John goes to Dublin alone

It’s true: after a mar­ried life of Extreme Sep­a­ra­tion for many years, I have got so used to hav­ing my beloved right at home that his upcom­ing absence is wor­thy of a blog post. He is tak­ing him­self off to Dublin, as in Ire­land, on Sat­ur­day for four whole days.

Alone.

Well, he will be join­ing a group, of like-mind­ed devo­tees of Irish Geor­gian Archi­tec­ture, for a series of learned lec­tures (is there any oth­er kind), tours of hous­es nor­mal­ly closed to the pub­lic, plates of indi­gestible Irish food and who knows what sort o’ mayhem.

We’ve had many live­ly dis­cus­sions among our friends as to the prob­a­ble nature of his fel­low sym­posi­asts. I vote for Lit­tle Old Ladies who thought gar­dens were includ­ed in the tour. Annie says, wet-blan­ket-like but undoubt­ed­ly right, Old Men Who Always Want­ed To Be Archi­tects But Inher­it­ed Father’s Accoun­tant Firm. John’s hold­ing out for A‑level stu­dents (as in, age 17, and GIRLS) who just can­not be torn away from a Robert Adam ceil­ing and think 46 is actu­al­ly the new 28. I say, in for a pen­ny in for a pound, and he should be pre­pared for any even­tu­al­i­ty. When I think of the social con­se­quences of my own sweet lit­tle Devon sojourn with food writ­ers a year or so ago… life­long din­ner com­pan­ions and house­guests when­ev­er I’m lucky enough for them to arrive in Lon­don! Birth­day wish­es for my small daugh­ter! Could the same be pos­si­ble with John’s adventure?

No.

He filled out the “extra sup­ple­ment for sin­gle room” with far too much glee, I fear. New friend­ships will have to leap out at him (and they will, since he is quite irre­sistible) in order for any­thing much to tran­spire. But I thought, “Hey, there might be some­one on the tour who is in des­per­ate need for a finan­cial genius to run his estate.” As in pos­si­bly the man host­ing the first night’s din­ner at his… cas­tle?

A mur­der is a def­i­nite pos­si­bil­i­ty. The cater­ing com­pa­ny hired to feed the sym­posi­asts has, on its staff, the hid­den, nev­er-acknowl­edged heir to the entire estate of The Cas­tle, and he/she (the dis­guise is real­ly com­plete) has lived his/her entire life wait­ing for revenge, in the form of an inher­i­tance. One per­son­’s por­tion of wild funghi risot­to is not what it seems…

We shall miss him. Four days of my being respon­si­ble for the entire house­hold (con­sist­ing of one quite inde­pen­dent child and four cats, admit­ted­ly). I shall have to get her to rid­ing, skat­ing, act­ing, musi­cal rehearsals, school on Mon­day AND Tues­day… not to men­tion laun­dry, meal prepa­ra­tion, sym­pa­thet­ic lis­ten­ing to all issues… oh wait. I shall be doing pre­cise­ly what all my friends with­out at-home hus­bands are doing EVERY day.

I know I can do it. And think how enter­tain­ing he’ll be on Tues­day when he gets back. Unless he can’t make bail for that murder…