It could probably be traced back to one summers evening in August 2004, but I will not bore you with the often complex paths that led to the union of Priddeesh and yours truly. A more accurate marker for the beginning would probably be a Holiday to Edinburgh in August 2006 where it rained for an entire weekend. During which Priddeesh caught cold and was very grumpy. Upon our return she never made it back as far as her flat, instead she decamped at mine, wrapped herself in a blue blanket and spent a week alternating between looking pitiful on the sofa and bed. And she never left.
I am not totally sure I remember there being any agreement along the lines of ‘Lets live together.’ Priddeesh just never went home. And soon after something very strange started happening in my flat. The clean lines were rapidly consumed by ’stuff’. And then soon after the open spaces vanished and were replaced by things to put the stuff in. Wicker baskets seemed to breed faster than march hares, bags of wool appeared from nowhere, clean and polished table tops were consumed by celebrity magazines with faces I had never seen. My once proud DVD collection was now littered with fitness DVD’s and then even worse I would find DVD titles like ‘Fifty first dates, Knocked Up and Forty Year Old Virgin’ ejected from the DVD player anytime I settled down to watch a movie. Penny Vincenzi books started piling up by the sofa and then a book case to put the books in and then more wicker baskets. And then a load of medical books. My neat and compact dining room table morphed one weekend into a big fat study desk. And then there were the clothes.
I think the clothes are what did it in the end. And now I am beginning to think they were all part of a cunning master plan. They always existed in neat ironed and folded stacks but they seemed to be everywhere. I brought a great big set of bedroom drawers and still neat stacks of clothes would sit insolently on the living room chair, or hang tired from the washing machine as if they had fallen asleep trying to crawl onto the kitchen floor. Or sat waiting for attention on the end of the bed. Summer clothes were levered into a giant suitcase. I’ll fit into those again soon clothes were stacked in draws beneath the bed. I threw away my old clothes to make space. And then one evening in October 2007, with the rain pelting against the window of my refuge - my study. A sweet voice floated in through the door: ‘Johnie, come and look at this!’
I ignored the request of course but little Priddeesh is not one to be swayed lightly, especially when she has a master plan brewing. So she appeared in the doorway of the study with her laptop balanced in one hand. ‘Johnie, look at this.’ She repeated. The screen was then positioned directly in front of me. I was staring at a house.
‘A house?’ I said.
‘Yes Johnie think of all the room.’
I often thought about having lots of room, but that was in the days before. Now my days were cluttered but joyous and fulfilled. And the source of my joy now wanted a house.
Almost a year later I find myself sitting on the living floor beside the brick surround of the fireplace in our new house, of that house. I think on the stress of the last two weeks, I think on the stress of the last three months, of the stress of May earlier in the year. During which I spent four weeks unemployed while looking for a job that would pay the mortgage for ‘That House’, or the hours I spend commuting now and the early starts and late nights. Of the months I will spend decorating. I listen to the busy movements of Priddeesh as she opens windows and cleans through the kitchen. She doesn’t stop talking. Excited jabber that I intermittently acknowledge while sorting through the vast amount of double glazzing keys, of her plans for a vegetable patch out back and a bench and table for the small square of grass off to the side, for a patio and for the border. And how she can just imagine children running around here and what a great place it would be for them.
I cross my legs: ‘But we don’t know anyone with children.’
‘Johniee!’
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