Something not connected to the central thread

If the central thread is the unpicking of my disastrous marriage then real life is Something Not Connected, at least in the context of this blog.

I kept forgetting before I finished up for the year that I have a new mobile number on a pay-as-you-go orange chip that the Fat Bastard bought for me because that way I'll cost him less to call (the two of us being on the same service provider now, how romantic is that?) and failed to pass the new number on to my employers, but they've caught up with me now and I have an extra forty-something hours of work through January alone. That should put an extra couple of pounds in my bank account which will provide the bank manager with a modicum of pleasure.

I've not yet had the chance to check out the rosters and find out who I'll be working with. I think that all the extra shifts are supervising rather than cash office hours, but that does mean I'll be sidling up to all those good looking boys. Yummy.

The other good thing is that of all the shifts only two are 9:00 starts so I still get my mornings to do what ever I want - right up to and including hoping back into bed alone and imagining furiously that I'm not (alone that is).

If he hands over some of his money towards the bills I might get my hair cut this month. Not dramatically altered, just neatened for the New Year.

Speaking of getting under the duvet, it is bloody freezing here. The weather forecast this morning said warmer wetter weather would be coming in from the Atlantic thawing things out and then drowning them. Ha. The snow lying about has just crisped over and the warm wet air keeps colliding with the cold air and dropping further drifts of the white stuff. However much the clowns at the Met Office are paid it is TOO MUCH.

Back history, Part I

Before I get to the gist of this may I say hello to today's crop of visitors from Pennsylvania, including the caller from Easton, PA who dropped by recently and spent enough time to check out today's additions.

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Right. Mentioning the paving slabs in the earlier posting today made me appreciate (via a Long and Winding Road) that I have not provided much back history or any context for my loathing and contempt for the Fat Bastard.

That cannot make it easy to get a handle on the narrative and so, belatedly, I give you random factoids that will accumulate into a reasonably sound and comprehensive if one-sided and therefore inherently biased basis for reading these missives in a somewhat skewed but nonetheless valid context. He can write his own blog and so can she; and if I find them I'll point you to them so you have 'balance'.

Factoid One (with subsidiaries): I am forty one years old. I was born in Canada and brought up by my Australian parents in Australia

Factoid Two (again with subsidiaries): I am highly intelligent, but struggled to maintain the necessary focus to succeed academically. Somehow I managed to scrape together the points to get a university place, where I did economics and history. I also subsequently did a diploma in business administration. More recently I've got part way through a European Studies qualification of some sort or other via the Open University in the UK.

Factoid Three: facing redundancy in 1991 I decided to take advantage of UK visas for commonwealth citizens up to the age of 28 and gave it 'all' up in November for a couple of years of travel.

Factoid Four: in February of the following year I started work under a temp. contract as an economist with a UK government agency and shortly thereafter I met, while working there, the soon to be (hopefully, fingers crossed) ex-husband.

Factoid Five (with subsidiaries): he 'courted' (sorry, that's a ghastly term but I can't think of anything better at the moment) me, while we worked there under the nose of Wife Number One, also an employee and from whom he had not yet bothered to obtain a divorce.

Now I want to make clear right here and now that he told me at the outset he was Divorced as opposed to In The Process of Obtaining (or Being) Divorced. Would I have dated him if I'd known that he was not actually divorced? Probably, yes. The problem lay not in his not being divorced, but in his not being honest about his marital status; and thus was laid down the pattern for our relationship which endures to this day.

I should also make clear that I did date someone else while working there, someone I harbour no ill-feelings towards. It was never, ever going to work between the two of us but I liked him and never meant to hurt him and I did just about managed to not date the two of them at the same time. Not quite succeeding was the meanest thing I have ever done to anyone, I apologised at the time, still regret my behaviour. I don't think I did anything worse, and if I did I apologise for that too.

That's enough factoids for now.

Good-night Pennsylvania

A very long suicide note

Well there you go.

While he was out at work G called. I finally 'fessed to venting a little in this way and after much nagging and undignified whining from her quarter I've given in and told her where to find this.

Her opening gambit was "you have heard of 'the longest suicide note in history', haven't you?"; to which my answer was of course, because I'm many things but not politically illiterate.

To that she came back with "well I think it has some competition".

G's view is that SHE wouldn't know about this or even suspect this without getting in contact with the Fat Bastard, even if they are otherwise separated. And he wouldn't be able to maintain equilibrium in the face of this provocation.

So now G confidently expects me to end up under the paving slabs that make up the patio area in the back garden. She promises faithfully to contact the police if she hasn't heard from or seen me for a couple of days at a stretch ...

how nice to have some faithfulness in my life and relationships.

Just have to mention this ...

The internet ... she is a wonderful thing.

Following this afternoon's series of posts I had a couple of new factoids nestling down comfortably in the back of my mind to be retrieved as necessary.

Having had our meal of cold cuts and cleaned up afterwards, plus gotten a couple of glasses of Fitou inside me I decided to do something I haven't done for a very long time - stick her name in a search engine or two and see what pops up.

Seems grandma may have died back in late July of last year

Also seems that there may after all really be a connection to Abbott ... that did take me by surprise; only my subconscious had really thought that the Abbott Associates-hosted visitor from Lansdale, Pennsylvania might actually be anything other than a coincidence.

But my search turned up an article in which she (you?) were interviewed along with a couple of other senior practitioners in your field for an article on career-building in your particular profession which was published in the trade journal for you people back in March of 2003. A great deal of emphasis was placed in the article, particularly by you, on the importance of networking.

And one of the other two interviewed had formerly worked for a corporation or other entity called Abbott; just Abbott so one can assume that the name is sufficiently familiar within your particular circle not to warrant expansion.

Know someone who currently works at Abbott, dear? Got them looking at this dear? Got you wondering, sweetheart?

Sleep tight, don't let those bed bugs he left behind bite ... least not until you invite them to.

Why couldn't she hail from Georgia

No, she's in Pennsylvania, or from Pennsylvania or she works in Pennsylvania ... but is she watching this.

Come the new year I'll put out a little more about the other side of the affair. So keep tuned sweetheart...

But even today there's someone in Pennsylvania (Abbot Associates, who are you?) tuned in.

We might see more than just a bit of Friends Reunited...

Classic performance

It (the Fat Bastard) worked today as noted earlier; theoretically at work for 6:00am, actually clocked in sometime between 7:00 and 8:00. He left in a fairly heavy fall of snow. Sadly it didn't last long, by the time the infant and I were up the skies had cleared and the lying snow was beginning to soften around the edges.

We did have a second fall a little later in the morning, but that too lasted but a short period before the skies again cleared and the great melt began.

It got in relatively on time; there proceeded a discussion about what we'll eat tonight. We have a beef topside roast to be cooked at some time over the holiday period. We also have a lamb leg in the freezer that needs to be cooked fairly soon. The upshot of the discussion is that we're having left overs and veg. because he and the Best Mate are rather behind in the development of their latest pub quiz.

He has just left to spend and hour around at their house, but only after mucking around for about 15 minutes and generally getting on my nerves. He's come back here, eat, walk out leaving dishes behind and spend the rest of the evening over there. Undoubtedly huge amounts of alcohol will be drunk and numberless cigarettes will be consumed and he will stumble in late and get to work late and leave his room a pigsty and come in late and... and... and...

Let's face it, if he wasn't a lying, thieving, cowardly, slovenly, indolent, self-centred, reactionary alcoholic hmm what? my life would lack one of its central ingredients - and wouldn't that be a wonderful thing.

So sorry mum

I said this was the worst Christmas I've known, it cannot have been much better for my family to whom I owe an immense and heartfelt apology.

I've been alone this Christmas, but for my daughter. To my mother, my sister, her daughter, my maternal grandmother, my mother's brother, his wife and their three children, to my late father's only son and to my wider paternal and maternal families I can only say sorry, that the breach has not yet been healed and that I have not yet taken that one way trip. Do you still want me to make it? I was alone with B and my thoughts this Christmas and they were with you.

Perhaps the house in London will be sold soon, the money will come through and we can find some way of dividing things up both equitably and profitably so that I can make that new start. If I didn't have that hope and the belief in it then I would have lost my mind at some point in the past fifteen years, but I do still hope and I do still believe and it will happen, provided you wish it so.

L.

What we did, part II

Christmas gifts included a good deal of Bratz stuff for B, which she loved as well as lots of craft stuff. She also was given a jigsaw, a CD player, a microscope, some clothes, lots of chocolate, a teddy bear, some 'smellies', some jewellery and so on and so forth. She didn't miss out.

She also enjoyed the Mah Jongg although this year, for the first time, she didn't win a hand.

Before that we ate. She managed to get three sprouts inside her, well done that girl and a whole lot of stuffing which she has suddenly become rather passionate about. I 'only' drank one bottle of wine and then one small bottle of beer but consumed over the course of the day and with much food to absorb it I think that not too excessive. I certainly didn't feel like I'd really over indulged when I woke up the next day.

B thought David Tennant as the new Doctor was rather OK and so did I. The best of them are fabulous in their own way. I grew up on Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker and those two apart only Christopher Eccleston has made the grade in my opinion until now. If I can get past Tennant as Casanova he might, just might make it too.

We spent boxing day with the same couple we'd been to midnight Eucharist with on Christmas Eve. We drove over to watch the annual Mud Race where something like 200 insane individuals strip down or dress up and then clamber down the muddy bank of the river, wade across what's left of it at low tide, clamber back up on the other muddy side, slither around and arc the make their way back across to the finish line.

We bumped into a couple of other families from town, got very, very cold, ate hot chips cooked in loads of saturated fats then drove back to eat and drink at their house. The children, our one and their one, stayed upstairs watching videos while downstairs we worked our way through three CDs of 'Name that tune' where you are given 10secs or thereabouts of song intro and have to name title and artist.

We clung to the sixties and seventies and didn't do too badly. I managed to extract us shortly before midnight, quite knackered and quickly to bed.

The Fat Bastard has gone to work this morning so it is just the two of us. We had loads of snow in the early hours of this morning and a further fall a little while ago. In between we've had clear blue skies and a winter sun powerful enough to turn the white stuff into grey sludge.

I'm finally back at the keyboard, looking forward rather than backward - this was the worst Christmas of my life, but if I dwelt on that for any period of time I'd make myself miserable and I can't afford to do that if I'm going to drag myself out of this domestic nightmare.

What we did

First of all we went to the midnight carol service at the church at top of the hill... it was the first time we'd been in to a service and it left me with mixed feelings. Even before we got there things went slightly awry. First of all the Fat Bastard mentioned it to his best mate, who mentioned it to his wife who decided she'd quite like to go along... The BM had thought if his wife went with me and B the Fat Bastard would be off the hook and free to go to the pub... instead we all ended up shoulder to shoulder in the pews and at the altar rail.

It was a long night for B who collapsed almost as soon as we got in then didn't wake up until almost 9 next morning. By that time we'd got the presents around the tree and mummy was beginning to recover from her Brandy-fuelled hangover.

Because the ham had been cooked for us by his mother (and no cloves, not the best ham I've ever had) we managed to keep everything on schedule and the only real slip was overcooking the roasted spuds.

The dining area looked reasonably presentable we sat down about when we'd planned, evaded Her Maj. and got in a round of Mah Jongg before it was time to sit down and watch the Christmas special Dr Who which was most excellent.

We even managed to keep on top of the dishes so I was quite relaxed going to bed.

I don't think that B was thrilled with the presents she received... very few toys, mostly things to do or make. Too bad. Hopefully things will get better for us this year. Now that I'm in paid employment I'm encouraged that we can turn things around and that some time during this year I can ship him out.

Is Philadelphia tuned in today? Do you hear this? I'm still planning to ship him out; yes, still planning to ship him out. Get it? Are you sitting there thinking of me as the miserable and inadequate little woman, woefully failing to match up to the requirements of being the wife, the life partner of this man, your man? If he's your man why is he camped under my roof, eating at my table, making my bathroom squalid?

Do you see me clinging to him, desperate not to be left alone? Get your head out of the bucket of swill and add things up again, sweetheart. You might find yourself remembering that old warning to be careful what you wish for lest you receive it.

Pennsylvania calling

Hello Pennsylvania,

Someone out there is paying attention. Someone out there spent the very best part of an hour reading through what I've posted here. The chances of The Other Matter picking this up are negligible, to say the very least, but having someone, anyone from the same State of The Union tuning in is utterly delicious.

We're about to head up the hill to the midnight service ... he's coming along, hee hee, to this heathen service.

Merry Christmas to one and all.

Merry Christmas

Thursday was Big Shop day. It was the day we purchased most of what it is we require to get us over or through the festive season, comestibles-wise.

I took the offspring up to the supermarket at around lunch time with the intention of slipping in a bit of private purchasing, giving her the chance to pick out a couple of items for the Fat Bastard's sack.

Our arrival coincided with that of, well let's call him Alexander, one of the bunch of young guys who work either the shop floor or the checkouts. After a conversation with him and wandering the shop floor picking out a few items I realised I'd left my cards at home so back we trooped. On the way the Fat Bastard and I spoke briefly - he'd decided we'd do the family Big Shop later in the day so we went indoors again and waited, and waited.

Later, en famille we went back again and bumped into ... Ally and he and I had another little chat.

We lugged the load home and went back for the second part of Big Shop and, once again we bumped into ... Ally. This third time we met up at the check-out where we were joined by both the Store Manager and the Manager's Assistant with whom he is allegedly having an affair. Well under those circumstances Ally obviously felt under no particularly strong obligation to scoot off; after all we were a bunch of employees talking semi-shop. This shop talk was centred on my loan of the santa dress of mine to Manager1 who will be wearing it today as part of the 'festive' ambiance they will be endeavouring to create. She'd taken it upstairs and tried it on, and left it there.

Young Ally ducked back up at one stage and brought it back for me to wear yesterday for my do... [see the other blog for details ;)]. And he stayed around chatting for a bit.

In the time since the Fat Bastard hasn't stopped twitching and I haven't stopped enjoying the spectacle. Ally may or may not be, as some would have it, gay; but his attentions have certainly planted in the Fat Bastard's mind the shocking thought that the rest of the (male) world might just not be entirely impervious to what charms I still have.

All of this has put a certain spring in my step, let me tell you.

Merry, merry Christmas to one and all...

Christmas is coming

Hmmn... I haven't finished buying Christmas presents, I haven't finished writing Christmas cards, I have got only as far as writing up the food list, I've barely scratched the surface of the cleaning and rearranging required to make it possible for us to sit down for Christmas lunch... that was the state of play as of first thing this morning, and I woke late with a hangover.

The offspring has finished school for the (calendar) year and so I had great difficulty dragging myself out from under the duvet.

Somehow, though, the day did get better. I ... well I said I was hungover, didn't I ... I can't quite remember what triggered it but by mid morning I was out side tidying the garden ... yes the garden got the once over. I swept, straightened cut back, pulled up and bagged it all up. It actually looks quite presentable.

A taste of success can have a peculiar effect on a person. I went straight from my minor triumph among the weeds to the interior and by the end of the afternoon we could have eaten at the dining table (although of course, we didn't; we sat down to re-runs of Series 1 of the West Wing).

We might, just might get there. I cannot quite believe it, but it is true. The fat bastard provided food and drink again tonight - given we don't get paid until tomorrow I'm increasingly sure he's borrowed the money from his mother to keep us afloat up to Christmas.

Who cares. We'll get there and the offspring won't know how close a run thing it was.

Feed me, Seymour

It is ten minutes before 6pm, it has been dark for almost two hours now and it has been cold all day. The fat bastard was at work today (he left the house about half an hour after he was supposed to clock in, but came in more than two hours after he was supposed to clock off - and we're about ten minutes from the workplace).

He came in with absolutely nothing for the table this evening, not one thing. He's now, just now, gone back out to get the food we'll eat tonight. Why he could not have simply brought it back with him is something beyond my comprehension, and this happens as a matter of routine.

He sat down when he came in and put a DVD on, sprawled out on the floor stuck his hand down his pants and that was it for him for the afternoon. The Christmas cards to work colleagues remain unwritten, as do those to neighbours. I'll end up doing them on my own and he'll be offended because I've sealed them and not left them so that he could add his name in his own writing. This too is something that we go through every year. He's a bright man, but not bright enough to learn that he needs to get the Christmas cards done in good time if he wants them done his way.

While I'm on the subject of Christmas he almost certainly has not yet contacted his mother's sisters regarding buying the video player to complement the videos we've bought for her. When I asked him yesterday evening after getting in from work myself he gave me some garbled story of having spoken to Anne's husband who is almost deaf and couldn't understand and so on and so forth ... it sounded like one of the fat bastard's crocks and I've enough experience to know one when I hear one, so that's probably what it was.

On the other hand he has just phoned from the supermarket to ask me what I want to drink. Presumably, since he was very strapped for cash a few days ago he's tapped his mother for a top up while he was with her on Sunday and he's bringing me back some beers.

Part of the furniture

I've done almost a month in this particular asylum ...

Yesterday, for example was my cash office/supervisor day; I spend the afternoon counting cash in and the evening supervising the junior staff. Well that's the theory at any rate.

Manager3 was the 'Manager's Assistant' on duty when I arrived and at 2pm or shortly thereafter Manager1 came on. The latter was, was by her own admission, very hungover as was The Checkout Supervisor who is the afternoon supervisor while I'm doing the banking.

Fine. The Office Manager left things in pretty good shape, and since we were fully staffed for the Christmas run-up I was free actually to do my job when I took over from her at 2pm. During the afternoon Manager1 plied me with tea in sync with plying herself with tea in a forlorn effort to drink away the hangover symptoms. The Office party had taken place the previous evening, hence the sore heads.

Some of the young talent were on show. X is tall, has gorgeous skin, come-hither eyes and beautifully thick, dark hair I'd love to run my fingers through. The big bonus though is his voice, though I must learn to control myself when he drawls maaarvelous over the intercom. I'm a sucker for a rich, deep voice. Working here has made me realise that men's arses really don't do it for me ... I've given up looking out for the rear end that has Manager3 in thrall, through boredom.

College has obviously finished for the year because X and a number of others were on show from immediately after lunch. X is only the pick of the bunch in so much as he has that particular combination of qualities almost guaranteed to float my boat.

Except that he doesn't make me laugh ... that's Y's particular strength; he isn't as conventionally good looking as X but makes up for that with buckets of charm and nearly total lack of inhibition.

In the absence of Marian I was able to pick up the threads confidently and if I hadn't lost or miscounted the occasional coupon here and voucher there or Ten pound note somewhere else I might have got the whole job finished with a couple of hours to spend on the shop floor.

Oh, and there was also the small matter of Angela's domestic travails.

She has a couple of daughters and one of them seems to be a complete basket case. She's almost 21 years old, slid through school without achieving anything credible and has since not held a job. With the assistance of el Supremo, with whom she has allegedly been conducting an affair that has now lasted several years, Manager1 has secured the ratbag daughter a job in a restaurant where el Supremo's lovely son is Assistant Manager.

The difficulty is that the restaurant is in London and the young lady can't cope with being away from home or having to commute in to London or alternatively share student-type digs or do her own washing or in anyway be self-reliant and so, after 1 whole day in her job, she's run home to mummy.

The afternoon saw me sitting at my desk, trying to account for every last penny of the almost twenty thousand pounds worth of cash, coupons and vouchers coming through our tills in Christmas week while the most senior person on the premises is engaged in a slanging match with one of her children.

Around 7pm el Supremo turned up in civvies to do some shopping, but to no-one's surprise he pretty promptly disappeared upstairs and shortly afterwards we saw the last for the time being of Manager1. With the two of them closeted upstairs there was no one left on the shop floor to keep things moving, with two days to go before the very top level management descend on us for a very detailed inspection of absolutely everything.

I have some sympathy for romeo and juliet, according to town talk the respective spouse of each is violent and who among us has the private life that provides a sound platform from which to launch a sustainable criticism.

The fact though is that she came in ill and ineffective, and the pair of them subsequently allowed their separate and collective private lives to get in the way of the running of the store.

If this were a singular occurrence it would ill behove me to criticise lest I find myself in similar circumstances. Sadly this sort of thing happens all too often, which is why we are likely to receive a less than glowing report from headquarters in the wake of their visit later this week.

Where was I?

Um, well, I did draft something back on Thursday, which I must go back and read (although I'll probably bin it as I would most things I post having given them mature consideration).

Couple of reasons for prolonged silence not the lesser of which is that I've been sick almost all week with some wretched bug that gave me a shockingly sore throat for several days and then knocked me completely sideways.

The other thing is that the Fat Bastard has not actually done much to upset me, not anything really major at least.

We ducked and weaved our way through a quite hectic social week last week and came out at the other end almost intact. Now we've got the house coming together for Christmas and have scraped together enough money to have quite a good one AND I (seemingly, fingers crossed) induced some sensible decisions.

We have a collection of materials from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts for his mother; dealing with, well, fine art. Problem is the books are accompanied by videos and his mother doesn't have a video player anymore. They aren't dear and the books weren't cheap so I've hinted that he should approach her two sisters with a view to planting in their minds the idea of buying her, between them, a new video player. One of them has a Makro(?, spelling?) store card so one ought be bought at a very reasonable price.

This idea appeals and he says he's going to run it by them tomorrow; if he's successful we will have a little more money that is NOT going out on something insane. Plus he's accepted that buying the digital radio set up would be financial stupidity of the highest order (or as I put it "we don't really need to spend that money on ourselves right now") when we still have bills coming in that we have absolutely no way of paying. Come the early months of the new year I'll be bringing in a bit more but at the same time the income support we've been enjoying will be scaled back so I'm not sure whether it will actually be worth doing the extra hours.

It must be the time of year but I really am feeling remarkably charitable towards him and even his mother.

So much so that the conversation I had with Jo in the office today didn't worry me one bit. It was sparked off by Jo spotting her ex-husband in one of the queues. Turns out he has a love child only six months younger (or older, I can't remember which) than one of their two daughters, which piece of information was presented as some kind of significant partial explanation for their divorce.

Well that led to me admitting that I'd lived in dread for years that I would learn the hard way that my un-dear husband was shagging his way fairly indiscriminately across town and that everyone was sniggering behind my back over 'the poor little woman', when in fact all I wanted him was to find some dim broad who would take him off my hands.

One little nugget of information then passed from Jo's lips; seems the Fat Bastard really hadn't made much pretence all the time he was up there before I joined ... to the extent that he did actually discuss with Hammond moving to the USA to join The Other Matter I Haven't Yet Said Much About.

Thank God I have other sources of self-esteem, eh?

I can never remember

if the saying is "more haste, less speed" or "less haste, more speed".

Anyway, I allowed myself to be side-tracked into a rant about bad personal habits, that was not on reflection even particularly comprehensive (thanks largely to the fact that he hasn't been off to fuck that creature in Philadelphia recently and nothing in his behaviour has suggested she's been here for a visit - so I haven't had the time to get into the squalid space at the top of the stairs which is his, and no-one else can safely enter without full bio-suit).

The point really, and why I was so steamed up in the first place, is that the fat fucker is sprawled out on his bed, leaving me trapped down here in the kitchen. I cannot yet risk going upstairs or he will be down like a shot (or like a rat down a sewer) to sprawl over the floor with his hand down his pants watching what ever it is when he thinks he can get away with it.

I've cleaned out the magazines he's kept under the bed in the past, the ones that boast in their titles of the age of the pictured females, border-line stuff; and the faux-coffee table, faux-high-art (it isn't porn its erotica, there's a difference you know - it costs lots to get all that soft lighting right and cotswold cottages as backdrops don't come cheap you know, compared with a council estate two-up-two-down on a sink estate in the vicinity of Birmingham) stuff that was in a way more nauseating. So I know what you like; you fat middle-aged miserable bastard.

You can run, but you can't hide.

So bloody tedious

I wasn't at work today so I spent the morning, after the school run, getting over having drunk more than was strictly necessary last night and otherwise annoying the cat who since the weather turned cold has adopted a rather proprietorial attitude towards the duvet.

After some extra kip and several cups of Earl Grey I felt sufficiently human to come downstairs and tackle CSS (actually I thought the Fat Bastard had come home unannounced for lunch, and decided since I was up to have another go at CSS).

The early part of the afternoon was spent waiting for him to come through the door, getting edgier and edgier as the clock moved inexorably towards 15:00 when I have to go back and do the 'picking up'. True to form the fat bastard lurched in just as I was about to have to leave and, having grunted what I presume to have been a greeting of some sort he proceed to slam the lid down on the coffee jar. OK I admit it is a bad habit and I'm a very naughty girl.

Well we all know what the atmospher is like in this house when I have the temerity to draw attention to one of his bad habits, such as:

• not putting the toilet seat up before he urinates, and not cleaning it up afterwards
• leaving piles of washed clothes on the bench above the washing machine to moulder before being run through again
• not putting food away in either fridge or cupboard
• not putting wrappers/off-cuts and empties in the rubbish bin
• using every available empty space as a dumping ground for whatever it is he can no longer be bothered to carry or wear
• leaving parts of the Sunday newspaper strewn all over the floor and sofa in the lounge room
• leaving dishes where he's eaten or drunk from them
• cooking food in the microwave (particularly lasagne) without a covering, and not cleaning up afterwards
• using the coffee plunger and not cleaning it out afterwards (until things start growing in it)
• not recognising, even when anything he attemps to put in it rolls off and onto the floor, that the rubbish bin is full a n d t h e b a g n e e d s t o b e r e p l a c e d; doh!

He believes that empty shampoo bottles eventually get bored hanging around the edge of the shower and take themselves off to the rubbish bin in the bathroom in their own good time, as do the blade wrappers or disposables depending upon which he is currently using and as do empty loo rolls, who actually like to spend a little time warming up on the radiator before going into the bin.

Yes the fat bastard has one or two annoying little habits of his own but woe betide the wife who dares criticise him for them.

AND I'VE NEVER FORGED YOUR SIGNATURE TO EMPTY OUR DAUGHTER'S SAVINGS ACCOUNT, OR EMPTIED OUR SAVINGS ACCOUNT OR STOLEN CASH FROM YOUR WALLET OR FUCKED SOME ACQUAINTANCE ON A CASUAL BASIS SO THAT EVERYONE COULD SNIGGER BEHIND YOUR BACK ...

YOU FAT MISERABLE BASTARD.

Amphigoric is a little treasure

The task of scouring the dictionary - any dictionary, for the purpose of accumulating a collection of adjectives and nouns to be applied to and used in lieu of Fat Bastard has turned out to be less amusing and gratifying than I had anticipated.

For one thing it is hard work sifting the suitable words from the commonplace, the technical and the archaic. I have very limited intellectual curiosity in the field of botany and the technical terms for the sexual parts of plants don't light my fire.

On the other hand the exercise has introduced me to some delights, not always found within the covers of my little favourite - The Superior Person's Book of Words.

For instance, this morning I stumbled across: amphigory.

Amphigory is defined in my copy of Webster's as "a meaningless rigmarole; a nonsensical parody"; giving us also amphigoric, defined as "of, relating to, or consisting of amphigory; absurd; nonsensical". Now this word I like and will endeavour to add to my vocabulary. I feel confident it is a word I could apply to a thousand circumstances in my workaday life.

Orange's is not the only mobile service offering...

and I had half a mind, by the time I'd got near the end of the drawn out process of registering my new sim card, to go to one of their competitors.

The only reason, after all, I am going with orange is that speaking with the Fat Bastard will be cheaper. Which when you think about it is a truly bizarre reason in the annals of commercial decisions for making a decision within a free market. If I am choosing that service provider so that I can have less expensive calls with him am I making that decision in the face of it being more expensive to speak with others; in which case am I secretly doing this so that he and I can speak for longer.

What the hell is going on in my subconscious?

Today's word: ambuscade

As yesterday I've gone in search of some term of abuse suitable for attachment to the Fat Bastard or usable in lieu of that appellation.

So how about ambuscade; used as a verb, whether transitively or intransitively, meaning to lie in wait in order to attack from a concealed position; used as a noun meaning a lying in wait and concealed for the purpose of attacking an enemy by surprise or a place where one party lies concealed with a view to attack another by surprise or those lying so concealed.

Sir, you were, on reflection an ambuscade.

Ouch

Oh dear, my baby is thinking of her maternal grandmother... and I would love her maternal grandmother to know that her grand-daughter in this wretched place thinks of her, particularly at this time of year.

This is going to be a painful Christmas in so many ways. I'm going to be here, yet again so far, far away from all my family and those long term friends I treasure. I'm going to be here, and flat broke and living in fear of the court order and the bailiff, and a spectator at my husband's frenzied spending.

Not only does he expect the Christmas lunch to come with all the trimmings but he expects too, to spend money on big ticket, lovely but utterly non-essential items such as the digital radio system. And I'll put on a happy smiley face while inwardly I'll be churning that come January one or both of us will be carted off to be put before a judge who'll send us away for financial irresponsibility.

At least, this week, I've worked nearly full time, but after tax that's likely to be about £150.00 for the whole week. I suppose that is £600 for a month, assuming I get the same number of hours each week but it is not highly likely.

On the other hand Gill is off to have her growth and her uterus removed tomorrow, Theresa has similar 'woman's' problems and Marian has some unspecified chronic health problem that might take her off at any moment. Then there's Louisa who is five months pregnant. That leaves Jo, Angela and me as the only reasonably fit and healthy people on the team for the next few months so the prospects of additional hours on a regular basis are good.

My bank manager would be pleased.

A strange day at the office..

After however many weeks it is of supervising the checkout operators today was the day when I was trained in being a checkout operator...

I got there in time for a 9:00 start and went straight into it. Happily the woman training me who I've always got on well with was more than happy to step aside and oversee rather than have me standing around like a wally trying to take in what she was doing. Thank you Sue.

So about 15 minutes later I've done it all ... except for cheque transactions which come through rarely these days and saving stamps sales which rarely happen in December, when most people are redeeming them.

Within an hour Sue is on her own checkout, nearby (within shouting distance) and we plough on through to lunch at which time we scamper in separate directions for an hour. After lunch we spend some more time on separate checkouts until the tea breaks. After our break we're round in the kiosk where I have to grapple with (a) the lottery machine and scratch cards and (b) spotty kiddies trying to purchase tobacco and related products.

Not quite worst of all is that I have to stand the whole time, in the Wrong Shoes. I cannot say that I felt I'd mastered the full range of kiosk work when 17:00 came around and the Cherry Blossom herself arrived to take over. I stayed on for half an hour which might have been a mistake since we spent most of that time unlearning what I'd been taught and relearning things The Cherry Way.

Half an hour more and it was time for me to flee.

I got home in time to find out that the FB had picked up the offspring, dumped her upstairs in her room with some books and sat down to watch Thin Red Line which he declares a Top Film. He'd done nothing about a meal for us, because he wouldn't be eating in. He finally fucked off around 20:00, leaving us in peace. Thanks for something! That's me, I'm knackered. I think I'll go off to bed. I have to get up early tomorrow and do some ironing, because I'm working tomorrow from 9:00 through 17:00

Check Out Chicks

No, not really: Checkout Chicks actually.


And tomorrow I become one, and it's official. Tomorrow, from 9-5:30 I shall (tea break and lunch excepted) spend my entire day on my arse shoving items in front of a scanner, bar code to the fore. On and on and on it will go, without respite or remission for good behaviour until the end of the day, and I am likely to go home and get very, very drunk to compensate. The following day I shall be at work again from 9-5 and this time I WILL BE SUPERVISING the checkout operators, as I have been doing Sundays and Monday evenings since I started.

Hmm.....

Grizzle, moan, whinge

Grouching and carping are, as behaviours, probably de rigueur among those in the throws of a marriage spiralling slowly (is this actually slo mo) towards separation and divorce.

So I am going to have a grizzle, moan or whinge...

I got up at the same time as him this morning, to make sure he got out of the house reasonably close to the time he needed to get out of the house to start work approximately on time. Then I washed and dressed and got the offspring up and put on a load of washing and did breakfast, school lunch, signed the paper work she needs for school, helped her dress, got her to school (approximately on time) came home, got the washing out and hung up, did some cleaning and tidying up, worked a bit, got ready for work up the road, worked from 1 in the afternoon to 9 in the evening, came home expecting to find him ready to prepare a (simple) meal.

I found evidence that he'd been drinking on the low brick fence dividing our front yard from that of the next door neighbors. Inside, not a sign or a sound. Eventually I tracked him down to his bed upstairs, sound asleep and snoring his head off. I said goodnight to the baby who was still awake and woke him up to tell him to get into bed - he was sprawled across the bed in his clothes.

On the hob some dried out pasta sauce and, in an adjoining pot of hot water some very, very not al dente spaghetti. Delicious, not!

Yes yes, back to sleep and on and on.

Back down stairs impatiently.
Finally the fat fuck has came downstairs, farted around ineffectually for enough minutes to have me climbing the walls and finally, when he was confident that I'd been agitated beyond bearing he stepped outside to smoke a last cigarette. That took him fifteen minutes. Now, at last, he has wandered upstairs; hopefully I won't see him again.

Ah, peace at last, indeed.

Today's word, and I also like

Today's word:

abject, ab'jekt, a. [L. abjectus, from abjicio, to throw away - ab, and jacio, to throw.] Sunk to a low condition; worthless, mean, despicable; low, groveling.

Yes, that will do for a start.

-----

I also liked:

abatis which is from french and is the term for "a collection of felled trees, from which the smaller branches have been cut off, and which are laid side by side, with the branched ends toward assailants, forming an obstruction to their progress.

abduce which is from latin and means 'to draw or conduct away' and gives us also abducent which means drawing away or pulling back and is used in physiology as applied to certain muscles which pull back certain parts of the body from the mesial line. [And if I find mesial when I get that far through the dictionary I shall let you know ;-) .]

and also ablacate and ablaut and abluent.

One of my favourite books

is called The Superior Person's Book of Words by Peter Bowler (ISBN 0 7475 5337 8) which was first published (back home) in 1979 and subsequently in the US in 1985 and later again in the UK.

Mr Bowler's avowed first objective as set out in the Prologomena was to provide the ordinary man in the street with new and better verbal weapons.

The book should be compulsory reading for anyone who claims English as his or her first language.

I dug it out today after recalling a little plan I'd cooked up some time ago, which was to work my way through the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary compiling an alphabetic listing of opprobrious terminology and might be applied to the Fat Bastard in lieu of the that clapped out appellation.

Sadly I don't have a copy of the Shorter OED, but I do have a copy of 'The New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language' which must weigh at least half the SOED and which will have to act as substitute.

By curious coincidence it was to Websters that Mr Bowler turned in pursuit of words for inclusion and at least some indication of use and meaning.

Paranoid, moi?

No. After careful scrutiny of site visits subsequent to the prolonged visit from the reader coming in through Philadelphia ...

If I were in other shoes I'd be back again and again, reading and re-reading, trying to work out if this is about what I fear it might be about ... and checking for further postings that might shed more light...

But the evidence suggests that it (the blog) hasn't yet been spotted. Plenty of time and plenty of anecdotes up my sleeve...

While I'm in the mood ... to be generous

I must record that he did another thing that was good and noble and self-sacrificing... He got home, as promised, at 18:30 this evening which happened to be just when the roast and all the trimmings (except the Yorkshire Pudding) were ready to come out of the oven/steamer.

Well done, that man!

Oh, and he left sharpish at 20:00 which means I've had the house to myself this evening. So that's three big cheers for him today.

Ahhh, isn't he cute

You probably, reading this, think I'm the bitch queen from hell. If I sometimes give the impression that I loathe and despise the man I'm married to well, gee, there are reasons, but more of that later on...

In the meantime we spent today apart because he went up to London to be with his mother and he took my daughter with him, which was fine. I asked him to run and errand for me, pop into the big chemist on the way and pick up something from their own label. I gave him my old nearly empty bottle and crossed my fingers, expecting him either to forget completely or bugger the task up.

No, I was wrong. He managed to negotiate the cosmetics counters of Boots and bring home the booty. Being the canny shopper he is he detected the offer, the Spend £15 and get x, y or z Free type of offer, so he bought something else and thereby was awarded the free gift.

The free gift is a selection in sampler size of the top of the range items in this top of the range Own Brand line, and the lippy shade is definitely wearable. So he gets bonus points for that.

I was suitable and unfeignedly graciously thankful for his efforts on my behalf.

I've now, however, had the chance to look more carefully at the second product he bought which was purchased to get the gift; it is a selection of pre-summer pre-suntanning skin products, to get your skin into the best shape to absorb those rays.

Now let me quote two passages from the following:

Diagnosis and Management of Malignant Melanoma
BETH G. GOLDSTEIN, M.D., and ADAM O. GOLDSTEIN, M.D.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
April 2001

First a quote concerning the implications of scoring high on the risk factors:

Table 1 lists the risk factors for development of malignant melanoma. A patient
with two or more risk factors, such as an atypical nevus that is changing in
color or size, has a high risk of having a melanoma.

The Table:


Risk Factors for Melanoma

Risk factor - Relative risk

History of a changing mole - >400
Atypical nevus syndrome
With a family history of melanoma - 148
With a personal and family history of melanoma - 500
Large congenital nevus (15 cm or more in diameter) - 17
White race - 10 to 12
Personal history of melanoma - 9
History of melanoma before age 40 - 23
Regular tanning bed use before age 30 - 7.7
Multiple nevi - 5 to 12
Atypical nevi - 7 to 27
Immunosupression - 4 to 8
Family history (first -degree) of melanoma - 3 to 8
Nonmelanoma skin cancer - 3 to 5
Sun sensitivity (tendency to sunburn) - 2 to 3

And the facts are:

I am 'ethnically' celtic, grew up in Australia, spent huge amounts out of doors playing sports and sunbathing, lost my father to melanoma when I was 10 and he was just 36, have fair skin, hair with a red tinge, burn easily, have been diagnosed with aplastic nevus syndrome (an abnormally high number of nevi) and at 28 had a BCC (basel cell sarcoma) removed from my face. Hmmm.

I don't have a death wish. I don't sunbathe; much as I adore the feel of sunlight on my skin that rarely happens and certainly not during the middle of the day at the height of summer.

And we've been married since 1993 and he thinks I'll have a use for this stuff.

The man can be kind and generous but he can also be one hell of a plonker.

Watching the Stats fly by

Watching the stats has become a bit addictive, mostly bots crawling over the thing... bots in all sorts of places...

But someone in Philadelphia, PA was reading for quite a while tonight, coming in via one of those eateries I was suddenly so curious about (in connection with The Other Matter) ... which by curious coincidence happens to be right where The Other Matter rears its ugly head ....

It's a small, small world. But it couldn't be that small, surely?

Ah, so that's the colour of our carpet

We went to town on the lounge room today ... I started on the boxes before lunch and had made appreciable progress before we were summoned to the Fat Bastard's assistance with the shopping. After getting back home and not having lunch we got stuck in again ... by the time we called a halt at around 16:30 it was clear the beef rib would not be thawed in time to cook tonight so we went back to work and almost cleared everything.

Two black sacks of stuff were hauled out for the garbage men and another two canvas sacks (plus the rowing machine which he used once) were set to one side to be taken down to the charity shop. I'm also hoping we can off load oh, about 66% of the books in the house and about the same proportion of the clothes but I'm not confident.

The upshot of all this work is, that with some further minor realignment of the room we should be able to put the Christmas tree and lights up tomorrow evening...

Yipee!

And if we can work a similar miracle on the dining room we might, just might be able to sit down for dinner.

In the mean time the miserable fucker is so exhausted from having done a bit of work around the house that he's been in bed since around 21:00 and I'm on tenterhooks lest he come down stairs and ruin what remains of my evening.

When the ring went west

By the time we moved here I had the baby and begun to see light at the end of the tunnel. I had my transfer to better prospects lined up and he had line up some work too - though this turned out to be the work that led to the astronomical telephone bill.

We sorted out a deal which entailed the mortgage, the pension cover, the council tax coming from my salary (along with the train fare and half the child care costs) while he covered the balance.

But for one reason or other the money was never there when the child minder's fees were due or she needed more nappies or ... in fact it was only there in the days immediate following a trip up to London to visit mummy and daddy.

The penny dropped of course. He wasn't working; though quite how he was managing to occupy his time was not very clear. I heard constant complaints from the child minder about how late he was getting my daughter to her and in what state she arrived.

Then I began to hear that he was being seen around town at odd times during the day, when he was supposed to be working.

He wasn't working and I was paying some other woman £140 per week to care for his child so that he could do what? Well it sure as hell wasn't the shopping (which I did) or the cooking (which I did) or the housework (which I did) or the garden (which I did) or maintenance (which was left undone, pardon me!).

There comes a point where you have to ask "what's in this for me?". Companionship, mutual support, sex? Don't make me laugh.

It began to be embarrassing that I was married to or indeed in any way associated with this feckless creature seen sloping around town wasting his life away.

When you sit next to some one five days a week for as much as 8 hours you inevitably get a glimpse into their private world and begin to wonder; and if you've established some form of rapport you ask questions.

So the girls in the office were gradually disburdened of their illusions until one day I was able to go into the office and wave my left hand in their direction and show them with some pride my ring finger - my naked ring finger.

I would leave the house and slip the thing off as I walked up the hill; I would keep it in the little zipper pocket in the lining of my all-weather jacket and put it on as I left the train of an evening. Sometimes I had close calls; when he would be waiting for me at the station and I would have to fumble to get the damn thing on in a hurry. By God it felt good to be unshackled, however briefly.

Oh, and there's this place

How about this one: The Arsenal at Old New Castle (which might just about raise a laugh in anyone who knows something about the Premiership)

It is or was (this establishment I mean)in historic old New Castle.

The address given on the card I have which is probably about 4 years old is 30 Market Street, New Castle Delaware.

If you're familiar place and can comment on its decor, ambiance, menu, wine list and so forth please do so. I'd appreciate any contributions that share past experiences. Bonus points for experiences about 4 years old.

I'm also wondering about...

The Washington Street Ale House & Restaurant. The address is (or was) 1206 Washington Street (fancy that!), Wilmington, DE.

I have a card which I'm guessing is about 4 years old. Is this establishment still open. If you know it I'd welcome your comments. If you've visited this place I would appreciate your recollections of your experience, including the decor, ambience and menu. It would be helpful to know the circumstances (ie, were you there with a lover, a group of friends, work colleagues etc)