The Woman Who Wanted To Be Funny is at the getting-to-know-everyone stage which I hope you are enjoying.
Kate’s wedding was a bit like my first wedding, held in a port-a-cabin. I was in my mother’s wedding dress which took months of nerves and IBS to get into and I don’t think I have ever been as slim since…
If you have a wedding story please feel free to share, a lot went wrong with mine, but I think it is the things that go wrong that make a great story. I would love to hear and I promise I won’t put them in my next story.
Mrs Mc Killop and The Port-a-cabin
We were married in a port-a-cabin in the council car park. The local registry office was being renovated at the time, and with scaffolding and a digger nearby the only thing glamorous was my paid-by-mum hairdo; a sort of Kylie Minogue frizz that defied an autumn wind and the energetic “we just got married’ shag later that night.
I was so in love I didn’t care if there was a digger in the photographs…or that I looked like a two-sizes larger Kylie Minogue.
Pete worked on an estate, building stone walls, and gardening, occasional ‘shepherding’ when Tam had the mother of a hangover. After a few years of marriage, he decided to go out on his own, gardening, diking etc. It was a decision he made with me saying, “as long you’re happy” and my mother saying “he’s the one who brings home the bacon”.
I thought making Pete happy would make me happy, that his dream was all I needed. He was determined to secure a future for us, and I followed, supported, basking in his glory. Sure I had the odd dream, but they were just fantasies compared to Pete’s, he was paying the bills.
We left the estate and its’ cottage and bought a pocket of land and a friggin caravan.
Nothing tests love like a caravan in the winter, especially when you’re pregnant, and when he erected a greenhouse before building a house I raged. He called it an investment…which got my hormones going, he wanted me to work in the greenhouse making compost and growing seedlings with a bump the size of a Wendy's house.…
Two sons later with gardener’s hands and a sore back Pete met Glen who became his right-hand man. They built up a huge greenhouse on an industrial estate and employed folk, leaving me redundant, pottering about our tiny greenhouse with tomatoes and cucumbers.
We were in a house by then. I made soups for the boys jams and chutney for anyone who stood still long enough—my parents had cupboards full. But there were times when I fantasized about something more, a different me…a me that wasn’t attached to a man, a kitchen, or another’s dream. Not that Pete was bad to be attached to, just that he was busy, away a lot and by the time the boys had left home I felt as needed as a bread machine in the kitchen.
Glen introduced cricket Pete and it slowly invaded our lives like dry rot, first, it was test cricket and one-day matches on the TV, then teaching the boys out the back. Pete started to talk of the perfect goggly and when the boys left he joined the third-age cricket club; a bunch of pensioners who had as much chance of hitting a six as a budgerigar. They spent the afternoon playing other geriatric clubs and then celebrated their losses or wins in the pub afterward. While I, alone in our tiny greenhouse wondered what to do with all the extra friggin tomatoes; and while the hell I filled the freezer with tubs of soup for no one.
I was struggling to adjust. I was used to cooking for boys who ate like horses with worms along with the squad of friends they brought home until I got a call from Mrs Mc Killop.
She was setting up a home baking stall at a school sports day to raise money for the Clachan Hall’s new roof and was looking for baking.
“I hear you’re a jam and chutney maker,” she said on the phone, which was a weird way to start a conversation…
“Who is this?” I said.
“Mrs Mckillop.”
“Oh, the scone lady…” I said and before I could compliment her on her ‘to die for scones’, she jumped in talking about how homemaking was healing.
I said nothing I, like my sons loved all things takeaway…
She ranted on, claiming all “factory jam and supermarket breads were as poisonous as nicotine and the reason many of her friends survived on shoe boxes full of prescription tablets.” I drifted off, thinking about last night’s leftovers, waiting for her to finish…so I could tuck into the last triangle of pizza.
“Your jams and chutneys would be perfect,” she said and stopped…
“What?” I stammered back to the present.
“The perfect accompaniment, I’ll bring some jars tomorrow, a dozen? Would that be enough? We have to educate people, stop them poisoning their bodies.”
It wasn’t exactly a dream I shared, but at least I felt wanted again, Pete a peanut butter and cheese man, hadn’t looked at my condiments in years.
Agnes Treading Water By Charlotte French
A Free book for you to download let me know if you enjoy it
Women Represent
Books written by women for women
until next time happy reading