couples, known as “mentors”, who talk to those taking part about their own experience and the kinds of situations they have encoun- tered. It is accompanied by a series of booklets containing readings and exercises. Observing a series of sessions at Our Lady


of Victories in Kensington, central London, I was impressed by the course, and thought the talks by the mentor couples were extremely good. Many of the couples taking part said it was particularly helpful to hear the views and stories of people who are already married. However, although I could see the point of


the exercises, some seemed to have an unnec- essary psychoanalytical slant. For example, there was a heavy focus on what a person has inherited from their upbringing and a lot of questions about parents and which of the par- ticipants’ parents’ mistakes those participants wanted to avoid. Questions such as, “If you had to guess, would you say that your mother ever initiated love-making?” seemed down- right bizarre. Women were also asked how they regarded their father, and were given eight possible descriptions – boss, protector, gutless, with- drawn, big kid, rescuer, provider and rock. The women were also asked if they had been afraid of him. Participants are requested to write about and discuss “what you would want to say to your husband or wife on your wed- ding night”. It felt odd to be discussing this in a church hall surrounded by other couples. However, aside from one participant who found some of the questions “creepy”, the par- ticipants were enthusiastic about the course. One of them, Yann, said he had been pleas- antly surprised by it, particularly the role of the mentors, and that he and his fiancée had not found the questions difficult. “I had a really good relationship with my parents and I enjoyed talking about them,” he said. “I can see why most of the questions were relevant, but my fiancée didn’t want to answer them all.” Another, Stephanie, said that although she had been with her partner for many years and they had children, she had found the course very useful. “I would have liked the sacramental and religious aspects to have been emphasised more,” she said. “But the relationship things were good.”


T


here is no research on how effective marriage-preparation courses are in helping couples to stay together through difficult times. Although


the divorce rate has fallen to a 29-year low, there are still a lot of marriages breaking down. The most recent figures show that 11.2 marriages in every 1,000 ended in divorce in 2008. As Bridie Collins said: “People spend tens of thousands of pounds on their wedding, but that’s just one day. Marriage preparation is a little bit of insurance for the years to come and in the end is much more important than the cake or the dress.”


■Isabel de Bertodano is a freelance journalist.


SARA MAITLAND


‘It was very beautiful, peaceful and silent and I did not have to play Monopoly’


I spent Christmas day alone. A solitary Christmas is surprisingly difficult to pull off. Each year loving people do their well-meaning best to thwart my desire, but this year I managed it. I had the loveliest day, helped as it happened by the weather. I love Christmas. I do it properly: a small tree; a traditional crèche (although delightfully and appropriately to my Scottish moor, one of the shepherds has a black-and-white collie); a feast (potted shrimp, then steak); a log fire and candles; a walk – with bright sun on bright snow and a wonderful moon rising in a pure sky. Sadly, this year my fireworks were not delivered on time. It was very beautiful, very peaceful, very silent and I didn’t have to play Monopoly with anyone or stay sober enough to drive home. This is not about “hating Christmas” or taking some moralistic stand against its “materialism”. I love Christmas; I just love it best on my own.


But what was most lovely about it, oddly enough, was that it was only possible because of community and neighbourliness. I live on a high moor in western Galloway – literally in the back of beyond, miles along a tiny, snaking, single-track road, and then up a steep rough track to where I rebuilt a ruined shepherd’s cottage a few years back. When the weather gets very cold, the track ices up and becomes undriveable. (When it starts to snow, if I am alert I take the car down the track and park it at the bottom gate; if I’m inattentive, I am stuck until it thaws.) Obviously, up here there is no mains water (no mobile phone connection, no road gritting and no rubbish collection either): the few scattered houses all have private supplies. The Sunday before Christmas my water supply froze, not inside the house but at the source. It is surprising how much water you need to get by. It takes more than five litres to flush the loo. Even if you abandon all washing (body, clothes and cooking) and pour your cold hot water bottle into the


cistern, you need a lot of water. For a couple of days you can more or less manage on 10 litres a day, but not indefinitely. It is even more surprising how heavy water is – I physically could not carry enough up that ice-rink track to make my life sustainable, even if the road was passable and the shops open to buy it. Melting snow is a romantic notion but an exhausting, non-viable reality. The freeze was forecast to continue right through the week.


I crept down the five icy miles to the village to get enough water for the immediate present, while I thought despairingly about what to do. A couple of hours later the cheerful young shepherd from the top farm appeared on his quad bike with eight full five-litre bottles of fresh water.


A friend in the village had remembered there were these empty but clean containers in the peat barn up there, whence she had recently retired. She rang him. He gave up his Sunday afternoon to filling them (he has a bore hole), and slithering three miles down the hill to deliver them. He is very new here; I had never met him before. By Monday afternoon the system


was sorted out – every day someone has appeared with water. It now arrives in a massive 20-litre container which belongs to the Signal Box, and is collected, filled at one of the houses which still has running water and brought up to me by quad or tractor. Another waterless house is receiving the same gift. On Christmas Eve I received an extra container so that they would not have to “bother” me through the weekend.


I am not solitary; indeed I cannot be solitary. The truth is that if I lived in a town and it was not so cold I would still be linked into a complex web of people who make the water mains work and run the sewage treatment plant and generate electricity.


But I would not have this loving


awareness of it. I came to live here in order to explore what a contemporary (non-institutional) life of silence and solitude might be and mean. But instead, I find I am learning far more about gratitude and dependence and kindness and community. So I had a very good Christmas.


■Sara Maitland is a novelist and writer. Her most recent book, A Book of Silence, is published by Granta. She has joined The Tablet as a monthly columnist.


1 January 2011 | THE TABLET | 11


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