Husbandless
As husbandless days go this one has not been too bad.* (So far. Six minutes left.) I had a wedding to ring at South Desuetude this afternoon** and contrived to get a ride*** from Niall, who was another of the fortunate. We got there early because you’re never quite sure about parking, and then of course had to wait AND WAIT AND WAIT AND WAIT because (of course) the bride was late, and there were the three extra hymns and the performing seals, as there usually are. It’s been a grey sort of day but not unpleasant, and the South Desuetude church is on a hill at the edge of town, and the land slopes away across the graveyard and a field of prancing horses to a long low horizon of Hampshire farmland. So Niall and I were sitting on a bench waiting for everybody else so we could then begin waiting in company, and I was looking out over all this and feeling a totally unjustified sense of peace and serenity but dauntlessly fought it off by having an emigrant’s attack of How did I get here? And I’m about to do what?†
Colin who, like most long-term tower captains, has a little black book of fearsome proportions, had managed to get eight ringers for eight bells, even with less than twenty-four hours to do it in. And as I have repeatedly whined in here that I so rarely get to ring on eight, this was a treat, despite having had to wait extra for the performing seals, who were so popular they had an encore. We only rang call changes followed by a few plain courses of Grandsire Triples—because for a wedding I am totally not reliable for a touch inside, and I was inside—but it was fun.††
I then had to hurtle hounds around Radio Three’s Saturday opera, Lohengrin, which I did want to hear†††—and of course Peter phoned at the moment I was climactically wrist-deep in chicken fat toward the hellhounds’ supper‡—but there is nonetheless a reasonable amount right with the world at present. Now if only more than four people show up for service ring tomorrow morning.
* * *
* The champagne and mayonnaise help. I tweeted this morning that Peter had left me a note which, among the instructions on use of the dishwasher etc^, enjoined me to treat myself. Whereupon I immediately put a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, since he’d clearly ordered me to, right? But I didn’t tweet the mayonnaise. The perfect husband in 140 characters might get a bit much. It’s easier to give you extenuating footnotes in the blog.
^ Using the dishwasher? This is another example of Peter at his control-freak best, right? Well . . . not exactly, or anyway not until you back up a few levels. It’s been a joke in Peter’s family for getting on forty years+ that you do not touch Peter’s dishwasher. No one but Peter can load a dishwasher properly.++ And, you know, for some strange reason no doubt due to the extreme twistedness of my psyche, I can’t be bothered fighting my husband for the honour of loading and starting the frelling dishwasher. This means that on the rare occasions when I might want to use the thing myself I don’t know how.+++
+ It may be less than that. I’m not sure when they got their first dishwasher.~ But I can assure you the Peter’s-dishwasher system began immediately.
~ I, on the other hand, am a sad case: I’ve never owned a dishwasher. I’d thought about it in Maine but never quite got around to it. The old house had one when I moved in, and I assume the new owners had it extracted with large tongs and buried in the Appliances So Old Their Serial Numbers Have Rusted Off graveyard. And once we moved into town . . . Peter does most of the cooking, so Peter has the dishwasher. Aside from the fact that there is absolutely no place to put one in the cottage kitchen, and I think keeping it outdoors under a tarp would be unsatisfactory. And the garden is already small enough without stochastic appliances cluttering it up.
Third House would probably have room for a dishwasher. If we start having [three]-house-parties for twenty I’ll think about installing one.
++ He’s like this in other people’s houses too. I’m sure he’s loading his son and daughter-in-law’s dishwasher right now.
My normal life is so chock full of excitement and adventure I never get around to telling you any backstory. Like for example—at least I don’t think I’ve told you this—the first thing that Peter said on crossing the threshold of my little house in Maine was that I needed a proper shelf in my coat closet, and if I had the tools he’d do it for me. Right now. Orient yourselves with the knowledge that this is a man I had met three or four times at conventions and so on plus one totally appalling lunch with my then-English publisher and a bizarre if riveting weekend at what I now call the old house when his first wife was still alive. It is disconcerting to find yourself falling more or less instantaneously in love with someone whom you barely know and is manifestly a fruit loop. He did create a proper shelf out of the haphazard bits of timber balancing on bulges in the wall in my coat closet—more of a cupboard than a closet, by the way—but I don’t now remember if he did it that first weekend or later on when we’d already settled that I was going to emigrate and marry him and all our respective friends and family were going, You what? You who?, and Peter came to Maine for a couple of months while I finished DEERSKIN.
Anyway. In his Gratuitously Polite, Disappearing Englishman way, Peter is a commanding kinda guy. Dishwashers. Closet shelves. He also has strong opinions about what constitutes a proper breakfast/lunch/tea/supper and what everyone should plant in their gardens. Fortunately he makes great mayonnaise.
+++ And/or can’t remember from last time because it was too long ago.
** Phone call from Colin yesterday, drawling, the vicar didn’t give me much time to make up a band. . . .
*** The ME is a total ratbag, and don’t ever let me fool you into thinking anything else. But I’ve never liked driving^ and having the excuse always to be the one who gets the ride and never provides it is not all bad.
^ Barring pootling around back roads in my MGB of sainted memory, sigh
† And what are those strange diagonal stripes^ of callus across both hands?
^ More dotted lines really
†† Anthea, who does not like Grandsire, gallantly went slightly wrong^ so I could feel clever by not being thrown by this.
^Deliberately. Of course. Cough cough cough.
††† Despite one of the most maddeningly wet heroines in all of literature, musical or otherwise. ARRRRRRGH. I may have to do a rant on Wagner so-called heroines and Elsa in particular some day.
‡ Yes. They ate. ::Huzzahs and cheering::
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