Secret of my happy marriage? We live in SEPARATE houses!
Her obsessive tidiness drives him potty. She can’t abide his mess. So the new Bake Off judge hit on a novel solution – spending the days apart and nights together
Who would have thought that, in my 70s, I’d get another chance at love? I didn’t pay John Playfair much attention at first. We met briefly over drinks at a friend’s house, and he seemed a jolly enough fellow.
he told me that he lived in the next village to mine, but my mind wasn’t really on the conversation. I’d been away for a few days and was eager to get home, so I swallowed my drink as fast as I decently could and left.
A couple of days later, as I was about to set off for a walk with my dog, I found a man at my front door, about to push an envelope through the letterbox. oh, he said, he just wanted to give me his contact details and suggest we go for a walk.
It was John Playfair. Slightly taken aback, but flattered, I asked him to join me. When we got back from our walk, we polished off a bottle of white wine while I sat on the sofa and he walked about the room talking non-stop — mostly, I think, about Alexander the Great and the politics of Burma.
I was fascinated by his knowledge and enthusiasm, but at the same time I couldn’t help thinking he was mighty attractive.
After that, I heard nothing for ten days and tried not to think about him. Then came an email suggesting supper. I was already booked to see a play on the night in question, so I invited John to that. And as I sat next to him, I wondered if his thigh was deliberately pressed against mine or whether it was just a case of the seats being too close together.
After that evening, I spent a lot of time looking at my phone. It sounds ridiculous for a septuagenarian, but I was willing it to ring and trying to compose a text that would not be too pushy, but would be witty and engaging and elicit a positive response.
HAPPIly, John turned up to listen to me speak about my latest novel in his village church hall a few days later. Seeing him in the audience, I thought I’d take the opportunity to be honest before I got too fond of him. So I announced to the assembled company that I was 70, and told them the story of the love affair I had in my 60s (see yesterday’s Mail).
Thank God, John wasn’t put off by this. The following week, we went to the pub, after which I got a chaste kiss on the cheek at my front door. Then he wooed me with haggis and neeps (cooked at his house), and again with Dexter beef fillet steaks.
Today, it seems astonishing he cooked me two perfect meals: since then, he’s hardly cooked anything beyond a boiled egg. Fair enough, I’m the cook.
John is the least dour Scot you could meet. In his youth, he backpacked for two years, working as a grape-picker, digger, leper hospital dogsbody, tattoo artist, surveyor’s monkey, barman and night-shift telephonist.
Finally, a job in the fashion industry led to success first as a designer and manufacturer of women’s clothes, and then as the supplier of uniforms to the likes of British Airways. he made a lot of money then: indeed, he had four children at private schools; a beautiful manor house in the Cotswolds; a flat in london and a thriving business in london.
he retired at 60, as his marriage ended, and he and his wife bought separate, smaller houses.
Anyway, John and I soon became an item and started living together — though, even now, he still returns to his house each day. Sometime in the future, we will no doubt end up selling our homes and moving into neutral territory.
When friends marvel that we haven’t already done so, I tend to say we’ll find a bungalow for him, another one for me and a carer’s one in the middle. But, for now, sharing a house seems impossible — because John is monumentally untidy and I’m super-organised.
John’s house has a narrow passage to be negotiated between his bedroom and bathroom, between piles of clean laundry on the left and a tumbledown wall of books on the right. Every inch of carpet has another carpet (brought back from his travels) on top of it.
Window sills and ledges are full of Buddhas and hindu brass gods and devils; every bit of wall is covered in pictures; the long room upstairs is a multi- coloured muddle of bean bags, sofas, stacks of Eastern fabrics, Burmese temple umbrellas and exotic lamps.
I couldn’t live with his stuff. Equally, he struggles with my ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’ attitude. I don’t quite plump cushions as soon as someone stands up, but I do go round shutting doors and hanging up coats. It must drive him mad. I’ve got the best of all worlds. I’ve got John, but not his clobber.
Most evenings we have supper, watch telly and go to bed in my house. John generally wakes first, makes me a cup of tea, walks the dogs, then disappears to his house until lunchtime to mow his lawn or
do his laundry or Hoover his carpet collection. Or, as often as not, he dons his gardening clothes and sets about my hedges or borders.
I make lunch for us, then John sets off again — returning in time for a drink and supper. The knowledge he’ll be with me at seven punctuates my day with frequent shafts of pleasurable anticipation.
I am spoilt rotten, that’s the truth. What could be better than a partner who is retired and therefore free to play chauffeur, handyman and gardener, who positively enjoys driving me all over the country, who will happily listen to me make the same speech again and again, who absolutely insists on a holiday every few months?
I am, however, aware of the age gap: John is seven years younger than me. My first husband Rayne was nearly 20 years my senior and thought of me as a spring chicken.
Now at 77 I am more an old duck trying to disguise my age.
The first time John and I went for a walk with friends, I stepped on an undone bootlace and went flat on my face. I remember thinking: ‘Oh, no, John is going to think I fell over because I’m old.’
I thought he was mad to take me on. In our first two years together, I had two new knees and an operation on my back.
THethought of marriage didn’t cross my mind at first. But as the years went by, I began to want it. I didn’t dare suggest it; rejection would have been unbearable. I never thought John would suggest it either. But one day he did.
I’d like to say he got down on one knee and said: ‘Will you marry me, darling?’ But, no. We were in the wilds of Namibia, laughing at a baby elephant, when John said, ‘Do you think we’ll still have this much fun when we’re married?’
I confess my heart missed a beat, but I thought he didn’t mean it. Just a slip of the tongue. So I didn’t react beyond saying: ‘Hope so.’
It was several days before I had the courage to ask: ‘Did you mean it about getting married?’ He did. Why did marriage seem important? We had an ideal life, living together but with two houses.
I think it was just that we wanted to be Mr and Mrs: to make a declaration of happiness and commitment, to have and to hold, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Somehow, those words still do the business.
For all that we’d been together for so long, the idea of getting married had me suddenly giddy with joy and excitement.
John describes himself as a short, greyhaired, knockkneed coffindodger, but to me he’s a dream come true. I still don’t entirely believe that he wants to spend the rest of his life (or, let’s be realistic, the rest of mine) with me.
We did the deed on October 5 2016. The wedding was short and sweet, and our (lemon drizzle) wedding cake featured a Lego bride and groom — bought by a friend on eBay.
I’m sure our contentment is a lot to do with our age. John would have found me intolerable at 25 — with my ambition, bossiness and obsession with food.
And I’d never have put up with the walls of books on the floor, and his insistence on visiting every single museum he encounters and trawling shops and market stalls with no clear object in mind.
He’ll scan a shop in seconds and pick out something from a mass of dross which will look wonderful on. He’s jollied up the way I look, with no grey, no beige, no mauve.
Sometimes I worry that I now look ridiculous: mutton dressed as lamb, or like a crazy bag lady, or an ancient hippy left over from the Sixties. But at least it’s fun. I used to live in suits and court shoes. Now I’m more likely to be in an Indian kurta, with brightly coloured cotton leggings and a necklace made of plastic or paper.
Since the wedding, our pleasures have been quieter and more domestic: our families, friends, cooking, gardening, walking the dogs. Of such banalities is happiness made.
EXTRACTED from Relish: My Life On A Plate by Prue Leith (published today by Quercus, £20). © Prue Leith 2012 & 2017. To order a copy for £16 (20 per cent discount), visit mailshop.co.uk/ books or call 0844 571 0640. P&P is free on orders over £15. Offer valid until October 13, 2017.