Dear Tina.

If our husbands want us to stick around, then radically changing what they do every few years is one way to keep us keen. Your chap has become a movie actor, larking with Ray Winstone and doing fight scenes with Temuera Morrison. That’s turned you on. Mine has become a member of the A team.

He’s had this whole other life going on in San Francisco. We were not two green kiwis arriving in our new country; he was already street smart and knew where to go for the best local burrito, how to park for nothing, where the fun gay boys were in the Castro and how to wrangle a car out of thin, and slightly smoggy, air. One sunny day he went into the city and came back with a red Honda Civic but the Toddler complained it was a bit small (thanks darling). The following day he came back with a slate grey 1984 Mercedes Benz. It’s ours for a year and no money was exchanged. No sexual favours were involved either! We’ve named it Benson.

When the Dimple worked in film, he used to pad around with bare feet, tweaking knobs in server rooms and hardly ever seeing the light of day. Up here, at camp he storms around in a backhoe – a double-ended digger – dragging trees out of the river. He’s got a bow and arrow in his toolkit. Yesterday he put up five giant teepees that some of the younger children will sleep in during summer camp. When did he learn about teepee construction? It’s like I’m now married to this other guy who’s been secretly trained in covert operations. That’s turning me on. One of the founders of camp said to me, ‘We’ve got ten in one with your husband, he can install gas heaters, run a team of lads, fix the wireless network, build anything and charm ladies.’ Your husband is a movie star. Mine is a star of the woods. Grrrr.

Love Angela

PPS Camp starts in a week. Then it’s bye-bye to the Dimple until the end of August and hello solo mama. As you like to say, Holy Shit Balls.