How has our marriage survived these 37 years?
On the face of it, Mary and I have little in common. She likes parties, spending money and promoting village harmony, whereas I like gardening, living off ‘rations’ and maintaining petty feuds.
Perhaps it is because we are utterly co-dependent. I don’t own a mobile phone or a computer – so Mary manages the business side of things.
I drive, cook, buttle and do various menial jobs such as splitting logs and relocating errant slugs who have breached the porous battlements of our cottage.
Mary bought me a mobile phone after an unfortunate incident in which she was left stranded outside Waitrose for 25 minutes, laden with seven bulging bags for life.
The misunderstanding had arisen from her mistaken belief that I would be circling the high street ready to scoop her up. I had in fact found a very nifty parking spot only ten yards away and had naturally expected her to use her initiative to find me.
Thinking ahead into the not-too- distant future, honing her orienteering skills will prove invaluable in the event of a hostile attack on our GPS systems.
But this initiative test proved to be the last straw, particularly as the previous week Mary and I had waited for 35 minutes on opposite sides of the local railway station, wondering why the other hadn’t appeared and with no means of contact.
A trip to Vodafone on Marlborough High Street resulted in the purchase of the most rudimentary mobile phone on offer – a so-called burner or dumb phone, as educationalists are currently urging onto parents of under-16-year-olds in place of the smartphones that have been so disruptive to junior progress.
Yet I was still baffled by it, and my ‘sausage fingers’ (as my daughters call them) struggled to manipulate the tiny buttons. After a few months of abortive efforts at remembering to carry it with me on shopping trips or butterfly walks, I gave it up as a lost cause.
The hope that I should not only be able to locate the mobile’s charger, within the chaos of our cottage, but also remember to charge it was deluded.
What’s more, I can’t deny I enjoy the freedom of being uncontactable. Those who wish to tell me something should know by now that I will be beyond reach from 11am to dusk, at which point they may attempt contact on a landline placed conveniently on the occasional table, where I put my beer and salt-based snacks, ready to watch Atrocities at 7 (the Channel 4 nightly news).
Despite being intermittently unreachable – a source of continual exasperation to my family – I at least enjoyed the elevated status of being the sole possessor of a driving licence. In this arena, at any rate, I was indispensable.
A recent unforeseen event has rocked my status within the family – and indeed my whole identity. My elder daughter passed her driving test. I was left feeling nonplussed as, with a screech of wheels, she disappeared into the distance with Mary, intent on a shopping trip for provisions – just as I was starting to feel a real sense of purpose at eking out the contents of my ‘nuclear-war bunker’ supply of cold canned goods, and digging up vegetables I had spent a year coaxing from the recalcitrant soil.
My life felt strangely robbed of meaning as they returned triumphantly and emptied their spoils over the kitchen table. I channelled my disapprobation by criticising various food items as incorrectly chosen, out of season or overpriced.
Months have passed and my daughter still does not own her own car, a quandary perpetuated by the discrepancy between her means and her desires – she wants a Land Rover Disco (Discovery).
Accordingly, she now ‘borrows’ my flagship Skoda Yeti on a regular basis. I am ambivalent about this arrangement.
On the one hand, I am stripped of my importance as sole driver and sustenance-provider. On the other, I find myself regularly liberated from the chore of making piddling little journeys into local towns, a habit that William Cobbett, a champion of the cottage economy and self-sufficiency, derided. The idea of daily supplies having to be ‘got in’ he found detestable.
In theory, therefore, I can conclude only that my life must have changed for the better. No more do the disquieting, disembodied cries of ‘GYE – ULS’ echo across the swaying treetops of our garden. No longer are my peaceful mulching, raking or furtive bonfire-building activities frustrated by the appearance of one of my exasperated womenfolk requesting I immediately drive them to the nearest shopping outlet for a Piriton.
The sound of the engine’s roar, followed by silence, now instils a sense of deep mental peace. I sigh in exquisite relief as I can now focus single-mindedly on the task at hand, primarily that of ‘letting nature lead’ within the environs of my acre of landholding.
Yes, I may have relinquished my superior status – my family are no longer trapped and at my mercy for food and medical assistance.
But surely a session of watering thickets of nettles and yellow archangel, the ecosystem warrior, so as to encourage the growth of a comfortable habitat for overwintering invertebrates, beats waiting for Mary in Waitrose car park any day.
