The third mortgage payment is looming up next week which I guess signals our third month living in a new world where, far from the cosy environs of comfortable and very fancy W2, strangers kiss you in the hardware shop, slug pellets and the destruction of ant hills becomes a whole thing, shawarmas and haircuts reveal themselves to be alarmingly cheap, and it transpires that not as many people visit you as you might have hoped. This is what loneliness in zone four looks like. Or is it zone five? Whatever it is, it is costing quite the eye-watering amount in transport costs back into the warm embrace of Old Home.

So, to the kissing situation. It was about four weeks ago that I went down to the little strip of shops at the end of our road to go investigate the replacement glass/framing situation at the hardware store. I had been delighted to discover a crowded, messy, old school shop just a minute from the new house, with brooms and plastic dustpans and faded 80s gilt frames in the window and a sign outside promising glass repair while you wait. In Bayswater there’s really no such useful thing – in fact, a good, hopefully cheap framer is extremely hard to find anywhere. They do get spoken about reverentially from time to time – apparently there’s someone in the Harrow Road who is quite good, and someone I know sends her work to a framer in Macclesfield, and there’s talk of a place in Shropshire, but that’s about it. And so over time you buy prints and photographs and save the odd good kid collage and stick them in a big folder and just…wait. You wait to have the framing/glass situation resolved by magic, and it seemed that this time, it might be.

So I wander down with my arms full of stuff and walk through the door which of course has a bell, and I wait while the man behind the counter serves a few other men buying paint and screws and masking tape. He then asks me to go down to the back of the store to his workshop – a big table with bits of wood and old frames and various sized sheets of glass – and he looks through what I have brought with me. He’s nice and kind, and we get along, chatting about me just moving in and what I was wanting – which kind of wood do you like? – and puzzling over a tricky frame and hmmming a bit. He throws a price at me which seems entirely reasonable and I think I have found The Place. I get excited and say thank you so much and actually, I will tell all of my friends about him and his wonderful prices and also that I might drop a few more prints down tomorrow to him. He says sure, that would be great, see you tomorrow.

I was working from home the next morning, as was Mark, so I went to see my framer guy at lunch time. Same deal as before – I wait while he serves his customers, and then he asks me to head down to the workshop to take a look at the work he has started. I am a little underwhelmed at some wonky wood and odd design choices but think, ah well, it is cheaper here than anywhere else and I could at least get them all up and out of the folder and on the wall. He comes over and tells me he likes my dress, and I say thanks, and we get into the next lot of work to do.

As we finish up, I start back towards the door, and he is super chatty and opens his arms for a hug. I think that is weird, but have had many weird hugs in my life and so just go with it. He then turns his head and gives me a dryish kiss on the lips which takes me by surprise – and then he goes in for a fully forceful kiss that is sexual and pushy and utterly without hestiancy or question. Just in there, fat and squashed and gross and shocking. I push him away hard with my hands on his chest and he lets me go and immediately resumes his former tone – chatty, friendly, happy – and tells me I need to drop cash off in the morning.

I’m reeling and awkward and embarrassed and grossed out and there’s a part of my brain which is telling me I did something to make him do that – I was too friendly/I was encouraging/I was not clear enough/I didn’t stop the hug/I was wearing that dress – and I didn’t know how to fix it and couldn’t work out if it was even a big deal so I just stammered something about my husband YES MY HUSBAND would come to give him some cash. I walked out through the dinging bell door, furiously blushing, my lips on fire, my mouth pulled into a wide grimace of distaste, puckered and ugly and sickened. I wasn’t sure exactly what to feel – furious? angry? I was embarrassed and grossed out, mostly. I decided not to say anything to Mark because it wasn’t a big deal really – just something kind of small, and gross, and Mark might make something of it, and that guy was nice until he decided to pash me and maybe I caused it somehow.

Of course though I got in and immediately ran to find Mark to tell him – I even acted it out for him to show him what had just happened, because I wasn’t sure about anything. He was calm. He just put his shoes on and I said ‘where are you going?’ and he said ‘I’m going to go talk to that guy’. I felt relieved.

The confrontation went like this:

Framer man says “Hello sir. How can I help you?”

Mark says: “What the *fig pudding* were you doing kissing my wife?”

Denial: “Oh no, I didn’t. I might have given her a hug but I do that with all my customers. Here, I’ll show you” going in for demo.

Mark says “*Fig pudding* off”

Then a bit of angry talk.

Framer guy took his glasses off and asked Mark to punch him.

Mark says “No, I’ll call the cops instead.”

Reader, he did indeed call the cops and they arrested the framer guy.

So then we spent the afternoon getting DNA swabbed and taking statements and being reassured by a very nice ex-PwC female cop that this was the right thing to do. I wasn’t sure. Framer guy didn’t get out until the next afternoon. The cops brought back the artwork but we had to drop off the frames which caused a whole other thing with the man’s son telling our son that his dad was a holy man and I was a liar. That we owed him money for the labour. That we would be arrested if we went into the hardware shop ever again.

It was all very tabloid headline with my brain running a tickertape along the lines of: “New white lady resident very mildly sexually assaulted by long-term reasonably-priced hardware shop owner. Shop shut for the first time in 40 years. The hardware store owner and his family involved in a police matter for the first time ever. New resident white lady must be protected.” Something like that. Argh – it was all so weird and sort of sad. Was he just feeling randy? How many times have I been kissed in that way which felt unwanted and gross? Did he know what he was doing? Should I have stopped it? Could I have stopped it? In that moment, was he calculated or just dumb? What part did I play in it? What part did I play? What part did I play?

In other news

Last night we went to a wonderful party but before we turned up Mark and I had a fight over sausage rolls and by the end of the night I was silently crying because he made a joke about me being hard work and after quite a few glasses of fizzy wine and with the sausage roll emotional bruise, that felt rather devastating.

Look how adorable we all looked before the tipping point! I seem so happy (though a little manic):

And here’s me with Casper as he shows me the quickest way to impressive biceps:

And the end of an era – Barnaby leaves his second year university flat that housed some excellent mates:

And finally, a weekend in Kent with some brilliant new Kentish friends for a wine thing which went really well until Mark got poisoned by a cod and vomited repeatedly in front of about 500 people: