Cath and I got married in Glasgow. At the time we lived in a
rented flat in a beautiful red sandstone building in an up-market situation in
the West End. Indeed, it was the type of Victorian tenement for which
Glasgow is famous. We chose this dwelling deliberately because many family and friends
were travelling some distance for our wedding and we wanted a reasonable abode in which to
welcome and entertain them. The only problem was that the rent was way beyond our means and so,
soon after our wedding, we moved into cheaper hospital accommodation in Ayrshire where Cath
was doing a surgical rotation. I use the term `accommodation’ fairly loosely to
describe a dilapidated prefabricated box on bricks that was barely large enough to turn
around in. Cath summed up the situation by asking bitterly ‘So is this
what married life is meant to be like?’
As it turned out, Ayr wasn’t so bad. We discovered that our
location was close to the Burn’s Cottage where Scotland’s national poet, Robbie
Burns, was born in 1759. We also frequented the Brig o’ Doon hotel near to the famous bridge itself. Little could I have foreseen that one of his well known lines
The best laid
schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley ….
penned in 1785 would come back to haunt me.
On 23 April I felt a little unwell and experienced some pain in my chest, I simply
dismissed it as muscle fatigue. By late afternoon
it was clear that something more sinister was afoot, Cath called an ambulance
and later in hospital blood tests confirmed that I had suffered a heart attack. Before I could catch my
breath I was having a stent inserted in my right coronary artery. Cath and I
had just finished watching “The Pitt”, a rather graphic TV medical drama so I
had all these images flashing around in my head as I lay on the table staring
at the equipment and the gowned-and-masked medics. At one stage one of the anaesthetists bent over and asked me if I consented to the use of blood products if required! I was immediately overwhelmed by images of an empty room with blood-soaked towels everywhere! Anyway, to cut a long story short, all went
well and I am feeling pretty much normal again.
While my health scare was doing its very best to thwart our best laid plans, my recovery was aided by the fact that the house renovation
seemed to accelerate on my return from hospital. The project was completed in the
first week of June and we could not be more delighted with how everything
has turned out. Our builder did a spectacular job of translating a set of 2-dimensional
plans into a gorgeous 3-dimensional masterpiece, while remaining more-or-less on budget
and on time. The whole experience has been tremendously satisfying and a world away from the numerous horror stories that circulate about building disasters.
The new front facade
The spotted gum pergola
The living room
Ceremonial first loaf of bread from the new kitchen
Whether I look up at the elegant
lines of a traditional farm cottage re-imagined or gaze out of the windows in the living room to take in the 180 degree view of the Huon Valley, I reflect with quiet
satisfaction that things have indeed come full circle. I feel I can finally look Cath in the eye and, Robbie Burns notwithstanding, answer her question. This is exactly what married
life is supposed to be like!
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