‘Have you got your passport? Your phone? Your wallet?’ The builder boyfriend patted his pockets and told me not to worry as we drove through the Gatwick drop-off lane where they charge you £5 to open your car door for three seconds and push someone out.
When I arrived back home, he texted: ‘I left my euros in the pocket of my work jeans.’ No matter. He could draw out cash when he got there.
It had been a last minute rush to get him on a flight to Cork to view this dream farm I had found, in the sun-drenched valley.
It was really a modest white bungalow but it had 45 acres behind it, and post and rail fences. If I squinted, it looked a bit like Southfork. It was certainly the closest I was ever going to get to homesteading. And while it wasn’t quite on the scale of a ranch in Dallas it was 45 acres more than we could afford in Britain.
I got so nervous I went online and bought a giant paddling pool from Argos, click and collect
The builder boyfriend could do up the bungalow, and the rusted cattle barns. Of course he could. He could do anything. (Or, as my horse trainer said to me during my jumping lesson last week: ‘It’s taken you six years to not finish a three-bedroom cottage. Are you seriously considering doing up a farm?’)
The couple buying our house have hammered us down so much that it is uncertain what, if anything, we can afford.
I fretted while the BB checked in at his Airbnb that night, went for a drive, and started looking at another property he fancied more, a tired out Georgian mansion with not enough land.
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