Daisy Waugh - The Desperate Diary of a Country Housewife

For My Husband

Cover

Title Page THE DESPERATE DIARY OF A COUNTRY HOUSEWIFE A Cautionary Tale Daisy Waugh

Dedication For My Husband

Introduction Introduction Two summers ago, Martha Mole and family moved from London to start a new life in the Country. It didn’t go as smoothly as planned. She kept the following diary. It should be noted, however, that there may have been times when her imagination got the better of her.

OCTOBER 2007

May 21 st2005 Shepherds Bush

June 2005 Shepherds Bush

2 a.m., July 10 thShepherds Bush

July 21 stFrance

August 14 th

September 1 st

Monday September 3 rd

September Paradise

September 20 th

September 23 rd

October 10 th

Sunday night, October 21 st

November 2 nd

November 7 th

November 8 th

Tuesday November 20 th

Thursday November 22 nd

Monday November 26 th

Friday November 30 th

December 14 th

December 15 th

December 15 thagain

December 17 th

COUNTRY MOLE

January 15 th

January 18 th

January 19 th

January 20 th

January 21 st

COUNTRY MOLE

February 1 st

February 5 th

February 9 th

February 10 th

COUNTRY MOLE

February 14 th

February 21 st

February 22 nd

February 24 th

COUNTRY MOLE

Monday February 27 th

Tuesday February 28 th

Tuesday night

Wednesday

March 2 nd

Friday 4 th

March 7 th

COUNTRY MOLE

March 14 th

Friday March 18 th

Saturday Very late Very very very late

Sunday Very very very early

Tuesday

Wednesday

COUNTRY MOLE

Friday

COUNTRY MOLE

Thursday April 12 th

Sunday April 15 th

April 16 th

Friday

COUNTRY MOLE

Thursday

Monday

COUNTRY MOLE

Monday April 30 th

Tuesday

May 7 th

May 9 th

Thursday May 10 thVery late

May 11 th

COUNTRY MOLE

May 18 th

May 20 th

May 21 st

COUNTRY MOLE

May 28 th

May 30 th

June 1 st

June 8 th

COUNTRY MOLE

June 17 th

June 21 st

June 26 th

June 28 th

June 30 th

COUNTRY MOLE

July 12 th

COUNTRY MOLE

July 16 th

July 18 th

COUNTRY MOLE

July 22 nd

July 24 th

COUNTRY MOLE

August 1 st

August 11 th

August 12 th

COUNTRY MOLE

August 17 th

August 19 th

COUNTRY MOLE

August 29 th

September 3 rd

COUNTRY MOLE

September 12 th

COUNTRY MOLE

September 25 th

October 4 th

October 5 th

COUNTRY MOLE

October 14 th

October 17 th

COUNTRY MOLE

October 25 th

October 27 th

COUNTRY MOLE

November 7 th

COUNTRY MOLE

November 13 th

November 15 th

November 20 th

COUNTRY MOLE

December 12 th

COUNTRY MOLE

January 25 thLondon

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Copyright

About the Publisher

Two summers ago, Martha Mole and family moved from London to start a new life in the Country. It didn’t go as smoothly as planned.

She kept the following diary. It should be noted, however, that there may have been times when her imagination got the better of her.

About a year before our adventures began I dreamed of a house set in fields, with a moat round it. It was ramshackle and much too big, hidden away in a secret, sunny coomb that nobody but I knew about. I think it may have looked a little like a medieval castle, with tumbling ramparts and a drawbridge, and yet simultaneously like a large terraced house somewhere in Notting Hill Gate.

In any case, in my dream I knew it was the house we’d been searching for. Not only that, I knew that this beautiful dream house, though surrounded by rivers and fields, was also within walking distance of Hammersmith tube station. And it was for sale. And it was being snapped up—not by an annoying Russian oligarch, nor even by my brother-in-law, the amazingly successful banker. It was being snapped up by us. We—husband, the two children, myself, and a mysterious brown puppy calling itself Mabel—were trading it in for our ordinary terraced house in Shepherds Bush, with its views over three giant satellite dishes and a multistorey car park, and we were going to live there, a life of carefree rural bliss, happily and wholesomely, for ever after. I remember waking up feeling exhilarated. And the feeling lasted, as I waded hither and thither through the usual Shepherds Bush knife victims and sundry litter, pretty much for the rest of the day.

The quest to find a place more satisfactory than Shepherds Bush to raise our young children continued as it had before. The husband and I had bored ourselves to sleep sometimes, discussing the options: Los Angeles? Sri Lanka? Sydney? New York? Ealing Common?…Not all the suggestions were realistic of course, but because, like everyone else’s, the value of our ordinary terraced house seemed to quadruple each fortnight, almost every option we threw in, however absurd, felt vaguely, distantly possible.

And there was always one thing we seemed to agree upon—that pretty much anywhere would be preferable to Shepherds Bush.

So we talked and we talked. And we talked and we talked.

And we talked.

And then one day, suddenly, the talking finished. We had made a decision.

I wonder now, with the benefit of the awful year and a half behind me, whether we were simply defeated by the sheer boredom of it. There came a point, perhaps, where neither of us could endure the conversation a moment longer.

…New Orleans? Kirkbymoorside? Malibu? Pitlochry? Nassau? Switzerland? Isle of Man? Barbados? King’s Cross? Marylebone? Bordeaux? Lamu? Winchester? Westchester? Henley? Delhi?…

The South West.

The following diary has been edited slightly—I’ve obscured a few names (or changed them) and for obvious reasons I’ve removed any give-away clues to our precise location. Otherwise it stands pretty much as I wrote it, a fairly accurate record of one very urban woman’s foolhardy—idealistic—attempts to adapt to family life in the English countryside.

I’d seen the property programmes. I’d read the lifestyle magazines. I’d looked in awe—and guilt—at the happy, healthy faces of those young families who dared to leave the Big Smoke behind them. They always make it look so easy. Don’t they.

The following should be looked upon as a cautionary tale.

We’ve found it. Finley and I have just got back from a day trip to Paradise, and the long, long search is over. At last.

This one may not have a moat around it, or any ramparts, and it’s probably a four-hour drive from London. But it has the same magical, forgotten feeling as the house from the dream that I had, and when I saw it—when I turned the final corner of that winding path and looked up, and saw it properly for the first time—I swear it was so lovely it took my breath away.

The house is in the middle of a small village and just three miles up the road from a beautiful, old-fashioned market town. It perches alone, big and solid and perfectly symmetrical, on a hill so steep and so high above the village road that when you look up towards it all the proportions seem distorted. Actually it reminds me of an Addams Family cartoon: quite grand, in a way, though clearly dilapidated; with a stone porch, and in front of the porch a stone terrace, and in front of that a stone carved balustrade, drowning in jasmine and honeysuckle and ivy.