Emptying Nest

Incredible though it seems, my life and that of my family, seems to be degenerating further into a situation comedy, with the rest of my community as its laughter track, whilst I sit in a corner somewhere, not so silently pulling at my newly highlighted hair. It was bound to happen now that Hubby is no longer here , because were he, I would, if not pass the buck, then at least look at him helplessly as I grapple with the change that I am struggling to embrace. So, first things first. My son. That gorgeous first born who informed me a few nights ago that he no longer requires my services and instead wants to shack up with his girlfriend. “That’s it?”, I cried, “That’s it? You don’t want me anymore?” There is no manual when your baby gives you this sort of news, ergo I had absolutely no idea how to respond rationally and relied, perhaps a little erroneously, on gut instinct i.e with a modicum of high drama and emotion. “See this?”, I demanded, pointing to my belly, “This gave you life. And these?” I added, pointing to my nipples, “These bled for you and now you tell me, oh so casually, that you don’t need me anymore”. “Mum”, he replied, “You stopped breast feeding me 18 years ago, get over it”. “Get over it?”, my voice had by now reached dangerously high decibels, from which there is little chance of return to normal and more measured speech. Under normal circumstances, I would have by now passed the baton to Hubby, whilst throwing myself onto the sofa, to wail and tear at my breast. As it was, I was alone with my son and my histrionics. “But why?”, I beseeched, “Why? Aren’t you happy here? Don’t you feel loved anymore?” “Ma, for God’s sake, it’s not like that. It’s just that me and my girl want a bit of space”. I reeled. “Space? Space? Space?”, I spat, “What the hell do you mean space? Have you become an astronaut now?” “You’re mental”, he replied. “I am not mental, I am heartbroken. You have all the bloody ‘space’ you need. Far more generously awarded you than any other teenager that I can think of. Apart from walk the dogs occasionally and empty the dishwasher, little else is asked of you, and your girl stays over seven nights a week, I do your washing and feed you and her too when I have a vegetarian option on”. “Well, we’ve found somewhere Ma. It’ll be fine”. And that was the end of that. I poured myself a very large glass of wine and picked up a baby photograph of him with his tiny, precious foot in his father’s hand. He’s nineteen. I had such hopes for him. Such expectations and now, instead of being at University with his friends, he wants to go and play house with his girlfriend. I am redundant. I drank more than was wise, especially given the fact that the following morning I had to drive my eldest daughter to Cardiff University’s Open Day. She was excited. Her eyes blazed with the fire of opportunity and adventure. “It’s a great Uni”, she said later, “The English lecturer was clever and eccentric. The student union is buzzing and the city is fab”. I have one more year of her. One more year of my darling girl and her brains and her beauty before I have to hand her over and share her with the rest of the world. All the time Hubby, at his meetings and schedules and admin is utterly oblivious to my breaking heart. We drove home again that night in torrential rain. The windscreen wipers were I redundant as I. When I arrived home, Dad was flaked on the sofa. “Have they been good?”, I asked, gesticulating to my youngest children who were now hanging onto each of my legs. “As gold”, he said smiling, although he didn’t stay, glad to return home next door to a little peace and quiet, where the demands are few and the television not as exuberant. I snuggled one and then the other under their duvets and asked about their days. The eldest of the two happily regaled me with the results of a perfect spelling test and the fact that she can now name every one of Henry VIIIth’s wives. In order. The Red-Head however, was a little subdued. “How did your presentation go?” I asked her. She and her very big sister had worked hard on a presentation of our Queen. “Not good”, she sighed. “Oh dear”, I replied, lowering myself onto the bed beside her, “What went wrong? Did you forget what you had to say?” “No”. “Well what can be so bad then?”, I asked, oh so naively. “There was a funny bit at the beginning”. “There you are you see. You entertained your class. You made them laugh. Was it about the Queen?” “No”. “What was it then?” “My brother’s girlfriend in her bra and knickers”. My blood ran cold. It seems that the USB stick that the presentation had been saved onto had belonged to our son. Hubby had found it on the coffee table and handed it, without realising, to our eldest daughter who, being an expert on the Royals, helped her youngest sister with her presentation and saved it onto said USB stick. The ensuing drama unfolded when the Red-Head had then opened her presentation up in front of a class of 7 and 8 year old and voila, cue delighted 7 and 8 year olds, a bewildered Red-Head and a mortified, newly qualified young teacher, when instead of a picture of HRH on the interactive whiteboard, a rather revealing, if thank God, tasteful picture of her brother’s girlfriend’s corset confronted the class instead. Were it a sitcom, it would be hilarious, but honestly? You just can’t make this stuff up.

Boudoir.

Before Hubby returned to work, we gutted the toy room. It was a dirty job and one that required a stomach of steel. What were those green, fluffy masses growing behind the Lego box? And why were the calcified remains of birthday cake, circa 2007, hidden in the Postman Pat jigsaw puzzle box? These enigmas will remain unanswered because the culprits involved, who were no more than toddlers at the time, have grown up a bit and have no recollection whatsoever as to why penicillin spores are more abundant in their play room than in a bio-technological laboratory, although they were very keen to help ‘sort’. Many, many bin bags were utilised in the big clear out. Limbless and beheaded Barbies and more than a couple of sexually ambiguous Kens, got the heave- ho. “But I love that Barbie”, was opined more than once by one daughter or another. “But she hasn’t got any legs/arms/hair or head”, I replied in vexation. Depending on the Barbie in question, she mightn’t have had any of the above, let alone delete as appropriate. Hubby was ruthless. “It’s going in the bin, ditto any jigsaw without all the pieces and any game without its component parts.” This, as it transpired, turned out to be most of the jigsaws and almost all of the games. With bin liners piling up as big as a thief’s outside a toy shop, the children’s resolve began to waver. “We haven’t got anything left to play with”, one wailed. “You haven’t played with this stuff for years”, replied Hubby, stamping on a doll’s head with rather over-enthusiastic fervour. “Get in that bag”, he added, squishing her in. “You are hurting her”, cried the Red-Head, attacking her father’s leg with remarkable gusto, “Leave her alone you pig”. “It is an inanimate plastic doll!”, retorted Hubby, attempting to prise her off. “So?”, she hissed at him. “The same doll, whose once sleeping eyes have been rather cruelly removed and, whose face is now disfigured by black marker pen where one of you has tried to remedy the doll’s blindness by providing it with felt-tip pen eyes.” The girls had the grace to look a little discomfited. The makers of Toy Story 1, 2 and 3 would have been up in arms as a Woody who couldn’t talk anymore, a Mr Potato Head who no longer had a head and who was now just reduced to a potato and a Buzz Lightyear with smashed visor and dislocated leg were plonked unceremoniously into a cardboard box, a scene that has been played out in the movie several times, but alas no plastic dinosaur, nor springy dog, nor green plastic toy soldiers came to their rescue. Books, hundreds of them, took hours to work through. I could not dispose of cherished books that had been read and re-read, time and again as bedtime stories, memories that are particularly precious to me now that two of my children are virtually grown up and the other two demand to read to themselves. Also all the books that have been inscribed in had to be kept. All books from my mother, from Godparents, and long lost friends. “Alice, we can’t keep all these books in the loft. They’ll bring the ceiling down”. “I can’t get rid of them”, I replied, beseechingly, “They are so precious. Our children’s babyhoods are written into the very fabric of these pages” and I brandished ‘Dogger’ into his face. Hubby sighed, “Good God Alice, never let it be said that you are not dramatic” but, I was careful to note, he put the special books in another pile – the pile of ‘things to be kept’. This pile, whilst being emptied from one room, now clutters another, only it isn’t even a room. It is the landing. Already this week the ‘pile’ has caused much embarrassment as Hubby, who having just about managed to lug it all from downstairs before he had to leave before dawn on Monday, never quite got it as far as the loft. And so, in this current mess it would have to be that Jacob, one of my lost boys, has returned from university to visit, bringing a friend with him. Said friend is South Korean and whilst, exceptionally polite, was at a loss as to why, “Such big house have many toys outside bathroom?”. No linguistic stereotyping intended by the way, he just genuinely used no prepositions. I was at pains to explain to him that they had originated from the room in which he was sleeping. “No, no! You do that for me? No” and he ran upstairs. Minutes later I found him humping a doll’s house down the stairs. “What are you doing Kim?”, I asked bewildered. “You very kind Mrs Band, but you no need empty room on my behalf”. Korean translators are very thin on the ground in Torpoint and so, whilst I wrested the doll’s house from him, I implored Jake to take pains to make Kim understand that whilst he was a very welcome visitor, I had not infact emptied the downstairs room so that he wouldn’t have to share a sofa-bed with a Playmobil Pyramid. “What are you going to do with this room now that’s it empty?” asked Hubby on the phone later that night. “It will be my boudoir”, I replied, “A place where I can entertain my friends in my private sitting room without having to compete with Horrible Histories”. Hubby was not impressed. I impressed on him that it was wonderful idea; he could have the sitting room to himself where he could watch Ice Truckers and listen to his music with impunity. We then had a slight verbal fracas which culminated in my hanging up. Minutes later a text arrived on my mobile, ‘Your boudoir is a perfect place for you to hang out. Just looked up its meaning – from the French: literally, a sulking place’

Pong.

The demands made on Hubby since he’s been on leave have made him increasingly frowny, due to my to-do list, to ensure that, now he longer lives at home during the week, he doesn’t escape certain male domestic responsibilities, especially as he no longer doesn’t even get to put the rubbish out. More on that later. ‘The List’, in fairness was only written as an aide memoire, a brief reminder to the two of us not to waste Easter leave when so many small, niggling domestic jobs could be getting sorted. Unfortunately, what neither of us took into account was a serious of unfortunate events, which would put pay to the other tasks that had been so patiently waiting. It all started a few mornings ago after I’d flushed the loo. There was the usual din that a macerator lavatory makes as the monster inside it chews up whatever the person has just evacuated into the bowl. It grinded and shuddered; splashed and chomped and then, as I washed my hands, it began to whine. Quietly at first, like the soft hum of a few summer bees, but then the hum became more of a high pitched tone like that of a lone mosquito. I walked back into our bedroom where Hubby was enjoying the first sip of what he hoped was going to be, a mugful of tea. “Toilet’s buggered”, I said as I lifted the duvet to get in beside him. He lay his mug down. “What exactly do you mean when you say that the toilet is buggered? Do you mean broken?” “I think so”. Hubby groaned. “What’s the big deal?” I asked, “You’ve become a dab hand at mending it. It breaks all the time. I never thought it bothered you.” “I hate it Alice. I despise it. I loathe it. I find it an experience of such appalling disgustingness you just cannot imagine. It revolts and repulses me. It’s nauseating and makes me heave. The last thing I want to do now is leave my warm bed, my hot wife, my even hotter tea to immerse myself up to my elbows of familial effluence, especially as I had plans to.., well do any of those things on the list other than this!” He threw the duvet back with a force and drama appropriate to his abhorrence of a malfunctioning, macerator toilet and stormed out of our room. Five hours later, having employed my pretty, flower patterned hammer, my torch, my ladle and my kitchen tongs, not to mention my rubber gloves and, having emptied the airing cupboard of several dozen, clean, warm fluffy towels, he found the offending article. A Chanel lipstick. “Yours I presume?”, he said, brandishing the offending and now rather filthy, if not half chewed, article at me. “That’s where it went! Yes, it is mine, but I can assure you that under no circumstances, not even when I’m really mad at you, would I throw one of my best lipsticks down a loo bowl just so that it would make you clean it out. That would be very cruel indeed.” He flushed the chain again. “I’m not happy with the seal on the jubilee clip at the back. Just popping to the hardware store. Back in a jiff”. “Where’s daddy gone?” asked the Red-Head wandering in. “To buy a jubilee clip sweetheart, he won’t be long”. She looked surprisingly delighted and sat on the outdoor step waiting for him to come home. When at last he ambled back up the road, she ran over to him. “Can I see it dad?”, she said, grasping a paper bag out of his hand. She removed from it a coil of metal with a key at the end. “What’s this?” she asked, most disappointed. “It’s a jubilee clip poppet”. As they walked through the front door, tears ran down her face. “What’s the matter darling?”, I asked. “I thought daddy had gone to buy a jubilee clip?” “But he had”, I explained, “You saw it”. In a little embarrassed voice, hidden into my neck , she explained that she thought the clip would be red, white and blue, maybe have the picture of a diamond Queen on it and would look nice in her long hair. Bless. A bit more grinding and groaning later and that was just Hubby - and the bathroom was finally, fully functioning once again. My kitchen utensils weren’t though as, with wrinkled nose and held at arm’s length, I dropped them into the bin. “Will they get recycled?” I asked Hubby. “Don’t ask me, the whole recycling thing is an utter mystery to me.” Since Cornwall County Council in their infinite wisdom has decided to provide fancy boxes for every resident and change collections days and times, some towns have gone into meltdown. Don’t get the residents started on overflowing dog-poo bins and long grass in parks. That service seems to have been abandoned. It is a hornet’s nest of dissatisfaction around here. And, as no-one seems to know exactly when refuse and recycling day is, bags of rubbish are put out in the morning and brought back in again, uncollected in the afternoon. Hokey-cokey for refuse. In out, in out, shake it all about. We didn’t even receive one of these new, black boxes and I had to purloin one from dad, who doesn’t really ‘do’ green. One morning, as ever in my dressing gown, I heard the rumble of the rubbish lorry. Opening the front door, I chased the recycling lorry down our road heaving fistfuls of recycling bags as I ran. “Yoo-hoo”, I called, “Please take my bags”. “Can’t love” said a bin man, “We are refuse, not recycling.” “But yours looks like a recycling lorry. There are huge pictures of glass and paper on the side of it”. I pointed. “That’s just advertising the service love. We don’t touch that stuff”. What a load of rubbish, or not, as the case may be.

Tra-la

“But I’ve got a silver medal in my L.A.M.D.A acting exam. With honours”, I lamented to Mags, who was patiently listening to my wittering, “I shouldn’t be nervous. I am though. I don’t have pretty little butterflies fluttering around my tummy either but great big, hairy, ugly moths”. I took a swig of my Americano, shuddered, wrinkled up my face and stuck my tongue out. It was very strong. “Not to your taste?” she asked. “Bleurgh. No. How can you drink this stuff? I haven’t even got a complimentary biscuit to dunk in it. That, at least, would take the edge off it”. “You are such a wimp Alice. Honestly. They do two shots here. It’s meant to pep you up”. I looked at her beseechingly. “Do I look like a woman who needs pepping up Mags? I am a bag of nerves.” “For God’s sake woman! Pull yourself together. You are singing as part of a choir. No-one will even notice you. You are hardly one of third of Banana-bloody-rama”. She had a point. “But I’m tall. What if they put me on the end? I don’t know the words to the songs and the musical director has told us we should be music free.” The trouble with an Americano coffee is, is that there is no redeeming feature to it. Nothing sweet. No froth. No chocolate sprinkles. Either of the former would have soothed me at this moment. I was looking for something comforting to suck off my spoon. “When is the concert?” Mags asked, making a concerted effort to sound interested. “Tomorrow night”. “What are you singing? “Well”, I said, “The rest of the Torpoint Lady Singers will be singing The Nun’s Chorus, The Rose, Wherever You Are, to name but a few. Personally I’ll be some oxygen starved guppy, opening and closing my mouth in desperation.” “But your first gig was ok wasn’t it?” Mags asked. I shook my head. “The rest of the choir were harmonious but the minute the bride entered the church, I lost my concentration. I was too nosy looking at what dress was like. Beautiful by the way, but I couldn’t find my place after that so I had to hide my face in my music folder”. “Hardly a Sarah Brightman moment then?” I shrugged. Mags squeezed my hand, “The next gig isn’t a wedding though is it. Just try and relax and enjoy it”. In the event, apart from the faux pas of helping myself to an egg sarnie before being told to do so – I felt as though I’d drunk the port before a toast to ‘The Queen’, it was a great success, mostly due to the fact that my fellow lady singers are very practised and professional and know the words and harmonies in their sleep. The musical director relented and allowed me to read mine and, as we took our places, my ladies were very supportive and guided me to my singing spot. I was relieved to find that even being tall, due to the lady in front having had her hair professionally coiffured, the lacquer was such that it obliterated my face. I was delighted and, for a short time, obliviously enjoyed a certain false sense of security until I was suddenly manoeuvred to stand in the front. In front of a packed audience is not the time to question the whys and wherefores of such a decision. Afterwards, I was told that it had something to do with sopranos and second sopranos. I took their word for it. Not that I’d like to imply that my life is one large mug of coffee, but no sooner had I recovered from the concert than Hubby, dearest, darling Hubby, was home again on Easter leave and I was making the most of being able to leave the house without so much as a backward glance and so, I arranged to meet Mags again, although in Polperro this time at the house of a mutual friend. Well, I’d planned to meet the girls, but I was stymied at the last hurdle. Without thinking that I might need a bank loan to park my car, I left Torpoint and its banks, drove straight through Looe and another few banks and continued my journey to Polperro which not only has no banks, but no cash machines that I’m aware of. I was already five late when I pulled into the car park and couldn’t quite believe my eyes when I saw that the price to park my car was four quid! Four. Quid. For three hours. There were no concessions, no half an hour drop offs to get essentials – like milk and bread or to run down to your friend’s house to inform them that you would not be joining them for coffee after all as you didn’t have four pounds in small change in your purse. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have paid it. That’s just extortion. Starbucks would have been cheap by comparison. I don’t know how the summer visitors will manage. Fuel prices have already changed our Easter holiday plans dramatically. How can families on, let’s say a multi destination day out – Looe, Talland Bay and Polperro be expected to pay these parking prices on top of the horrendous price of the fuel they’ve had to fork out on to get here in the first place? And what about the loyal locals? There is literally nowhere to park in Polperro apart from the top car park. I can’t imagine anyone being prepared to pay four pounds for the privilege of getting their groceries. I texted Mags to say that I was turning around and going home again. Her reply was ‘Shopkeepers are up in arms. Come back and sign a petition. All the shops have them”. Had I been able to afford it, I would have signed it. Gladly and with a most emphatic full stop. April 2012

Ole Red Eyes.

He’d sung the first verse in the car that had driven us home. The driver diplomatically kept his silence. In fact as he helped me get Hubby out of the car, instead said, “I shall miss you Sir. It’s been a privilege.” Hubby shook his hand firmly before I led him up the steps of our house and in through a dark and quiet house up the stairs to our bedroom.
Pussy Galore, I am convinced, had nowhere near as much trouble undressing James Bond as I did my husband in a very similar rig because, as Hubby lay flat on his back on our bed warbling the second verse -
“I've lived a life that's full
I travelled each and every highway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way” – I stood at the foot of said bed, still in a long frock, still in my high heels, heaving off his shiny, black patent dress shoes, arguing crossly with him.
“No darling”, I muttered, “You have all the highways yet to travel”.
“Very profound Alice love, very profound”, he added, helpfully lifting his bottom off the bed so that I could pull his trousers down.
“No. I was just stating a fact – you will be very familiar with the route to your new job. M5, A30, A303…” and I yanked his trouser legs down his long legs.
“Bloody Nora, you are going to regret that last snifter tomorrow morning”, I snarled. Unfortunately, my remonstration only reminded him of verse three which he sung with gusto -
“Regrets? I've had a few
But then again too few to mention”.“Be bloody quiet”, I hissed, “and sit up a minute”. He did as I instructed helping me remove his dinner jacket and undo his bow tie but he slapped my hand away as I fumbled with the top button of his dress shirt.
“Are you trying to garrotte me Alice?”, he asked, hurt. I didn’t dare reply. He wrestled away with the infernal button for another minute or two, after which, with some success, he lay down on his pillow again, leaving me to attempt to pull his shirt off. I was doing a jolly good job until it came to his wrists when the stupid cufflinks stymied my efforts. Hubby was by now rolled onto his side, the sleeves of his shirt joining his hands together behind his back as if he were handcuffed and under arrest.
“Oh for heaven’s sake!”, I declared, more than happy to leave him in that position all night if push came to shove, as quite literally, it had. The Tiffany cuff links which I had bought him on 5th Avenue all those years ago when we lived in America, were buried in the deep, by now inside-out cuffs and no amount of pushing and shoving were helping my labours.
“For God’s sake!”, I now shouted at him, “Don’t just bloody lie there, help me to help you.” After much struggling and wriggling, one hand broke free of the cloth apprehending his freedom and with one foul swoop he dragged the other sleeve off with his free hand.
“Ta-da!”, Hubby exclaimed.
“Ta-da indeed”, I replied imperiously, “Honestly, had you planned to get bat faced tonight?”
Hubby rolled over, looked me in the eyes, took my hands in his and said,
“Alice, I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way”. It took me a moment or two to realise that the words he was saying were the unsung lyrics of the bloody song he’d been singing since we’d left the party. I too fell back on my pillow. I’d run out of energy. All the parties, all the final speeches, all the gift giving, all the concerts and lunches and dinners that in this, his final week at work had been dedicated to him, had taken its toll. There was no denying it any more, I was an emotional wreck. I don’t want him to go. I don’t want to say goodbye to all the lovely people he has worked with for the past two and a half years: the captain, his wife, his PA, his colleagues, the wardroom hall porters, the chaplaincy, the training officers, the medical staff, the stewards, the chefs. I don’t want to be a single mother all week and deal with the daily traumas of bringing up five children. One of us needs to mop up the kitchen whilst the other mops up the problems of one or other of our fast growing family, problems which are of such disproportionate concern to them that one understands completely why the phrase, ‘teenage angst’ was coined. Basically one of us needs to solve domestic crises whilst the other cracks on with the domestic chores.
Hubby, lying on top of our duvet, in little more than a pair of little pants, our son’s surely, and a pair of stripy socks, looked oddly vulnerable. He held my hand and, as we both stared up at the ceiling, he sang again, quietly, with a certain sobriety:

“Yes there were times I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out, I faced it all
And I stood tall and did it my way”. Tears dripped down the creases of my eyes and onto my pillow. Hubby wiped my face.
“I've loved, I've laughed and cried
I've had my fill, my share of losing
And now as tears subside…”. But Hubby choked on the final few words. He couldn’t articulate that he ‘found it all so amusing’. Not even the image of him in his undies and me in my long frock, lying on our bed, crooning the ultimate swan song, could detract from the fact that, ultimately Frank Sinatra was talking a load of bollocks.

Gin soaked.

“Subtle, sweet, soft and smooth”, I said.
“And very sexy”, said Hubby peering down my cleavage. I slapped his nose away.
“Not my bosoms for goodness sake; gin”.
“Gin? I just thought it was junipery and fizzy and great with ice and a slice”. I groaned. Suffice it to say that it was my son who bought me a master tour at the Plymouth Gin distillery as a gift and not Hubby, who wouldn’t know the difference between a supermarket brand and a Plymouth gin if he were unfortunate enough to drown in it.
“That is how our master guide described the flavour of their gin – subtle, sweet, soft and smooth”
“And was it?” asked Hubby.
“Well the one in the bar with tonic and lime was”.
“Ha-ha”, said Hubby punching the air triumphantly
“The others”, I added, ignoring him, “were a little more curious”.
“How so?”
“Well, the ones we had to taste weren’t all Plymouth ones. One was a Bombay Sapphire, another was a Gordon’s, another a Beefeater. One very pucker chap in a seersucker blazer and cravat was horrified. Apparently he hated Beefeater gin”.
“So what did you have to do?” asked Hubby rummaging about in my goody bag the guide had kindly presented us.
“Well we sat at a bar with five different gins in front of us, then, we had to water them down a bit and then, do as you would a wine.”
“Knock it back d’you mean? Oh well then Alice, I’m very surprised to see you still standing. ”
“Ha, bloody ha. We did have to knock it back actually. Twice for each gin. First we had to swallow it quickly and secondly we had to swirl it around our mouths and then swallow it. Apparently one’s mouth tastes gin differently to wine, further down or something”. Hubby looked at me askance.
“Sounds kinky to me”.
“Well it wasn’t. It was very interesting and our guide was fantastic. We learnt how to nose a gin and what spices to sniff for and then we had to say which one had been our favourite of the five and Mr Seersucker said ‘number 3’, which was revealed to be the Beefeater!”
“Anyway, cut to the chase”, said Hubby rather impatiently, “Did you bring any home?”
“As a matter of fact I did. My very own, hand made by me. And, like the Little Red Hen, as I made it all myself, it will be drunk all by myself”. And I took the bag away from Hubby. I didn’t really mean it, but I was feeling peevish that he wasn’t listening to the fascinating procedure involved and just wanted to imbibe my masterpiece instead of appreciating how it’d been conceived.
“Oh come on. Don’t sulk. It’s just that we’ve been there, done that. Don’t you remember?”
“That was entirely different. That was the cheap tour; this was the crème de la crème of gin tours.”
And I removed from my Plymouth Gin plastic bag, a little bottle of personally labelled gin, the flavour unique to my blend as I had hand picked the spices from quite a selection then added some citrus peel and Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt, distilled it myself.
As I carried it through to the dining room, our son ran upstairs from the basement.
“Mum! You’re home, how did it go?”
I gave him a huge hug. “Thank-you my darling, it was fantastic, I had a wonderful day. It was a very personal and thoughtful gift. Most unique”.
“What did you do?” he asked. Not wanting the same reaction that I got from his father, I chose to tell him a snippet of information that, as a boy still, he would love.
“Well, before we could go into the huge room where these gigantic vats of gin are being distilled, we had to leave our phones in a locker. Can you imagine why?”
“Thieves and scoundrels?”
“No darling, I somehow doubt that on a masterclass gin tour on a weekday afternoon we had to fear our mobile phones being nicked from our handbags”.
“Why then?”
“Because the alcoholic vapours were such in this vat room that a spark from our mobiles could have triggered an enormous explosion. Bigger than any on a petrol station forecourt”.
“No way. Wow! That’s like, really cool”.
“I thought you’d like that nugget of health and safety advice”. You could tell by the faraway look in his eye that a part of him wished that I’d been reckless enough not the heed the safety advice given and that far from bringing home a bottle of gin, I’d come home with singed eyebrows and a far more exciting tale to tell. Hubby too was nodding his head as if my involvement in a cataclysmic alcohol calamity would have been one hell of a story to dine out on.
“They even insisted we touch a metal handle before we walked into that room”. They both looked at me with big eyes, as though listening to a bedtime story.
“To get rid of any static on our person, apparently even a spark from a nylon jumper would have been enough to cause a mighty bang of such catastrophic proportions the building would have been razed to the gorund”.
“Wow!” they both said in unison. Boys eh? It’s no wonder Top Gear is such a popular show. A show about cars and explosions. The producers know their target audience very well indeed.
“Shall we try it then?” I said. Our son ran to the fridge/freezer to get ice and tonic, Hubby cut a lime into a wedge. We poured it into two tumblers and took a swig each, our son watched; his taste buds have yet to mature beyond Carling Black Label.
“Jeeze”, I said coughing and thumping my chest.
“Crikey” added Hubby, “That’s more potent than Navy strength gin, enough to knock old Nelson off his plinth at Trafalgar square”. Mother’s ruin? This mother was that night. Very.

Imminent.

Hubby’s departure from the homestead is imminent. I don’t need to feel it in my waters as there is evidence all around me. He has started to stockpile his stuff. There are little mounds around the house that belong to him ready to be packed and driven away. CDs, books, new socks and unfamiliar pants litter the stairs in a most perilous manner. Long lost shirts and sweaters have been excavated from the back of the wardrobe; some have not passed muster, the moths having feasted but, some have been washed and pressed and hang on backs of doors, like immaculately ironed spectres, waiting for their new haunt in an unfamiliar cabin, somewhere in Wiltshire, a place where we, his family, have no place and do not belong.
For the next twenty months or so, Hubby will live a life and conduct his business completely outside our realm of understanding. We have no points of reference to imagine him in situ. We cannot picture where he will sleep, where he will eat, his office or his colleagues. It is all very disconcerting.
Hubby, for the first time in a 35 year career is not excited about this last chapter. He has been so very happy in his last job that it is such a shame that his final appointment in the Royal Navy is taking away from home and to a place which is unfamiliar, even to him.
His departure is also affecting our marriage. There is still three weeks to go before he finally leaves, yet our biorhythms must know that something is afoot as we have, to our youngest children’s great disgust, become a bit lovey-dovey.
Even Mags was taken aback when she called in last week and happened upon Hubby and me, in the kitchen, snogging.
“Oh put her down”, she scolded, “it’s not right, people of your age, conducting yourselves in such a manner”.
“They do it all the time Mags”, added our ten year old, wandering into the kitchen on the search for some Ribena, “I’m scared to walk around the house in case I catch them doing it”.
Mags raised her eyebrows, luckily as our girl is only 10 and therefore couldn’t possibly imagine (I sincerely hope), the, permutations and double entendre of ‘doing it’, she was only referring to us kissing.
“Are they now?” asked Mags, “Well, it must be better to see a mummy and daddy love each other so much than those who are always rowing and shouting at each other”.
“I guess you’re right” replied our daughter, although she wasn’t entirely convinced. It’s peculiar how we react to being parted from one another. There are tell-tale stages. We are starting to cling to each other and are indulging in a bit of smooching. Hubby rings me from work and tells me that he loves me far more frequently than usual and I am buying him little love tokens, just to show him that his feelings are reciprocated. Freshly made Peanut butter fudge from Roly’s in Totnes for example, was met with disproportionate joy.
“Oh my God Alice!”, he said popping a chunk into his mouth and as it melted, his eyes shut just so that he could savour the experience. Funny little moans emanated from him.
“Ok, ok, I get the idea. You love the fudge. Those noises are just weird though. Cut it out”.
Even our son, the rocker with the black hair and tattoo, has been increasingly affectionate of late. Working in the wardroom as a civvy steward has given him an ‘access all areas’ pass and he has been privy to find out a lot about his dad and his colleagues’ opinions of him and, the general consensus is, that people like his father. An awful lot.
When articles are written in papers that talk about our teens and wayward boys and troublemakers, it always comes down to the fact that these young men have rarely had a good male role model in their lives. This man may not necessarily love to play football with his son, but he must be decent, he must be a man to whom the lad in question can look up to. This is probably why excellent, male, primary school teachers are so much in demand, because so many boys do not have regular access to a decent bloke who is a part of their lives, day in day out.
Imagine then, Hubby’s dining out. The mess was packed, the food sublime, the wine generous, the staff, family members included, professional. My brother and his wife sat to the left of me, Hubby to my right. After dinner, Hubby cracked a few groan inducing jokes and paid tribute to the leavers. The gavel was struck again and the Captain stood up and what was said next, were the sort of words one never gets to hear as one is usually dead, in a wooden box adjacent to the eulogiser. I could see my son’s eyes well with pride up as though thinking, “That’s my dad, he’s talking about”.
So, chez Band is a very emotional place at the mo, but, like I said and I have been a Navy wife long enough to recognise the stages couples go through before a separation so that, just before he goes, where one would think our lovey-doveyness would reach its zenith, we will row and bicker and bitch at each other, as though repelling the other from oneself – a sort of self-preservation order so that it doesn’t hurt so much on the day. And that is how the next 20 months will be. We will both live for Friday, we’ll be delighted to see each other and then on Sunday afternoon, as I dish up Sunday lunch, I’ll be remote again, not being able to bear his grip being put in the car for yet another week away from us. Hands up how many Navy wives know what I’m talking about?