning I was sitting at my desk pretending to write, ears on stalks, biscuits at the ready, but he must have tiptoed into work extra quietly. The bastard. I never heard him come in.

Anyway, the point is, just because the handsome builder—and the other one—are more or less my only contact with the adult world these days, it doesn’t mean I have nothing better to talk about. I do. I certainly do. Slug repellant, for example. According to my handsome builder, this little corner of the West Country is a national slug hotspot, with approximately 300 slugs for every square metre of earth. I’ve told him I have grand plans to make our own garden a one hundred per cent slug-free zone; I hinted I might even get Mr Osman and his bombs down here, if that’s what it needed. I don’t think he knew what I was talking about.

The truth is we’ve plopped ourselves in this beautiful corner of the world for all the right reasons; clean air/great schools/green fields/utility rooms. But—handsome builders aside—we don’t know a soul. Our only hope of contact with the local world is at the school gate—the very place, for lots of meanspirited reasons, I have always taken great care to avoid.

But beggars can’t be choosers, can they? And there’s a limit to how many nights a person can spend watching DVDs of The West Wing. I’m assuming. So come three o’clock (which, incidentally, is exactly three hours and twenty-one minutes away) I’ll be slapping on my Stepford Grimace and standing at that school gate just like the rest of them: Desperately Pretending to be nicer than I am. Desperately Seeking a Social Life.

And it’s going to be fine. In fact it’s going to be better than fine. It’s going to be thrilling. It’s a whole new adventure.

Next Friday night, for example, the husband and I are booking a babysitter. We’re getting ourselves all togged up in black tie and ball dresses, and heading off to our son and daughter’s annual Parents’ School Dance. Imagine the fun. If you will.

And I’m seriously looking forward to it.

January 15th

The tickets cost £50 each, including dinner, and the party took place in a room that looked and smelled a bit like my old school houseroom: the same mismatched, pastelcoloured walls, scuffed around the edges, and a pervasive stench of stale air, instant coffee and saliva. Actually it was the old town hall. One of the mothers, kind and welcoming as ever, had made enormous efforts to squeeze us onto her table and so I sat, adding to the festive odour, I suspect, with my very own hint of mothballs. I was underdressed in a strange pink rayon skirt and shirt ensemble, which has languished at the back of numerous wardrobes and storage boxes since I got it nearly twelve years ago. I have often wondered what possessed me to buy it in the first place—or why I ever insisted on keeping it. At least now I know that I’ll never wear it again.

Fin and I set off for the party full of hope and good will. Fin caught an early train down and we arrived in perfect time. There was no milling about before dinner, which was good, really, since we neither of us had anyone to mill with. We were led straight away to our designated table. And things went pretty much downhill from there.

On either side of me sat a couple of men whose faces began to merge as the evening wore on. Both had moved with their families down from London (Chiswick) within the last ten years.

One worked in the City. He spent the week in a small flat in Hammersmith, and the weekend at home, catching up on some ‘much-needed kip’, and—presumably—having his shirts laundered for him by his wife.

‘We find it works very well,’ he said to me. ‘It suits us. The kids are settled. We love the school. We love the lifestyle…I can really get my head down during the week. Which is super. And of course Katie’s got her hands full with the kids!’

He asked me what my husband did for a living.

He had sandy-coloured hair and sandy eyelashes, a heavy metallic watch with sandy hairs encroaching, and an unyielding, incurious, slightly pudgy face. As, I’m pretty sure, did the man on the other side. But memory can play funny tricks. It’s been a couple of days since I wrenched myself from their company, and I must admit I’m having some difficulty now distinguishing between the two.

The other man (I think) did not spend all week in London. On the contrary, he came down from his City job on Thursday nights, and spent Fridays working from home.

‘We find it works very well,’ he said to me. ‘It suits us. The kids are settled. We love the school. We love the lifestyle…I can really get my head down during the week. Which is super. And of course Sarah’s got her hands full with the kids!’

He asked me what my husband did for a living, and his goldfish eyes glazed over before I had time to reply.

I’ve never been very good at small talk. The truth is by the middle of the main course I had pretty much given up trying. One or other of the Sandy Men, in flirtatious mode, uttered a sentence which ended with the words ‘ladies and all things technical!’ and that was when I officially retired. The supreme pointlessness of our attempting to communicate any further became altogether overwhelming. My cheeks had lapsed into paralysis. My tongue had turned to lead. My heart was filled with resentment and boredom and I was thoroughly depressed. I had almost forgotten—if I’d ever even been aware—that men so unreconstructed actually existed. So I sat back and let them burble across me until coffee was served. They talked about Mercedes cars—their own and other people’s—for the rest of the night.

At some point I looked across the table at Finley. He was faring better than I was, which wasn’t really saying much. Some jolly old bird, squeezed into a strapless ball dress she should have chucked out back in 1983, was leaning across the table towards him, pressing her discodusted boobs together while he held out a light for her cigarette. She was having the time of her life, poor girl, oblivious to the scatter-gun approach of Fin’s delightfulness, and glowing beneath his fantastic care. As he held out the flame she rested one of her hands on his arm. Her nails were freshly painted for the ball, I noted: dark plum, just like Uma Thurman’s in Pulp Fiction, all those years ago. I caught F’s eye. Noticed, beneath all the layers of delightfulness, an inescapable gleam of desperation there. It cheered me up enormously.

We danced after that, Fin and I. To a deafeningly loud and intermittently off-key rendition of FYC’s ‘She Drives Me Crazy’. And—it was kind of lovely. London seemed a long, long way away.

January 18th

The carpet layer is here. He shouldn’t be, of course, because we still have a lot of building work to do; but he said he needed to shift the carpets quickly (storage space problems, apparently) which meant we either had to fit them this week or not fit them at all, and since his quote came in at £2,000 under everyone else’s ‘this week’ seemed like the way to go. No doubt we shall come to regret it.

He’s an obvious crook, by the way. Or he looks like one. Darrell suggested him. Darrell specifically advised me not to be put off by his appearance, but it’s hard not to be. He has shifty eyes, one of which doesn’t open properly, numerous studs and hoops in both ears, and a large, shaved head with a small swastika tattooed on top. Not that I care, so long as we get the carpets in, but his villainous appearance clearly troubles him. Every time he hears my feet in the hall he comes rushing out from whichever room he’s measuring, and delivers another homily on integrity/importance of: especially in carpet layers. I nod like a puppy, of course. Nobody mentions the swastika.

In any case he’s brought four teenage boys with him today, all of them a little damaged, by the look of things. Between them they have now removed all but one door in the house. There’s a teenager calling himself Stewart, who doesn’t seem to go in for eye contact, nor for the spoken word. But he obviously gets a hell of a lot of text messages, because for the last hour or so, while I’ve been working, he’s been standing outside the hole where my office door used to be, deleting them one by one. And each time he deletes, it goes ‘tring’, like he’s waving a magic wand.

Which is of course reassuring, because at least it’s proof that someone, somewhere, at some point, has been communicating with him. And not just once, but thousands and thousands and thousands of times. It means that maybe someone out there actually likes him. Or he’s a drug dealer, of course. In any case he has a relationship with the world, and that has to be something to celebrate. Maybe he’s not quite so damaged as he appears.

January 19th

Hatty called—for the first time in ages. I was giving the children a bath and I didn’t get to the telephone on time. She left a message, sounding high as a kite, and not saying anything of any consequence really, except that her and Damian’s five-minute film Goodbye Jesus, which has already won three minor awards at little film festivals around Europe…

Has just been nominated for an Oscar.

January 20th

Darrell stayed late this afternoon—late enough for me to offer him beer instead of the usual tea and biscuits. Fantastic, as Fin would say, while texting his location manager in Bucharest.

So I offered Darrell some beer, and he said yes! Fantastic. I think he fancies me. Maybe. A bit. Not nearly as much as I fancy him, obviously. But a little bit. Perhaps. Or he might do. I don’t know.

Anyway it was just him and me, that’s the thing. His partner (Ralph, I think30? He’s OK but he has a nobbly head, like a bad potato; also, I suspect, beneath the friendliness, a simmering rage against toffs: both of which traits, for obvious reasons, I find a little off-putting. ) His partner ‘Ralph’ had already left. Ditto the carpet layers. Ditto Mark the painter. Ripley and Dora were in the playroom entertaining themselves—and Fin is away. (Actually he’s with his location manager in Bucharest, so no need for texting tonight. No need for worry either. Not on this occasion. She’s young, but she’s no beauty. Also, unusually stupid. I took the children to visit one of Fin’s film sets a couple of years ago and we were introduced. ‘H-E-L-L-O, M-U-M-M-Y!’ she said to me, V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y. And that was it. Amazing.)

Where was I? Darrell and me. Darrell et moi…We talked about our travels in Florida. Darrell went to Orlando the year before last, but didn’t manage to make it to Miami. He said he thought Orlando was mind-boggling. I said I thought so too, though truth be told I’m not convinced I’ve ever been there. I went to Jacksonville once, I think. In any case it didn’t matter at all…Florida has a lovely climate and a hell of a lot of alligators. We agreed on that. What else did we talk about?

I don’t know. The kitchen, obviously. But I didn’t want to focus on that. It would have put too much of an emphasis on—lots of things I didn’t particularly want to emphasise at that particular moment. Anyway, I drank slightly more than half a bottle of wine in the time it took him to finish his two cans of lager—which, I think, is a slight improvement on the last time. I certainly wasn’t reeling by the time he left, but I had taken up smoking again. Darrell smokes roll-ups. He offered to roll one for me. I know perfectly well how to roll my own, of course, but I decided not to mention it. I let him do the rolling and then I said oooh, because they did come out very neat. Oh dear. Oh dear.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

I can’t help it. He’s got such a fucking sexy laugh.

January 21st

Going to Clare Gower’s coffee morning this morning.

Oddly enough I’ve never been to a ‘coffee morning’ before. Well, it’s not that odd. Up until now I’ve made a fairly conscientious effort to avoid them. I have a nasty feeling this one may be quite a formal affair. Otherwise why would I have been invited to it almost a fortnight in advance?

She had to postpone the last one because she was having the outside of the house repainted, and she thought scaffolding might somehow ‘confuse matters’. Not certain which matters, and I didn’t like to ask. In any case the scaffolders have apparently packed up now, and taken with them all danger of confusion. The house is nicely repainted, Clare says, and the coffee morning is Back On. I have high hopes for it. Clare says she’s expecting about ten guests—all women, of course. There must be one among them who might possibly be a friend?

I’m going upstairs now to put on some mascara in her honour.

COUNTRY MOLE

Sunday Times

There haven’t been many times in my life when things have seemed so wretched that I really, truly wanted to press my own ejector seat and power into eternal space. But since leaving London for the West Country and a new existence of Healthy Family Fun, I find my fingers more often groping for the button.

Forget the pain of childbirth; the long, drawn-out death of a loved one; forget being eaten alive by piranha fish, or having a nail slowly hammered into the back of your neck. Hell is a coffee morning with the unemployed lady-mothers of idyllic rural Britain. Hell is knowing you stick out like a sore thumb and that you’ll be stuck there, sticking out, for an hour minimum, smiling until your face cracks, before you can politely slip away again. Time hasn’t passed so painfully since my last triple physics class, back in 1985. What a culture shock.

Nevertheless, I definitely tried to fit in. Said mmmm about the organic carrot and ginger nibbles, which were truly delicious; hooted with naughty laughter at the wicked ‘willy’ jokes, which were abysmal; managed (most impressively of all) to bite my tongue when they talked about their husbands’ domestic predilections as if they were not only interesting but paramount, and left—a little early, admittedly, but full of gratitude and enthusiasm.

They saw through me. Maybe they could sense I didn’t truly believe. At the school gate I bumped into the Hostess Lady-Mum, Queen Bee Lady-Mum, whose very delicious nibbles I’d mmm’d over so wholeheartedly, and I think she pretended not to see me. I sort of hopped this way and that, grinning, trying to catch her eye. She turned away. Somehow or other, I must have blown it.

In any case I shan’t dwell on it. I mustn’t obsess. They obviously all hate me, but I have to move on. It was a bad morning. A failed experiment. Suffice to say, the quest for a decent social life continues in earnest and I have decided once and for all that the ladies’ coffee mornings are not, and never were, a realistic recruiting ground. Unless of course they happen to invite me again.

In the meantime I think I’d do better looking closer to home. At the builder, for example. Actually we have two builders, a painter, a landscape gardener and five carpet layers on the property as I write. I’m talking, of course, about the good looking one, the tea and biscuit-refusing installer of our new and exorbitantly tasteful, pale green kitchen, who sings Fred Astaire songs while he works, and who is, by the way, among the most handsome men I have ever met.

While the husband was hard at work in Bucharest yesterday, the builder told me, in his lovely West Country burr, that he used to play a lot of tennis.

Well, blow my cotton socks off, and so did I!

In fact there’s a run-down, faintly depressing old tennis club in the local town and I go there once a week in search of a match. So far I’ve not had any joy. It appears that everybody in the club already has ‘their tennis organised’.

So it’s with a mixture of desperation, loneliness and, obviously, lust that I’ve been trying to summon the nerve to ask him for a match. Trouble is—what if he thinks I’m propositioning him? Or—Christ, what if I am propositioning him? Crickety-crackety, what if he thinks I’m propositioning him and he says Yes?

OK. Obviously, that was silly. Over-excited and very, very silly. He’s much too young for me. Apart from which, of course, we moved down here to be more of a family, not less: to pursue a life of good, clean, decent, honourable, innocent, monogamous fun. And that’s what we’re doing, dammit. For example, we went out in the woods yesterday, the children and I, and we built our very own bows and arrows. Out of natural sticks. God, it was fun! Or it would have been, except it was raining and the children wanted to watch telly and I was terrified about the slugs, and the arrows didn’t really work and—

Anyway the main point is, I’m married.

February 1st

Well, here’s a peculiar fact. Clare Gower, maker of immaculate ginger nibbles and agonisingly feeble willy jokes, has decided to overlook my spoddish performance at her coffee morning the other day. I was convinced she hated me, but it turns out she doesn’t hate me at all. In fact she seems quite keen to become my friend.

Not because she likes me. She couldn’t. We have nothing in common, beyond the whole life-cycle thing. I catch her looking at me sometimes with an expression of dull, vaguely pitying confusion. Nevertheless, in spite of that, in spite of my obviously being a misfit, something about me has obviously tickled her fancy. Or possibly she feels sorry for me. In any case she has invited Fin and me to a drinks party in three weeks’ time and to a dinner party—not this Saturday, not the Saturday after that, nor the one after that, nor the one after that, nor, in fact, the one after that. But the next one. Though I know that under normal circumstances Clare and I would never dream of being friends, I am, of course, extremely happy and grateful for this new development.

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