Doing it Yourself

In this world there are two sorts of people. The first decorate their house every year and take annual leave from work to achieve a new habitat all based around a leaf motif they saw in Good Housekeeping magazine. Then there's people like me. I buy quite nice houses and then let entropy take over to the point where it becomes a crap hole and I move somewhere else into a home one of the Other Type of people has done up. Simple.

This is not purely down to laziness. It is because I've never felt very confident about decorating so I've always felt it unwise to start with a half decent room and end up with rubble a few short hours afterwards. So I don't decorate. Or at least I didn't until this year. I always took my post-backlash feminism extremely seriously during my marriage and left all DIY type jobs to my ex. Only, sadly, he isn't the Good Housekeeping type either so it never got done.

Today, dear reader, has been a day of new starts. I painted my porch. This is not the simple task it sounds. My porch is huge and was constructed by Heath Robinson in the late 1970s of untoughened glass and putty. Wet rot had allowed holes to develop in the superstructure. It has been thoroughly gnawed by a rabbit.

In the past 12 hours I have toughened the wet rot with Ronseal sealant. I have filled the holes with putty. I have painted all the woodwork. Sadly, I am not an adept DIY-er as I get bored easily: I'd much rather slap putty and paint around than, you know, sand or prepare surfaces. The puttied areas look like one of those Christmas cakes that are iced roughly to resemble a well-skied mogul field. However, there are now no holes in my porch and I'm proud of myself for getting it all done in 12 hours, whilst also teaching my son to play tennis. I'm such a DIY queen that I'm sure Nick Knowles will be around to recruit me to help with his plumbing*. I wish.

So, just how much of an independent Doing it for Myself Amazon am I? Well, there's one thing I ought to admit. Whilst I was in the shower washing off several laminated layers of paint'n'putty the shower curtain frame detached itself from the wall and fell on my head. As I don't own a drill I had to get my ex round to put a new one up. But I told him to buy me a drill for my birthday on behalf of our son. So, maybe come September I will wholly be doing it for myself.



* Yes, I do recognise this was rude and unnecessary. But you don't know just how bad my Nick Knowles obsession is...

Do me a favour

In the interests of veracity and well-scrubbed-lacrosse-stick-toting-play-up-and-play-the-game-girls-fair play I ought to admit that my ex is currently doing me a number of favours. This is somewhat of a surprise as I was out of favour for about half a decade. Last week he brought me some fresh milk round after mine solidified on contact with hot coffee in an unpleasantly ploppy manner. On Saturday I realised that I had left something vital with him last time he looked after our son and that the absence of this chit of paper was going to cost me a small fortune. So I rang him. He didn't answer on any of the first five calls as his mobile is always on silent. Finally I reached him and explained my predicament. He had Important Business to attend to and could not drop the chit off. I pleaded and he agreed to meet me somewhere half way between where I am and where he was going to deliver said chit. This, in itself, is little short of miraculous because we rarely ever met in a half-way-between-where-I-am-and-half-way-to-where-he-was-going manner whilst married, neither in time nor space nor emotion. So, we met, I got the chit and off we both went with a smile and a wave. There was grace and there was a favour.

Thinking about this on the train to Manchester (whilst waiting forlornly for the free coffee to arrive. It didn't) I realised:
1. Whilst I was in favour at the beginning of the relationship he made me happy
2. He helped make our son and that's the greatest favour anyone could bestow
3. And, at the end, he did me a favour by leaving me with my son and the house; dignity a little tattered and heart thoroughly broken; but in a position where I can regroup and become the person who writes this blog.

He's done me a favour.

Feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic

I doubt you need a refresher on quantum mechanics, but here's one. Nils Bohr's quantum theory suggested that as matter behaves differently at the quantum level that we had to 'look' at the matter for it to behave as expected in our world. Hugh Everett III's many-world theory gets around the idea that it appears that at the quantum level matter behaves oddly (it exists in two places at once; freaky) and he suggested the many-worlds interpretation. Basically, Everett suggests that whenever we come to an important decision another parallel universe is created where the choice we chose not to take is followed. So, you go to Dorothy Perkins, remember your bank balance and don't buy the gorgeous frock. Everett would suggest in a parallel Universe another you buys the frock, goes out, parties and maybe ends up marrying the lead singer of a major 80s band such as Duran Duran. Bet you wish you'd bought the frock now, don't you?

So, somewhere in a parallel universe there is another me whose husband didn't leave at the beginning of February. Last night she would have eaten pasta & pesto alone in front of the TV and then snoozed on the sofa. At 2am she would have run up the stairs to bed at the sound of his key in the back door to avoid a fight. Meanwhile, her colleagues would be out celebrating the end of term.

But, I don't live in that Universe because my husband did leave. And so, last night was another milestone. I went to a staff do. This is a big deal (although not enough of a big deal to warrant random capitalisation). I had a blast and behaved fairly disgracefully. I admitted a wholly inappropriate crush to a colleague. I did bum-to-bum dancing whilst pouting with mates. My mini-me friend and I decided that even though there are 12 years between us we were going speed-dating whilst pretending to be sisters because that would make us hotter. For some reason my mate and I ordered about 7 taxis which never arrived so we commandeered a lift to town with a faculty leader's boyfriend. Who we've never met before. I snogged a completely random stranger who is about a decade younger than me in a club. I didn't get to bed before 4am. At one point a kid who I used to teach asked me if I was stoned (no, I wasn't) but I did suggest that the state I was in could be aptly summed up by these Oasis lyrics:

I need to be myself

I can't be no one else

I'm feeling supersonic

Give me gin and tonic

Actually, I didn't need any more gin and tonic because it appears that I was a major factor in the bar running out of gin. No, really. Anyway, I'm glad I live in my supersonic Universe and I feel really sorry for the alternative me in a parallel Universe who is probably having an argument with an alternative ex-husband right now. But, I have to say I'm quite jealous of the other alternative me who once picked a dress that I rejected and is now Mrs le Bon. Well? I can dream.

A game: please (anonymously, if you wish) tell me what an alternative version of you is doing in a parallel universe. This must be based on a decision you made and where the flip-side might have ended up. Go on, it'll be fun - and you can post anonymously!

This is my truth. Tell me yours.

As I was tucking my son in tonight he asked me what 'fiction' meant. As he's five I told him it meant stories that people make up that aren't true. However, this chimed with a number of thoughts I have been thinking that were crying out to be blogged. I have been questioning where fact ends and fiction starts.

My ex told me that an old friend of ours had contacted him for a chat. The reason this was done was that this old friend had seen me in my bitter early days following the split and couldn't believe what I had said about him was true. The person she'd always known and the person I described just didn't intersect. However, when I considered things more closely I did recognise that my ex was two people: the person I married and the person I split up with. She used to know the person I married and I would never have split up from him. However, the person I split up from was different and it's better that we are apart these days.

Then another old friend pointed out, in a lawyerly fashion, that my ex ought not to see this blog as it might prejudice any future divorce proceedings between us. I've had a re-read and whilst it's not particularly complimentary it doesn't outright libel him. I've said a lot worse to his face. Am I being unreasonable writing this? I don't think so and I'd like to think that maybe in a decade's time he could read it and grudgingly admit that all the things that attracted him to me are demonstrated on these pages. Or maybe not.

So, what is my truth these days? Well, I'm just so happy that I can't even explain it without drooping down to some trite simile. I'm confident, I'm my own person and I'm totally happy with myself. For a number of years I've been hidden away from the world because my marriage was so dire and my self-esteem was rock bottom. One friend recently told me that, until recently, I was the most lonely person she'd ever met: always home alone and often in tears from some marital spat. I would say that I can't imagine being like that any more but that's not true. I see it every day, in reflection, when my ex comes to collect our son. He's so lost and depressed and guilty about the split. I truly wish him well and wish that he could feel happy.

This is my truth. Tell me yours.