There’s no getting away from it: my husband and I have really let ourselves go since the boys left
University exams are over, so our sons will be home soon. That means we have spent a full academic year as empty-nesters and I’m apprehensive about what they will find on their return – and not just the brown, crispy corpses of the elder’s houseplants. We haven’t fallen apart, split up or sunk into desperate sadness. We missed them, but they seemed happy enough, so we were happy for them. However, their absence has made us … what? Odd? I think that’s it: odd.
For a start, they haven’t been back since we installed two chairs in front of the glass door to the garden, where we now spend all our free time, like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets, commenting, usually unfavourably, on the local birds. I’m uncomfortable at the thought of our sons overhearing this stuff (“Here comes double-chin magpie”; “Starlings are real assholes”). We each have our own eccentric refinements of armchair time: I have identified a specific pigeon nemesis to rage against, while my husband has installed one of his numerous gadgets for monitoring and complaining about household electricity consumption in his eyeline. He even calls it “my pigeon”.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
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