Chapter One

The Obsessive Diary

First thing’s first:

I will be LIVE in conversation with (First and Last Woofter), the one and only Patrick Gale, Thursday 3pm UK. It’s his first foray into Substack, his maiden interview here, and being a lifelong devotee of both the man and his work I’m slightly beside myself that it should be me who gets to hold the stage. For those who know his work already, come with your questions. For those who’ve yet to discover one of England’s finest novelists, where have you been? He’s our very own Anne Tyler, our Cornish Elizabeth Strout and in Love Lane, we’re back with Harry Cane…. I’ve already told him I may well spend the entire hour telling him how much I love him. It’s also more than likely that we’ll drift into whippets…

Now, for the diary….

I ran out of oil. In 30 years of living at the farm, this has never happened. The AGA went out, the heating died, there was no hot water. That was Monday, which we’ll return to, but first, Mothering Sunday which saw me and Margaret exchanging rage-filled, tearful voice texts about the lack of flowers, messages, texts, phone calls, thinking ahead, any planning at all by our offspring while avoiding (me) and raging at (her) instagram which is designed to turn even this most ancient of existences into a competition from which we all emerge scathed and seething. All it takes is a daffodil we cried to each other as decades of snot and teething and temperatures and dropping everything to hold knocked us over. As the waves of love and exhaustion took us under. As the scent of freshly baked bread made us wonder if we were the only ones noticing, and the driving and cooking and cleaning and love, (did I mention the love?) made us shout Why only one day?

I’ve a thing about these man-made celebratory dates; Mother’s Day, Women’s Day, Valentine’s and Christmas. I can’t help but feel they’re a happy falsehood of care, (“We celebrate you, don’t we?”) and a straightforward system for keeping us in our place while making money out of it; a coercive control producing flowers once year to make it all right. They make me wild. And then there’s instagram. So M and I in our voice message exchanges tried to be very mature while failing and I thought of all the friends who’ve wanted children and never had them, who’ve lost children, who’ve lost mothers when they were young for whom the day is so much worse, and hours ticked on and I went for a walk and then this happened.

S turned up for some farm R&R with a friend, and they each brought armfuls of flowers and telling me I’m the best. And then B sent a message so full of love and care it made me cry, instantly plus has it arrived yet? which it hasn’t (whatever it is) but the thought mended everything. And J stepped up to help me yesterday (which we’ll get to), turning up with flowers and just what I needed. And then oil ran out.

At the kitchen table yesterday, the place from which I’ve run a commune, married twice, brought up twins and written four novels I suddenly and all at once could no longer hold it all together; the farm, the estate, the parenting and career. Last week I met with AW for an editing meeting which we ended with a quick tarot because, why not, we are both warlocks of a kind, and the last card I pulled was the Ten of Wands. You’re holding too much, he said. You need to put something down.

And at the kitchen table when I could no longer hold it together, S put her arms around me and said, your mum died, and your relationship ended and J&B left home and you’ve a book coming out and it’s no wonder, it’s a lot, you need to put something down. And then the oil ran out and I thought, Okay. It’s a sign.

I have moved to London. I picked up the keys last week and moved boxes from my mum’s emptying house yesterday. Last night was my first night in my new flat, and obviously this is confluence of happy timing is no coincidence at all. It was time.

J turned up with flowers and all hands on deck for a day of logistical boxes, parking, keys and lugging mattresses upstairs. We went to the Tall White House and rescued 1970’s cutlery and 1980’s saucepans, and the cups I gave my mum with the handprints of her grandsons made in the pottery when they were small. We sat on the floor while waiting for deliveries and imagined his travels to Vietnam. We ate lunch at a place on Portobello, marvelling at the ease of being in London, and made lists of things I need; kettle, water filter, everything. And after he’d gone I unpacked boxes.

As the bubble wrap lifted from the glasses that had once stood in the high white cupboards of the dining room out of reach, the distinct scent of Cinzano drifted up to meet me. And as I looked through a bag with my name on it, tissue paper revealed a tile from Cluny where, on our long drives through France, my mother would always stop. Hello Ma & Pa. You are here and so am I. A flat in west London, the part of town where I lived with Margaret 30 years ago, long before the farm, and children and marriages and books. I've returned to the ‘hood. A new chapter begins.

Eleanor