dear diary

06.00 Husband gets up to go to go back to London. I don’t notice because I made him sleep in the spare room last night so he didn’t get me up early.
06.15 Woken by nanny’s crying. She is homesick. She shouldn’t really have her clock radio set to Radio Gdansk Breakfast Show. It can’t help. It is good reception up here though. If not for Denmark in the way you could even see Poland from here.
06.19 Baby starts to cry.
06.20 Switch on Radio to drown out baby. The sound of Carolyn Quinn makes me feel homesick. I start to cry.
06.22 I bang on wall and shout to Nanny that children will be late for school. Pull pillow over head.
08.20 Hear door slam as children go to school.
09.30 Phone rings. It is my agent. Why have I hardly written anything this week? Why not do a diary type post to show how awfully busy I am because everyone thinks the nanny does everything. Put phone down, pull duvet over head.
09.45 Call in Natalia and tell her to make a list of everything I do today.
09.48 Gaze at Radio Times picture of Colin Firth as MrDarcy stuck on ceiling above bed.
10.00 Log onto Wife in the North. Consoled that someone else has as grim a life as me. Read comments onWifey's blog. Someone using a photo of Audrey Hepburn in their profile criticises another commenter for hiding behind anonymity. V. strange.
10.30 Think probably should get out of bed now. Just time for a quick bath before I go out to site meeting at cottage.
12.45 Get out of bath. Can’t find car keys.
12.46 Write blog post about losing car keys and make appointment with post traumatic stress disorder consultant. He can’t see me for three weeks due to sudden influx of downshifters putting strain on resources by losing keys, dealing with homesick nannies and arguing with builders about pantries.
12.57 Find car keys.
13.00 Get in car. Husband has filled it with petrol. Hurrah! Start engine.
13.01 Find favourite CD in glove box to cheer me up.
13.05 Car engine cuts out. Remember now that car runs on diesel. V. bad
13.06 Can’t get James Blunt out of my stereo, as well as out of my head, now ignition dead. Start to cry.
13.07 look in rear view mirror. ‘you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful it’s true’. Cry some more.
13.20 Get out of car. Realize I will have to walk all the rest of the way, sigh, start walking.
13.24 Arrive at cottage for meeting with architect.
13.30 Disappointed when architect says building noise hasn’t forced owners of remaining house in street to sell to us.
13.31 Grumpy local (is there another kind?) complains about housing shortage. I tell him my family occupies three houses in the village so how can he say there is a shortage.
14.00 Arrive back home just in time for health visitor to drop by. She is local so brings an interpretor.
14.01 Health visitor checks baby’s name for records. 'Willy Super', I tell her. 'No, I know your name Rilly', she says, 'what’s the baby’s name.?' I tell her she can jolly well run along and return when she can be more respectful. Health visitor goes red and falls off chair.
14.05 My agent rings. I need to do something to add some local atmosphere. He has booked riding lesson. He hangs up. Riding what? I ask myself.
14.30 Time for first drink according to new years resolution, as amended from no alcohol until 7pm on January 3rd and absolutely not a drop until 5.30pm on February 12th.
15.00 Send Natalia to off licence for fresh supplies
15.45 Children arrive back from school. I tell Natalia to tell them I have died.
15.48 Milly and Tilly start to cry.
15.50 Natalia comes upstairs. She starts to cry
15.51 I start to cry.
15.52 I have another drink.
15.55 Phone rings. I am expected at riding stables 10 am tomorrow. Voice from riding stables says he can't quite match my name with a face. I remind him who I am. Riding instructor starts to cry.

wringing the changes

Haven't much time to tell you how grim it is up north today I'm afraid but today is one of those days when I rilly think about how my life has changed. The washing machine is broken again, perhaps it was continuously having to wash the children’s clothes after they'd been brushed against by one of the local children coming out from their MMR injections and trying to pass their autism on to my own darlings, or perhaps it was my sitting on top during the spin cycle thinking about Colin Firth one too many times but nevertheless it was down to the river with the washboard today to hunker down amongst the local women and try and get those nasty northern germs off our southern clothes. 'Why do you all gather at this same spot to do the washing?' I enquired. 'because the outdoor privies all empty into the river just down there', it was explained. 'What kind of washing powder to you mostly use?' I asked. 'Serf', came the reply. I began to suspect then that not all of the local women had staggered down to the river laden with laundry simply because they had all been pestered by the au pair to let her have the range rover on her day off, nor that they had all been re-reading Bridget Jones Diary on the tumble dryer again so I tried to conceal the designer labels from my Primark pounding and Wilkinsons wringing fellow washers but alas it was inevitable that someone would notice eventually. ‘Shouldn’t you dry clean Lacroix pet? Said the hunched up old woman next to me on the cold foggy slippery muddy foggy cold muddy foggy slippery foggy bank, hardly visible behind her headscarf and layers of charity shop clothing. She was so old and haggard I asked how long she had lived in the village. 'I came up here last year when I left university' she said. I thought I could get an amusing book about northerners and their amusing northern ways out of it for people to read on the Picadilly line. They told me the americans would lap it up too'. I shivered as a northern cloud blew across the northern low winter sun and the cold northern river fell under a northern shadow, and also as my new friend told me that today was her 24th birthday. ‘where’s the nearest dry cleaners?’ I asked. ‘Copenhagen’ she said, and we both carried on scrubbing our washboards, like an all girl northern aquatic skiffle group, just as if it were 1956. Watford Gap, Watford Gap, Oh to be only fifteen miles from the Watford Gap…sigh

Friends with money

We rented a DVD last night. The girls and I often watch films while we wait for the glacier on the A1 to melt in the spring so that my husband can visit from London... oh when, oh when will I have a man in the house again, I'm ever so lone-lone-lone-lone-la-lonely... We’re the first people in the village to have a DVD player (it records as well so I often spend an entire lonely weekend watching my favourite episodes of Location Location Location) or in fact a TV, or indeed electricity so often one finds a gaggle of open mouthed local children gathered around our window in amazement at the moving pictures. I often have to tell them to jolly well get back to work in the garden. How can one be expected to write a great novel with grass that long! The DVD was called friends with money, about a woman who cleans the houses of her richer friends. I used to have friends with money you know, now I am just money with no friends. I thought if they made a film about my life in the north it would be called friends with no money because everyone in my village is poor and they all have to clean my house! Hmm, I wonder who would play me in the film, Renee Zellweger perhaps, with some jobbing provincials who can ham it up as my down at heel northern friends, well, I say friends but how can they be real friends as none of even went to university never mind Oxford and it's such a struggle to reduce my conversation down to their base rural northern level, and Michael Praed as my riding instructor...now now Rilly, behave, you’re married!.. I often think during our ‘girls’ nights in’ that I’m sure to make a fortune selling the film rights to this blog some day soon, and that’ll be one in the eye for everyone who says this is a bit too patronising, a bit too London, and a bit too done already, and that I'm just Peter Mayle without the sunflowers. Rilly'll show 'em won't she, Milly and Tilly!