And then, Eeyore (beloved husband, so named by my mother for his relentlessly pessimistic outlook) was made redundant. The cruellest word, and a thoroughly unpleasant experience - to which, sadly, he had become quite used.
Newly at leisure, Eeyore became very good at his version of the 3 R's - Relaxing, Resting, and Recharging. I maintain that many years of marriage have made me into a patient woman, but I grew increasingly frustrated as the list I had thoughtfully produced for him of things that needed doing grew ever longer. To begin with I loved the fact that he was home. For the first time, he was really living in his house. It was a pity that he couldn't have done it while it was at its loveliest, before the Great Shake, but at least now he could enjoy it all day every day, in all weathers - and, as the months passed, in several seasons.
I'll tell you when I knew it was time to get him back out there, though. It was when I walked into the kitchen at about lunchtime one day, mid-week, mid-winter. I was carrying yet another enormous basket of dirty washing and asking myself whether it really needed doing, or was I perhaps looking forward to ironing it all in the small, warm, steamy laundry room? The rest of the house was absolutely freezing - hold on: let me just explain that.
While Eeyore had been working in London, he had had a rule about the use of the central heating. This was born not of financial need, nor of green conscience, but of a total lack of imagination. He couldn't - or wouldn't - understand that at home, we weren't basking in the regulated warmth of a city office block. We were deep in the 19th century, where we constantly blew on our fingers and were often taken aback by our own sudden, jerky shivers. Because he wasn't there, he was resolute: the heating remained off, until either a) the temperature in the back hall hadn't risen above 5 degrees for three days, or b) there was snow on the ground - proper snow mind, none of your 'light dusting' nonsense. The oil level in the tank was monitored assiduously, and he took to quizzing guests to determine whether or not his law had been broken. Any complaints were met with instructions to 'put another layer on', or 'move around more'. My insistence that when the wind was from the west I could sit in the study, at my computer, and have snow blowing onto my feet had been met with ... well 'scorn' is a harsh word, but here I'm afraid it's bang on. (The hours I spent crawling under the desk trying to find where the stuff was coming in were warm enough, it's true, but as a model for the future it really wasn't a goer.) I took to leaving earlier and earlier on the school run: seat warmers and the heating on full blast meant that short trips mysteriously became longer ... We were generously allowed to light the log burner in the sitting-room, but not before the children got back from school. Electric blankets were acceptable, but lying in bed all day to benefit from them, was not. Apparently.
Embarrassingly, once he was at home all day, and began to realise that bone-aching cold was wearing and indeed impractical, I got stubborn. There was no way he was going to crank up the thermostat on my watch - we had suffered: now, he could too. Yes, I know it was childish and petulant, and that I was cutting off my nose despite my face and all the rest, and that a sensible person would have cast off several layers and basked in the new-found warmth of a habitable home, but this is me we're talking about and I was more than happy to Suffer, loudly of course, to make my point.
Anyway - on this day I walked into the kitchen and there he was. In multiple grey layers, looking more like a heron than ever, he was perched on the edge of a chair with his German banker style glasses balanced on the end of his nose. I'm afraid to report that he was wearing a cravat. And my (rather fetching) orange felt wrist warmers. He was eating cold tinned sardines in tomato sauce on toast, and reading the newspaper in poor light and total silence. Suddenly I had an insight into our future: increasingly monochrome, in an echoingly quiet, freezing house that smelt of fish oil.
From that moment on the honeymoon was definitely over and the gloves, improbably, were off.
