My wife Mandy drove just over eight thousand miles a year, mostly on short business trips to visit clients. Our detached villa in Surrey was not too far from the infernal M25 motorway that casts its noose around London. It was a nice place to live, but even a short car journey can take a long time on the M25.
Mandy's coping mechanism for dealing with traffic jams on the M25 was to have snacks and soft drinks while she listened to 'bubblegum' radio. It helped that she loved her bright orange VW Beetle cabriolet. It was Volkswagen's brand new version, with a powerful two litre engine, state of the art sound system, a black soft top and black leather seats. Most folk agree it's a great little car, but that didn't stop her littering the inside of it with chocolate bar wrappers, empty drink cartons and all sorts of other crap. I found it amusing that she drove a car with a top speed of over 120mph, but most of the time it was either stationary or crawling along on some of the UK's most congested roads.
Mandy's first car had been an old VW Beetle, back when she was a student at Uni and she told me she had fond memories of that car. It was before she met me and she had been living at home with her parents in those days. I didn't ask her, but her fond memories most likely involved shagging young men in the tight confines of the bug. When VW reinvented the Beetle a few years ago, she went on and on about how she would really love to have one. I took the hint and bought the top of the range convertible she wanted for her fiftieth birthday. I also bought the personalised registration she had to have. It was an absurd amount of money for a number plate with her initials and the letters "BUG".
The car became known as Wee Bug, but despite her attachment to the car Mandy couldn't be bothered checking Wee Bug's tyre pressures and fluid levels, so I did that on a regular basis. Some people don't mind driving around in a car full of crap, but I can't stand a messy car, so I also cleared out the empty cartons, paper cups, food wrappings and all the other litter. It was no big deal and I never mentioned it. Mandy never thanked me, probably because she didn't even notice, but I didn't mind, because I always found enough loose change amongst the litter to buy a couple of beers at our local pub at the end of the day.
It wasn't surprising Mandy was a bit careless with her loose change, given that we were both earning good money and enjoyed a comfortable standard of living. Mandy is a business consultant and she helps all sorts of companies with strategies to develop and grow their business. I'm a freelance project manager, specialising in change management projects. Everyone calls me Terry. My real name is Dave, not Terence, but even my wife calls me Terry. Why? It's short for Terminator. Change projects almost always result in some poor bastards getting terminated and it's my job to do the dirty work.
Mandy and I got together at University, when we were both studying Business Admin. We hit it off so well that even before we got married we set up our own limited company, Alpha Business Consultants Ltd. Although we were young and comparatively naive, we got some helpful advice and financial support from my father, a highly regarded commercial lawyer.
Sadly, dad's no longer with us, having succumbed to the big 'C' a couple of years back. When we started the company he agreed to be a director and it was his active involvement that gave us the gravitas necessary to get to the table with potential clients. In return we gave dad a couple of shares in the company and he was always ready and willing to give us the benefit of his skills, expertise and experience.
In the early years Mandy and I worked hard to build business for ABC by establishing a client base that needed consultancy support for strategic business planning. However we realised after a while that our skill sets are quite different. Mandy is good at helping companies plan for the future, while my strength is operational problem-solving in the here and now. Her speciality is all about planning what people want to happen and my speciality is solving problems when the shit hits the plan.
Both Mandy and dad suggested that ABC needed to be clearly identifiable as having a focus on strategy rather than implementation, so we agreed I would trade separately as an independent consultant, specialising in managing organisational change projects. Mandy continued to work for ABC as its sole employee.
Our twin daughters, Linda and Lucy, left home a couple of years ago and they are both at University now, but when they were young children I fitted out a ground floor room of our house as ABC's office and put a sign on the door that said "Office". Mandy or I could go in there and work without being disturbed. Gradually it became Mandy's office, because my work is mostly on site at the client's location, whereas her work is mostly off site, working from home. She has around fifty key accounts and she charges fees for her consultancy services as and when those clients need her advice.
Unlike Mandy, I rarely had repeat business, although I did get referrals and I regularly worked as an associate for a big name management consultancy. I usually only had one client at any given time and I worked with the client for weeks or months, managing a major change project, such as an office relocation or organisational restructuring. When I finished a project I usually had a break for days or even weeks before another assignment came up.
Not knowing what's coming next can be unsettling for many people, but I was used to that and I enjoyed my occasional breaks by catching up on my reading and improving my culinary skills. It also gave me time to take on most routine maintenance tasks around the house that didn't require a professional to do the work.
I also regularly cleaned the aquarium in Mandy's office. She had read somewhere that a big aquarium with lots of brightly coloured tropical fish helped the thinking process, so she just had to have it. She liked the aquarium, but she couldn't be bothered with the maintenance and upkeep of it. She probably thought pH was just two random letters, so I ended up looking after the welfare of the fish.
I never complained about being left on my own when Mandy was away on short business trips and she never complained if I was gone for a week at a time, working on site elsewhere in the country. In fact I think our love life benefited from those occasional absences, especially after our two daughters left home and we had the house to ourselves.
As empty nesters I was hoping we could revitalise our social life by getting out and about a bit more, maybe even getting away for the occasional romantic weekend in Paris or Rome. Men plan and the gods laugh, as the saying goes. Things changed when Mandy came home one day with Wee Doug.
Wee Doug is a Shih Tzu, also known as a Chinese lion dog. Every time I see him I can't help thinking of the joke about the guy who went to a zoo where there was only one animal, a dog. It was a Shih Tzu.
I was a bit annoyed that Mandy got a dog without consulting me. Wee Doug was friendly enough, but I knew immediately that I would end up having to take him for walks and look after him when Mandy wasn't around and possibly even when she was around. He was just a puppy when she got him and he had to be house trained, so guess who had that pleasure? We didn't start calling him Wee Doug just because he was small. He peed anywhere and everywhere for a while.
Mandy loved Wee Doug. He was literally her lapdog, sitting on her lap whenever he got the chance. She would fondle him as he lay next to her on the sofa while she was watching TV. He would sit on a chair next to her when we were at the dining table and he could invariably be found lying on top of our bed in the morning. I tried my level best to discourage Mandy from allowing Wee Doug complete freedom to roam throughout the house, but my pleas fell on deaf ears.
To keep our love life from coming completely off the rails I had to lock the bedroom door if I wanted my wife to myself in the bedroom. Even then I had to remember to unlock the door and open it afterwards, otherwise Wee Doug would whine at me from outside the door and Mandy would whine at me inside the bedroom.
By now you're probably thinking I'm an irritable bastard and most likely have some form of OCD, sifting through the litter in my wife's car, but that's not the way it was. I'm not too bothered about small matters, so when it came to tidying up Wee Bug my standard operating procedure was to open the car door, scoop all the litter out and dump it in a plastic bag at the edge of the doorframe. Any small change would be on the floor under the litter, so no sorting was required.
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That Sunday afternoon was no different, until a scrap of paper fell on the ground next to the plastic bag. I noticed it was a credit card receipt from the Ainsley House Hotel, a sprawling country house hotel around twenty miles from where we live. Like many of those big rural hotels, it has a restaurant with a solid reputation, but most of its income comes from the hotel spa and conference centre that hosts seminars, wedding receptions, business dinners and other events.
There were no details of the purchase, but the amount charged was what you might expect to pay for lunch or dinner for two or three people. I assumed Mandy had been wining and dining some clients, so I decided I better not throw the receipt away in case she needed it and I stuck it in my wallet to give to her later. I put all the snack wrappers and other litter into the plastic bag, tied it off and tossed it in the bin, then drove Wee Bug down to the local garage to fuel her up and check the tyres and fluid levels.
Mandy was leaving the next day on a business trip up north and she wouldn't be back for a few days. I was between assignments and had plenty of spare time. I had hoped to take her out for a pub lunch at the Fox and Hounds, but she told me she was too busy preparing for her trip. I was disappointed about that, because Sunday has always been a family day for us. Our daughters continued the tradition by calling up for a chat most Sundays, so I wasn't surprised when I got back from the garage to find Mandy with her feet up in the lounge, clearly in the middle of a lengthy phone call with Lucy.
Listening to Mandy's end of the conversation I gathered that Lucy was having another crisis in her love life. Linda is the calm and mellow daughter, whereas Lucy is the drama queen. When their sleepovers with boyfriends got serious I tried to stay cool, but still show them that I cared about what was happening in their lives. They know we are both there for them if they need help or advice, but their mother is usually first on the list if they want to gossip or have a moan.
From what I recollect, Mandy was telling Lucy to "get over it", "get back in the water", there were "plenty more fish in the sea" and that she should "taste and try before you buy". I didn't know what had happened, so I didn't know what advice I would have given Lucy. I find the Latin motto of "festina lente" is generally a good approach to problem solving. Hurry slowly. Take time to reflect and then decide what you want to do.
Whatever was going on, it was up to Lucy to decide what she wanted to do next. I wasn't going to chip in my tuppence worth and make her any more confused, so I simply asked Mandy to say hello from me and went into the kitchen to prepare the Sunday dinner. Roast beef and Yorkshire puddings with roast potatoes was standard fare for us on a Sunday and I found it therapeutic to put it all together, especially when I had a decent bottle of claret to go with it.
