Having taken early retirement David and his manic depressive wife Hazel, decide to rescue their failing marriage with disastrous results.

Selling the majority of their belongings and buying an ageing car they drive to southern Spain, buy a plot of land on a mountain and, amid many adventures and setbacks, begin to build their new life.

It is not long before Hazel’s depression returns and in desperation she attempts to commit suicide. Rescued in the nick of time, and hospitalised, Hazel begins a course of psychiatric therapy but the treatment that is designed to cure her, and her marriage, backfires disastrously when she reveals her deep secret, which finally destroys the marriage and rips the family apart.

Taster follows.

Do you know what it’s like when you take early retirement? It’s brilliant! Plenty of time for those previously neglected hobbies, lots of time to devote to the garden, maybe even the opportunity to do a few odd jobs for a bit of beer money and to cap it all plenty of time to enjoy being with your partner. Makes you feel all warm inside doesn’t it. That’s how it should be; that’s how I thought it would be.

Early retirement found me, at the tender age of fifty-one, in good health and financially secure, with a pension giving me an income that covered all my basic worldly needs thereby removing those nasty money worries. Retired! Freed from the rat race; freed from the stresses of too many hours driving round the country solving other peoples problems on the mobile phone: hands free of course. I had also been freed from the forked tongued ‘suits’ who were making it increasingly difficult for ‘Joe on the tools’ to do his job efficiently. Most importantly I would have more quality time to spend with my wife Hazel. At the time we had been married for over thirty years, but, increasingly throughout our marriage, as I climbed the greasy promotion pole, my career had dictated that we spend far too much time apart. From now on it should be ‘our time’.

I have always been one for hobbies, from the first time I scribbled a vaguely discernable drawing on a piece of paper, but as a direct result of adult commitments my very large Meccano set had not seen daylight for donkey’s years. My drawing pen had congealed ink clogging the abandoned nib and my poetry pencil had only scribbled a few meaningful stanzas in recent years. I still enjoyed reading, writing and music, that is listening to music not making it. I had proved my total ineptitude at creating music firstly as an enthusiastic seven year old when I screeched to death a poor innocent violin and later as a teenager, when I took up my school’s offer of piano and guitar lessons, I was to discover that having feet that hummed was the nearest I was ever going to get to being a virtuoso. One hobby I had not turned my back on – no hang on, it’s far more than a hobby, more a passion even an obsession that’s more accurate – was football. I hadn’t played for many a year, not that I gave it up it sort of gave me up really. One claim to fame that I treasure is the Sunday in 1969 when no less a legend than Sir Bobby Robson came to see us play. He was scouting for talent and I am convinced he would have given me a trial for Ipswich Town were it not for one small problem; I was pretty useless as a goalkeeper, a fact that obviously did not escape his notice. Now supporting football that’s a different matter entirely. I have always loved watching football especially my beloved ‘Tractor Boys’, Ipswich Town to the uninitiated.

As you see I now had plenty of time to do things and plenty of things to do. Hazel on the other hand had not retired, partly because she had always refused to get a job and had therefore not worked – outside the home that is – for thirty years, but mainly because the home was still there and the washing and ironing still had to be done. Now there was an added complication; me. I had left a demanding job which had occupied my mind fully and which involved plenty of travel and nights away. Now I was under Hazel’s feet unconsciously competing in the home. I have always liked cooking and often used to prepare the main meal, especially at weekends, but now I had graduated to stirring the food Hazel was cooking. Turning down the cooker when I thought it needed turning down and generally putting my wooden spoon in where it was definitely not appreciated.

Together Hazel and I had enjoyed walking in the past, but unfortunately the weather in England for the past couple of years had not been very good and Hazel always seemed to have some ache or other which prevented her walking too strenuously. Consequently we had not ventured out as much as we would have liked. We were also very keen on the theatre and were regular attendees, both in Ipswich and in Colchester. It was this love of theatre, entwined with my love of writing and my somewhat bizarre sense of humour, often described by my friends as eccentric, that gave birth to a career writing pantomime scripts for my Masonic Lodge. Each year I would provide a script and perform a role in the production. I loved being the on stage baddie. Oh yes I did, sorry.

Hazel, on the other hand, had no hobbies or interests save cleaning and television, with a smattering of gardening thrown in. Basically she was one bored housewife.

With this plethora of hobbies and pastimes to bolster me, it may seem surprising but I felt as if I was in a rut. Albeit, as Mrs Bucket would say, my very own comfortable – three bedroom bungalow in a quarter of an acre in the Suffolk countryside – rut. Now I actually believe that there is nothing ostensibly wrong with being in a rut, especially if you feel content and fulfilled in that rut. Why should other people, who cannot feel the comfort or contentment of your personal rut, tell you that you should not be rutted. The marriage of thirty-one years was still intact although cracks had started to appear some years before only to be thinly papered over. Behind that thin veil the cracks lurked, slowly widening and sometimes they tore through the curtain but it was, never the less, just about hanging together.

* * *

Our relationship hadn’t got off to the best of starts. About a month after we met we were sitting outside her parents home in my Ford Anglia after a night out. The radio was gently playing the latest hits from Radio Caroline and Englebert Humperdinck began to croon ‘Please release me.’

“I wish you would” whispered Hazel.

“Wish I would what?”

“Release me.”

“Do you really want to part then,” I asked, “I don’t because we don’t really know each other yet; but if that’s what you want.” My question hung in the air for an eternity.

“I suppose not.” She sighed. A quick peck and she threw the door open and was gone, not even a wave or a backward glance as she closed her parents front door.