To wed or to bed: that is the question

I’m used to having my own way and I’m especially accustomed to the men in my life obeying orders, so I’m lost as to what I should do with Stefan. He just keeps popping up all over the place with flowers, chocolates and a massive sparkler. He even got himself a tattoo in my honour. He’s hell-bent on scattering the sight in my head.

What a week to be struggling with this. The place is coming down with flowers and chocolates, not to mention this Fifty Shades of Grey film that has the world driven mad. I’m normally very decisive and you’d think that after accepting one proposal of marriage in your life ‘twould be easy to accept a second one. It isn’t, I’m dithering and dathering like a young slip of a girl.

My inclination is to say no. I don’t want another husband, it would suit me fine to have a nice man friend on one arm and my independence on the other. I certainly don’t want to wake up every morning beside someone who’s going to be asking me what I’m doing for the day. I prefer to ask myself that question.

That’s one of the things I like most about being single, those moments alone in the morning when I wake up slowly and take time to ponder what was, what is and what might have been. It’s like taking down an old photo album and flicking through it, or looking at an old video. I’ll often spend that first half remembering people and happenings that are perhaps not all that important in the course of world history, but they are important to me.

I might recall the times when my father would demand to know why there was no holy water in the house. Without blinking an eyelid, my mother would tell him she had a full bottle in her handbag and would send me to her room to get it. She’d come with me as far as the porch, slip me an empty bottle and whisper: “Go out to the rainwater barrel, a leana, and fill it. What he don’t know won’t trouble him.”

Sometimes I might spend the time imagining what life might have been like had I, for instance, taken up my aunt’s invitation and gone to Philadelphia with her. If I did that I might now be the venerable matriarch of the president of the United States of America and not the lamented mother of a half arse local councillor in Tipperary.

Anyway, what has this to do with Stefan’s proposal of marriage? Well, for one thing I don’t think I could enjoy those precious morning moments if there was a man snoring and farting in the bed beside me.

I wonder if there’s such a thing as a halfway house between being single and married?

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a special friendship space where you could enjoy the presence of a man in your life without having to be joined at the hip. I suppose you could call it a FÁS scheme marriage, where one could spend two and a half or three days with one’s partner and the rest of the week on your own. I should suggest that to Maurice, maybe he could start a constitutional crusade for the part-time partnership.

All things considered, I have to admit it’s great to have someone just to potter around and do odd jobs with. Maurice is no good for that. As far as he’s concerned every job to be done around here or out at the farm is like a dose of cod liver oil or a visit to the dentist: something to be endured rather than something to be enjoyed.

In contrast, myself and Stefan can spend a day potting plants, weeding a vegetable patch, trimming hedges or even sweeping the yard, and we get as much enjoyment out of it as some people do from a hike in the hills or sipping gin and tonic in Lanzarote. It’s grand to have someone to do those sorts of things with.

And what about sex? Well, what about it? I know that as far as men are concerned it’s fierce important, but at this stage of my life sex it’s like being asked if you want parsley sauce on your bacon and cabbage – I can take it or leave it. The last thing I need in the intimacy department is a Duracell bunny who doesn’t know what it is to be switched off.

I think my decision is made, but I don’t know how to tell him. Can he be put off for another while? By the time this is all over I’ll be as good as Ronan O’Gara at finding touch.