I have had a difficult day and behaved very badly.
I have been cross and upset and not been at all kind.
I have been unhappy and frustrated and am not a nice person, even though I can write nice diaries and make people laugh. Underneath I am quite horrid.
In order to explain what has been happening I had better fill you in on some details.
There are not many details otherwise we would be here all night. Consider this to be a one-sided picture painted with the broadest of brush strokes.
Years ago when I met Mark his mother did not like me very much. She thought that I was a Bad Woman.
She said that if he married me he would lose his share of the farm.
Mark liked the idea of a Bad Woman very much and married me anyway. In the event he was disappointed because I turned out to be not nearly as bad as he was hoping, and he has pointed this out frequently in the years that followed.
He did, however, lose his share of the farm.
His sister inherited that when their mother retired.
This sounds much nicer for her than it was. In fact it was a dreadful poisoned chalice of thankless hard work and labour and debt and unhappiness. It was not at all a happy ever after and we were very glad, with hindsight, to have avoided it. We did not have a farm but probably we had the best of the bargain because of not having stress related indigestion for fifteen years.
I am a rubbish farmer in any case. You have got to get up too early.
Mark’s sister did not mind Mark having married me and so he has continued to be friends with her and potter around at the farm, as you know.
Mark’s sister does not intend to live at the farm for ever. She thinks that one day she will sell up and go to live on the profits in Greece, where they will retire and eat olives and drink Greek wine, assuming the Greeks make wine, which I suppose they probably do. If not there is always retsina or ouzo.
We have been discussing this future event over the last few days, not because it is imminent but because obviously farms sell very much better if they are tidy and beautiful with mature gardens and lots of hard work.
You have got to start these things in advance.
She thought that when she sold up she would probably sell things off separately, the house as one lot, the barn as another, and so on.
We asked if we could have first refusal on Mark’s shed.
We said that obviously we would pay the market price for it and that if it turned out that we could not afford it then she could sell it to some millionaire banker who wanted it for storing his helicopter, but in the meantime we would like to try.
She thought about it for a day or two and then said no.
She said, to our terrible disappointment, but really quite sensibly, that she would rather give first refusal to somebody who would like to buy the rest of it, because of Mark’s shed being a scruffy liability and probably somebody with cash would be happier if they could buy it and then knock it down.
Also she pointed out that we didn’t have any money and couldn’t afford it.
She was right about this but we denied it furiously.
Also she pointed out that she had had fifteen years worth of stress-related indigestion and jolly well wanted to take the cash and spend it.
This was true. Goodness alone knows that she has earned it.
All the same Mark was very upset. It is his shed and he built it, and although to the rest of the world it is a horrible eyesore, for him it is his lovely place with singing walls, where he can tootle around making and doing things. He likes the birds and the space and the oily patches and he belongs in it like a robin on a Christmas card.
I watched the dagger go into his heart and then I was very rude and unkind to his sister.
This was not at all fair, because she was entirely right in thinking that somebody who bought the house would probably want to buy the shed as well. They would knock it down and never have to see it again.
I like Mark’s sister, she is much more patient about mess and things than I am, but I was horrible to her.
It was dreadful, because Mark was so upset that he didn’t stop me. Usually he interferes if I am not being my very best self, but he didn’t.
We had the rest of the day doing things to the camper van, but we were so sad that somebody might eventually buy the house and knock the singing shed down that we didn’t enjoy it, and couldn’t concentrate, and kept losing things.
Mark was quiet and despairing, because Windermere is not an easy place to find anywhere to rent or buy, especially for scruffy things like car repairing
In the end we went home.
Mark was so upset that he had left his mobile phone on the bonnet of the car when we drove off, and he had to go back to the farm and look for it.
He didn’t find it.
However his sister did tell him that she had had a rethink and that even though it was a hideous detrimental eyesore, he could buy the shed if it was really important to him, although added that she thought he was quite mental.
This was jolly kind of her because it is not easy to be generous about scruffy sheds, but far more so when your sister in law has been rude and horrible to you.
The app for finding your lost phone has told us that it is in a field miles away, we went and hunted wetly up and down in the dark later, but didn’t find it.
Mark said kindly that he was glad he had married me instead of keeping a farm and a shed, which was nice of him.
It is half past six in the morning and we are both going to bed. It has been a troubled day, but it has all come out all right in the end, all I have got to do now is raise enough money to buy a shed and also become a nicer person.
Oh well.
