In loco parentis

If I were playing 'let's speak comedy Latin' then 'in loco parentis' would probably be translated as: push your Mother under the train. However, it really means 'to take the place of a parent'. This particular phrase is A Big Deal, in fact, enough of A Big Deal to warrant completely random capitalisation.

So, following this Latin refresher, your task is to write down what you understand by the phrase: 'married, with children'. Even those whose DNA pool is on the shallow side would recognise that those words will mean that the spouse in question will have:
(a) a husband or wife, and
(b) offspring, progeny, sprogs, kids, descendants or whatever other name you have for them...

Now my ex's new-girlfriend has a bit of an issue with (a). Despite the fact they went on holiday whilst he was still married to me she gets all funny about the word 'wife' and won't talk to him for a week if he uses it. The fact that he was married would be a rather large hint as to the existence of a wife, wouldn't you think?

It gets better though. This weekend my ex introduced her to his children. So how do you think she reacted? Of course, if you are deeply in love with a new partner you will do everything in your power to make that first meeting with their kids as wonderful as it can be. When I met my step-son for the first time we took him to the railway museum and had a great time with him. What did my ex's girlfriend do? Apparently, she sat in stony silence ignoring the children all evening and got stroppy about him showing affection to them. Oh brother.

So, rather than being in loco parentis, as she should be, she is in fact totally loco about going out with a parent.

Things taught to me by sixth formers

Last night I went to the Sixth form ball. This is what I have learnt from the experience:

1) Don't have any photos taken in profile. Not good.
2) Don't have any photos taken straight on. Worse.
3) Don't have photos taken with 18 year olds. You will look like something Hans Christian Andersson rejected from a witch fairytale as just too disturbing.
4) Don't drink lots of wine and gin and then hand your camera to sixth formers and ask them to take pictures of you together. There are some things about yourself you should never see should you wish to retain your sanity.
5) Everyone else in the world, except me, knows how to do a line dance thingummy dance to Whigfield's 'Saturday Night'. And that 'Cha-cha-step' nonsense. This makes me proud.
6) All DJs are tossers. Particularly bald ones from Garforth.
7) It's probably not dignified to emote through 'Time of my life' from Dirt Dancing if you want to retain any shred of dignity.
8) The idea of profiteroles is significantly more attractive than the reality of profiteroles.
9) Duran Duran are godlike genius. 'Girls on Film' attracted lots of dancers. Nice work.
10) Ignore any shite you hear about kids today. The ones I know are simply gorgeous. Particularly when stood next to women twice their age....

Rebarbative

During second year at University I was still under the misapprehension that I ought to do an English Literature degree. That year we studied the Romantic poets thus starting a lifelong dislike of Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey'. However, the main recollection I have of Second Arts Eng Lit is how much I hated a bloke called Martin and a new word I learnt. Rebarbative.

Martin was one of the most reviled characters it is ever possible to meet on an undergrad course. He was a mature student. Who climbed mountains. For fun. He had the audacity to turn up at tutorials having done not only his reading but research too. Without a hangover. And on time. How rude. He had furry blue legs (some lame mountain outfit) and a beard. Ohh, how I hated the beard. It was like some highland rodent creature had smeared itself around his gob with the express intent of making his lips look horribly pink and wet. So, whilst idly flicking through the dictionary I found a word to define Martin:

rebarbative: /ri'ba:baetiv/ adj. literary repellent, unattractive [f rebarbatif - ive f. barbe beard]

Loud was the chortling when I discovered that 'repellent' could be a synonym for 'bearded'. It seemed to suit Martin extremely well, and a lifelong inability to fancy men with beards was born.

And I often think that girl is long gone. I don't read the dictionary for fun any more. I did a teacher training course where I was exactly the sort of know-it-all-look-I-got-all-As sort of mature student I loathed when I was an undergrad. I quite like mountains. I turn up for things early without a hangover. But certain parts of one's psyche NEVER alter.

My ex has taken the opportunity of being a free operator to express himself. And he has done this via the medium of ... a beard.

Rebarbative, indeed.

Remember the date

Well, after much fannying about and emailing I went on a date last night. Being me, I managed to sabotage my appearance early on in the preparation process by dousing both my eyes with shampoo: the albino-rabbit-blazing-red-eye thing is so not a good look. However, in a frock and emo quantities of black eyeliner, I set off.

And the datee in question was great: good looking, articulate, amusing and good fun. I managed to chat for a good few hours without marking an arse of myself (I think), and thoroughly enjoyed myself. And, no I didn't snog him (I can see you're desperate to ask...). We parted at 10:10 for me to walk back to my car and for 300 yards of the Headrow in Leeds I had a big grin on my face: I'd done something grown-up pretty well. It felt significant.

So then I checked my phone. And two hours beforehand the babysitter had tried to contact me to tell me my son had woken up to find me gone. The poor wee thing had cried inconsolably for nearly two hours because he wanted his Mummy. And where was she? Blithely drinking fruit juice in a bar where you just can't hear your phone. I zoomed home to him and he clasped my hair so tightly to try to feel secure again. Just heartbreaking.

And that's when I realised: when I remember the date that's going to be the feeling that will stay with me. Guilt. You can't do both things: you are either a single girl or a single mother. And I'm the latter. So, I'll remember the date but I don't think I'll be repeating it.

You're my wife, now.

Many years ago my ex and I joked that after the exchange of rings at our wedding ceremony he was going to say 'you're my wife now' in the style of Papa Lazarou from 'League of Gentlemen'. We didn't. Indeed, it would be very hard to discern from his behaviour and attitude in the past two years that I was his wife in any meaningful form. But tonight he did say I was his 'wife'. How did we get to this outbreak of proprietary interest, hmmmn?

1. I'm looking pretty good these days. I saw a really dear friend on Saturday for the first time in ages. She said that I'd lost weight since the last time she saw me. In fact, I've piled on quite a few pounds to the point that all the buttons on my capri pants are pinging off quicker than hail on a tin roof. However, I appear thinner because I'm happy. Actually, I'm bloody happy. And a smile in the eyes and a bounce around the knees knocks about 4 inches off your visible arse. I'm patenting it as the 'Grin Plan Diet'.

2. I'm not jealous about his girlfriend any more. Indeed, I was asking cordially and with totally unfeigned interest about their trip to the Lakes at the weekend. Obviously this makes her a smidge less attractive as she's no longer forbidden fruit. Shame.

3. The old me is back. Another friend told me that splitting up with my ex has done wonders for my confidence and I'm a 'different person'. I had to tell her that I was always like this, it just got hidden under a misery duvet for the past few years. The old me used to get together with the girls and get thoroughly trolleyed a lot. Anyone who has seen my Facebook lately can see the reappearance of this phenomena.

4. He's jealous. Really wormy emerald-hued jealousy. Because I've got a date on Thursday. Artlessly, I asked him to babysit because, after all, I was always home looking after our son when he was off sniffing after his new girlfriend. In Berlin. For a week. Whilst we were properly married. Let me just check: oh yeah, he's moved out, he's going away for B&B weekends in the Lakes with her, and he's asked me for a divorce. So, really me going on a date isn't really a Mata Hari level of betrayal, is it?

So, he said that he was finding it hard that his 'wife' was going on a date. I informed him, kindly but firmly, that I'm his ex-wife. I'm not your wife now, because it's my life now.

Gold

This post will concern gold in four forms: firstly, my wedding and engagement rings; secondly, as a prize for physical exertion; thirdly, as a colour for sandals and fourthly, with reference to the Spandau Ballet classic.

Firstly: my gold wedding and engagement rings. I'm not wearing them. They are in a little box in my safe and I'm not going to put them back on. It has taken me a good few months to finally take them off permanently and oddly, there is no mark on my finger where they used to be. I also don't miss them. I think it is fair to say, dear reader, I'm over my marriage break-up.

Secondly, I deserve a gold medal for waking up at 9:30am this morning and still making it to the gym for a 10am legs, bums and tums class. I haven't done a class for eight years and I did OK with grapevines and lunges but indulged myself in a lot of lying comfortably on my mat during the sit ups, and not sitting up. But I have negotiated about 10 babysitting sessions from my ex so I can keep going. Buns of steel, here I come.

Thirdly, gold sandals. All women look forward with anticipation to the day the black lumpy sensible winter shoes come off and the glittery strappy sandals go on. However, some odd coding in our DNA means we forget just how painful sandals are. We are lulled into a false sense of security by the shop. In the beautifully air-conditioned carpeted shop we slip our feet into accommodating and cute sandals and marvel at their comfort. We then make the big mistake of wearing them outside on a hot day. Our feet puff up in the unaccustomed warmth. The straps of our sandals gouge into the puffiness. The straps flay all the skin from your heels. The toe straps gouge into your toes until they are practically severed. I reckon that the true secret of the Catholic Church is that all nuns who are suggested for sainthood because they have stigmata on their feet have actually simply been wearing their summer sandals for a few hours. You know it makes sense. Anyway, today I chose not to wear my ugly comfy beige Scholl sandals to town but wore my gorgeous kitten heeled, gold gladiator sandals instead. I hobbled, but in an enormously sexy manner. As a married women I always chose comfort over sexiness. No more.

Finally, and phew, ain't this a long post? Gold, by Spandau Ballet. Last night I went on a birthday do with lots of lovely ladies. I lost my karaoke virginity in a little booth. Diffidently I hummed along with the others until enough cocktail had been imbibed to make me believe (wrongly) that I can sing. The last ten minutes were spent howling marvellously and the words of Gold by Spandau Ballet sum up just how I feel at the moment:

There's nothing left to make me feel small

Luck has left me standing so tall

Gold

Always believe in your soul

You've got the power to know

You're indestructible

How are you?

Say these words in your head: "How are you?". How did they sound? Concerned? Interested? Bored? Insincere? Quizzical? Like Joey from 'Friends'? Hmmn? It's impossible for you to know how I meant them to be read/mentally said because I typed them and you read them. According to semiotic theory they are arbitrary signs to which you, the reader, attach a significance according to your cultural bent. Phew, I'll stop showing off now.

Anyway, I'm suffering a similar problem at the moment because I'm finding it impossible to read emails. Ok, I can read them, but I can't read them. I'm emailing a bloke via an internet dating site and I can't tell whether his responses are quite amusing or dull as ditchwater because I can't tell whether certain phrases are ironic or not. In person this would be very simple, I could use verbal and non-verbal clues to work it out. On my laptop screen they are a befuddling mix of 'does he mean this or that'? Is there a wry wit or is it dry shit? The worst part of it is that I always find the wrong thing funny. Not like laughing at old ladies falling over (although I would and so would you) but at films. A marvellous friend with whom I go to the flicks says that half the fun of the film is me guffawing away in the bits of the film where nobody else is laughing. I find that bit of film funny so I cackle. Semiotics again. But what if these emails aren't truly amusing, it's just the significance I attach to them?

It's all very difficult. Of course if I wasn't a grade A wimp I could just email and say meet me for a coffee in town. But then that would make me have to trade my nice, safe virtual world for the real, frightening world where I might have to meet a real stranger and say 'Hello, how are you?".