City Men: Country Wives - Drowning not waving!

The Money Pit!

Today I sat on the stairs and bawled my eyes out in front of my best mate. J said  little but just looked at me as I rambled on between hiccoughing sobs careless of my eye-makeup, careless of the snot dripping from my nose.

He’s the type of guy you feel safe to do this in front of, it’s why we chose him, to be Godfather to Bog Boy after all. There needed to be someone here that could act as a buffer for me and the children when it all gets on top of me.

And today I felt like I was drowning not waving…

I remarked it doesn’t take much anymore to have me off in hysterics. But honestly I haven’t cried like this for years. Some say it’s cathartic to have a jolly good cry perhaps they are right. My eyes ache now and I feel like it must be at least midnight but there again the utter exhaustion may help me sleep better and tomorrow will be brighter.

It certainly felt anything but bright at 2pm this afternoon as I sat there snot dripping.

“I hate this place, I loathe it. I’m selling it!” I howled and punctuated my statement by stamping me feet on the stairs until they rattled.

The house was unmoved.

It’s heard it all before, especially from me.

“I can’t take it anymore, I can’t do it anymore.” I wailed.

I looked at J and I could see he was about to say that I could and I have done and I will so I forestalled him.

“I don’t want to do it anymore,” I heaved out between sobs, “I don’t want to cope. I want to make it stop!”

“I hate Suffolk. I hate this place. I never wanted to come here!” I continued to wail. “And the fact that I don’t have the Internet is just too much…”

We have the honour, nay privilege, of living in an Internet black spot and I have to get my connection with the big bad outside world via a convoluted and complicated network of routers and satellite dishes as BT  ain't that interested. It works, usually but every now and then, especially when I am on a deadline, it doesn't.

Then I have to get in touch with Ra. Ra is godlike but like most ancient gods one isn't actually too sure they exist. I have evidence that people round here believe he exists but I haven't actually seen him in so long that I fear he is now mere legend. He NEVER answers his phone and he NEVER tells you what is going on. So I tend to leave increasingly and frequently more and more bizarre messages in my efforts to contact him and more importantly getting him to contact me to say that he has heard what I am saying and that he know and is dealing with t4he problem. NOW!

You get the God like drift here. Basically you have to put your trust in Ra and he will deliver.

Sometime though I actually need to hear that on the telephone. And after four hours of futile calls. texts and general frustration it was all too much.

J gave me a great big hug and I sobbed some more leaving a nice snotty trail down the front of his jumper.

He held onto my shoulders and looked me in the eye: “It’s not just about the fact that you don’t have the Internet again is it,” he said.

That man knows me too well.

Of course it wasn’t about the Internet though as I said it was the last straw.

Suffolk is a funny place. You actually have to want to go there as it’s not on the way to anywhere in particular. It’s sort of a dead end. A bucolic, slightly dirty and otherworldly, dead end with a Nuclear reactor on its coast.

I am sure there are plenty of people who love Suffolk but having been dragged here by my husband seemingly on a whim because he said so with no  real thought having gone into it a decade before I am still kind of immune to its charms.

I know I should have got over myself but when things like the Internet goes down for four days and I cannot do my work let alone blog or tweet or indeed even email it just reinforces how terribly isolated the place is.

I did SO love London and I had SUCH a great job, one I enjoyed and was actually good at and having to give that all up to take on a 500 year old decrepit house (even if I was one half of the idiot pair that fell head over heels in love with it and bought it willy nilly) spend ten years doing it up, squandering oodles, and I mean oodles, of thousands of pounds on it foregoing holidays, new clothes, new cars and god know what else – it sometimes just doesn’t feel worth it.

Not when I still have oodles and oodles STILL needing spent on the damn place because I got diddled by the original builders we employed (but that’s another story).

So sitting in those stairs eye makeup smeared down my face, snot dripping and hiccoughing I admitted it.

“Charlie is going to London!” I broke down into hysterical sobs again. “It wasn’t part of the deal!”

No the deal stated that if I did HAVE to go and live in the back of beyond HE was going to be coming home every night – because after all I HAD given up and AWFUL lot.

But times change and sometimes you get new jobs and sometimes there is an economic downturn and your house has eaten up every last cent so your husband has to work harder than ever before and you’ll just have to accept that you need to be a tad more flexible about life.

But it doesn’t mean you have to like it.

And I don’t.

I don’t want Charlie to be renting out someone’s spare room during the week in London, I want him home not because of the deal but because I am going to miss him.

Terribly.

PS. It still pisses me something chronic though that the Internet is so unreliable…blooming backward county!