Concerned by hubby’s desires
Dear Miriam,
My husband is a Druid and I’m worried that he wants to sacrifice me at Stonehenge. I am 41 and my husband is 43. We’ve been married for 23 years and every solstice and equinox he gets out a big bronze knife and tries to persuade me to come to Stonehenge with him so he can sacrifice me to ensure a good harvest next year. I always make an excuse why I can’t go with him, like I’ve got a headache or my mum’s got a bad leg, but my excuses are wearing thin.
He says that lots of his Druid friends have sacrificed their wives and I am just being stubborn. I don’t want to get sacrificed, but I’m afraid I’ll lose him if I don’t give him what he wants. Please help me, Miriam. I am at my wits’ end and I don’t know what to do for the best. Audrey L., Somerset Miriam says:
It sounds to me that you have been leading your Druid husband up the garden path a bit. By making excuses every solstice and equinox why you can’t come to Stonehenge to have your throat slit or be eviscerated, you may have given him the impression that you would be happy for him to sacrifice you to appease the Gods when it is convenient. You need to have a heart-to-heart with your man and tell him that you love him but that you do not want to be sacrificed in any circumstances. It may be that he finds himself another woman to sacrifice on his pagan altar, but I’m afraid that’s just a chance you will have to take. I hope your marriage proves strong enough to survive this test, but remember it is your feelings that should be paramount. Dear Miriam,
Ibroke the law at Stonehenge before Christmas and now I can’t live with the guilt. In November, my wife and I took our 16-year-old daughter to Stonehenge. At the entrance, I saw that adult tickets were £15.50 whilst it was just £9.30 for children aged 5 to 15. To my eternal shame, I told the woman in the kiosk that my daughter was 15 and she let us in, no questions asked.
The guilt at what I did has been gnawing away at me ever since. I haven’t slept since that day, I can’t keep my food down and my hair is falling out. To try to erase the memory of what I did, I started drinking heavily and that in turn led to me losing my job. My wife and daughter have left me, I’ve fallen behind on my mortgage payments and now the bank is about to repossess the house.
Every time I hear a knock at the door or a siren I jump, thinking that the police have finally caught up with me. If only I could live my life again, when I got to that ticket kiosk I’d pay the extra £6.20. JB, Cornwall Miriam says:
Don’t be so hard on yourself. Nobody’s perfect; we’ve all given in to temptation and made a rash choice at one time or another. The important thing to bear in mind is that you want to make amends. Why not join up as an English Heritage volunteer, perhaps standing in a a room in a draughty stately home, officiously telling people not to step on some grass or selling extortionately priced ice Cornettos in the gift shop? With the national minimum wage currently set at £7.20, you would only have to work for 51 minutes 40 seconds before you could clock out and fuck off home with your conscience salved.