There really is no typical day

What panics and upsets her? You name it. Choosing lunch. The weather. A neighbour walking across the street. Not having a dog. The NHS. Not having a cockatiel. Having a canary that sings too loudly. The phone ringing. Her shoes rubbing. Her bra rubbing. Radio 5Live. Her PC mouse. Libby Purves. Anything her mother says or does. The world, the universe … and so on and so on. You get the idea.

Harriet suffers from a numbing myriad of largely unidentifiable personality disorders necessitating virtually 24/7 care, which I, as her husband, solely provide. She’s been this way since her teens, through her twenties and on into mature womanhood. We’ve been married for seven years now and for a time I was able to go out to work. But then Harriet began to struggle again. I cut my hours, but things got no better. Work ended dramatically one March morning: as I walked out to the car I spotted her throwing household possessions from the back bedroom window out into the garden. By the time I’d run back she was laid in a ball on the patio, her own urgent tears falling among the rain-drenched concrete flags. Enough was enough, and for the past three years I’ve barely left her side.

Many thousands of carers up and down the country will recognise the economic privation of eking out an existence on Carer’s Allowance, plus the bewildering assortment of other benefit top-ups available. And sure, our income has fallen, but not by so much. Then, what price can I place on knowing that my wife has all the love and support I can possibly bring, on tap? Smiles are for youth, wrote Philip Larkin, and I’m damned if I’m going to miss out on the good hours, the happy moments, the cool-clear sane times with Harriet for the few extra pounds going out to work would provide.

So what happened after the ‘biro war’ last Saturday? Well next, she went for herself with a pair of (fortuitously blunt) sewing scissors and a further tug-of-wills ensued. Just a typical lunchtime then. The reflective smiles and hugs would come some hours later – along with a joint effort to sugar-soap the living room wall. And no, it didn’t come clean.

We tried Fosse Park shopping centre today, always a trial at Harriet’s most fortified, and this was not one of her good days. But she sets her mind to tasks or needs and nothing is right with the world until the task is complete, the need fulfilled.

The M&S sandals’ mission was bound to be tense. She preferred what they had in the Men’s range. But then: nothing in her size, nothing in her colour. “Don’t leave me,” she flapped, as I wandered a few feet away to examine an alternative display. Finally, she found some she’d try on. They looked great. “But they rub just there.” So did the brown ones. By now things were on a knife edge, my wife visibly shaking, too puce and anxious to overly care about sandals any more. Getting out alive was all that suddenly mattered.

“How about these?” She tried them on. “I like the bobbly soles,” she said, desperately. “I’ll have them. I’ll colour the yellow bits in with marker pen.”

And with that she ran for the car, leaving me to settle up, without even pausing to replace her own shoes back on her hot, bare feet. She couldn’t speak all the way home. The experience had utterly drained her. This may be just another day eking out an existence. But it’s also a life.