The kind of human being he is

We moved from the north to the outer west of London in 1995 into a house after a succession of flats, but still renting rather than buying. We'd blown the money he'd had handed to him when he left the public service, that fat redundancy cheque. Property prices were depressed but we were in no position to put down a deposit.

For a year I worked for the same company as him a very small, new privately owned business trying to get a piece of newfangled technology up and running in the aviation industry.

For the brilliant idea the greatest two obstacles to acceptance were the company's principals, but that only became clear as I spent some time on the inside. They had met inside Ford Open Prison for 'fraud' type crimes and were technically not involved in the running of the company. That did not mean they were without influence over day-to-day and even strategic questions.

After some months I gave up and took a job in the city while I sorted out where my career would be going. That was how I ended up at the Financial Services company where I sorted my head out and nearly sorted my life out.

I've recounted the sorry story of the shares ... gifted to us by his parents to be the basis of a 'nest egg' and squandered by him when his salary could not be stretched to cover his booze and fags budget.

There was also the savings put into a joint account but which either rather than both of us were required to sign on to effect a withdrawal. That was in a Halifax account which subsequently de-mutualised. As holders of a savings account with (well) above the minimum amount we would have been entitled to shares. I realised he'd emptied the account when the shares didn't come through.

We were briefly enthused by the idea of having our own allotment, a patch of ground within a communal area where we could grow fruits and vegetables. To help us his parents provided us with the funds in cash to put a shed on the site so that we would not have to drag equipment back and forth. That vanished and in the end they simply went out and purchased the shed itself (and then helped us put it up).

After we moved here I discovered that in the dying days of his time with the public service, when he supposedly was helping sort files for archiving at the PRO he lifted a document he found; a document he subsequently sold through Phillips, the auction house for £2,000. He wasn't ripping me off with that one, just the entire British nation.

Years later when The Other Matter was coming to a head, just before I was promoted to Manager and achieved a measure of financial safety, I discovered the hard way that he had helped himself to the entire and supposedly well hidden stash of cash I had painstakingly accumulated through the lean years against a boiler or cistern failing and us having to call in an emergency plumber.

The worst moment though was finding the documents relating to the savings account his parents had established in my daughter's name. They'd placed a four figure sum in it to mature over the years and be available for her around the time she would, we all expect, head off to university. This account, on my advice, required both our signatures. He'd typed up a letter and forged my signature in order to help himself to his daughter's nest egg.

That's the kind of human being he is.

Know it? Brandywine Brewing Company, Greenville DE

Do you know the Brewpub of the Brandywine Brewing Company, a restaurant and brewery that was on Rt 52 (3801 Kennett Pike), Greenville Deleware?

I have a card for this establishment that is probably about 3-4 years old. Is it still there?

If you've visited or if you're a regular I'd love to know what sort of place it is. What is the decor like, what kind(s) of food does the restaurant offer, what sort of people visit/are regulars, what are its drinks like.

I'm hoping for the comments of ordinary customers rather than foodies. If you have an impression of this place you can share, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

UPDATE 8/12/2005 (That is 8 December for our cousins on the other side of the pond including you, dear, if you are reading this)

No one else seems to dine in or otherwise frequent these places so fondly regarded by the Fat Bastard he brought home mementos of your time spent in them to leave lying around where I might find them. Either they never were much chop or you two spending time there really put the mockers on them.

Was PMS, now PMSL; LOL

The Fat Bastard almost caught me unawares, coming back in just now from work. His shift ends at 13:00 but he never starts on time and always comes in late. Normally later than this.

It wouldn't have mattered except that I still had the two windows for Campbell's Field open and the ticket sitting beside the computer here. He could so easily have seen it and come to some pretty right conclusions. Why other than driven by curiosity about That Other Matter, which I've not yet begun to deal with, would I be interested in that particular ballpark?

Nervous moment indeed, but it has now passed.

The Fat F****r is now on the floor in the other room playing with his new toy (a laptop, for your information). Yes he's been frantic for a computer and internet access for ages. Does he think he can use my landline for his porn crawling and cyber activities related to That Other Matter (the one I've not yet begun to deal with)?

At least he's engrossed in something which keeps him out of my way and I've had time to post this little vignette.

Campbell's Field seating question

Do you know Campbell's Field (home of the Camden Riversharks; Camden, NJ etc, on one bank of the Delaware River at the foot of Ben Franklin Bridge - see, I do know where it is thanks to this: http://www.riversharks.com/campbellsfield.cfm

But what I don't know, and would like to know is this.

If I were to sit in Section FLD116, Row E, Seat 5. Where would I be? Looking at the seating diagram I'd be on the river side lower area midway.

If you can comment on how good this seat would be for a novice spectator, what the experience would be like I'd appreciate it.

Back me up, Dave

There was a point in the past, before my daughter was born when I came truly to believe that I had lost my grip on reality, or gone completely around the twist.

How else could I explain how I saw things?

What person would truly treat the person he professed to love in the way I saw myself being treated? If it was impossible that I could be treated in this way, and yet I saw myself being treated this way, or if being treated this was was perfectly normal and my reaction to it was abnormal then either way I was on the verge of being certifiable.

Before we married, when he apparently couldn't bear the idea of us parting but wasn't yet ready to migrate we struck a deal to stay in Europe for a few years before settling in Australia. I made it abundantly clear that I had no intention of staying in the UK for the long term and that he had to be prepared to move. He said he was.

And yet here I still am, all these years down the track, lumbered with the only man in England who would not grab the chance for a life Down Under (even if reality turned out to be not all beer and barbies, afterall).

He would tell me something and stick to it long after it had become abundantly clear that the truth was otherwise and he would do so with such a determination that it seemed impossible he could be lying. A liar would not lie such a stupid lie, one in which he could so easily be found out or exposed, so he couldn't be a liar.

That was the sort of logic with which I tortured myself.

Inevitably this process was corrosive to my soul, to my self-esteem. It took an exceptional catalyst, a huge effort of will and a modicum of luck to drag myself back up from the abyss without hitting rock bottom. The baby came along just in time. Simultaneously I found myself at work in a supportive and encouraging environment from which I could draw new reserves of confidence and hope.

I had been reduced to working as a secretary (with all due respect to secretaries, many of whom are bright and hard working and vital to the well being of the organisation within which they work, but it was a step backwards for me) but for an immensely open minded boss who could see that I had things to offer the organisation but needed to be placed elsewhere to offer them.

He floated the move to the fee-earning side and I ran with it. Without his support and his knowledge of the workings of the Firm the move might never have happened and I'd probably not be alive today to write of these things.

He and the others around me helped me believe in myself again. While off on maternity leave I went on my voyage of discovery around the house. I found the documentation relating to the share sales and knew that I had not been going insane. With this proof acting as cement everything has held together ever since, through all the difficult times.

In the midst of the pregnancy and early months at home we took in a guest, one of the Fat Bastard's drinking mates who had been kicked out by his partner. His name was Dave. He was (and hopefully still is) a very short and very pugnacious Northern Irishman. He and the Fat Bastard went drinking every evening when they were not working the night shift on the way home from work at the pub in ______ over the road from the railway station.

One night he came bursting in, charged up the stairs to the lounge room and ordered me to say not a word. A short while later the Fat Bastard came in and up the stairs.

"See, I beat the bus" or something similar Dave said to him in a mild tone and we got some rigmarole about the bus journey.

The moment the Fat Bastard stopped talking Dave laid into him at the top of his lungs in that distinctive Ulster accent of his.

"You lying ******* ******** ****** (etc, etc). I saw you get out of the taxi round the corner. You're a lying ******* ******* **** (etc, etc). Why do you ******* do it?" and so forth and so on for quite some time.

The fat bastard just stood there at the top of the stairs in the door way leading to the lounge with the blank resigned look he adopts when he's getting the truth aimed between his eyes.

I lent Dave £300 just as he was leaving us, I think to get things sorted with his partner, and I never got it back. Right now and as much as I could do with the money I'd forgo it for a few words from Dave to confirm the gist of the above story and let me know what squalid story or stories lay behind the anger. Come in Dave, all is forgiven.

Ralph's Italian Restaurant; S 9th St Phila, PA

I have a flyer for this establishment probably about three or four years old now. Is it still there?

More importantly if you've dined there I would appreciate a review. I'm specifically wanting the ordinary diner's experience, so tell me when and who with and why (eg, July 2004 with a group of friends for someone's birthday), what you ate and drank and the impression you came away with. I want a sense of the ambience, the decor; how you saw it as well as how it made you feel.

More letters from 2000

First, dated Friday 9 June, 2000

My Dear _____

I feel utterly shattered and let down once again by what is happening. How can you go through this life with no thought for your family? Nothing but lies, lies and more lies. Well we have had it with you. We have pleaded with you a million and one times that you owe it to your wife and little child if not to us to be decent, upright and responsible. You are over middle age [in fact 40 years and 9 days old] and still acting like a carefree adolescent, free spending with other peoples money, with never a thought for paying anything back. Are you not ashamed? Where has it all gone?

All your Dad and I have sacrificed for you and look how you treat us - as if we didn't matter - just a soft touch or worse, fools. Well no more - you can sink or swim, and do not contact us again until and until you can show proof of your integrity (if you know the meaning of the word).

I have now learned that you may be out of work and that when you spoke with me a few nights ago you told me that you were in ______ and that your lift was coming - your Dad has just arrived back from seeing ______ [me] who told him that she thinks you are not working at the MOD (this can't be true can it?) she says that you are now doing 3 nights a week in a pub?

The litany of lies from you is unbelievable. You are well aware of the enormous disadvantages of being in debt collectors books - it goes from one financial agency to another and your reputation thereafter is mud.

You are not to touch any of the family of friends of yours and ours for money, its so low and embarrassing. I shall never be able to lift my head in public. See what you have reduced us to? Shame on you. Mum.

And this longer one, dated 18 August 2000

My Dear _____

I would like you to read this through and get back to me on it.

I spoke with ______ this morning who has given me an account of matters as they stand between you. Your Dad and I are completely shattered. All your promises to give your attention to your little daughter and ______ seem like pie in the sky now. The poor woman is at her wits end, what with all the debts that have been mounting up and the legal action that is threatened to recoup the moneys due, is quite unacceptable. Hiding Bills, etc, in the shed is not fair; how can you do this?

I believe that 1st you need professional counselling immediately to sort out your muddled thinking, to stop you drinking and cigarette smoking and any other vices that only you know of (at present).

We none of us know for certain that you have a job or with whom, and what happened to the chap who lived in B______ [the town we live in] who used to pick you up? As I understand you now go to ______ for a lift to ______? Who is this guy then?

Apparently you have been seen on occasions walking in B______, how come if you were supposed to be at work? ______, please help us understand.

Do you still work at the pub? I never expected you to lower your standards to work in such places. It may have been OK when you were a student but surely not now, and if you have a full time job, not at all! You have let ______, little ______ and your parents down so badly it beggars belief but surely there is still time.

[Padding excised at this point]

For one thing you should always know your outgoings from month to month and budget accordingly. All married men have money responsibilities, the rent or mortgage and upkeep of the house. It is an essential prerequisite for an harmonious marriage. It seems to us that ______ is paying for everything. This can't be right and you should know it. She also pays your pension. Where does your money go? and what precisely did you spend all the money for the shares, it didn't go to a deposit. Just tell us the absolute truth now.

[More padding excised at this point]

______ is missing her family in Australia and she would like to see them, so help her to accomplish her wish. My only regret on this is that she would be taking ______ and your Dad and I may never see her again.

Why did you marry? Did you not think that with your previous failed marriage, your indolent and truly selfish ways would jeopardise your second chance at happiness?

You may think that all the deceit and lies that you have been getting away with all those years could continue indefinitely. Well they haven't and quite right too. Do you believe that because we have a house to sell that you will be financially secure? Well think again. We know enough now, not to throw good money down the drain. You have no intention of making good.

______ [religious leader] was only trying to show you, all those years ago what you needed to do. Discipline was one. He said you were an out and out liar, and not to defend you. He was only trying to point out that you shouldn't have got your friend to take you to hospital without the express permission of the school. He and you got into a lot of trouble as a result, but I won't rub it in now. You know it was wrong. You were trying no doubt to impress and to show off how you could get away with it. It doesn't really work. Uprightness and the absolute truth are admirable traits in any man, not tomfoolery. One likes to be admired and looked up to and kids like to emulate their parents. What else does one have to offer, tell me, please tell me.

You thought that you were clever, deceiving me and all of us, and seemingly getting away with it. I recall saying many many times that you must never do anything that you would be ashamed of in later life. Nothing stays secret forever and now you are reaping what you have sown.

Have you ever done anything that youcan be really proud of. I should like to hear. ______ intends taking ______ home to be educated in Australia, and hse has high hopes for her, just as I had for you.

Had you been more honest, trustworthy husband, it might never have come to this. You seem to have forfeited your parental rights and religious upbringing as ______ doesn't believe in religion at present. You probably don't either,but that is no reason or excuse to deprive your little innocent child of her God given right of a glorious experience, she can decide later if it has no relevance in her life, but at least give her the opportunity to experience an unique privilege.

Please get in touch immediately. Love Mum

Reading these through for the first time in several years a couple of things strike me.

The tone is of course quite distinct and to my ears hectoring; hardly conducive to bringing a recalcitrant overgrown adolescent to heel. And some might be tempted to see blame lying with the parent as much as with the child.

Bear in mind though that the truth, which may or may not set one free, is in here.

He told me that he was expelled for being caught sneaking off the school grounds to go drinking in a nearby pub. The letter suggests that the expulsion arose out of something altogether different - if he had an accident and had to be taken to school then I suspect this accident was the one in which he put his arm through some plate glass, severely ripping up the underside of the upper arm. Be he told me that the incident happened when he was at university.

Why, on earth did he lie about when and where; if it would have made any difference it would have made a positive one since fooling around to the point of endangering your own (or some other person's) life becomes less impressive with age.

This is what really grinds everyone down in the end. The sheer pointless stupidity of the lies he tells.

I can't face doing any more of them just yet, but another of these letters is at:

http://thisismyaffair.blogspot.com/2005/11/those-cleaning-expeditions.html

Those cleaning expeditions

Central to an earlier posting was my mention of the occasional forays into the Fat Bastard's lair for the purposes of detoxification.

While I was still working these expeditions took place annually during the two to three week period in August I took as annual leave to coincide with the summer holiday of the wonderful Polish woman who took care of my daughter while I was at work; while I was at work. I'd get up at 5:00 to get the first direct train; he'd drop her off then mooch around all day and disappear shortly before I arrived home having stopped off on the way to collect my angel.

The leave period was the only time I had access to the house and wasn't too tired to undertake anything monumental while he made himself scarce.

So that's it; once a year I'd gather together any important looking paperwork such as correspondence with occasional employers, Inland Revenue, social benefits providers, utility companies, banks and other less salubrious lenders, debt collection agencies, courts and so forth. In order to establish whether any given piece of paper ought be kept or could be discarded I had at least to find out what it was; that's how I began to look at these letters, but once I appreciated their content I read more thoroughly and kept them. He probably thinks that I simply threw them away; he's certainly never asked for them.

That does remind me of a conversation we had a couple of nights ago, the context for which eludes me for the moment, but in the course of it I made the point that he is not good at confrontation either (so I suspect he'd been critical of someone he'd observed avoiding confrontation). He conceded the point then went on to make some fairly wild and even extravagant claims about having grown up with two parents who rowed constantly with one another. I tried to press him as to the subject for reasons I'll have to go into another time but he wasn't forthcoming.

My parents had occasional verbally violent exchanges involving slammed doors and one or other driving off into the night to cool down. They were alarming at the time and then were over. They were only occasional and I'm sure they were preferrable to constant carping and bickering and probably less psychologically damaging, but perhaps one could also say "get over it". Besides I want to row and get the air cleared, not spend the rest of my life nagging.

We've been married since early October 1994, having lived to gether for 18 months before that, and this is the first time in all those years I've heard him claim this. Although I didn't ever know either of them well and rarely observed them at close quarters I would have said that they bicker no more or less than any couple married for decades. Either he's telling yet another whopper about his childhood or he's just offered up another fabulous example of his lack of communication skills.

But back to those letters...

This first one is dated 6 September 2000.

Dearest _____

We are beside ourselves with worry. I have written you twice asking you to ring. Why do you persist in causing us such anxiety?

_____ [me] said that she would leave you a note as she is abed. We have done the best for you both & this is how you treat us. I shall have to seek guidance from either _____ [his alma mater] or ______ [the Church].

You must try to convince ______ that she is making a grave mistake not giving little ______ [my daughter] a ______ [religious denomination] upbringing. Too lazy no doubt to walk to church on Sundays yet I dare say you sit around for a couple of hours reading the newspapers.

Where are your priorities?

It is clear that you have made yet another mistake, but you did not seek our advice or blessing when you married for the 2nd time. Why did you bring yourself to this; you never listen to us.

If ______'s visa was running out why could you not let her go, or were you co-erced? She is a rather dogmatic person and intends looking out for herself. You do not now figure in the scheme from what I can gather.

And there it ends, apparently; unsigned.

This letter was written after they'd come to my aid financially to deal with the accumulated utility bills and particularly the telephone bill which had resulted in the service being cut off. Of course she was angry. I understand that.

Daniel

I mentioned previously that September 11, THAT September 11, impacted on us in an uncommon way. And that uncommon way must be laid out too, but in a separate posting.

I'll tell you how it happened for me. Like pretty much every sentient being there and awake when it happened it is a day etched, indelible. In the same way that my mother can relive that day in November 1963, when she and my father were living in Canada and so lived through the afternoon and the days that followed in real time.

And in the way I cannot do for the collapse of the Soviet-sponsored Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall breached - I woke up and watched the re-run; the Hungarian border guards rolling back the barbed wire fences and ushering the fleeing Ossies into Austria, I woke up and watched the re-run - and so on and so on.

The scene setting is that the Fat Bastard was away, allegedly undergoing training somewhere in the middle of nowhere and effectively incommunicado; subsequently I've come to the conclusion that he just might have been telling the truth about this.

By this time I was a fairly senior Consultant, lined up on the final approach to promotion to Manager and career blue sky. But with him away my hours in the office were heavily curtailed. Promotion to Manager would allow me to undertake the work needed on the house and engage an au pair and I was almost there, but in the mean time I ducked, wove and in terms of time did a bit of borrowing from one part of my life to prop up another.

Fortunately the type of work I was involved in enabled me to take it home and do it in the evening after my baby was tucked up. That was how I kept the boat afloat.

But sometimes the stress caught up with me and I'd develop a kind of strep throat. But I'd gone into the office on that Tuesday because I'd not taken my lap top with me the previous evening and could not take anything workwise much further without it.

The morning passed in a bit of a blur and by lunch time the only reason I was still there was that I felt too awful to face the trek home. In our open plan office my station was at the corridor end of a rank of three at right angles to a window in the outside wall. The senior managers had the stations at the window end; the more senior members of staff being Partners and Directors had their stations enclosed as offices. Each rank of three had a facing rank of three, creating a cluster of six. The other way of looking at this arrangement is that each rank of three had a similar rank of three backing onto it, creating a pool of six usually with a line of low cabinets creating a divide.
From my station I trotted back and forth to the water fountain regularly. Luckily most of the more senior staff seemed to be absent that day, for one reason or another; either attending internal jollies or on client visits.

On one such trip one of my colleagues, sitting in the corridor end station that backed onto mine happened to remark that a plane had flown into the World Trade Centre. My excuse for my initial reaction is that I was unwell, and besides there's more than one World Trade Centre. Except of course that there is (or was) really only One World Trade Centre.

I glanced at his computer screen and saw the tiny CNN window, within it the smaller image of one of the towers with what appeared to be a black hole in it.

The very first news reports emerged at 13:48 London-time, of American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles impacting the North Tower a couple of minutes earlier. At 14:03 United Airlines flight 175, also flying from Boston to Los Angeles struck the South Tower of the World Trade Centre.

Not a coincidence, deliberately wrought carnage in the centre of New York City. My colleague kept open his CNN coverage, a female colleague occupying the Senior Manger's station at the end of my rank kept open a dialogue with a friend inside the BBC while I established a streaming link with Radio Australia (which was actually broadcasting BBC material rather than a domestic perception). In fact the internal network collapsed that afternoon under the sustained assault we made endeavouring to access the outside world electronically.

Everything ground to halt while we absorbed the hijacking and crashing of four planes within the north-east of the United States, we listened to the reports of the collapse of the twin towers, gruesome speculation about the toll and the motives or those behind the attacks, the early moves by the US administration to get control and the early concerns that the events in the US were part of a bigger plan or would be replicated elsewhere.

The South Tower collapse commenced very shortly before 15:00 (London) and the North Tower came down almost precisely half an hour later.

I left the office at around 1630 and made my way on foot to Liverpool Street amid stories of the evacuation of Canary Wharf - to which a lot of financial institutions had moved in recent years and which is particularly distinct in the London skyline. I had always preferred the twenty minute walk to the hassle of a tube trip round from Farringdon. I enjoyed the exercise and the chance to see London from the pavement up.

My usual route on foot took me up the stairs to the Viaduct and then past St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, the church where one of my sets of Gx5 Grandparents was married aeons ago, and the Old Bailey. Before the end of Newgate Street I normally turn left, past the old Post Office building onto London Wall, past the museum, and up to Moorgate and then South Place and Eldon Street/Broadgate and the station entrance there.

But that night I chose instead to take the route I rarely used; rather than go left up King Edward I carried on along Newgate, past the tube station and St Paul's Cathedral and then on up Cheapside and Poultry to Threadneedle, which took me past the Old Lady and the Stock Exchange then onto old Broad Street, then across London Wall and ultimately to the same Broadgate entrance.

The roads on this route are narrower, there is a sense of closeness or tightness about the environment, the pavements too are narrow and a great deal of scaffolding clutters them. Also it isn't so flat, the roads undulate gently and with the older architecture (except for the wall itself of course, lower remnants of which really are Roman) it is an altogether more interesting walk if longer and more tiring. Ordinarily the route is like the bull run, but with the herd stampeding in two directions (one lot for the overground, the other lot for St Paul's and Bank tube stations).

Memory plays tricks; it seemed that night to be twilight and cold. It feels rather as I imagine it would after the bomb went off (somewhere else, obviously).

While one of the two key centres for global capitalism might just have been brought to its knees this one still stood, physically at least. Suited workers of all ages drifted out onto the streets as I passed their buildings; to wander around aimlessly, quiet. Many huddled in doorways or the entrance to alleyways and smoked frantically. At this stage no one yet had any clear idea of the scale of the loss of life or the meaning behind the attacks; in fact we didn't know if it really was over.

The scene at the station was like something out of bedlam, with hoards attempting to force their way onto the limited number of pre-peak hour services while railway staff struggled to keep things safe. I wanted a newspaper, something concrete to cling to although it was far too soon for any comprehensive or balanced coverage. I eventually managed to buy one from a vendor up on Bishopsgate and made my way back down to the concourse and onto a train that got me part of the way home. It was crammed full of people getting out early in a panic given the speculation about similar attacks on London, or because their employer had sent them home early.

The train was silent, all the way out to the junction where I left it. What on earth could we say to one another.

I spent the evening and the following day at home immersed in the intense media coverage which followed. To a remarkable degree compared with many similarly or seemingly 'earth-shattering' stories the prolonged coverage was justified by the way in which the story continued to emerge and evolve over an extended period. The death toll came down, mercifully, and it became apparant that virtually no one had been trapped in the wreckage and survived.

One of the most deeply affected companies was Cantor Fitzgerald, what we were calling a Financial Intermediary with few direct comparators. Its staff, largely trapped above the point of impact had been decimated. It didn't escape me that not so much earlier, before the project went horribly wrong, the idea had been floated that I might fly out to the US to interview an appropriate senior exec for information for a research project I was doing on Financial Intermediaries in the US, London and on the Continent.

The following day and with the entire world still grappling with the enormity of the attack, the so-called Assault on America, I went back into the office, switched on my computer and went into my emails. Almost the first thing I saw was an email from the local leader of one of my projects: an US technology company with a particularly high profile in printing.

The Global lead partner for this particularly important client of the firm, a guy I'd been in conference calls with as recently as the previous fortnight, a guy I had saved emails from had been on one of the flights (UA175, which crashed in to the South Tower, the second to be struck).

Some one I knew, albeit not so well, had been killed. What happened was no longer abstract or remotely horrific. And it got worse later in the day when the official notification from the office of the Global Managing Partner hit my in-box. Four of our people were among those on the hijacked planes; two of them were partners and two of them were very young and new to the Firm.

Three of them were travelling on business but Dan, and this was absolutely the worst of it, was returning home after a holiday with his partner and their three year old son - the same age as my daughter. Quite what went on inside that plane for Dan, Ronald and their boy from the moment the hijackers made their move to the moment of impact is something I cannot bring myself to dwell on but I cannot forget either. I remained with the firm for another 16 months, but the light went out that day a bit.

The FI project turned into a disaster, for reasons wholly unrelated to this commentary, while the US tech firm continued to be a client with work for me coming through periodically. I made manager but there was no promised land. When I was offered a sizeable payout to leave I went without a backward glance, relieved to be free to rediscover my soul and rebuild my self respect.

My need for this freedom was as you may already have deduced not even largely a result of my time with the firm, and some of its people paid a far higher price for working there than I ever did.

The last thing I did before my departure, my 'switching off of the lights", was to delete the last saved emails in my account; and they were the ones from Dan.

Where did the letters come from

I'm painting myself a dark shade of black, and have little if any interest in mitigation. This is it with gloves off.

But that doesn't mean explanations are utterly redundant.

The letters, deeply personal, caustic and pathetic by turn were not filched from a hiding place; they were gathered up from where they'd been left: left lying around in his room for me to find.

So here is the first explanation.

The house is at one end of a terrace, a group of four adjoining houses. The other three are 'two up, two downs'. This fantastical English contrivance is precisely what it claims to be: a house with two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs. They typically were constructed in the days before indoor conveniences, in the days when the working classes who were their occupants had no expectations. The kitchen was rudimentary, washing facilities were portable and entire families, typically large in the days before contraception, lived cheek by jowl in such small premises.

Two doors up from us, in one the two middle houses there lived when we arrived here a very, very old lady. She had been born in the house, one of something like 12 children. The shed that took up most of the 'garden' had in fact been built to accommodate the overspill; and by some miracle they did not all perish of cold.

At some time in the relatively recent past a previous owner had an extension built onto what is now our house. Each of the other three houses has an extension but in each of their cases the extension is a bathroom built onto the back of the house at ground level. In our case the extension is effectively a 'two-up-two-down' built along side. In it we have a kitchen, dining area, third bedroom and bathroom. So in the original part of the house we have a long living area knocked through and upstairs we have two bedrooms. And we have all the garden front and back still.

Since very soon after moving in our daughter and I have shared the second double bedroom, the bedroom in the new part of the house. The fat bastard has had the really big double bedroom which is in the old part of the house all to himself.

Periodically, usually when he is absent for a week or thereabouts, I go in wearing full body armour and render the place safe for normal human occupation. In the process I gather together black sacks of rubbish comprising stale food, empty wrappers, drink containers, cigarette packets, the discarded inserts from said packets, newspapers, magazines, cotton buds, used tissues and other unmentionable detritus.

The mountains of clothing, some washed some unwashed, are brought together and bundled up so that I might dust and vacuum the floor, wash the walls and generally smarten up the place. Once I actually re-painted.

The letters from his mother emerged in the course of this cleaning. They were there, lying about amongst the above mentioned detritus. I thought it only right that I should be discriminating in what I threw out and so I checked everthing before I disposed of it; and that is how I came to discover that his mother maintained a rather one-sided correspondence with her son through the difficult years.

Should I have thrown them away realising that they were personal correspondence. Possibly yes. I kept them not really out of any consideration for posterity but because they cast a very particular light on that dark passage of time, provide another voice, another narrative.

And since I'm providing my version of events it is only right and fair that another speak too, since those letters so patently came from the heart.

Further depuration

I have spent some time today before going to work this afternoon in re-reading some of the letters from his mother he left lying around during the particularly difficult time between our move into this house and September 2001.

September 2001 changed things for us though in unexpected ways that were not immediately obvious, and for the moment at least this is a digression.

After we moved here in November 1998 I secured a move onto the 'fee generating' side of the business; the respectable, serious side of the business. Everyone else, however senior, is just 'back office' and despised.

I started at absolutely the bottom rung of the ladder as a trainee on my previous salary. A few months in I had apparently been promoted because a restructuring eliminated my trainee grade and labelled me an 'assistant' which previously had been the appellation of those on the rung above trainee. I got no pay rise to go with the new title. I had a lap top and a mobile and business cards and a nice little line in small client assignments that after a couple of weeks had already become perilously straightforward.

I was awarded a pay increase in the summer of 1999 but things were still difficult. The fat bastard claimed to be working but he claimed to be working with the MOD and it was pretty much impossible for me to believe that. He'd have had to pass a security check that looked not only at him but his wife. And I'd have been the stumbling block.

Besides he seemed chronically short of money except immediately after he'd been to see his parents. At the time from my salary I was paying the mortgage principle and interest, the covering pension, the council tax, the tv licence and the child care. On top of that I was seemingly expected to find money for food, clothes and the things a toddler needs such as nappies. I was on less than £20,00o per annum before tax and NI.

Our house payments were about £500 including mortgage, pension and council tax; on top of that I paid about £140 per week(around £580 per month) in child care. You do the sums and work out how much I could have left given that I also had to pay to get into and out of London on a daily basis at £270 per month for a ticket.

The pay rise merely narrowed the immense gap between my incomings and our outgoings.

I wanted to be able to work from home occasionally and so toward the end of our first year in the house I set out to establish the technical fault on our telephone line he claimed to be trying to sort out. No such fucking thing, of course. He'd run up a colossal bill with the telephone company and we'd been cut off.

The bill arose from an ill-fated venture with the former Chairman of a private company he'd been employed by briefly. The idea had been for him to run recruitment from home and to do this he'd had broadband installed. I'd agreed to him having the installation done provided the company picked up the costs but, of course, I was lumbered with the bill. Or rather his parents were. They gave us the money that enabled me to pay off the telephone bill. I negotiated with the other utilities for staged payments. A further promotion coming in the following summer would see my salary rise towards the kind of level where I could support us without any input from the fat bastard.

I'm reminded of this by the content of the letters. Some of them, of course, are innocuous enough; the usual stuff between a fretful mother and her only son living some distance apart. But other passages are altogether darker and more difficult.

And since I now have to go to work I'll have to leave them for another time.

The Christening and its aftermath

After the first initial shock and the realisation of how it must have happened I had to tell him. I told him that he needed to come home after work and he did. I sat him down on the sofa and gave it to him simply and directly.

And that's when he uttered those words. Firstly "there goes our lifestyle" and then "of course, if its a boy it will be called x and if its a girl it will be called y". No consultation and no consideration.

Appalling, sickening and only partially comprehensible in the context. It was difficult enough for me to believe and I knew that I'd not had sexual contact with anyone since our marriage four years earlier. How much more difficult might it be for a man to believe when there had been so little sexual activity within the marriage that the child was his.

Was the insistence on the names his revenge? If it was he got his fill for I can barely bring myself to utter my child's name without feeling sick.

I had little time in which to prepare for motherhood. January came around all too rapidly and the nursery was filled with gifts and hand-me-downs through family and friends. The delivery was uncomplicated and we were home just a little more than 24 hours after I went in. And then I was pretty much on my own after the initial flurry of interest. We, the two of us, would go for walks in the parkland along the river and I would talk to her, promise her that I would get us one day out of the mess I had landed us in.

At the time of her arrival our financial situation was as good as it had ever been. We had money in the bank, some savings but not a lot. I was not sure how much and concerned about taking unpaid leave to extend my four months of maternity leave to six. I asked him one evening if we still had the shares his parents had given us, if we still had that financial resource upon which to fall if, in the event of some unforeseen problem arising, we needed to dip into savings beyond the cash.

He assured me repeatedly that we did still have them, that he hadn't sold them, that the certificates 'were in the house somewhere' and he looked me in the eye as he told me this and I believed him.

I had to.

It was either that or return to work when my daughter was less than four months old something I wanted desperately to avoid.

So I took the chance that he might be telling me the truth and extended my maternity leave to six months including two months on no pay.

Then there came the matter of the Christening. I agreed to it and to a particular selection of Godparents from among friends. None were particularly suitable but they were the best available. I made it abundantly clear that if family were to be included then there must be reasonable equity, some balance in the represenation of the two sides.

The day itself, in early May, was unseasonably warm and the robe already on the small side. From the moment it went on my normally easy going baby fretted. We walked around to where the service was to take, gathering friends and family members along the way. And we arrived to the jaw dropping sight of the priest we expected to conduct the service halfway up the front porch in overalls giving the painted weatherboard facade a fresh coat.

He was deeply apologetic for double booking himself in this way and scurried off. In fact the service began only slightly behind time. But the worst of it for me was to come. As those chosen to stand stepped forward they were joined by a cousin of his and her husband. The bastard, the complete bastard. Crossed again, without the decency to openly and honestly argue his corner he'd simply gone behind my back. I cried inside through the service as loudly as my daughter did on the outside and wanted nothing more than to retreat to a room upstairs and hide from the gathered clan below.

We had the reception afterwards at our house, a three story town house I'd spent the best part of a month getting ready for the day. In the course of preparations I delved into the deepest darkest recesses of the garage on the ground floor looking for household items long since packed away given how little entertaining we did.

The house was rented accommodation that came fully furnished so the garage contained our furniture and the cars had to park up on the forecourt. I dragged out serving platters, good cutlery and glassware, the damask table cloths, washed and pressed as necessary and in the course of so doing other things came to light.

I got my revenge on him for his act of treachery, one day shortly after the Christening when his parents called over. His mother was hardly through telling me how pleased she was that we were making a go of things, when I gave them a dose of reality.

I showed them the sale of share documentation that proved conclusively not only that the shares were no longer ours but that they'd been sold long ago, long before the baby was conceived and that when he'd stood there and looked me in the eye and told me he hadn't sold them he'd been lying through his fucking teeth.

He's an only child and I know they made huge sacrifices to give him a good start in life, a home in a very good part of London and education at a (minor) public school. Quite how he turned out the way he did is beyond me; that day his parents were forced to confront reality only briefly and see for perhaps the first time in almost twenty years the true character of the only child they brought into this world.

I regretted a little forcing this on them, but it became clear pretty soon that they had a vast capacity for self deception, perhaps essential for their own protection, and life returned to normal for them and their precious blue eyed boy. I remain to this day typecast as the wicked wife in all of this.

My current job

After the hurly burly of the charity shop this new job is an absolute doddle. I'm a part time supervisor, part time cash office administrator in a supermarket chain outlet.

My regulation hours are made up of two shifts, one Sunday one Monday afternoon/evening. During Sunday I do the lot, bring in cash and count it while keeping the checkouts churning over. Our checkout operators are not permitted to override anything or do much that requires any amount of thought. Basically they're treated like trained monkeys. Pushing predefined buttons in a structured sequence produces a predicted outcome. Any deviation from the norm must be handled by a supervisor. So any mistake, however trivial must be handled by a supervisor.

Let us say, for example, that the checkout operator mistakenly selects the menu item for broccoli rather than sprouts. The checkout operator is not permitted (indeed has not the facility) to delete the erroneous item.

Instead he or she must call for a supervisor. Someone has to trot out with the manager key for the till, retrieve the wrong entry and delete it. The operators are trained to enter the correct item and continue processing purchases while waiting for the supervisor but if the mistake is made at the end rather than at the beginning of the customer's trolley load a delay is inevitable.

Similarly, some items not appearing in the computer which drives the menus on the checkouts must be keyed in by a supervisor.

Worst of all on some shifts is the fact that an underage operator may not sell alcohol. In the old days all she or he had to do was ask permission of an adjacent (over age) operator. Today that isn't possible; a supervisor must trot out with a key and process any alcohol purchase.

We're rather reliant on some shifts for student monkeys who are all too often underage and so the supervisor is back and forth constantly.

That's it. That's what I do as supervisor. I make sure we have sufficient checkouts open, balancing demand against staff levels and then I make entries our operators are not permitted to make.

Never mind the more complex stuff for one moment, such as handling the licensed goods, the TVs, set top boxes and recorders. Sales of such items must be reported to the licensing authority. That means paperwork which our operators cannot be trusted with. And refunds are not something even the most experienced operator can be trusted with.

Except that later at night, particularly on my Monday shift, when it makes no sense to have me sitting on my fattening arse watching the TV monitoring the checkouts and waiting for something to happen and I'm out on the shop floor learning a completely different aspect of what makes the shop tick I can't be the sole resource the operators have to fall back on so one of the more trusted shelf stackers is given a set of keys and the authority to do my job.

Banking is a completely different matter, though just as dull.

Stand by Your Man

He got her home safely and she is now upstairs pretending to be asleep.

I cooked some pork and herb sausages and ate them wrapped in soda bread in lieu of a properly balanced meal, since they'd stopped off at the Evil M on the way. They also came home bearing gifts. Not just the black tights for school I had hinted would be most welcome but also two jumpers, a quite lovely skirt, some jazzy tights for casual wear, some knickers, some thermal vests and a set of jazzy underwear comprising vest and shorty pants that were the in thing in beach wear last summer.

Thankfully the line was drawn at a pair of boots given that she has two pairs already and the shop the duffel coat his mother had wanted to buy wasn't available in her size.

She went just about straight to bed but as far as I can tell she hasn't settled.

He's finally fucked off. Long after I wanted of course and long after his being absent could be any use to me.

I'm sitting here and I've had about three units of alcohol and I'll probably get through quite a bit more before the night's out (or before he comes back). I need to dry out desperately. Today, after the after effects had begun to lift I swore I wouldn't drink today but, well, as I've already recorded I have done so.

Currently I'm listening to Tammy extolling the dubious benefits of Standing By Your Man.

Yes, Tammy, Sometimes it is hard to be a woman and it is equally hard to give your love to just a man. You're bloody right I've had bad times, and he the fucking freeloader has had plenty of good times; I've understood that all too well.

I long ago lost count of the number of times I'd forgiven him, and I've forgiven him plenty of times since. Divining quite why he is the way he is would challenge a psycho-analyst of freudian genius if not necessarily freudian persuasion. Trouble is, Tammy I no longer love him and I no longer love him largely because there's nothing about him I can be proud of, given that he's such a poor excuse for a man.

And that's why I justify so long ago denying him my two arms or any other part of my body to get warm with on even the coldest of nights. And he made bloody sure he wasn't lonely.

You say "show the world you love him", but what if that's a lie; a downright filthy dirty lie? What should I do then Tammy. Should I walk away or stand, like I have been since November 1991. Giving him the best (and reproductive) years of my life. He can fuck of and fuck someone anytime and get a second family but I won't be able to. I've squandered my life on the fucker.

And that sect his mother's an adherent of would honour me for having stood by him all this time, kept my head down and taken the abuse. They would think me a good woman for having wasted my life; my God given life.

Misogamistic

The Fat Bastard has taken my daughter to visit his mother in London. I should not be so ungracious and any signed-up member of Father's For Justice might see in me the epitome of the Ex-wife (not that I am yet) As Bitch.

In fact all I want is for him to get her back safely.

I've given up hope of him seeing how hurtful his behaviour is. I know his mother has baled us out again financially and I'm grateful for that, of course, but my mother has never seen her grand daughter, barely spoken to her. She's not hugged her, kissed her, cuddled her. So how can they feel they've missed out or been deprived.

We have a crisis coming up in January and on her birthday when we're both supposed to be working all day. He wants to send her away to his mother for the entire weekend, from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. But it is her birthday, and she is my baby and I'm not having her away from me ALL weekend.

There must be an alternative. If there were not I might have to swallow the rising gorge and let it happen, but he won't even look for an alternative and time is passing by. Of course she'd love it and on another weekend I would not feel so strongly about it.

But...

I'd live in fear that she'd take my daughter to a gathering of the particular sect she is attached to, stuffing my child's impressionable mind with their particular brand of gynaephobia, misogynism, homophobia, racism and general narrowness of vision of humanity.

To a lesser extent I fear what she'd say about me and about my intention to return home to Australia. This godawful country is not home, never will be, and I married on the understanding that we would live in Australia rather than here. I admit my view, my attitude is heavily coloured by the misery I've endured in and as a result of my foolish marriage; that things are not as bad as I have felt them to be.

I will take her out there, down there, back home with me and she will become wholly Australian. There she'll get a robust education and acquire the hard veneer which will serve her so well in this diabolical 'man's world'.

He has family out there including a sister of his mother and her family; there would be no restrictions on him travelling there regularly to visit given that he's British and Australia is a Commonwealth country, beyond the basic Visa requirement. And although I would never sponsor his settlement out there, and he'd never reach the points qualification without such support, I would never stand in his way of travelling out and letting him have access to my daughter. I'd never seek a divorce either.

After marriage to him, marriage holds no appeal. In the abstract I can still appreciate both its appeal and its societal value but viscerally I am indubitably misogamistic.

The Safest Man in England

In the late summer of 1997 I began to realise that 'something was not as it should be'. I was putting on a bit of weight that no amount of dieting would shift and my abdomen felt 'different'. I went to the doctor not sure why - I'd been told at 19 that I wouldn't ever have a child without intervention, so I couldn't be pregnant. Could I?

What made this even less likely is that by 1997 things between us had disintegrated, totally. We had sex twice that year. Once in April and once in July. And then the symptoms that took me to the doctor.

I went to a well woman clinic.

At the well woman clinic I described my symptoms to a nurse and as I did so I listened to myself with another ear that could hear things as she heard them and I could hear myself describing myself being pregnant but I couldn't be. Could I?

I went home and told him.

His first words were 'there goes our lifestyle'. He drew breath and next decreed that if 'it' was a boy it would be named after his father and if a girl 'it' would be named after his mother.

I hate my daughter's name. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Even now after all these years even having to use it makes me feel sick to my stomach. And I will never, ever forgive him. Never. He disgusts me, in every fibre and aspect of his being he disgusts me.

I loathe him.

To protect myself against ever having a murder charge brought against him I told everyone I worked with for years the truth, the absolute truth, including all the anecdotes. I made him the safest man in England. For only under the most severe and undoubted provocation could I ever give him what he so richly deserves.

Fishing expedition

On Monday night X rather than Y was Duty Manager; the first time we had worked together.

There were few problems although I think she was watching my work rate and may have concluded that it wasn't high; I was taking the opportunity afforded by her failure to push me to take some time out to write up some careful notes. There was also a breakdown in communication at closing time which allowed a couple of chancers to charge through.

We also got rather cosmopolitan at one point, dealing three-way with stranded Polish customer who had topped up his phone at the kiosk only to find 20 minutes later that he still had no credit. Fortunately Regina was working the shop floor and could explain to him that sometimes the credit takes longer than this to come through and he needed to be patient.

The difficulty in fact lay in making Regina understand using English what it was we wanted her to explain in Polish to him. Whatever she said to him he had a smile on his face when he left.

Early in the shift when the office was quite full there was some sniggering about the Manager and one of the Manager's Assistants. Someone told me years ago that the two of them were conducting an affair, that he gets beaten up by his wife and that she too is married to a violent bully. The Fat Bastard has added that one of the supervisors who is married to the woman's husband's brother (ie, they're sisters-in-law through marriage to brothers) is quivering with unrequited passion for the manager.

At this point I should explain that he's short (around 5'2" or 5'3") middle aged and balding. The Manager has altered his shifts to make them coincide with those of his paramour. Good luck to the pair of them.

Later in the afternoon I heard all about X's gynaecological travails; after she left the office I had to agree with the one of the young department heads that the freedom with which these middle-aged women discuss their most intimate bodily functions is simply staggering. In all my working life I have never previously been exposed to such grisly detail.

Later still X and I had a quieter more measured conversation and only afterwards when I had had the chance to reflect did it dawn on me that this was all a fishing expedition. She asked a delicately phrased question about the Fat Bastard and me and I admitted that we're really only married in name and living under the same roof for practical reasons. She admired our ability to keep things civilised (ha!) and admitted that she hadn't spoken to her ex in about a couple of decades and that their children have been forced to take sides. She then asked about how we handled one or other of us wanting to bring home a "visitor".

It has been almost eight years since I had anyone else in my bed except in my imagination and I effectively admitted as such. He, on the other hand, is conducting a long term relationship and if she does come here they stay in London or enjoy a weekend break at one or other Euro-capital.

That was when X gave the game away by asking if I meant the woman in America. Oh yes he is soooooo discrete. I'm still not sure if he's been at it with anyone else. In fact he might well have been at it with her. Perhaps that's it. He's been at it with her and she wants to know if what he's told her, which was probably something along the lines of 'she doesn't love me any more and won't care', was true. If only she knew how I'd feel about her if I ever got confirmation; not hate her for fucking my husband but for doing such a bad job of it that he won't leave

White whites, Germany's chancellor and my abs

I should be doing my legs, I should be working on my face, I really ought to be doing something about the abs.

What am I doing?

I'm thanking providence that the Fat Bastard has gone upstairs to bed at this hour, enjoying a beer, typing this, keeping an eye on one of my favourite groups and generally biding my time while the whites get a good boiling wash.

I like my whites white.

Tomorrow morning's drama:

Act One: I don't feel well enough to go to School (you won't go to drama club in the afternoon, oh alright then)

Act Two: I didn't want that for lunch (you should have said something earlier, I don't like xy or z, since when?)

Act Three: I can't find (my school shoes, school bag, reading record, reading book, homework etc, etc; well where did you put them; I don't know; well why should I?)

Act Four: Come on, we're late (I don't want to be late, well get out of bed earlier/eat your breakfast more quickly, get dressed more quickly etc etc)

The Fat Bastard's mother is going to make herself useful and pick up some tights but they probably won't get here before the cold snap does.

I didn't go to a meeting I was supposed to attend earlier this evening and I do NOT feel crippled by guilt about that any more than I do about not attending to my legs, or face or abs or alcohol intact or bank balance.

In the background Anita is wittering on about Angela (hard G) Merckel who has just become Germany's first woman chancellor ... how far we have yet to travel that the sex of a head of government (not head of state in this case) might still be worthy of comment, let alone the bandwidth consumed by particular BBC broadcast for as long as this will go on.

Everything begins somewhere

I'm at home, not alone but ministering to the needs of the off-spring who has a bit of a chesty cough and so is having a couple of days away from school.

It is gone one and I have managed to persuade her to get dressed - 'your father will be home soon' was my weapon of choice. Having gone through good handful of paper from the packet by the printer she has now moved on to Spyro on the PlayStation. Currently it is looping through the backing music while she works through her soup and bread.

The Fat Bastard sent me a text message asking me to call my boss which I've done in the last ten minutes or so. Bearing in mind I'm earning around £80 per week (before tax) on my regular hours which is around $US140 or $AUS190 I think being asked to contribute £15 to the 'Secret Santa' is a weeny bit cheeky. But I can't admit that so I've said yes and will have to buy someone that much worth of Christmas present.

Ouch!

I'm still living in expectation of being hauled off to prison over outstanding debts to various organisations and I'm not confident that next month's bills will be payable; if the mortgage cannot be paid next month I can see us being on the streets before Christmas.

So why did I say yes?