Bio
Sounds Like a Storm Brewing
Wasps. Thunderstorms. Motorways. In 1995, these are what terrify me. So, on a hot, heavy July afternoon, I take slow winding roads from London to the Cotswolds, windows shut.
“Almost here, Gilly,” I lie to myself. I’d ask for directions, but there are only sheep about, and it’ll be four years before I get a mobile.
Finally, I clock ‘Welcome to Gloucestershire,’ and think, ‘Welcome, new life’. Peace, rural adventures. Yep – I have signed for the whole package, via the furnished rental of a house beside a church and a field of cattle.
It’s the blinding bit of sunset when I stop for milk. To deliver it, that is. From their car seats in the back, my twin daughters have woken up sticky with heat and furious with hunger. From their cages in the hatchback space, four cats miaow their displeasure. Nellie, who has one eye, is loudest.
For the final downhill mile, I keep heavy on the horn. I can’t see what may be oncoming. So I parp, drive 100 metres, then parp. I don’t know how else to say, ‘I am here’.
The thing about a furnished rental is that it is already fairly full. The removal guys sandwich cots into bedrooms that already have beds, and kitchen pots into spare spots. There isn’t room for the books, records and magazines that fuelled my London journalist world. “We’ll leave them outside,” say the removers before they scoot. “Won’t rain in July.”
At midnight, twelve brash chimes from the church clock send the cats to secret corners and my wriggly, giggly six-month-olds into meltdown. How can I have missed that village feature on the viewing?
My husband has been at our old house, tidying. As he arrives, so does the storm. Years of my press cuttings move towards soggy. “Quick,” I shout as my interview with Colin Firth gets wetter than his shirt in a Jane Austen series. “We need plastic.”
But my then husband has other concerns. He carries a case I don’t recognise. Too precious for the van. It holds his secrets past. One more baby, two house moves and five years on, we’ll get to that thunderstorm. It will fire crack my world. For now, the dawn chorus starts. The babes. The cats. The cows. The church clock. My unpeaceful rural adventure begins.
