Happy Familes
What a mess this week has been!
For most of it my computer has been out of action and what a week it has been on various fronts.
Sunday evening he returned from a visit to his mother with news that she is planning to send my daughter off somewhere for a week during the summer holidays. I haven't been given the name of this place - I have no idea where it is, who's behind it, what it offers or any other essential information but I'm supposed to acquiesce.
Then we're all to reconvene and play happy families somewhere up north - I gather the plan is to rent a twee cottage in the Lake District for a week. Hmmn. Now I wonder what sleeping arrangements she's envisaging and the extent to which her spineless backbone has set her straight?
There's not a snowball's chance in hell that I'm climbing between the sheets with him for the first time in almost eight years, not even for the sake of appearances, not even to keep his mother happy.
This is that nasty bit of boggy terrain whereupon the merits of the 'white' or 'social' lie are debated.
And there are people out there who will argue that the kinder, more humane course would be to hunker down with the fat, lying, thieving, cheating and slovenly so-and-so for a week in order that his frail, elderly mother of eighty-something can go on living in a soap bubble of her own devising.
Others will contend that conspiring to lead her to believe in something other than the truth whether by act of commission or omission, is tantamount to lying to her since it amounts to practising a deceit upon her however well meant it might be.
For me the problem is more practical and more painful than that. I can't bear being in his company for more than a few minute at a stretch most of the time and the idea of being in such proximity for hours on end makes me want to heave. A propos I was mildly intrigued by an observation attributed to the current pope that the growing number of loveless relationships could be to blame for declining birthrates in the Western world.
Gee, did he work that out all on his own?
These announced plans for our summer have lain on the metaphorical table all week, studiously ignored by us. Discussing them would require that a few tough home truths be spoken. Right now he overlooks the reality that he's locked in a loveless, prospectless union to someone who despises him because overlooking reality is the habit of a lifetime, and anyway this reality is easier to live with, when it does intrude, than the one involving a return home to live with his mother.
But nothing stays the same for ever. I had a game plan once and that came to nothing, but slowly and surely an alternative has developed.
What I want is the wherewithal to start afresh. It's probably too late for more children, though I turned out to be a far better mother than I'd guessed I'd be, and I've serious doubts I'll ever find it within me to form another serious relationship. I wrote about this to someone this week during one of those brief periods when my computer was behaving. I wrote about waking up from a kind of hibernation to discover I've got to go out into the meat market with a body that is 14 years older than last time. Life is full of challenges. I guess that's just another one and I've no right to feel sorry for myself. I said yes. No-one was holding a gun against my head when I did.
I want my share of the house and my share of the pensions. For the eight years we've lived here I've paid perhaps 95% of the mortgage and the same percentage of the pensions; as someone once put it "life's a lemon - I want my money back"
It is a while since I did any kind of calculation of what that might amount to but since the pension is locked up tight I'd say I've a moral claim to almost all of the value in the house. Which leaves him with mummy and her great big house in central London.
If I sound greedy, tough! I put up with fourteen years of crap. I've been lied to, stolen from, cheated on and taken advantage of. Being married to this SOB was the hardest thing I ever did in my life and I'm in effect asking only for an decent day's pay for a day's decent work.
My current game plan hinges on getting my daughter's Australian citizenship sorted out and a return home. Every six months I have to adjust my thinking based around the academic year. Realistically we're now looking at staying here for one more Christmas and then returning in time for her to start the new school year in January 2007 on the other side of the world.
All of this has been floating around all week and then this evening he let off another little bomblet - his mother has accepted an offer for her house. She's no idea what she'll do next or where she'll live but apparently she's selling up.
Last night when he was soaring off on one of his flights of fantasy he claimed that he'd always dreamed of winning the lottery so that he could by a certain house. Now this particular house was built in the 1860s for my great great grandfather who'd migrated to New South Wales from Ireland and then moved south to settle in Victoria. His origins are unclear but it is possible that he wasn't from totally dirt poor stock. He certain prospered. He became a gentleman farmer who helped revolutionise the colonial beef industry, and a pillar of the community.
The rabbit plague and financial crash of the 1890s pushed the family off the land but not before his older children including the son I'm descended from had got themselves well established. The house passed out of the family, went to rack and ruin and then in the 1970s was lovingly restored by new owners. Briefly afterwards it became a museum but is now again a family home. The house was built after my ancestor had become prosperous, was architect designed, well built and is now protected. Everyone descended from that Irish migrant is brought up on a diet of stories of the house and the country it is set in.
Yes I'd love to own that house.
But its moments like this one which make me doubt that he's really the inept and guileless shambling wreck he appears.
We haven't had an emotional connection (or a physical one for that matter) for the best part of a decade and he wants to buy me this house? Why?
If I sound ungrateful and ungracious help me out here because I really can't think why he would suddenly, right out of the blue drag the House into it like that with this extraordinarily generous offer.
I can't even get him to do basic things like help pay the household expenses or keep the house reasonably clean and tidy but he can say he'll do something like that for me. Talk is cheap and I'd had enough of his talk, oh, say twelve years ago.
This takes me right back to where we were with him saying "I love you" a thousand times a day when all I wanted was for him to get up in the morning and do something with his life rather than just drink and smoke it away, as though saying "I love you" might blind me to the crap I was already knee deep in.
If this is an incoherent post, that reflects the fact that tonight I am deeply confused; its as though I've been driving along a straight road and suddenly I've found myself approaching a junction without a map.
I'm going to take time out and think about this and maybe post some more about the goings on at the funny farm (aka my office) or some of my extracurricular activities (but not, sadly, of that kind).
In the meantime the news from the outside world as gauged from tabloid front papers (excluding stories dealing with people I've never heard of)
For most of it my computer has been out of action and what a week it has been on various fronts.
Sunday evening he returned from a visit to his mother with news that she is planning to send my daughter off somewhere for a week during the summer holidays. I haven't been given the name of this place - I have no idea where it is, who's behind it, what it offers or any other essential information but I'm supposed to acquiesce.
Then we're all to reconvene and play happy families somewhere up north - I gather the plan is to rent a twee cottage in the Lake District for a week. Hmmn. Now I wonder what sleeping arrangements she's envisaging and the extent to which her spineless backbone has set her straight?
There's not a snowball's chance in hell that I'm climbing between the sheets with him for the first time in almost eight years, not even for the sake of appearances, not even to keep his mother happy.
This is that nasty bit of boggy terrain whereupon the merits of the 'white' or 'social' lie are debated.
And there are people out there who will argue that the kinder, more humane course would be to hunker down with the fat, lying, thieving, cheating and slovenly so-and-so for a week in order that his frail, elderly mother of eighty-something can go on living in a soap bubble of her own devising.
Others will contend that conspiring to lead her to believe in something other than the truth whether by act of commission or omission, is tantamount to lying to her since it amounts to practising a deceit upon her however well meant it might be.
For me the problem is more practical and more painful than that. I can't bear being in his company for more than a few minute at a stretch most of the time and the idea of being in such proximity for hours on end makes me want to heave. A propos I was mildly intrigued by an observation attributed to the current pope that the growing number of loveless relationships could be to blame for declining birthrates in the Western world.
Gee, did he work that out all on his own?
These announced plans for our summer have lain on the metaphorical table all week, studiously ignored by us. Discussing them would require that a few tough home truths be spoken. Right now he overlooks the reality that he's locked in a loveless, prospectless union to someone who despises him because overlooking reality is the habit of a lifetime, and anyway this reality is easier to live with, when it does intrude, than the one involving a return home to live with his mother.
But nothing stays the same for ever. I had a game plan once and that came to nothing, but slowly and surely an alternative has developed.
What I want is the wherewithal to start afresh. It's probably too late for more children, though I turned out to be a far better mother than I'd guessed I'd be, and I've serious doubts I'll ever find it within me to form another serious relationship. I wrote about this to someone this week during one of those brief periods when my computer was behaving. I wrote about waking up from a kind of hibernation to discover I've got to go out into the meat market with a body that is 14 years older than last time. Life is full of challenges. I guess that's just another one and I've no right to feel sorry for myself. I said yes. No-one was holding a gun against my head when I did.
I want my share of the house and my share of the pensions. For the eight years we've lived here I've paid perhaps 95% of the mortgage and the same percentage of the pensions; as someone once put it "life's a lemon - I want my money back"
It is a while since I did any kind of calculation of what that might amount to but since the pension is locked up tight I'd say I've a moral claim to almost all of the value in the house. Which leaves him with mummy and her great big house in central London.
If I sound greedy, tough! I put up with fourteen years of crap. I've been lied to, stolen from, cheated on and taken advantage of. Being married to this SOB was the hardest thing I ever did in my life and I'm in effect asking only for an decent day's pay for a day's decent work.
My current game plan hinges on getting my daughter's Australian citizenship sorted out and a return home. Every six months I have to adjust my thinking based around the academic year. Realistically we're now looking at staying here for one more Christmas and then returning in time for her to start the new school year in January 2007 on the other side of the world.
All of this has been floating around all week and then this evening he let off another little bomblet - his mother has accepted an offer for her house. She's no idea what she'll do next or where she'll live but apparently she's selling up.
Last night when he was soaring off on one of his flights of fantasy he claimed that he'd always dreamed of winning the lottery so that he could by a certain house. Now this particular house was built in the 1860s for my great great grandfather who'd migrated to New South Wales from Ireland and then moved south to settle in Victoria. His origins are unclear but it is possible that he wasn't from totally dirt poor stock. He certain prospered. He became a gentleman farmer who helped revolutionise the colonial beef industry, and a pillar of the community.
The rabbit plague and financial crash of the 1890s pushed the family off the land but not before his older children including the son I'm descended from had got themselves well established. The house passed out of the family, went to rack and ruin and then in the 1970s was lovingly restored by new owners. Briefly afterwards it became a museum but is now again a family home. The house was built after my ancestor had become prosperous, was architect designed, well built and is now protected. Everyone descended from that Irish migrant is brought up on a diet of stories of the house and the country it is set in.
Yes I'd love to own that house.
But its moments like this one which make me doubt that he's really the inept and guileless shambling wreck he appears.
We haven't had an emotional connection (or a physical one for that matter) for the best part of a decade and he wants to buy me this house? Why?
If I sound ungrateful and ungracious help me out here because I really can't think why he would suddenly, right out of the blue drag the House into it like that with this extraordinarily generous offer.
I can't even get him to do basic things like help pay the household expenses or keep the house reasonably clean and tidy but he can say he'll do something like that for me. Talk is cheap and I'd had enough of his talk, oh, say twelve years ago.
This takes me right back to where we were with him saying "I love you" a thousand times a day when all I wanted was for him to get up in the morning and do something with his life rather than just drink and smoke it away, as though saying "I love you" might blind me to the crap I was already knee deep in.
If this is an incoherent post, that reflects the fact that tonight I am deeply confused; its as though I've been driving along a straight road and suddenly I've found myself approaching a junction without a map.
I'm going to take time out and think about this and maybe post some more about the goings on at the funny farm (aka my office) or some of my extracurricular activities (but not, sadly, of that kind).
In the meantime the news from the outside world as gauged from tabloid front papers (excluding stories dealing with people I've never heard of)
- Peerages for sale - so last month
- Party funding loans - ditto
- Are there any live chickens left in Norfolk?
- Erosion of civil liberties - I have satellite tv, does it matter?
- Freeing of foreign cons - Clarke to survive, by a whisker
- The NHS - the Glory Year (by Pat Hewitt)
- Deputy Do My Secretary - 10/10 for effort, 0/10 for style
- Steve (See I'm Not Dull, Really) McLaren (Subtitle: Anything Sven Can Do...)
and finally - Brazilian Man Makes Sensible Decision Shocker
posted by Enyo @ 9:40 pm
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