Escape From The Country

I've sacked Susan.

With only four days to go before the start of my two month misadventure Down Under.

I told you I wasn't looking forward to it.

She's all of a sudden demanded £100pw house-sitting money. That's £800! On top of job seekers allowance and dodgy housing benefit! She'd be toasting herself by my lovely AGA, twiddling her thumbs, just counting her money, rich as Croesus!

While actually you can get house-sitters for free these days.

I was just trying to do us both a favour, but she doesn't seeem to see it like that.

"While I'm here, I will sell your house by filling it with good energy," she adds, "so I should really be getting 10% of your sale price too."

Eh????

Susan has been my 'project', but I think she must be a bit mental. Remind me never to take on another project. I lose my temper (rare), and use my scary-older-sister-voice on her. While my life suddenly falls completely apart, she remains oddly unperturbed.

And perhaps she's right, because what happens next proves that my beloved home is in fact a house of horror.

After the most stressful 24hrs I've possibly ever experienced, I track down a highly rated, experienced, qualified, insured groom, who will take over at the end of the week.

My daughter, Freya (21), a drama student at Exeter, will keep the show going until Demi's arrival complete with ancient horse and 2 dogs.

Two days til take-off and urrgghhh! A stray tom has discovered how to get through our catflap to eat The Cat's food, and it sprays all over the freezer room. Meanwhile Twiglet the dog (14), having had two "we thought this was it" visits to the vet in the last six months, has been incontinent several nights running; on top of which, I think there's something dead that has started to stink under the hall floor.

Yet another big freeze has arrived, meaning I have to lug heavy bales of haylage each day in a wheelbarrow up to the horses' field, and break the ice in their trough.

Freya has offered to drive me to the station to catch my flight, and, while she holds the fort prior to Demi's arrival, plans to drive backwards and forwards in our elderly Ford Fiesta to her Exeter based gym (she has a power-lifting competition next week), returning to high Dartmoor late each night to deal with the animals.

Wretchedly, I beg my horse-lady, Nicola, who is only supposed to come onTuesday and Friday mornings, whether, instead of Freya, she would be prepared to forge her way through the snow, gales and dangerous ice, ten miles each way, in the dark, up hill down dale, in her Land Rover, to check the horses on the second night after my departure, when the temperature is predicted to dip down to -5C.

On my last night, Caroline, Chistophe, Freya and I have arranged a farewell drink at The Two Bridges, despite last-minute panic, and the freezing rain and general pestilence. It's shut. As is every other Dartmoor pub on a Monday in January.

I can't wait to escape this place!

The following morning, Freya and I depart for the railway station, and all is fine; but Im nervous of opening the car's window, as it's already broken once, and feels funny again. I spot the postman coming in the opposite direction, and without thinking, assuming that he might have the trainers I ordered for my trip, open the window. There are no trainers, and the window sticks wide open. "Muu-ummm!" wails Freya. Thank God it's not raining, as it was last time this happened, and we have no choice but to carry on to Newton Abbot in a howling wind.

I say possibly my final farewell to Twiggy, Freya drops me by the machines to get my tickets, and rings four garages, finally finding one which will shut the car window permanently, until Dave our garage man tracks down a new window-opening motor.

I can't believe that Im finally on my way, and have no faith at all that public transport will get me to my plane on time. But extraordinarily enough, it does! How quick and easy it can be to get from Devon to Heathrow! I had no idea!

Jimmy to the Rescue

Five days after my arrival in NZ, while I'm happily snoring away in my camper van on the other side of the world, Demi and her entourage arrive at Wydemeet in the middle of a storm - 90mph winds accompanied by the normal horizontal lashing rain.

Just 24hrs after her arrival she is already suffering a full nervous breakdown.

My barn is too leaky, my fields unsafe, my mares off their heads with lust over her elderly gelding, and the idea of having to pack and post one of my Hermes scarves (my life-saving second-hand business) proves the very last straw. So allergic has she become to all things Wydemeet, that she's developed a rash.

So that's the end of her.

And I'm back to square one yet again, but this time from a sunny campsite in NZ with intermittent boadband, virtually no mobile phone battery power, and an eleven hour time difference between me and Help. I want to scream and cry and throw things, and to bash my head on the van's shiny bonnet.

Endless frantic messages and calls between Caroline, Nicola and Freya in the middle of their night, as my signal fades into nothing, and we've done it.

Incontinent, dying Twiglet will go to Caroline, who will load up the mares and take them to Grand National winner Jimmy Frost's racing stables in Buckfastleigh, for a two month spoily, costly (but actually a lot cheaper than a kennel would charge for a dog) sojourn, away from the howling wind and rain of high Dartmoor.

Meanwhile my beautiful home will remain empty; central heating, hot tub and AGA all pumping away, waiting for someone to come along and enjoy them.

No wonder I haven't had a proper holiday for thirty years.  Never again!