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Sunday Times

January

We did it. We made the break. We sold the place in Shepherds Bush and left the Big Smoke behind us. It took us years to make the decision, months to organise the move, but we escaped, finally, on July 4th 2005.

Seventeen days later one Hussein Osman (a.k.a. the Shepherds Bush Bomber) used our ex-neighbour’s garden to hide out from the police, and our street was evacuated for three days. So, you see, while our children were gambolling among the daisies, befriending wild hedgehogs, filling their rosy cheeks with organic vegetables and so on, their old London muckers were camping out in a community hall somewhere in Acton, waiting for the bomb detectors to allow them back into their homes. It is impossible to communicate how smug that made us feel. How smug it continues to make us feel. And I need to hold on to that.

Because here we are, now, in our West Country idyll. Or here am I, to be more precise. The children are at school, the husband’s in Soho, working. My friends and colleagues are all in London, chatting away. And here I am in my West Country idyll, lungs bursting with fresh air and good will—and nobody to share it with. Except you. Reality is beginning to bite.

It’s mid-morning. I’ve done the school run. I’ve admired the view from the sitting-room window; I’ve taken a turn around the utility room, and felt the usual little surge of pride. I’ve even ventured into the garden, albeit briefly. (It was a bit cold. Plus there was a slug.) I’ve checked the answer machine for messages. None. And the e-mail. None. I’ve taken another turn round the utility room, which, after nearly twenty years of hanging clothes on the banisters, never fails to soothe. And I’ve looked at my watch. Many times.

But heck, it’s awful quiet around here.

And it will be, I suppose, until around lunch time, when the builders come. One of whom, by the way, is truly exorbitantly good looking. They—the handsome one and another one—are building us a kitchen in what used to be the second sitting room, and I keep popping in there in case the handsome one needs biscuits. Which he might, one time. He’s always saying no. Yesterday morning I was sitting at my desk pretending to write, ears on stalks, biscuits at the ready, but he must have tiptoed into work extra quietly. The bastard. I never heard him come in.

Anyway, the point is, just because the handsome builder—and the other one—are more or less my only contact with the adult world these days, it doesn’t mean I have nothing better to talk about. I do. I certainly do. Slug repellant, for example. According to my handsome builder, this little corner of the West Country is a national slug hotspot, with approximately 300 slugs for every square metre of earth. I’ve told him I have grand plans to make our own garden a one hundred per cent slug-free zone; I hinted I might even get Mr Osman and his bombs down here, if that’s what it needed. I don’t think he knew what I was talking about.

The truth is we’ve plopped ourselves in this beautiful corner of the world for all the right reasons; clean air/great schools/green fields/utility rooms. But—handsome builders aside—we don’t know a soul. Our only hope of contact with the local world is at the school gate—the very place, for lots of meanspirited reasons, I have always taken great care to avoid.

But beggars can’t be choosers, can they? And there’s a limit to how many nights a person can spend watching DVDs of The West Wing. I’m assuming. So come three o’clock (which, incidentally, is exactly three hours and twenty-one minutes away) I’ll be slapping on my Stepford Grimace and standing at that school gate just like the rest of them: Desperately Pretending to be nicer than I am. Desperately Seeking a Social Life.

And it’s going to be fine. In fact it’s going to be better than fine. It’s going to be thrilling. It’s a whole new adventure.

Next Friday night, for example, the husband and I are booking a babysitter. We’re getting ourselves all togged up in black tie and ball dresses, and heading off to our son and daughter’s annual Parents’ School Dance. Imagine the fun. If you will.

And I’m seriously looking forward to it.