One Year Down

One Year Down
Diary 28 June


It is our first wedding anniversary. The paper one. So it is
fitting that I am sitting on a train with my husband, accompanying him
to a conference, which promises to be so full of paper pushers that it
should be classed as a fire hazard. The ALARM Conference, or
Association of Local Authority Risk Managers is for civil servants who
make jolly decisions about whether to pay off old ladies who trip over
paving stones. What joy.


I do, however, love train journeys, I love posh hotels, I
adore boozy dinners ? deux and this trip promises to contain all of
those, so it's not all going to be about laptops and name badges. The
train whistles us through Market Harborough (quick wave to the
Fishberts), and Spondon (quick wave to school friend Tracy who got
knocked up by the Spondon ProntoRod lad when we were doing our GCSEs)
and winds on through Derbyshire (hello Drew and Jeff), whose green and
pleasantness (and a Midland Mainline gin and tonic) fills me with love
for my country and my companion. Then we reach Manchester, and my joy
evaporates like the England football squad's defense (sorry Neil).



The streets behind the station are grey and functional, as of
course, streets should be; I just wish they could be a little more
imaginative. Litter, both the human and inanimate variety, strews the
pavement and cars sloshing rain from their windscreens thunder past
aggressively. The hotel, however, is luxurious in a standard kind of
way and we check in: "Mr. and Mrs. Crawford, welcome." It still makes
my knees wobble, sharing a surname with someone who isn't my father. I
want to look over my shoulder and check that the mother in law hasn't
followed us.


We check out the room and squeal loudly at the contents of
the minibar (Damian) and the bathroom cabinet (me). Then we remember we
are adults and roll around on the bed for a while. "Quick swim before
dinner" he asks.


I am always daunted by communal changing areas. I attempt to
tie myself into the witty little bikini that Daisy bought me at
Heathrow en-route to honeymoon heaven this time last year. It doesn't
fit. It didn't fit last year as I now remember, but when you have a
private pool halfway up a road to nowhere it doesn't really matter. It
became a daily joke that I would sashay down the steps to the pool like
a reverse Ursula Andress (or Hyacinth Bucket) with the bikini
unraveling around my neck. Damian was most amused, the builders
opposite even more so as we discovered on departure. At The Midland
Hotel in Manchester, however, my witty bikini becomes a big guffaw.



The other woman in the changing room looks at me and we both
glance down to what looks like two PG Pyramid bags barely covering my
modesty. "Pregnant", I lie, and the woman pulls a face that suggests
someone has used her nose as a lemon squeezer. I join Damian in the Spa
minutes later, wearing my Marks and Spencer undies.


We dress up for dinner. I wear my wedding dress. Not the
oversized doily but the cocksucker pink number I wore to the registry
office in a childish attempt to display my disgust at the whole
bureaucratic process. Mrs. Crawford the elder was horrified. "Couldn't
you just paint your toenails instead," she begged.


We eat sushi and drink wine and toast the past and the
future. Our quarrels are the same, the issues are much bigger ("I don't
care if it does have a double garage, I am not living in a bungalow"),
the intimacy all enveloping. We stagger back to the hotel, via Canal
Street where we giggle at the drag queens, and fall, contented, full
and proud in to bed. We've made it.


In the morning my husband has left the hotel before I wake
up. He has a breakfast meeting with a client before heading off to the
conference. At this point I should say that Damian is not a Local
Authority Risk Manager, he is a surfer, a snow boarder, an all round
action hero, who writes computer software on the side.


I head down to breakfast alone and am seated at the largest
possible table in the middle of the dining room. Wearing an ancient
tracksuit (and slightly damp bra) I feel like a scruffy urchin in a sea
of suits. I bolt breakfast (normally my favorite part of a hotel stay)
and hurry back to my room before I am evicted. My ?17.50 breakfast does
not sit well on top of raw fish and two bottles of wine, and I have
barely stuck my keycard in the door when the whole lot comes up again.
Well, about fifteen quids worth anyway.


It is raining, I have silly shoes and no umbrella, and
although yesterday I intended to trawl Manchester to see if I could
spot a large red haired auditor wearing a Shaalwar Qamiz, I now decide
to sulk and spend the morning in bed.


At lunchtime, when I can put it off no longer, I pack up and
trek to UMIST to join Damian at the conference. Outside, men and women
who must break out in hives at the thought of wearing a primary colour,
huddle around the ashtray and discuss the intricacies of Premium
Apportionment Registers. Strangely many men are carrying small teddy
bears which I gather are being used by one of the exibitors as
corporate gifts. I sidle up to Damian and rescue him from a terribly
dull looking woman, who must be called Doris, nothing else would suit.
"That's a PR humdinger if ever I saw one," I point to the bear that he
is holding. "Surely they must realize that grown men and women look
utterly ridiculous carrying around children's toys in the name of
touting for new business". Doris looks crushed. She hurries off to give
her bears to people who will appreciate them more. I am a nasty old
baggage.


This is why I left the rat race. Weeks upon weeks of
corporate entertainment are bone crushingly dull. There are only so
many smoked salmon parcels and glasses of lukewarm chardonnay a girl
can stomach. It's amazing how you can spend six weeks going to every
navigable city in the entire United States of America and yet sleep in
the same hotel room every night. The lack of imagination (and humour)
suffocates me.
Although some of them are alright. I once had the pleasure of opening
the newest school in the Aspect Empire in Dublin, to which Bertie
Ahearne, the Irish Premier was invited, as a good friend of one of the
directors. After a few too many Guinesses (on both of our parts) I
decided to walk Mr. Ahearne back to his car, which involved negotiating
fifty metres of cobblestones in four inch heels. Needless to say I went
arse over tit after about two minutes and ended up sprawled in the
gutter like a character from a Marian Keyes novel (I made the mistake
of telling Granny Coates this story, her possessing a wicked sense of
humour and bucket loads of Irish pride. She looked at me aghast and
said "You fell over in front of the Taoiseach?" in her best Lady
Bracknell voice. You'd have thought I'd confessed to throwing my
knickers at the pope).


Finally we escape back down the Midland Mainline to London. I
have overcome another hurdle in married life - being a corporate wife.
Damian, on the other hand, has learned that business and matrimony are
probably best kept separate.