Charity Begins at Home

There’s some sort of fundraiser this evening in the village, which has been entitled a Ball.  I’m not sure quite how like a ball it will be and I certainly won’t be wearing a ballgown, but the OH has splashed out on some tickets and we’re joining a table that seems to be mainly people he’s met at pub-quizzes or from the local am-dram group.  Still, it should be fun as there will be live music and dancing so the entertainment value could be quite high.  I will post an entry about it if anything interesting happens.  And possibly even if nothing interesting happens, you’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, in amongst all the showers and potential flash-floods, life goes on here in our sleepy village.  Nibbled at the edges, sometimes, by the goats belonging to a smallholder on the edge of the village, that escaped from their yard and were caught just up the road from our house, demolishing Sylvia’s roses and completely unfazed by her dogs barking at them.  I went out later, down to Joe’s house to check the post for him – he’s gone on some sort of research trip while the decorators are in as he can’t stand the smell of paint, and has asked me to stop the post from piling up too badly – and I don’t think there’s a single front garden that the goats didn’t sample.  Poor Colbert was very embarrassed and muttered something about the pigs having charged the gate when Sylvia returned them, but since it was the goats that were out rather than the pigs, I don’t quite see how that can be relevant.  It’s given Sylvia good mileage at the pub, anyway.

Keeping it in the Family

Fiona’s been keeping a low profile since my last entry; I’ve seen her around the village occasionally but she usually crosses the road to avoid having to pass me on the pavement, giving me one of those very pointed looks that suggests she’s planning some sort of revenge, she just hasn’t decided on it yet.  All of which is very tedious, but like terrorists, if I let even unspoken threats from her influence my life in any way, then she’s won.  And I really don’t like the idea of her winning! 

So I’ve carried on pretty much as usual, trying to tackle the jungle that is the back garden in which the foxgloves and the dandelions are winning.  I don’t mind foxgloves, but the dandelions really annoy me.  Particularly since, even though the OH had a go at mowing them recently, we’ve just spent two weeks in Florence (hence the hiatus here, Florence is *not* a small village!), so the weeds seem to be winning.    Even Verity commented and at the moment, that’s saying something.  She dropped in on Saturday to hand over a couple of parcels that had arrived while we were away (birthday presents for George, when I get round to wrapping them) and after sipping morosely at a coffee that she’d forgotten to add sweeteners to, she looked around and said, “Your lawn’s looking a bit peaky.”  There’s currently more moss and dandelion than grass, so calling it a lawn is overstating the case considerably, but she’s right.  Consequently, this morning I phoned one of those companies that look after lawns, you know, visit four times a year to add fertiliser or something, and we’ll see what they can do.

We’d been invited for dinner at Paul and Celia’s on Saturday evening, which was very pleasant and a chance to meet some other people.  There were ten of us altogether, a couple of familiar faces from the village, but mostly not, and it was a full-blown six course meal if you include the cheese and port at the end, and the subsequent coffee and liqueurs.  Celia appeared to have got someone in to help with the preparation and then with serving the drinks and so on, and I said at one point that I thought for a teenager, it probably paid better than babysitting.

“Oh, I’m not paying her,” Celia replied.  “That’s my daughter, Kathryn.  She’s doing a degree in hotel management or some such, so it’s good practice for her.”

That may be true, but I’m sure the poor girl would prefer the money.  And I doubt her mum can write a reference for her!

Unfounded Pessimism

                That’ll teach me! And possibly, that’ll teach Fiona Hagerty, though I doubt it.

                You may have been wondering why I haven’t written anything for a while.  I have to tell you, I thought Fiona Hagerty was to blame, but it turns out in a way I was too.  After my last entry, there was a knock on the door, less than an hour after I had posted it.  It was Fiona.

                “How very lovely to see you again,” she said. 

                I wasn’t sure if she was being sincere – past experience suggested not – but there was no point deliberately antagonising her, so I was civil in response.

                “You too.  It’s been a long time, Fiona.”

                “So here are your worst fears being confirmed.  Feeling wretched?  Embarrassed at being caught out being so public about our relationship?”

                Truthfully, yes.  Fiona had been the bane of my life all through primary school, particularly because our mothers had been friends and therefore assumed that we were, and then I had the misfortune to be in her class at secondary school too.  It was a relief when she went off to university in the north of England, only returning very occasionally and I saw very little of her.  But she had been careful in her bullying and for all my complaints, nothing had happened to stop her.

                “Anyway,” she continued, “I just dropped by to let you know that if you say anything else in your blog about me or any of the friends I’m making in this back-of-beyond village, I’ll tell everyone all about you.  And it won’t just be about your pathetic biscuit-making efforts.  It would be such a shame, having to move now, when your house would only fetch a fraction of its value, always assuming you could even find a buyer.  Bye!”  She turned and walked away without waiting to hear my response.

                My response, though, was silence.  As you can tell from the gap in blog entries.  We’ve all done things in our childhood that we’d rather not share with our adult friends (or at least I hope we all have.  I did, at least.) and Fiona could certainly be relied upon to spread all the malicious stories she wanted, and any denials I issued would just come down to the usual me versus her, and she always had a knack, even at the age of 6, of including just enough truth in her version to get away with it.  So I said nothing, I wrote nothing, I tried to carry on in the village as usual, and every now and then I’ve seen Fiona on the other side of the road when I’ve been out walking to the post office or similar, and she’s just smiled and walked on.  The threat she made was enough to keep me quiet.  Because part of her comment was quite accurate – house prices even in villages are not great and it’s really hard to find buyers with the banks being so reluctant to lend money.  If she made life in the village untenable, it would be hard to escape unless I went to live with Ronnie.

                I asked Verity what she would do, but she’s still swinging between bouts of extreme listlessness and going out partying with much younger friends from one of her charities.  “I doubt it would be that bad,” was all she said.  “I’ll still talk to you.”

                So I was stuck.  Until last night.  Last night the OH decided we hadn’t been to the pub for dinner for ages, so we sauntered down the road for a meal out.  There was an Aunt Sally match going on in the pub garden, but fortunately we were early enough that they didn’t need the tables inside and there was room for us.  We had just placed our order, when in walked Fiona with a man I didn’t recognise, though possibly she’s snared a husband.  The OH noticed my mood change dramatically and asked what the problem was.

                Not the least fazed when I told him.  “Come on,” he said.  “Realistically, what harm can she do?  You know lots of people in the village who all know what you’re really like” (‘lots’ is a slight exaggeration but there may be an element of truth.  I suppose) “and she’s only just moved in.”

                However, my frozen stance must have given away to him how unconvinced I was.  So instead, bless him, he took the bull by the horns.  He turned round and addressed Fiona.

                “I don’t know what you think you know about my wife, but I’ll thank you not to come round threatening her.   You don’t know what you’re dealing with in this village, we’re a loyal bunch.”

                Fiona didn’t seem the least bothered initially.  “Oh, you must be the husband.  Well, yes, you’re certainly loyal.  Impressive, under the circumstances.”

                I was chewing the inside of my lip and my knees were trembling under the table, but the OH carried on.  “And what circumstances would those be?”

                “Her daily liaisons with Joe.  Everyone knows about them, so I assume you do.  Every morning she’s down there.  I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her and goodness knows what he sees in her, though with his wife away most of the time and so flagrantly unfaithful, perhaps he feels obliged to compete with her with whatever he can get.  But good for you, sticking by her.”

                After the initial shock of the accusation had worn off, I wondered how the OH would react. Belief?  Argument?  But no.  He really is a star.  He slapped Fiona round the face, a good hard slap that resounded so loudly they probably heard it out in the garden.

                “I don’t know where you could possibly have got such a bizarre idea from, but you are clearly either deluded or malicious.  I think a slap answers in either case.  Any more lies you’d like to spread about my wife, think twice.  I shall be more than happy to repeat the treatment.”  He turned to me at this point.  “You know, I’m not sure I’m hungry anymore.  Shall we go?”

                And we left.  I was still shaking slightly and astonished that neither Fiona nor her friend had any response to the OH, but perhaps they were as shocked as I was.  Fiona certainly was not used to be contradicted as a child.  But it seemed for once her rumour-mongering skills had let her down.

                “Just ignore her,” the OH said on the way home.  “This story about Joe is patently untrue and to be honest, if there’s going to be a rumour about you, I can think of worse people to be associated with.  Just don’t let her win.  If I were you, I’d write one of your blog entries about tonight so that everyone knows all about Fiona.  It’s about time she encountered a little resistance.”

                The more I think about the story that Fiona was going to spread, the more amused I am.  It is as the OH said so patently untrue that how Fiona ever thought she could use it to manipulate me, I don’t know.  It serves me right for thinking that she would win in this instance, because she most certainly hasn’t.  I really must learn not to be so pessimistic!

Verity’s Back!

                She dropped in on me yesterday evening, mostly to pick up a key.  She’d parked outside her house and only on attempting to get in had she remembered that she’d asked me to get the locks changed.  I walked back round with her to help carry the luggage in and to show Verity what I’d done following her instructions.

                “There’d better be nothing of His left in the house,” she said.  You could hear the capital.

                I find it sad that a relationship that appeared to work so well can disintegrate so rapidly, but perhaps Verity hadn’t been telling me everything.  Certainly the comment about a Spanish woman had been news to the whole village.  But it’s taken its toll on Verity.  She has always been fashionably slender but she’s lost weight up at Ronnie’s and is close to looking haggard, and it can’t all be due to avoiding Ronnie’s cooking because Verity is usually more than capable of taking herself out to a restaurant.  She’s also a little snappier with me than before, though maybe that’s because despite my best efforts, I have not managed to eliminate every remnant of Max from the house.

                “I can still smell him,” she complained, particularly in the bedroom and the bathroom.  “It’s as if he’d been spraying his aftershave at the curtains.  He probably did, just before he left.  Bastard!”

                I helped her take down the curtains in the master bedroom prior to taking them to the cleaners, and then we made up the bed in the spare room so she didn’t have to sleep in a room with no curtains.  I did ask if she wanted to come back with me, for dinner or for the night.

                “Oh, I couldn’t impose! But thanks for offering.” 

                Verity, impose.  The two words are synonymous.

                Meanwhile, the new neighbour, on the other side of Delyth?  My worst fears have been  confirmed.  It is indeed Fiona Hagerty.  Let us just hope our paths do not cross.

Brief Update

Ronnie phoned me this morning just as I was shifting the laundry from the washing machine to the tumble drier – I’m all in favour of saving electricity and drying things the natural way, but the sky is just too grey and dreary today to give me any confidence that my things will dry before the rain starts.  Anyway.

“You’ve got to talk to her,” she whimpered down the phone line.  “She’s driving me crazy.  We’ve got a bathroom designer coming in later because Verity doesn’t like the layout of the bathroom and there’s no bead in it, or something.  There’s nothing wrong with the bathroom, it’s done me fine for more years than I can remember and it suited Verity fine when she was little too.  You’ve got to help me, you’ve got to persuade her to go home!”

Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time at all, you will know that trying to persuade Verity to do anything she doesn’t want to do is like trying to persuade a cat into a swimsuit.  But because I like Ronnie, I agreed to talk to Verity and see what I could do.

I was given a list of jobs.

“I’m not coming back while there’s any sign of the snake in the house,” she snarled.  “He may have gone but his stuff won’t have done.  You need to go through the cupboards and get rid of all his clothes.  Burn them.  Don’t give them to a charity shop, I might see someone wearing his shirt.”

I thought that was a bit harsh and privately vowed to give them to a charity shop a very very long way away.  It was a risk, but a small one.

“Then I want you to arrange for a locksmith.  I want all the locks changing, even the window locks.  I don’t trust him.”

I wasn’t sure that a locksmith would change the locks without some proof of ID.  I mean, otherwise, a burglar could arrange for a locksmith wherever he or she went and really make life difficult for the victims.  Verity put on her most disbelieving voice.  “Then get them to phone me!  I can’t believe you’re trying to make this harder for me, you of all people!  I thought you were my friend!”

I apologise for all the exclamation marks, but she had gone into exclamation overload by this time.  I assured Verity that I was not trying to make things harder, I just wanted to make sure that everything went according to her plans.

“Then, once you’ve done that, I want you to take that majolica jardinière and give it to a PETA fundraiser.  Max really hates what they do, so it’ll serve him right.”  The jardinière was an antique and I know that Max spent quite a sizeable sum on it for a Valentine’s present for Verity about three years ago so if he ever finds out what she had in mind, he probably would be quite annoyed.  I’m not quite sure how I’ll locate a PETA fundraiser but in the meantime I shall remove the hideous but valuable monstrosity to my garage so that Verity doesn’t have to see it in her conservatory.

She then started on some of Max’s other belongings – his golf clubs and other non-flammable items, so I got some paper and wrote it all down.  I now have a list that will keep me busy for the rest of the day.  Hedonism didn’t feature on it, but I’m sure he won’t mind being added to it in Verity’s absence.