You hear about these couples who retire to the country and how hubby does all the driving – how, in fact, she doesn’t drive at all. Then, three or four months into their new rural life, when they’ve barely started the redecorating, he has a heart attack. And suddenly she’s out in the middle of nowhere, doesn’t know anyone, and there’s only one bus into town every second Wednesday and Country Life doesn’t seem like such fun after all.
You can either read it as a cautionary tale against moving out to the sticks when you’re in your sixties or becoming too dependent on one’s spouse. With regards to the latter, in all fairness, I think it rather creeps up on you. In our house I always tended to take care of the domestic bills, etc. – not necessarily because I’m such a whiz with a spreadsheet, but because I probably just had more time. So I suppose I should just be thankful that I’m not one of those widows who’s never seen a gas bill and goes into anaphylactic shock at the very thought of one. It tends to be men who don’t have a clue how to operate the cooker, or imagine the creation of spag bol to be a thing of great complexity. But then, given the current standard of my diet, I’m not really in a position to criticise.
It’s the solitariness (if such a word even exists) that floored me. You suddenly appreciate how that husband of yours – the one you always moaned about – was such a significant fixture. If only in the sense that his routine (what time he left for work … what time he got back, etc.) gave your day some structure around which to organise your own. Otherwise, you really do start to rattle about the place. And the chores really do suddenly seem a complete and utter waste of time. Not that I ever aspired to be the 1950s idea of a housewife with the pinched waist, pointy tits and proud smile as I placed some frazzled carcass on the table (with those little paper chefs’ hats covering the ends of the ribs). It’s just that you do somehow end up using the person you share your life with as some sort of motivation for getting things done. Even if you do rather resent it at the same time.
For me, the epitome of the desperation of solo living these days is having to drag the wheelie bin out to the road before dawn on a Tuesday morning. Then dragging the bloody thing back in the afternoon. And it’s not simply that I want John to be doing it for me. There just seems to be something supremely futile to it. ‘How many more bloody times’, I would wonder, ‘am I going to drag this stupid great lump of plastic up and down the bloody drive?’
And in the evening there’s no one to ask if you’d remembered to do it. Or to whom you can say, ‘Those damned bin men didn’t come round again.’ One of the biggest shocks upon joining the ranks of the widowed/widowered is that Bin News is something you tend to keep to yourself. Unless you happen to collar some unsuspecting neighbour and get it off your chest to them.
Apparently, wheelie bins haven’t quite made it up to north Norfolk yet. Either they drag their metal dustbins out into the lane or just pile their bin bags up in a great heap. It’s all terribly olde-worlde. Wednesday is bin day. I’d put it in my diary if I had one. Maybe I’ll put it on a list.
One or two of the villagers have started nodding at me. We are, officially, on nodding terms. Who knows, another year or two and we might actually have a conversation. I suppose they’re used to people pitching up for a week and doing the whole ‘Hail fellow, well met’ routine on the way to the paper shop, then the next week they’re gone, and someone else is unloading the car. And the people who were super-friendly are back home in the city being miserable again.
On the subject of redecorating, I find it very hard as I sit before the fire of an evening not to speculate as to precisely what I’d do with this place if I actually owned it. And not just re which carpets to take up (A: all of them). Or which woodchipped walls to strip (see answer to previous question). But how to rejig the kitchenette in such a way as to create a little more storage space, or even sufficient room to be able to turn around.
You wouldn’t want to start knocking down walls, partly because there aren’t actually any to knock down except the one between the bedrooms, since one of the few things this cottage has got going for it is its modest dimensions. It sort of fits quite snugly around you. I’m sometimes sitting at this table or slumped in the armchair and it occurs to me that if I reached my arms out I might be able to touch both walls. Of course, I couldn’t. But I wouldn’t be far off. And the idea that I might be able to reassures me somehow.