Any consideration of me, as attached to The Beloved, had been at a somewhat genteel distance. Either I was glaringly obviously the perfect prospective clergy wife and no more needed to be said about it, or, more realistically, the item on the Church of England’s ‘must do’ list that says ‘Suss out what the wife thinks and see if she’ll be any good’ was not a very long way from the bottom. In fact I’m pretty sure it was a long way below ‘Try to make sense of Synod’, ‘Ban all nylon-stringed guitars from places of worship’, ‘Find a groovy press image for the Archbishop’ and ‘Deal with international debt, famine and human rights violations’.

However, now the spotlight was to turn on me. Or was it a searchlight? An ominous and immovable appointment was shakily scrawled into my diary. The dread day of meeting the Diocesan Director of Ordinands loomed blacker than the dentist.

As I have already discussed, I had become increasingly impatient with the grinding slowness with which the Church of England’s machinery seems to work. Any movement in the direction we were so eager to go took forever. We were poised on the starting blocks but the starter had either left his pistol in the drawer at home in Cornwall or needed fourteen committee meetings to get permission to fire it - and then only if there was an R in the month.

Our work situation, due to the undecided nature of the future, was not what anyone would blithely describe as ‘stable’ or ‘normal’. Here was I working twelve-hour days and selling my car to pay the rent whilst The guilt-wracked Beloved was unable to consider taking a proper job because at any moment that earth-shattering call may come and he would zoom away to a selection conference. And, should he clear that hurdle, he could be .... I’m sorry, we could be at college within a short, fraught six months.

I say again, Time in the Church of England does not run like Time in the rest of Creation.

So I was soldiering on. I won’t say that I was doing this quietly and self-effacingly. All studies in Waiting apart, I wasn’t doing this in a subtle manner. My good friends know that suffering in the background is not one of my numerous talents nor is doing anything quietly. I can, if asked, make washing-up or tea-making into a quite diverting four act opera.

My valiant soldiering at that time involved waiting tables for a peanut per hour in the local restaurant run by appallingly sexist manager as well as stitching what seemed like hundreds of costumes for a theatre school’s end-of-year blockbuster showcase. As I stuffed yards of tulle and cerise coloured lining satin through the sewing machine by day and evaded the groping hands on both sides of the bar by night, I wrote and rehearsed the terse little speech I was going to deliver to the DDO.

I was going to make it crystal clear to this Very Important Man just how close we were to severe financial difficulties if the dear old C of E didn’t get a bit of a wriggle-on. I was going to protest warmly at the somewhat blasé way the dear old C of E assumed that partners, and in particular this wife, would carry the can without even asking if that partner, or this particular wife, minded. I was going to point out in absolutely certain terms that there was only so long a body could work the hours that I did and retain the sunny charm and unfailingly cheerful outlook that had hitherto been known as an integral part of my personality. I was going to say that, if something didn’t happen rather soon, I was going to rip his head off.

I marched down the street to the DDO’s house on the fateful evening with a thin veneer of civility masking a pathological need to maim. I was ready to commence this battle with all my well-rehearsed armaments blazing. I neither noticed the pleasant treelined way or The Beloved trying to talk conciliatory sense to me. After a tense half-minute on the doorstep during which I reassuringly hissed that I was ‘fine, really, just FINE, okay?’ the door swung open.

It swung open with such force that I was almost sucked into the hallway. But a counterblast came in a loud and cheerful voice. ‘Great news!’ it boomed. ‘All systems are go! Your conference is on March 18th! You must be Adey! Do come in!’

I deflated like a released balloon and felt thoroughly foolish and ready to cry. I was also, now that I was no longer on the offensive, really frightened.

It is a nasty but regular part of my job as a performer to go to interviews or auditions. I try to convince people that I am exactly the sort of person that is wanted for the rôle. I am a ‘find’. I am the quintessential comic relief, winsome lover, battered wife, cheeky principal boy or feisty working girl.

The big difference between that and now was that I was not up for a rôle. I had no character research or plot background to fall back on. And what the hell are the identifiable qualities of a Potential Ordinand’s Significant Other anyway? What was of interest here, even grave importance, was not what I could do but who I was. The trouble was that ‘me’ was, and still is, a really useful resource when building a character or interpreting text or music but if looked at too closely was, and still is, revealed to be the usual, mortal, rather unsightly mess of insecurities. And I was about to be closely looked at.

Trying to tell myself to get something more like an iron grip on my wobbly diaphragm and my suddenly minimal lung capacity, we picked through the bomb-site of what was left of a meal with small children. We sashayed through the toys, mushy peas and marker pens into an office where we were invited to sit down. I took a deep breath.

This was the first time I had encountered what has come to be very familiar. What I now faced was a handy-wipe-clean-leatherette Church of England Armchair. Let me describe the effects of contact with these contraptions.

After placing oneself in the habitual position preparatory to sitting there is a dangerously rapid reverse descent, a bounce and an unsettling equal and opposite dynamic reaction resulting from the seat of the Armchair being a good eight inches lower than it looks to the untrained or inexperienced eye. Your knees are now above your heart. Sitting with any grace or poise (and for women this usually means keeping your knees together) is only possible in two positions. The first, known as the Perch, is sitting on the very front edge of the Armchair. A brisk but surreptitious wriggle is required to attain this position after initially floundering about with your bottom further back on the seat. The more experienced Armchair sitter will be able to use the bounce and the equal and opposite dynamic reaction to propel themselves quickly to the front of the Armchair after the initial descent. The second, the Lounge, is achieved after the initial bounce has subsided and requires leaning back until ones shoulders make contact with the back of the Armchair thus rendering one’s trunk virtually supine as this, again, is a much greater distance than the eye would perceive. It is now permissible to adjust any scatter-cushions provided or even put them on the floor if you do not need them to prop yourself into a position where the air may pass freely up and down your windpipe. Cross your legs and use one elbow on an armrest to prevent complete subsidence. There is a third position, known as the Basic, where the bottom is placed in the centre of the seat, the bent knees are spread with the feet flat on the floor and the forearms or hands rest on the knees. But this latter is usually only used by men because they are wearing trousers or women who don’t mind about keeping their knees together.

Escape from an Armchair requires a threefold action. An heaving convulsion, a mighty muscular clench and a suppressed grunt may usually be combined to make it possible to stand upright again. The less fit may find they have to repeat any of these three a few times to achieve verticality. Try to make the actions flow as smoothly as possible and remember that giggling or squealing uses up precious breath. Think of the Olympic parallel bars, focus and concentrate.

I now nurture a theory that there is a manufacturing company, probably somewhere in Norfolk, that makes Armchairs to precise C of E specifications down to the one dodgy spring and the farty noises built into the seat.

Ensconced in a magnificent example of an Armchair - I was affecting the Perch to begin with - I took in the room over the rim of my kitchen tumbler of (very good) red wine. The wallpapered walls were mercifully camouflaged with books, the curtains were terylene of a colour so frightening they deserved an X-rating and the carpet was a brown and orange nylon ‘curry’ design. The desk was hidden under dozens of foot-high piles of papers. This guy, apart from being a VIM was obviously a Very Busy Man.

It started out well. Easy conversation between the VIM and The Beloved flowed. I think The Beloved was even moving towards the Lounge (having begun in the Basic) when the spotlight turned directly onto me. I brought into employment all the lessons a life in the theatre had taught me about how to seem confident, calm and assured. Keep your voice low, don’t laugh too much, watch your body language, remember his name, make eye-contact often, watch that your skirt doesn’t ride up, don’t drink the wine too fast, don’t wave your hands around too much, don’t spill the wine, don’t say ‘um’, don’t fiddle with your hair, put the bloody wine down, sit up straight and concentrate, etc etc. In actors’ speak this is called the ‘third eye’ and is a valuable function to acquire and to be able to call up. It means that both hemispheres of the brain are functioning at once. You are emoting your socks off whilst monitoring technical control of the instrument. I was in marvellous technical control of my instrument. I recall the exertion of remembering all these auto-instructions and putting them into effective action. Unfortunately, I have very little memory of what the VBM actually asked me.

My single clear recollection is of when he asked me about my ‘support’ of The Beloved’s vocation. I launched into a moving homily about my trust in his conviction. I declared a fierce pride in his courage. I declaimed a readiness to move heaven and earth to allow him to realise his aims. I admitted a willingness to iron his clerical shirts and answer the door seventy times seven a day. I think I even mentioned God somewhere.

‘How touching.’ DDO/VIM/VBM said. He was looking at me with a mixture of confusion, amusement and admiration.

I then realised that all I was really being asked about was my income.

I was later informed by The Beloved that I was asked a number of other pretty telling questions which I had the absent presence of mind to answer with great honesty. These apparently covered topics such as our plans concerning children, whether we were here in the UK to stay and how we dealt with our families on the other side of the world. Among these was also the biggie about how we would deal with moving house every few years. Now for one opera singer and one actor/writer this, I can assure you, is chickenfeed. Since we had met The Beloved and I had lived at nine addresses and have since added five to that number. My friends will attest to the assistance of a small instruction booklet I have written on the subject. Baby, we move house like other people have hot dinners.

So I was grilled, stir-fried and probably lightly boiled as well by Acronym Man. After an unknowable eon, we said our goodbyes and The Beloved and I marched wordlessly, shoulder-to-shoulder in an all but perfectly straight line to the nearest pub. We only made eye-contact once we were safely positioned behind two great big pints. We solemnly ingested two packets of crisps each and then My Beloved spake and said unto me,

‘Well, you only said “fuck” five times.