Like Steve McQueen gone slightly to seed, the builder boyfriend strode off into the sunset. Nothing becomes him so much as the manner of his leaving. He does so every now and then, this time, perhaps for good. I can’t blame him. As he walked away, his blonde hair shining in the sun, it occurred to me that he is a free spirit. I watched him disappear down the track and thought, it’s a shame to tie him down.
He did his best trying to renovate my wreck of a cottage but inevitably he imploded after assorted petty battles. Being dictated to by a Lib-Lab parish council would take its toll on anyone. It wasn’t just the constant carping about our building materials being an eyesore.
The No Horse-Riding signs banning ponies from the 65 acres of common land the house fronts onto incensed him so much he was on the verge of claiming ancient grazing rights by tethering our horses outside the front gate.
And the ‘Say no to all development’ policy was predictable enough to me, especially since it was the Lib Dems who were pushing it. But to him, the hypocrisy was unbearable. ‘But they’re for unlimited immigration!’ ‘Yes, I know.’ ‘So they’re letting them in then refusing to house them?’ And all this while digging up decades of botched flooring in a flooded basement and removing the wet earth in a tub by hand through the house because our right of way round the back was being blocked by the neighbours.
He hit the Diclofenac pretty heavily. I raided my supply to leave him boxes of the stuff by the kettle. By some fluke, the pills are almost identical in shape and colour to my HRT pills.
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