| Confessions of the Long-Suffering Partner of 13 Years Pilot Series |
| Thirteen years. One mad gardener. Still no parole. |
| Episode 1 I Knew He Was Different. I Didn’t Realise How Different. By Suzanne Turner |
| There are moments in life when you look back and wonder whether the universe was trying to tell you something. A warning sign, perhaps. A quiet suggestion that you might want to reconsider your next move. In my case, there were plenty of warning signs, and I cannot claim I missed them all. I saw quite a few, thought about them, and carried on regardless. Thirteen years later, I am living with a professional gardener called Rory, a man whose favourite opening words, “Suze, I’ve been thinking”, can still make me wonder what sort of day I am about to have. But before the gardener, there was the Mad Professor. And before the Mad Professor appeared on my doorstep, there was a voice on the telephone. I met Rory in 2013, although “met” is rather a generous description of what happened at first. We were introduced through a friend of his, and for nearly six months we got to know one another without being in the same room. He lived in Whaplode Drove, near Spalding in Lincolnshire, while I was in Ashford, Kent. A considerable distance separated us, and in those early days our relationship consisted largely of telephone conversations, messages, and music. In retrospect, the distance was probably an advantage for Rory. He had plenty of time to make an impression before I had the opportunity to inspect his wardrobe. Now, I have always enjoyed a good conversation, particularly with someone who has something interesting to say. Rory certainly qualified. He was intelligent, articulate and curious about practically everything. We could move from one subject to another without running out of things to discuss, and his sense of humour was unlike anyone else’s I had encountered. He could be wonderfully funny, sometimes deliberately and sometimes without appearing to realise it. He also had a talent for expressing himself through words and music, sending links to songs that said something he wanted me to understand. It was an unusual sort of courtship, if indeed courtship was what it was supposed to be. According to Rory, it wasn’t. He had made it clear that he wasn’t looking for a relationship. He wanted friendship, and he had his reasons. I accepted that, at least in principle. The difficulty was that his version of friendship involved hours of conversation, a great deal of personal openness and a steady stream of charming gestures that seemed suspiciously like an attempt to win me over. Perhaps he would have argued that he was being himself. Perhaps he was. But looking back, I have to admire the technique. There was no grand declaration, no conventional dating routine, and certainly no expensive dinner where we could both pretend to be on our best behaviour. Instead, he gradually became someone I looked forward to talking to, someone who made me laugh and someone whose mind I wanted to understand. He told me early on that he had Asperger’s syndrome, the term commonly used at the time. I knew very little about it, so I began reading. That is what I tend to do when I encounter something unfamiliar: I ask questions, look things up and try to make sense of it. I wasn’t looking for a handbook that would explain every aspect of Rory, because people are considerably more complicated than that. I wanted to understand why certain things might be difficult for him and why he approached the world differently. He was open about his experiences, and I appreciated that. I also discovered fairly quickly that understanding a person in theory and living alongside their habits in practice are two very different matters. But that particular lesson was still some months away. The man I was getting to know had lived an unconventional life. For a time, he had lived in a caravan in the Lincolnshire Fens with his dogs and horses, far removed from the sort of social life many people take for granted. By 2013, he was living in a house, but he remained something of a recluse. He spent long stretches at his computer, gaming, researching and following whichever subject had captured his imagination. He was a night owl, and the outdoors did not seem to feature particularly prominently in his daily routine. I used to tease him about being “sky shy”, as though exposure to daylight might come as an unwelcome surprise. It amused me then, and it amuses me even more now that he spends so much of his working life in gardens. What made him particularly intriguing was the contrast between that reclusive existence and the person he had once been. Rory had worked in fashion and merchandising, marketing and advertising, brokering, catering and butlering and other avenues this series will not cover and had known an assortment of very different professional worlds, many in which appearance and presentation mattered. Yet here he was, living quietly in rural Lincolnshire, absorbed in his own interests and apparently quite content to ignore many of the conventions other people fuss about. I started calling him the Mad Professor. It wasn’t an insult. It was affectionate shorthand for a man with an extraordinary mind, a slightly eccentric way of looking at things and the ability to pursue a thought long after most people would have moved on to making a cup of tea. Of course, being fascinated by someone doesn’t mean you are blind to their peculiarities. Rory could talk at considerable length, and a simple question didn’t always guarantee a simple answer. If a subject interested him, he wanted to examine it properly, including the background, the exceptions and several interesting points that might or might not have anything to do with the original question. I rather liked that about him, although there were moments when I suspected that getting to the end of a conversation might require a packed lunch. He was also very direct, and I gradually learnt that his words were often intended exactly as he said them. It was refreshing, even when it made me rethink what I thought he meant. I should probably admit that I was not approaching all this as some endlessly patient, saintly woman who had never had an awkward habit in her life. I had my own routines, opinions and expectations. I liked daylight, order and a degree of practicality. I had work and responsibilities, and I was not in a position to drop everything on a whim. Nor did I want to. What appealed to me about Rory was not the idea of changing him into somebody more conventional. It was the fact that he challenged me. He made me think, encouraged me to see familiar things differently, and could make an ordinary evening feel unexpectedly entertaining, even from the other end of a telephone line. Those conversations had warmth too. We talked about animals and nature, subjects we both cared about, as well as music, memories and the things that had shaped our lives. Some conversations were serious; others dissolved into laughter. Over time, the voice on the telephone became a familiar part of my day. I began to recognise his moods, his enthusiasm when a new idea struck and the mischievous humour that could arrive without warning. We had not yet faced the everyday tests of being together in person. It is easy, after all, to appreciate somebody’s eccentricities when you can put the telephone down and return to your own perfectly organised world. But the connection was real, and it was growing. By the spring of 2013, meeting in person was becoming the obvious next step. We planned an outing around his fiftieth birthday in May: I would travel to Lincolnshire and take him to the seal sanctuary at Skegness. Animals seemed a sensible choice for two people who shared such an affection for them, and a day out would give us something to enjoy while we worked out whether we got along as well face to face. His health meant we had to postpone the visit until June, which gave me a little longer to wonder what I was letting myself in for. I had seen photographs, of course, but photographs cannot tell you how a person occupies a room, how they behave when nervous or whether six months of easy conversation will survive the first awkward hello. I thought about what I would wear. I thought about the drive. I thought about whether I would feel as comfortable with him in person as I did on the telephone. And I thought about the rather extraordinary fact that I was preparing to travel from Kent to a small village in the Lincolnshire Fens to meet a man who had repeatedly told me he wasn’t interested in a relationship. If a friend had presented me with that arrangement, I might have raised an eyebrow and asked a few searching questions. When it was my own arrangement, however, I found myself remarkably willing to see where it led. Curiosity is a powerful thing. So, as it turns out, is a man who knows how to make you laugh. I did not know then that I was about to discover an entirely new meaning of the phrase “first impressions”. I didn’t know a cardigan could become such a memorable feature of a relationship, or that the first day would provide enough material for several stories. I knew only that I liked the man I had come to know, that he was different from anyone I had met before and that I wanted to find out whether there was something more between us than a very good telephone connection. So in June 2013 I set off for Lincolnshire, full of nerves, curiosity and what I now recognise as a fairly heroic amount of optimism. The Mad Professor was waiting. And I was about to meet him properly. |
| Next episode: The Mad Professor and the Cardigan from Hell |
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| About our writing & imagery Most articles reflect our real gardening experience and reflection. Some use AI in drafting or research, but never for voice or authority. Featured images may show our photos, original AI-generated visuals, or, where stated, credited images shared by others. All content is shaped and edited by Earthly Comforts, expressing our own views. |
