For richer, for poorer

Hubby came home on Sunday after a fortnight cycling in Germany and Austria. He kept teasing me that most of the 21 other participants were women. I didn’t mind at all – the photos showed how dreadful they looked in Lycra. Apart from one, whom he photographed while riding behind her. This probably explained the expense of the souvenir gift he bought me.

I’m pretty cool about him going off on his own. It gives me an uninterrupted opportunity to spring clean, garden, shop, read, socialise and write. Sometimes I travel on me tod me sen: hiking up North, mainly. Smart move, because men can look fanciable in GORE-TEX. And so do I, still. Whatever the activity and with whomever I travel, I prefer to holiday in Blighty by car or train, because it’s the most sustainable option. Planes and airports are big, ugly polluting beasts that bring out the worst in passengers, and funding foreign powers at the expense of Blighty’s GDP is not my idea of patriotism. However, I am tempted to fly to:
• Tanzania, for big game hunting, thereby supporting their conservation efforts (per a previous blog)
• Israel, to myth-bust the ‘genocide’-propaganda* 
• Argentina, to mooch with Milei and admire his handling of the economy – Rachel from accounts should come with me
• Italy, for martinis with Miloni and sticking pins in von der Liar, I mean in an effigy of von der Liar. Or do I?
• America, to dine with The Donald and converse with The Vance about Free Speech.

A couple of days after Hubby left on his latest trip, contractors arrived to replace several windows and doors. His absence meant I could sneak in last-minute changes to the spec without him objecting. Later, while the chaps cleaned up after themselves (as much as men ever do), the red brick dust remained pervasive. I had to mop all the hard floors not once but twice and Vax all the carpets. No way could I have done that with Hubby around.

Crucially, once I’d cleaned and tidied the house, it stayed clean and tidy. When Hubby is home, I swear he stands at the top of the stairs and shakes violently, releasing dust and dander to every crevice of every room. He also drops everything in his wake, wherever it takes his fancy: shoes, tools, paperwork, coffee mugs, sweaters, cake crumbs, pens, newspapers. I try to explain that I have OCD tendencies and he’s dicing with death, but he just doesn’t get it. One day he will.

And of course, he was away at peak vegetable-harvesting season. I had to deal with copious amounts of courgettes (and the occasional marrow), French beans, runner beans, carrots, radishes, lettuces and chard. I begged neighbours to take anything they wanted. What was left I batch-cooked: ratatouille, courgette soup, courgette quiche, green/French beans with roasted red peppers, and green/French beans with shallots and pancetta. The freezer is heaving. To make more room, I took out some frozen stewed rhubarb and made spiced rhubarb muffins, and frozen gooseberries for compote that goes great with Greek yoghurt, nuts and seeds.

When I’d done, I noticed that the plums were starting to ripen, the greengages were almost there, damsons were prolific, and I was inundated with crab apples, quinces and medlars. So here goes with the plum cakes, greengage jam, damson gin, quince vinegar and either crab apples or medlars, but not both, for jelly. Hopefully the neighbours will oblige again. 

On my own, I also enjoy my choice of radio station (Radio 3 not Greatest Hits Radio) and CDs (Elgar, Led Zeppelin and Billie Holiday, not Springsteen, ELO or Stilgoe). Meals are also modified – I graze all day long straight from the fridge and pantry, with no expectation to prepare anything or sit down and eat leisurely and sociably. Just whack off a hunk of cheese and carry on cleaning. When I do indulge in occasional downtime to give my back or brain a break, I watch my TV, not his: The Big Bang Theory, Law and Order, and The BBC Proms, not Saving Lives at Sea, Countryfile or ‘Fleetwood Mac break up (yet again)’. 

The longest stretch he’s done is ten months. Well he did sail around the world. What made that particular trip even more monumental was that we were living in Massachusetts at the time, and my friends on both sides of the Pond couldn’t get over the fact that he’d abandoned me in a ‘strange’ country. Yes but only for ten months, I reassured them. And I had a blast. I set up my own PR and copywriting business, had a regular column in the local newspapers about Hubby’s exploits on the high seas, as well as the foot-and-mouth crisis in Blighty that was exacerbated by a rurally ignorant and farmer-hating Labour government. Who knew? I supper-hopped from friend to friend, damaged the ride-on mower while trying to keep the two-acre yard under control, blocked myself out of the house when I pulled an avalanche of snow off the roof, which landed between me and the door, and I kept the house clean and tidy for ten months. Those were the days.

I did fly out and meet him at one of his layovers – Wellington, New Zealand. I flew from Boston to LA (8 hours), LA to Auckland (12 hours) and Auckland to Wellington (1 hour I think). I wasn’t into no-flying in the 90s. On the LA to Auckland leg, a brat cried the whole time. The parents looked like cr@p at the end of the flight. I just looked daggers. On the return 12-hour leg, for some reason I was very uncomfortable, but the flight to Boston was only half-full, so I stretched across four seats and slept the whole way.

To put it all into a more important context, a few months later on 11 September 2001, the same flight from Boston to LA that I had taken never arrived at its destination thanks to genocidal Islamic fanatics. How many Islamic fanatics are currently resident in Blighty? How many more will be allowed to stay as Labour voting fodder? How much more trauma will they cause to individuals, communities, the economy and infrastructure? I’m asking questions in the interests of academic curiosity and political transparency. What? That illegal now? Hang on a sec, there’s a knock at the door … 

The plane that departed Boston just before the LA flight was also heading to California. One of my friends and business associates was on it. As soon as the sh!t hit the fan, the flight was vectored to land asap at the most suitable airport. Her reaction afterwards put paid to the lie that Yanks don’t have a sense of humour. 

When reliving the nightmare with us in an all-American bar, she exclaimed, “Of all the wonderful cities in my beautiful country I could’ve been diverted to, I had to end up in Detroit”: think Blackpool on a bad day.

Hubby’s back home now. He took one look at the to-do list I’d left on his desk, and is off again this weekend. It wasn’t that onerous: do his own laundry, chase one contractor, pay another, hang some pictures, paint the walls unavoidably damaged by the window guys, re-hang blinds and curtain rails, dig over a compacted flower bed, stack the logs, move some garden furniture, and that’s it. Oh, hang on. I’ve found another page.

Now I’ll come clean, in another sense. Part of the reason for writing this blog was to have a pop at Angela Rayner for, according to the Daily Telegraph, selling off allotments for housing. In my earlier draft, at the end of my lyrical waxing about produce from my garden, I’d flown the flag for allotments for people who don’t have sufficiently large or suitable gardens to grow their own food, and how Rayner was an enemy of the working class, or she was in developers’ pockets, or living up to the nickname I gave her (Knickerdropper Gory). But then I perused good ol’ CapX, an online ‘magazine’ making the case “for popular capitalism – for markets, innovation, growth and competition … for policies and ideas that will enhance freedom, choice and prosperity for everyone in Britain.” What’s not to like? Anyhoo, a new opinion piece explained that the Telegraph was being a tad mischievous, because Rayner had no intention of the wholesale sell-off of allotments. What she is doing is making the occasional decision to build on certain allotments under very limited circumstances, for example: if they aren’t being used, or if the developer is going to relocate them. Just as previous Governments have done for decades.

So, I redrafted the blog to remove that paragraph (or at least relocate it in a new context), and went straight to the gin store for consolation after, for the first and hopefully last time in my life, protecting Rayner’s integrity. With protectors like me, who needs detractors? Suitably consoled, I poured myself another one to toast the insightfulness, honesty and intelligence of CapX or, as I’ve come to refer to them, Sons of Maggie. God bless ’em, everyone.

Which is a nice phrase to end on, but the first draft ended with a nice note about Hubby. Ah well, stylistic integrity comes first.

*  The BBC’s John Simpson tweeted a photo of a supposedly Israel-starved skeletal child. He didn’t comment on the healthy-looking lady holding the poor boy, or the plump toddler behind them. He pulled his post when I challenged him.

Then there was the photo of another ‘starving’ Palestinian child who, as it turns out, had cerebral palsy and a serious genetic condition with complications that were to blame for his plight.

The UN has admitted that there is actually a lot of aid in Gaza but they can’t distribute it because aid convoys are attacked and looted by Hamas.

Etc., etc., etc.