More marital discord

Maybe it was the storm, but I had to storm off from dinner the other day and scream in the bedroom. I screamed at Sandy, but I am not sure it was him I was screaming at: it could have been myself, my mother, or anyone. It made a change from Telefonica, anyway.

It was all Xtina's fault; she started it by saying Sandy should have whatever car he wanted (a Landrover of course) as "he's made so many sacrifices," she said. She and Edouard have been staying here, looking for sinks for the house in Spain (150 Euros from the industrial estate here, £650 in Fired Earth) and things have been a bit heated from time to time; everyone is tired, it is very hot. I drove around translating "limestone, without a plughole" even though I didnt want to; I wanted to stay at home as I usually do, and ended up having to talk to Clemente, the very nice sink man who insisted on taking us on a bar crawl, about how you had to live life for now in case you died of cancer like his brother, while standing in a crowd eating kidneys of a toothpick. Anyway, we had a few glasses of wine, and the discussion about the car started and then she says that. Sandy had been silent most of the day, having arrived late on Friday (fiesta night) from the US; of course the logistics had all gone wrong and the body language all day was "you made me come here and put up with having to get back to Almeria instead of Heathrow", or at least that was how I read it. The fact is, he has not come out with any thing like "this is nice," or "lovely day," for a long time, not that he says things like that, being Glaswegian, but you would think he could acknowledge the good side of being here, even if he is having to travel a bit more; it is only four hours to Madrid if you put your foot down, after all. The silent Sandy body language got to me all day: as a result I did not lie about on a lounger like Xtina and Eddie, but chopped up wood and piled it up, getting the usual injuries, hung out washing, cleaned the terrace, watered trees etc, getting more and more angry/tearful to myself. So when Xtina came out with this, it was the proverbial straw and I ran off. Sandy came after me; I had hidden in the bedroom but clearly not very well as I was just behind a box. I was a bit (a bit!) hysterical and said I had spent months packing and organising the move and it was not fair for him to imply he was a victim who had been sacrificed as he knew perfectly well I had not made him come here and it was not my fault he had not looked at the logistics properly, I was not lying about on a lounger, it was very hard dealing with Telefonica, what about the children and their better life, I wish I hadn't come, I wish he hadn't come back, I would get a job in town and then he could go back to the UK, etc etc, this went on about ten minutes non-stop; meanwhile Sandy was just looking at me and not saying much except eventually, to BE QUIET. He said he could not remember why we moved, which was no good. I said he had to be clear I had not made him do it and eventually he did admit that it was not possible for anyone to make him do anything, and also that he did not wish he hadnt done it, but all the same you got the feeling that he thought maybe I had drugged him with that date rape drug or something. It was the same when he got married the first time: whenever I asked him why he had married Stephanie if he didnt like her, he said she had arranged it all without asking him and then it was too late. Seemed pretty unlikely to me, but maybe this is how he sees it: he does nothing but agrees with things for a quiet life and then finds out too late what he has done. Anyway, we had a tearful kind of make-up, but I was still angry underneath and I suspect Sandy was still whatever it is he is being, sulky, perhaps. The next day I kept giving him ideas of what he could do (flat in Madrid, give up IBM, etc) none of which were any good; it was like feeding an angry tiger with little flies. He did admit in the evening that the stars were beautiful; I went to take the dustbins to the gate and the sky was spectacular, but when I asked him to go with me and look, he said no, he knew what they looked like and was reading. As a test, I asked him about six times, but he kept saying no, which just shows there is no way I could have got him out to Spain without him wanting to go, if I cant even get him as far as the bins.

Anyway, he seemed a bit more sanguine yesterday; we went to the Viveros (garden centre) and bought 3 palm trees, a sort of banana and 4 jasmine and bougainvillea trellises. This would cost about £1m in the UK, but here it did not: the jasmine and bougainvilleas, which were about 7 foot tall, were 7.5 Euros each: it was fantastic, like being in a tropical paradise and I got excited about the garden. Even Sandy stirred himself to buy a lemon tree. He has now gone to Germany and the UK but is back in 2 days as I am the one driving to Madrid to pick up the children. He has no confidence I can do this without an accident, but I am going anyway, to see Sylvia and have a break from all the household stress: the sink was blocked yesterday but thankfully I poured caustic soda in it, no doubt illegal in the UK, and it seems to work again, though possibly only in the way Sandy and I are working out the "living in Spain" argument, until the next blockage or, with the passage of time, a proper plumber.