When your husband takes a Mistress – What every wife should know

The vacant expression on his face and misty eyes started in the summer of 2013 when my sister-in–law and her family came to stay with a VW Camper van. Hubby began looking off into the distance and dreaming of the open road.

The research or ‘infatuation’ phase, as I liked to call it, started with him joining online forums, purchasing magazines and talking to people in the pub about his latest passion.

Then he saw the bus of his dreams, and he went on a blind date to Taunton (we live in Norfolk!) He drove back with her nearly getting hypothermia in the process – and this is a man who won’t get out bed on a Sunday to put the kettle on.

In this phase he had simply lost the ability to concentrate on anything but the task at hand and that was fixing Poppy for the start of the summer. Poppy, is an early bay Devon T2 VW Camper van with a Westphalia interior.

I would like to offer some advice if your partner is thinking of straying. Don’t let them (as if you could stop it) buy any classic car:

• If they are not mechanically minded
• If you get jealous easily – as you will spend hours by yourself and when they reappear you will have to listen to tales of the mistresses vital statistics and new clothes.
• If you are not prepared to have your best kitchen scissors used to scrape the rust off the hub caps while cleaning takes place on your lounge floor.
• If you are not prepared to help out yourself with the occasional ‘could you just hold this’, ‘tighten that’ or ‘put your foot on here’.

I would also suggest that you stock up on plasters, cleaning products and sympathetic noises for when it all goes wrong.

Well after our first year, my husband is just as much in love as always and I must admit to being a little bit in love with her myself, not only because she is a beauty, but because she has brought us all closer together.