Reasons why Fran dreads windy weather

Our letterbox flap is made of a thin metal. On very windy days, the flap goes crazy, and it sounds as though a vicious swordfight is going on in our hallway, the metal clank-clank-clanking with each gust.

Wake up at two in the morning with that racket going on and, in the quiet of the dark, the swordfight turns into knights in armour conducting a full battle at the bottom of the stairs. [Yes, these stairs.] We have chimneys, too, through which the wind screams. Move over, Wuthering Heights.

We rent the house so, technically, the letterbox is not ours to replace without permission. ‘Dear Landlord. Our letterbox clanks’ seems a pathetic reason to drag him here and, sod’s law, it would be a cloudless day, as still as death.

I suppose we could make a video of the flapping letterbox on a windy day and send it to him but this is all beginning to sound like an episode of Monty Python or a ketamine-induced dream.

We have tried ways to stop the flapping. Sometimes we tape it down or stick it with Blutak. But it comes undone and ha-ha-ha goes the flap with its tinny laughs.

In these circumstances, marital conflict thrives.

Today, another windy day, I was writing at my desk upstairs while my husband fossicked about in the back garden. I came down to make coffee. On my way past the front door, I saw that someone had posted a folded pizza delivery leaflet through the letterbox but it had got stuck without landing on the doormat. I pulled it out. TING TING TING went the flap as I wrenched at the leaflet.

‘And you can shut up,’ I said to the flap, not that I hold grudges.

I put the leaflet in the recycling basket then took my coffee upstairs. Ting ting went the flap behind me. I closed the study door.

Half an hour later, I heard the back door shut. My husband arrived in the hallway downstairs. I heard the clunk as he dropped his gardening shoes.

There was a pause, then he called up, ‘What did you do with the leaflet in the letterbox?’

I yelled back, ‘It’s in the recycling basket.’

‘Why?’

I opened the study door and peered down the stairs. ‘We never order pizza.’

‘No, I mean, why did you take it out?’

‘To put it in the recycling basket. We never order pizza.’

‘But I put it in the letterbox.’

‘Did you? Why are we delivering pizza leaflets to ourselves? We never order p -’

‘It was on the doormat. I picked it up and used it to block the flapping.’

‘Oh.’

‘That’s why it was folded up.’

‘Oh.’

I could feel the vibrations of his eye-rolls through the hall ceiling.

I heard his long-suffering footsteps on the way back to the recycling basket, then back into the hall, and then the ‘ting ting a ting ting ting a ting’ as he forced the folded leaflet back under the flap.

I called down, ‘The kettle’s just boiled if you want a coffee. And there’s flapjack and chocolate brownies in the tin,’ because there’s nothing like a heart attack for bringing a couple closer together in times of strain.

As the marriage vows say, ‘For better, for worse; in sickness or in health; for richer, for poorer; whether he’s cross that you took his leaflet away or whether he’s not cross that you took his leaflet away.’

Later, I realised from upstairs that there’d been no ting ting ting for a while. My husband’s innovative leaflet method had proved effective, although I don’t know how the leaflet would fare on a very stormy swordfights-and-knights-in-armour kind of day.

I shall say to him over dinner, ‘Darling, your innovative leaflet method has proved so effective,’ just to help matters along.

At least, for now, we know where to find the leaflet should we ever change our minds about the pizza.

Inside Fran’s Diary

The launch party for ‘Home Bird’ is on Thursday 20 March at Waterstones Leamington Spa from 6.30-8.30pm. Do you live nearby? Do you want to come and BE nearby? I would love to see you. Here’s the link!

We also have a date for another ‘Home Bird’ event the next month, kindly hosted by the lovely Warwick Books. It’s on the evening of Tuesday 29 April and details are right here Please come along, and even better if you’ve read the book by then and have QUESTIONS!

Other things coming up fast. Somehow, I seem to have squeezed them all into one week. Oops. Why not book yourself into a local hotel and come to them ALL?!

Wednesday 2 April at 10.15am, speaking at Warwick Library about my books and writing. Free event AND you get a cuppa and a biscuit.

Thursday 3 April at 7.30pm, chairing a Warwickshire Society of Authors event about literary festivals and what they can offer to local authors. Members and non-members welcome. Come along and listen to Jacci Gooding who runs the brilliant South Warwickshire Literary Festival each year.

Saturday 5 April, womanning a stall at Banbury Book Fair selling copies of Cuckoo in the Nest and the spanking-new Home Bird. Free admission (as in, you don’t have to pay, not, they expect you to share random things you’ve done wrong)

If you want more details about these events, you know where to find me. Yes, in my hallway, swearing at my letterbox.