Nigella Lawson and I were clearly separated at birth. Not only from each other, but also from our spiritual mother.

And I have finally found her!

I am, of course, talking about Clarissa Dickson Wright. Just look at her! Give me another fifteen years and I could be her. She was fat, a cook, a country woman and rather mental.

As am I.

You see, in the eight years since I last worked on this blog, I have gone from being a somewhat atypical suburban wife in the northern outskirts of Stockholm to living in the depths of the Swedish countryside, just outside a tiny village in the north of Sweden.

And when I say tiny, I mean tiny.

Fewer than 300 people live here, and I reckon at least a third of them are, shall we say, characters.

It’s perfectly all right for me to say that, as I am most definitely one of them.

We are also a remarkably international bunch. Down our end of the lane, you are more likely to hear English than Swedish. Three of the four permanent households are English-speaking, including one occupied by a half-Irish chap and his Swedish girlfriend. Three of the five holiday homes belong to English speakers, too.

At the centre of village life is the shop.

It’s one of those wonderful little country shops where you can get pretty much anything. And if they haven’t got it, they’ll get it for you, usually within a day or two.

They deliver, too.

“Could we have some bread, eggs and milk?”

“Of course! We’ll be with you in an hour.”

“How about crocodile steaks?”

“That might take a little longer. Day after tomorrow?”

Should you ever find yourself in our neck of the woods (quite literally), do pop in, have a natter and buy something locally produced.

The shop is owned by Tommy, who knows absolutely everyone. He’s rather like the landlord of a proper country pub. He knows everybody’s business and can point you in the direction of almost anything you might need.

Sometimes the staff even know what you need before you do.

Which is rather handy.

Living here, it’s remarkably easy to feel close to nature and develop a slightly prepperish streak.

Every year, we buy 20 kilos of moose meat from a local hunter. We get our beef from a farmer in the next village and vegetables from another local grower.

It all gives me the rather satisfying illusion of self-sufficiency.

We originally bought the house as a holiday home, but promptly fell in love with both the house and the area. Within a year, we’d upped sticks and moved here permanently.

Our garden currently boasts redcurrants, rhubarb and damsons.

Naturally, being me, I am planning an enormous kitchen garden which will eventually provide us with all the fruit and vegetables we could possibly need.

Possibly with a little surplus for the neighbours.

Last year, we bought an apple tree, and thanks to our caretaker’s devoted efforts, we are already reaping the rewards.

This year’s magnificent harvest consists of one (1) apple.

At this rate, complete self-sufficiency is just around the corner.

Over the years, I have taken up a great many hobbies.

Well, strictly speaking, I have considered taking up a great many hobbies. I have had wonderful ideas, purchased all the necessary supplies, brought them home, unpacked them and arranged them lovingly on the dining table, otherwise known as the Hobby Space, ready for the fabulous projects I fully intended to undertake.

A few years ago, we had an exchange student from Germany staying with us. Maya, otherwise known as the Enthusiastic Kid, was a lovely girl who shared so many of our interests that she could quite easily have been our own.

One day, I decided that what our household really needed was matching pyjamas.

Long-Suffering Husband and Enthusiastic Kid were, naturally, thrilled.

We pictured ourselves sitting around the Christmas tree in our matching nightwear, the very image of a perfect family. There would be wholesome breakfasts, cosy evenings cuddled together on the sofa watching It’s a Wonderful Life, and quite possibly a light dusting of snow outside the window.

You get the picture.

So off Enthusiastic Kid and I went to the haberdashery, where we purchased a sewing machine, fabric, patterns and every conceivable accessory required for the manufacture of three sets of matching pyjamas.

Having dragged our purchases home, we unpacked everything, spread it across the dining table and stood back to admire it.

And there it stayed.

For weeks.

Until two days before Christmas, when we realised that we were expecting eight guests for Christmas dinner and would, regrettably, require the use of the dining table.

What followed was a magnificent bout of scurryfunge, that peculiarly satisfying word for the frantic cleaning and tidying one does when visitors are imminent.

The entire enterprise was hastily packed away.

Two years later, having produced precisely zero pairs of pyjamas and never actually used the sewing machine, I gave the lot to Mother.

Since then, I have planned and provisioned several other hobbies. I have embroidery kits, crochet hooks, wreath-making supplies, card-making equipment, scrapbooking materials, oil paints, canvases and an assortment of other creative necessities.

All of which are currently packed in boxes in storage, some 500 kilometres away.

I have, however, finally come to an important realisation.

I do have a hobby.

It may not be particularly productive, and I doubt anyone will ever admire the results at a craft fair, but it is a hobby nonetheless.

My hobby is shopping for hobby supplies.

And I am exceptionally good at it.

In which the Long-Suffering Husband raises a deeply disturbing question

It’s happened.

The moment I have been dreading for some time has finally arrived.

He’s snapped.

My beloved Long-Suffering Husband woke up this morning with the oddest expression on his face. Now, LSH has always been a man of a more philosophical than practical disposition. While other husbands concern themselves with such mundane matters as leaking taps and household repairs, mine prefers to contemplate the great mysteries of existence.

This morning, however, he surpassed himself.

“How do Smurfs reproduce?” he asked.

I stared at him.

“What the fuck?”

Apparently, he’d woken up with the Smurf Song going round in his head, which had somehow led him to ponder the reproductive arrangements of the little blue creatures living in the woods.

I have been married to this man for several years, and I still occasionally wonder what goes on inside his head.

Naturally, being the devoted and dutiful wife that I am (stop sniggering at the back; I can hear you), I immediately turned to Google.

It turns out that the reproductive habits of Smurfs are a subject of considerable debate among the more peculiar inhabitants of the internet.

Of course they are.

One might have hoped that humanity would devote its collective intellectual resources to curing cancer, ending poverty or developing a washing machine that doesn’t eat socks.

Instead, we are discussing Smurf genitalia.

And there are questions.

Unlike Donald Duck, who has spent decades wandering about without trousers and apparently considers this perfectly acceptable, the Smurfs are fully clothed below the waist.

Why?

What exactly are they concealing?

One assumes there must be something worth covering, unless the trousers are merely a fashion statement.

Then there’s Smurfette.

The only female in an entire village of little blue men, and what does she wear?

A dress and high heels.

Honestly.

If ever there was an example of gender stereotyping, this is it.

What woman in her right mind would bother with high heels when she finds herself in the rather enviable position of being the only female in a village full of men?

It’s rather like announcing that you’ve become a strict vegan at the precise moment you arrive at an all-you-can-eat meat buffet.

For a fiver.

I have no idea how Smurfs reproduce.

And, until this morning, I had never felt the slightest need to find out.

But thanks to my husband, I shall probably spend the rest of the day wondering.

This is what happens when you marry an intellectual.

Other women get flowers.

I get Smurf sex.

In which the Long-Suffering Husband takes domestic efficiency a step too far

I have come to a rather disturbing conclusion.

An alien has abducted my husband and replaced him with an extraordinarily tidy impostor.

For years, I have devoted considerable time and effort to training the Long-Suffering Husband to become a little more house-proud. It has been a long and arduous process, involving gentle persuasion, pointed remarks and the occasional theatrical sigh.

And now, apparently, I have succeeded.

Rather too well.

The man has become a domestic menace.

He wanders about the house collecting anything that has been left lying around and putting it away in places so bewilderingly obscure that I suspect he is operating an entirely different filing system from the rest of humanity.

Nothing is safe.

Not a book, not a cushion, not even an innocent little bottle of nail varnish.

Today, for instance, I had planned a thoroughly agreeable afternoon on the sofa, eating pralines and painting my nails.

Well, perhaps not the pralines. I rarely eat sweets. But you understand the general atmosphere I was hoping to achieve.

Indolence. Luxury. A complete absence of useful activity.

Unfortunately, the sofa is no longer the comfortable haven it once was.

The Long-Suffering Husband has banished the cushions and throws.

All of them.

He maintains that cushions are unnecessary frills and cannot understand why anyone would want them cluttering up a perfectly serviceable piece of furniture.

Those of you who remember Steve from Coupling will recognise the argument.

The only surviving concession to comfort is a Christmas-red towel belonging to the cat.

The cat, unlike her mistress, has successfully defended her rights.

Remove the towel and she will register her displeasure with a look of such withering contempt that even the Long-Suffering Husband knows better than to argue.

So the cat has her towel.

My cushions, however, have been exiled.

Nevertheless, determined to enjoy my afternoon, I settled myself on the rather austere sofa and went in search of my nail varnish.

This was when I discovered the full extent of the catastrophe.

My husband had tidied the bathroom cabinet.

Not merely rearranged it.

TIDIED IT.

I found my top coat. I found a few bottles of varnish. But my base coat and several of my favourite colours had vanished.

I searched.

I rummaged.

I opened cupboards which had no conceivable connection with cosmetics, because experience has taught me that this is precisely where my husband is most likely to put things.

Nothing.

Eventually, with my patience approaching its natural limits, I asked him where the missing bottles had gone.

“Oh, I threw those away,” he said.

I stared at him.

“You WHAT?”

“They’d dried up.”

My nail varnish.

He had thrown away my nail varnish.

Without consultation, without warning and, most outrageously of all, without even the courtesy of allowing me to conduct a proper inspection of the condemned bottles.

This is what comes of encouraging a man to take an interest in housekeeping.

Give him an inch and he’ll reorganise your bathroom cabinet.

Still, perhaps there is an opportunity here.

If the Long-Suffering Husband is going to take such an active interest in my cosmetics, perhaps he should assume responsibility for their application as well.

I can picture it now.

My beloved husband, sitting beside me with a tiny brush, painstakingly painting my fingernails while I supervise from the comfort of the sofa.

It would be rather sweet.

Unfortunately, I shall never persuade him to give me a pedicure.

He absolutely detests feet.

Not merely dislikes them. He regards feet with the sort of revulsion normally reserved for cockroaches and particularly unpleasant medical specimens.

So there we are.

I have successfully transformed my husband from a man who barely noticed household clutter into one who removes it with ruthless efficiency.

And I find myself longing for the good old days when my nail varnish was safe and the sofa had cushions.

Clearly, the Long-Suffering Husband needs either to become a little more Nancy or to Butch back up.

Preferably before he discovers my underwear drawer.

They do say you should be careful what you wish for.

You might get it.

And then it might throw away your nail varnish.