Shed tears

I am at work but I am so frazzled and tied in knots that can hardly write.

I am being a rubbish taxi driver. I just took some people to an hotel up the road and realised halfway there that I was talking to myself, out loud and with accompanying sighs. The customers were sitting in the back, being very, very quiet, presumably in order not to disturb the obvious nutter behind the wheel.

We have had a day full of the sort of things that make you want to go and have a very, very stiff drink, and I am counting the minutes until I can.

We had arranged for the valuer to come to the farm tomorrow to tell us how much Mark’s shed is worth. This afternoon we went over there to meet up with Mark’s sister and walk the boundaries of the land so that everybody was all talking about the same things.

We were really excited, and the suddenly, somehow, when we got there, it wasn’t all right.

Actually it was horrid.

Mark’s sister was cross and grumpy, sharp and abrupt: and when we went into the house we were met by a ghastly silence. Her husband was quiet, and the children glared at us and turned away.

We didn’t know what to think.

We went back to the shed feeling sad and upset. In the end we couldn’t bear the worry any more, and went back to the house to see if we had offended somebody.

Mark’s sister said that she had decided the shed was hers, and it didn’t matter how Mark felt, because she wanted to sell it with the house, and not to us.

She had changed her mind.

Mark’s shed will be offered first to anybody who buys the house after all, so they can knock it down.

She wouldn’t tell us why.

We asked her to think about it, and in the end she promised that she would talk to her husband and call us in the evening.

We went home and waited.

We went to the taxi rank and waited, hearts in our mouths.

She didn’t call.

In the end my father called, and I poured out the whole sorry story.

He was horrified.

Five minutes later he called us back to say he had put ten thousand pounds into our bank, and that we were to go and negotiate our heads off.

We rushed to the farm, hearts thumping, and dashed into the kitchen to grovel and plead.

We would give her ten thousand pounds now this very minute, and then anything else any time and please…please…

She shook her head and shrugged.

“Sorry,” she said.

There is no happy ending.

It is hers, even though Mark built it, and paid for it once already with his own money. She can do as she likes, and she likes to make her house attractive to more potential buyers more than she likes to think that Mark is happy.

That is all right. It is not easy to value anything more than money. It is easy to think that you do, but it is not until the chips are down that you find out who you really are.

We sat on the taxi rank feeling overwhelmed by the day. We rang the valuer and cancelled. Then we felt humbled and quiet at the scale of my father’s generosity.

We rang him back and he was sad with us, and said to keep it.

Mark said that we would have to get our things out of the shed soon. Apart from his sister wanting to sell it, he said that when people do something unkind to you, they want to believe they are justified in doing it, so they start trying to find reasons to be angry with you. Then they can feel all right about themselves again because they can believe that you are horrid. He thinks that very soon his sister will hate him because she will feel guilty, and so we will need to go.

I thought this was very sensible and right, I am glad I am married to Mark.

He said that he has built a shed before, and he will build another one. We will try and find a field that we can buy with my generous father’s ten thousand pounds, and we will build the most beautiful shed, and power it with solar panels and power from water. We will make it happy and not built on somebody’s anger and unpleasantness, the whole thing will have come from kindness and people who care about one another.

I love Mark.