As bold as brass

After years of car sick children and innumerable bags of shopping and thousands of miles of arguments the old thing (and I mean old) decided it had done enough. A great silence has descended on our road, which used to echo the happy explosions from a dodgy exhaust pipe.

Now, don't think I am being sarcastic when I refer to this event as "happy". This mechanical dark cloud has a number of silver linings. I'll be only too happy to get a car that isn't big enough to fit the whole of both daughters' possessions at the beginning and end of every university term. I have my eye on something small and shiny, that will fit a suitcase or two - and maybe a laptop if pushed.

This means I can avoid another three years of acting the removal man. I don't know about your young women, but mine insist they can't last a day without absolutely everything they possess.

"What if there's an invitation to this or that?" they say, goggle-eyed, as if to imply that I have forgotten the whole world implodes and all is lost, if you are in Oxford and the needed frock is in Edinburgh.

And of course, they are right. But if they want the frock, they are going to have to get it in a small suitcase from now on.

Silver lining number two had a more short-term effect, but even more exciting than number one.

Of course, with no car, I presumed that we would not be able to travel to one of Henry's more insalubrious bogs in Northern Scotland to take our usual vacation with the filthy little blood-sucking beasts among whom he loves to frolic.

No - not the Fellows of his college - the insects he studies for his "great work".

Having done our week of gadfly watching on the west coast in the early summer, I thought that was it. A nice August spent at home, harvesting tomatoes, keeping the weeds at bay, swimming in the river. Not a bit of it. The gadflies are there, and Henry must be among them. And, in his present mood regarding my new-found directions in life, this meant I had to come too.

This was until I deployed the heart-stopping news about how much it would cost to get me to Scotland on the train on a last-minute, non-saver, fleece 'em ticket. I thought he was going to collapse. He went all white, and then red, and then leant heavily on the (also collapsing) sideboard.

Of course, the department pays for Henry's ticket, but not mine. And although dear Henry has been known to part with his money, it is only with a knife in his back, and even then he likes to pick it out of a purse, coin by coin.

The reason we haven't got a new car yet, in spite of Alicia getting very twitchy about how she'll get all her stuff' back to Edinburgh, is because parting with that sort of money will probably finish Henry off. He still hasn't recovered from signing the mortgage documents, and that was 25 years ago.

The Volvo came from my mother, at a knock down price, when she suddenly realised that all the children had been gone for ages and she only needed a Mini. Henry said couldn't we have her Mini? I didn't even answer that.

So, anyway, Henry stands there, leaning on the dodgy sideboard wrestling between his hatred of spending money and his fear that as soon as he takes his eye off me I'm up to no good these days. But in the end, the good old miser wins out and I am left behind.

Oh, I can't tell you the bliss! I waved Henry off to the station, his bike laden down like an Indian chai salesman, so that he didn't have to pay for a taxi, and walked back in to an empty house.

Now this may seem to most of you to be a pretty basic sort of situation. But not to me. I couldn't remember the last time I had truly been in the house and it was empty - really empty - for days to come. No one needing washing, food, lost keys, disappearing mobile phones, nothing. No one needing anything from me.

What was so amazing, after all these years, was how quickly I met up with an old side of Gertie I haven't seen since I don't know when, in that quiet house, with no demands I'd completely forgotten she existed.

But there she was, bold as brass, wandering about in her petticoat with a glass of icy wine in one hand and a kettle chip in the other. Where has she been all these years? Locked away in one of the corners of the comodious airing cupboard maybe?

Wherever she's been, I'm glad she's back. She's so much more fun than the everyday wifey, mum Gertie. I'd forgotten quite what a slut I used to be before Henry and the girls whipped me in to shape.

I've always been capable, when I wanted to be. It's just that now and then I enjoyed being incapable, just like my daughters are now, letting the washing pile up while the cool wine slips easily over my tongue.

The dogs of a forgotten Gertie have been unleashed. Hold on to your chairs people!