We moved into the house with the attic in 1999 – our last home as a family, though I wasn’t exactly the first one to leave it – that honour goes to our son, who left in 2004 to go to university, though he was back in the holidays for a few years, and also for the ‘industry’ section of his third year, in 2007.
I announced that the smaller attic room would be the birthplace of ‘…the first great novel of the twenty-first century!’ With a legacy from my parents (who had both passed away early in 1999) I bought a new computer (the first time I’d had one that was all my own, instead of sharing a family one), a leather-topped desk and captain’s chair (which I still have) and a suite of flatpack office furniture (which I assembled by myself, but which has suffered after multiple house moves since and has mostly gone). I filled the shelves with books and filled my time with housework, job applications and managing the activities and transport needs of two youngsters who were rapidly morphing into teenagers. I was living in a Grade 2 listed Georgian house and garden, beautiful beyond any realistic expectation I might have had, and I told myself every day how lucky I was.
Six years later, in the middle of an autumn night, I went up into my attic room, switched on my computer, Googled ‘free blogs’, found a site called ‘blog.co.uk’, created my first blog (which I titled: ‘Husband or Cat?’) and wrote the following:
Here’s my scenario…
I have had a cat for nine years. Before we got the cat, my husband always swore he didn’t want one, but since we have had it he has always got on very well with it and has never shown any animosity towards it.
husbandorcat, blog.co.uk, 16 October 2005
I recently decided to get another kitten. My husband’s reaction went something like this:
Hubby: If we get another cat, we have to get rid of the old one.
Me: We’re not getting rid of the old one.
Hubby: In that case, I’ll go.
Me: OK, you go then.
In spite of this conversation, I went ahead and got the kitten on the assumption that my husband was not serious, and that he would learn to love the new cat just as he had with the old one.
However, he refuses to be in the same room as the kitten, to the extent that he will not eat a meal with myself and our daughter if the kitten is present. When he is not at work, he has taken to spending all his time in a room in the attic.
When I asked him how long he intended to keep this up, he announced that he did not wish to be in the same house as the kitten and would find somewhere and move out.
I offered to get rid of the kitten, but he replied that it was too late and he was going anyway.
This after 23 years of marriage, 28 years together, and never any hint in the past that he was dissatisfied with our relationship in any way.
No one would make this up. This is my life.
What happens next?