Hunter Davies on long distance logistics
As an anniversary looms, our columnist fears that decisions will soon have to be made, but how to broach the subject?
Image credit: MH Jeeves
As an anniversary looms, our columnist fears that decisions will soon have to be made, but how to broach the subject?
Big day on 7 September: two years since we met. Flags are going up on the Medina Bookshop, in Cowes High Street, where it all began; when this total stranger walked into my life.
A fascinating, artistic, stunning stranger.
Sorry, pet, I forgot to say that. Oh sorry, forgot you don’t like being called pet.
So much has happened, yet only the blink of an eye compared with the fact that I was married for 55 years. According to Miranda, it is 704 days, 16,896 hours and, oh God, I have forgotten how many minutes. How does she get the time to work out such a dopey thing?
I do try to keep her occupied and amused.
The most interesting thing Miranda has said to me in the past two years has been, "If in doubt, move the furniture". She got this phrase from her mother.
When her mother did not know what to do, she would jump up and change the curtains, take a door off, move the sofa around.
Good philosophy for life. Better than taking to the bottle or running off with the milkman.
The most interesting thing Miranda has said to me in the past two years has been, "If in doubt, move the furniture"
The most important thing she has done in the two years since she met me is write her memoir, My Name Is Not Matilda (you have to read the book to understand the title).
Her first book at the age of 78, so well done. Everyone should write their life story when they get over 70. Get it all down, for your family if nobody else. Some tears along the way, a lot of agony and late nights, but she did it.
To my delight and of course surprise.
Oh no, don’t hit me.
She is stronger than me. One highlight of the two years was when she had an arm-wrestling contest at a family party with my 15-year-old granddaughter, Sienna. She is a strapping, fit lass who plays football in Harringay, training three times a week.
But guess who won? Yes, the old biddy.
Now you know why I don’t take any liberties with Miranda, but this coming year I fear we will have some logistics to work out. I am still living half my year in my London home, which I don’t want to give up, and half the year on the Isle of Wight, where I have a holiday home in Ryde.
Miranda has her home outside Cowes, about 10 miles away from Ryde. She loves it dearly, and neither does she want to give that up. We each move back and forward, but I am increasingly finding all the travelling from London so tiring – on the bus, tube, train, hovercraft, taxi, coach and then walk.
Everyone should write their life story when they get over 70. Get it all down, for your family if nobody else
Mad, at my age. I fear all the time I will fall, and no one will know where I am.
So, what are we doing to do? The thing is I love both places – my London home and the Isle of Wight. Just as Miranda loves her house, with her son and grandsons in the next street.
When my wife was alive, and our children had grown up and left home, we worked out a great domestic system: half the year was spent full-time in London, half the year in the Lake District. It was like living twice – a rural life and an urban life.
I am not expecting sympathy. I know how lucky I am to have these choices. But how long can it go on?
Monkey glands, to keep me going for another 50 years? Or get AI to create two of me – one living there, one living here.
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