50things2dob4iam50 - #1 The One Day Event

So here I go - the start of my 50 things to do before I hit 50 - and I am straight in there with one of the biggest: the one day event*.
It must be one of the biggest indulgences ever and also one of the scariest.
I mean - what if?
What if I fall off? What if I break my leg/arm/neck? That really is going to cause a problem. Who will look after the kids/dogs/house?
Dear Charlie tells me to stop being so negative after I confess to him my worries as I drive him to the station at 5:45am. And then he tells me something else. He says he is proud of me.  He's full of admiration that I am doing something I love even though it could be dangerous. He says I shouldn't worry about it being indulgent because if I do then his relatively new found passion for cycling is also indulgent and dangerous.
"Life is too short to stop doing the things we love just because we may get hurt or injured doing it! If we did that we'd land up doing nothing!"
I get his point.
But I still worry.
Probably not helped by reading about someone who was out riding and had a very bad fall. And it was not clever watching all those YouTube clips of people falling off their horses while doing cross country...
So in a few hours I am going to start my odyssey, my personal quest in the year running up to my 50th birthday with a one day event.
I am scared.
But I am also excited.
I am going to challenge myself to go further than I ever dared to and if I fall off...

*A one day event is a horse riding challenge whereby a rider competes across three riding disciplines: dressage, show jumping and cross country.
Dressage is a bit like ballet but for horses and shows how well a horse and rider can work together. It is judged on the bearing, demeanour, discipline and elegance that the partnership brings to arena. The test consists of a sequence of movements to test the suppleness and obedience of the horse.
Then there is the show jumping bit which is a test of agility, precision and control of both horse and rider over a course of show jumps.Finally there is a cross country section where Horse and rider must negotiate a course of solid obstacles within a certain time limit. This part of the one day event is designed to test the fitness, technique and  all round ability of both horse and rider.

How much do you drink? And should I be worried?

It’s the end of a day and the children are in bed. It’s been exhausting, what with fetching and carrying, feeding and watering, work, play and everything in between.

I need a treat.

A lovely glass of chilled wine to wind down.

But it doesn’t stop there does it.

It’s usually a couple of glasses of wine.

Sometimes it’s three quarters of a bottle.

Occasionally a whole bottle.

It is not a good state of affairs.

I didn’t used to drink this much and I certainly didn’t drink on my own

But things have been creeping up on me and I need to face the reality that I am drinking too much.

I have cut it down somewhat by having spritzers but whereas I used to have the occasional glass during the week I now seem to have a couple of glasses a night.

It has all become far too convenient.

Wine is relatively cheap.

It comes in a screw top bottle.

And now I read it is also available by the glass at M&S and in Tetrapaks which may be all well and good for the environment but won’t be any good for me.

I mean a Tetrapak is just like having it in a box, I won’t be able to frighten myself with how much I’ve drunk because I won’t be able to see how much I have drunk until the Tetrapak is empty. Not that I ever got through a whole box.

It doesn’t help having friends over either. J usually drops in of an evening before he goes home (he works in the barn) and whereas we used to have a cup of tea we now tend to have a glass or two.

I suppose I encourage it by offering and really I should not. But if truth be known it is a way of getting him to stay longer, putting off the moment for me when I will be on my own until the following day. Dear Charlie doesn’t come home during the week anymore and while I know this is for the best, it makes the evenings yawn ahead and I don’t really know what to do with myself.

Should I be worried or is it merely a blip while I get accustomed to the new way of life?

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!

Why Not Having My Husband Around Might Save Our Marriage

Seriously over the last two years it’s been tough as I watch my husband become enthralled with his new job to the extent that me, his wife, and our two boys seem to disappear off his radar.

When he does get home, invariably after the boys have gone to bed and sometimes even when I have, he’s exhausted and we barley manage supper let alone a conversation.

It doesn’t get much better at weekends with him having siestas in order to catch up while I try to entertain the boys and not wake up Daddy.

I’ve said it before; it’s not much of a family life.

So me saying that not having him around just might save our marriage may seem a bit strange. But I really think it will help.

Enormously. 

In fact I am really looking forward to it.

The idea is that he stays up in London three or four nights a week and comes home at the end of the week rested and restored because he does not have to commute. You never know he may even make it home early on the nights he does come back because he has had the freedom to work late while he is in London.

A friend is renting a two bedroom flat and has a room spare during the early part of the week and this could be perfect for us. It’s in an area we used to live in and where a lot of our London friends still reside.

Dear Charlie could drive down on a Sunday night, bicycle into work at Blackfriars all week, then drive back on a Thursday night. Commute in by train on Friday and that’s it.

Only one day of having to get up at 5am!

Only one day a week of train commuting.

Bearing in mind it costs us £6000 a year for him to commute this must surely be a win:win solution in more ways than one for us!

Why didn’t I think of it before!

You never know we may land up renting our own flat and then I could pop down during the week…we may even be able to go out…!!!!

City men; Country wives

I think there have been books written about this and films and I know there have been plenty of lies but it’s strange to be living it – City men and country wives.

It’s not what I thought would happen to me when we got married. I didn’t expect to be stuck out in the countryside in a large house which we can ill afford to run let alone pay for.

Don’t get me wrong, I am lucky I have all this but I’d give my right arm not to. I envy those wives whose husbands are home in time for supper, whose kids see their dad every day at breakfast.

I tackled him about it last night saying that things had got to change for all of us. I begged. I threatened. I pleaded and I even cried.

But you know what the whole thing was turned on me. The reason we are in this situation is because of me.

Now I don’t remember saying I wanted to live in a big house in the country, in fact what I did say was we had to move from Streatham because he wouldn’t let me change the décor which his last girl-friend had done nor move any of my stuff in. It was a huge bone of contention in our first year of marriage and nearly caused me to leave.

Perhaps I should have done.

But then I wouldn’t have had my boys.

I am not asking to move now, for I realise that my husband won’t. I am asking that he puts us, his wife and his kids a little higher up his agenda.

He says I am too dramatic and that I am always whinging about my lot when I should be grateful. A little of me agrees. But like many a country wife before me I am lonely. I miss my husband.

We don’t talk much because we are both so tired at the end of the day. It seems that all the energy we can muster goes on eating supper in front of the telly. Actually, I now have supper with the boys because he never tells me when he is coming home and I hate eating on my own.

When I point this out he rounds on me saying that when he is at home of an evening I am always upstairs on the computer. I wouldn’t be if I was given some warning I should have said, but you know when you are in the middle of an argument the words you wish to say just get stuck in your throat.

He’s not a bad man. He can be utterly delightful but he is in the thrall of another – his work; a mistress who is sucking my man dry and giving him delusions of grandeur. He’s the big I AM.

And he thinks he is being reasonable.

He thinks his life is perfectly fine and because he thinks so I should as well.

I tried to make him understand that his life would not be perfect if I weren’t here. It just wouldn’t happen and do you know what his reply was?

“You always look at the worst case scenario! If you weren’t here. If something happened to you, your parents would rally round and so would mine.”

So that is where I stand. A country wife married to a City Man.

Footloose

It’s silly but tonight I am going to a Ball, a proper ball with dancing.

It’s not often these days that I get to dance, except of course round the kitchen with the boys when no one else is looking. I mean I don’t even dance when Dear Charlie is about. I don’t know why, perhaps I just feel a tad embarrassed. It can’t be a very pretty sight seeing a past-it forty-five year old cavorting round the kitchen table doing her funky stuff to seriously out-dated tunes.

My boys don’t mind and nor do the dogs in fact they join in getting all skittish and jumping up and down. The boys have even been known to dance on the table, although I suppose I shouldn’t encourage that for fear of rather large expense bills when they are older and deciding that it would be a good idea to do in some London nightclub or worse at someone’s wedding….

For me though I love to dance, I love losing myself in it and I suppose that is the reason why I don’t want people to catch me at it, I mean at home. When we lose ourselves we don’t care what we look like we are there in the moment and so utterly free and well, as I said, if someone else were to spy us well they wouldn’t understand and I hate being a laughing stock, I have some pride!

But at a ball, where everyone is expected to dance I can hide among a crowd and really let my hair down. And that is why I am so looking forward to this evening a chance to dance  in the open where no one will think I am odd and no one will be looking….

Just one of the many songs that gets my toes tapping...

When he is late….

When he is late I think the worst. I can’t help it. I try to watch the TV, to read, to cook, to tidy up anything to occupy myself, I really do! But I just can’t help myself, I keep thinking that somehow something terrible has happened and that is why he is late.

After so many years of marriage I should be used to his tardiness but each time is exactly like the first.

It would be fine if only he answered his mobile phone but invariably, he never does. When I yell berate him for not answering when he finally deigns to return home, he looks bewildered and says inane things like

“Sorry it ran out of battery.”

“I had it on silent.”

“It was in my suitcase.”

“I was sleeping.”

“Paltry excuses!” I fume, but to be honest I am too relieved to see him home safe to take it any further.

I am not saying I worry exactly when he is a little late; it’s when he is hours late that I twitch. When he has told me he’s going to be home early and then he is late.

“I had to go for drinks.”

“I forgot to tell you…”

He obviously has no clue about what he is putting me through.

First of all it is the dread, and then it is the practicalities of a life without him. How will I cope? Will we have enough money? Will I have to sell our home? And I go into these in HUGE detail almost down to the last penny. For the biggest worry of course is money and being able to support the boys until they are old enough to support themselves.

I don’t dwell on how I would feel if he weren’t around anymore that is just too much to contemplate, a void. It has to be about getting things done and sorted and surviving.

There are times when he is late that I could cheerfully throttle him then and there on the doorstep for putting me through all the crap but then of course I remember that it was me not him that was doing the thinking and that is the problem…Dear Charlie just doesn't!

The first time he did it was on a Friday night and we had friends round for supper. We waited and waited and waited by 9 o’clock I was frantic with worry while trying not to let it show and laughing and joking and keeping everyone entertained.

He should have been home at 7pm to help me. Guests arrived at 8 and I just kept hoping and hoping and hoping. And getting more and more drunk as my nerves frayed.

Finally I admitted the truth I had no idea where my husband was and we started to phone round the hospitals and just as I was on the phone to the police he bowled up on his bicycle.

“Oh, hello!” he says to everyone with a broad grin, “didn’t expect to see you here!”

He’s done it many times since but it will always be like the first time to me…