So this is my life story

Sat nav is an amazing creation of this century, it shows you where you are now and how to get to where you want to go. And if you have half a brain you will even know the difference between Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Newcastle-under-Lyme and not end hundreds of miles astray, wandering around hopelessly and asking Black Country types why you can't see the Angel of the North. Amongst many things, my ex was completely anti sat nav. He much preferred the spiritual and geographical purity of having huge sheets of Ordnance Survey maps completely blocking out the front view of the windscreen and blazing rows about where we might be and which turn-off was the correct one. Another thing he despised was my music taste. At first he pretended to be into the bands I liked, but by the end he treated everything with disdain. Foremost in the pantheon of bands he hated were the mighty, mighty My Life Story (or 'My Wife's Tory' as he called them. Chortle. Not).

So, last night I did two, maybe three things, he would completely disapprove of. Firstly, I went to Manchester (a place he calls Scumchester). Secondly, I got there by using my sat nav. And finally, I went to an acoustic set played by Jake Shillingford of My Life Story. Now, I'd have to set up an entirely different blog to properly introduce you to the immense gorgeousness that is My Life Story but I know it won't succeed because the only people I've ever met who actually like them are my friends. You know who you are.

If my life story had sat nav the journey would go like this. In the late 1980s I took the route of being very shy and a total square who rarely left the house and had few friends. In the early 1990s I took a left and headed straight down A1 party girl territory. I was a bit of a glamour-puss and have lots of 'things I did when I was gorgeous' stories. In 1997 I bore right and met my ex and for a while the road was straight and fast to 'happy ever after'. In 2002 I got pregnant and I got stuck in the cul-de-sac of stay at home all the time, have no friends, be a bit square, whilst having a dreadful relationship. Then new year 2008 my life's sat nav recalculated and my ex took a right straight out of my life. At this point I set the sat nav for total new road and last night I arrived at one desired destination.

I got a cuddle from Jake Shillingford and I have photographic evidence that it happened on my Facebook. Wibble. Incoherency. Giggle. Woo-bloody-hoo. I made a bit of a twat of myself as I couldn't string lucid sentences together but he was very lovely and chatted regardless of my utter girly patheticness.

This post is dedicated to The Dedicated. We sparkle and shine. And we're the only ones who understand those words.

Happy returns

There are many ways in which to segment a lifespan: by careers, by rites of passage, by lovers, by hairstyles (both wise and, usually, unwise) but the simplest is by years. Tomorrow is my birthday and, unusually, I am about ten years younger than I was this time last year.

If I were clever enough to draw graphs I would be able to chart the gradual decline in my married fortunes by the manner in which my ex and I 'celebrated' my birthday. But I don't know how to do that.

1997 - a fantastic seventies cops themed party.

It was a cheap excuse to dress up as Charlie's Angels.

We scandalised the neighbourhood by having the party on the day Princess Diana was buried and the nation snuffled sadly. But we didn't. We dressed up in polyester and boogied.

2001 - my 30th. Huuuge party in Scarborough and a trip to Barcelona

2002 - I was pregnant so no drinking but we went to see a film

2005 - I was left at home to look after the kids whilst my ex went to football with his friends.

2007 - my birthday clashed with a home match again and I always lost. So went to the cinema with my best friend to watch 'Atonement' instead.

Hmmmmnnn. Do you see any decline in my fortunes? Unlike poor old Diana there weren't three people in my marriage towards the end, there were about 23. Me, my ex and the entirety of his football team. With me coming in at a paltry number 23.

So, what about this year? Well, I've had a bloody marvellous time. I went out on the town with my friends last night. We ate posh pizza. We drank cocktails with free Cobra chasers. My friends valiantly tried to get the Dj in an Indie club to play Duran Duran for me (they failed). A short Mancunian who looked like a bit like Ashley Peacock from 'Coronation Street' tried to chat me up (he also failed). I burnt chips at 4am. Today I recovered by eating Minstrels in front of 'Mamma Mia' whilst intermittently sniffling, singing and ogling Colin Firth. It rocked.

And I feel significantly younger than I did this time last year. I don't know about many happy returns, but I do know my happiness has returned.

We're doomed, all doomed.

As my well-educated readers know the average person has fewer than two legs and if you are blessed with two legs you are above average (if you take a mean of all people a small proportion will have no legs, or one leg, or a stumpy bit and then when you add them in with the majority who have two legs you end up with the average human having 1.73 legs or something). So, clearly statistics are nonsense. Therefore, whenever you read that 1 in 3 British marriages end in divorce you have to question the statistical validity of that statement.

I can give you some useful advice on how to have a happy, lifelong marriage. Don't live on my street. Ever. My little terrace of 6 houses spells doom for marriage.

In number 5 lives J___. Her husband scarpered with another woman in 1967 and she still bleats on about it. We try to avoid her. In fact, on bin night I have to pay extreme attention to the manoeuvring of my wheelie bin, rendering me completely incapable of making eye-contact. Oddly, a minute after she starts talking to me I can usually hear my son crying inside and I have to rush in to see him. Even if he's 2 miles away at his Dad's.

I live in number 2 and, very conventionally, I split up with my husband after 7 years of marriage. He was immensely itchy.

Number 1 is owned by a lovely young couple called M___ and J____. They got married the week before Christmas 2007 and she'd moved out by March 2008. A three month marriage? Anyone would think I lived next door to Britney Spears. Ironically, they bought the house from T____ and C_____ after their marriage split up after 17 years.

This week I was talking to my other next-door neighbour, P___ who is married to M___. They bought the house a couple of years ago in a practically derelict state and have been doing loads of work on it. During our little conversation she told me that she and her daughter were shortly to be moving out after 22 years of marriage.

Clearly, the young couple with the baby in number 6 need to relocate. Fast.

How the other half live

I spend a lot of my time dividing the population of the world into two groups. There is the group I belong to and then the group I don't. For instance, I am a member of the group who refuses resolutely to ever use text writing and indeed I tend to shudder whenever I see text writing. I belong to a minority group in this but I do feel that when a semi-colon is required in a text, it should be used. I also believe that there is a verb: 'to text', and that this verb has a past participle of 'texted' i.e. 'last night I texted her', instead of the grammatically reprehensible: 'last night I text her'. Another set of two groups is the pedantic camp and the non-pedants. I think it's clear which camp I belong to...

However, you can change camps, and become one of the other people. Clearly, this does not mean tht da blog is guna bcum fulla txtese lol, because I actually felt just a little bit sick when I wrote that. No, I used to belong to a group of people who felt that their life was all but over. I believed that my whole role was looking after my son, teaching the kids at school and trying to avoid confrontations with my ex. I was never truly happy and I was the only person I knew who dreaded the bell on Friday because that meant a potential weekend of hassle and being shouted at in the kitchen. But I'm not that person any more. I have changed sides and I am now a thoroughly happy person. I used to be a member of the group who said 'no' to everything and now I say 'yes' a lot more. In the past few days I have signed up to seeing some bands on school nights and going on a hen-weekend in Barcelona. And, for the first time since my son was born, I can tell my ex that he's looking after our son without fear of endless fallout and recriminations. I'll simply hand him a list of dates and tell him that he has to look after him on those nights. Simple.

This summer has also been spent living like the other half. I've spent virtually three weeks abroad in France and Portugal with my parents and son. I've not been guarded and quiet like I always was before because I don't have to try to 'protect' my parents from knowing how bad my marriage was (although, to be fair, they knew perfectly well). However, I really learnt how the other half live at my Mum's hairdressers. Whilst I was there having my hair changed from the Red Panda look (grey roots, black middles, ginger ends) to glossy Auburn pony the 'phone rang. The assistant said that they needed an appointment for Princess M_______ and I thought 'ooh, it's a bit rude to call a high maintenance customer 'princess' in front of the rest of the clients' but it turns out that Princess M_____ is indeed a bona fide European royal type and she does frequent that salon. There's another group to which I don't usually belong: women who go to royally approved salons. I don't think I have half a life any more.

Girls who like boys who like boys who like girls

Today I got to meet a really fascinating new person and spend a good few hours in their company. This person was a complete stranger and it was really odd, but rewarding, to make their acquaintance. And yes, it was a male. And no, this isn't a juicy post because this stranger is my son.

If you are expecting some sort of novelistic denouement where I tell you about a long lost child I'm afraid you are going to be disappointed, because I'm going to be writing about the son that I've brought up and spent nearly every day of his five-and-a-half years on this planet with. However, I've only ever seen him with friends that I have chosen for him, not with friends that he chose for himself. Today his best friend came over and I met a whole new son.

Think back to your childhood. Was there a friend that your Mum wanted you to play with (usually her friend's child) that you basically couldn't stand? They came over and you got sent off to play together, but it was more punishment than fun? Well, I'm afraid that my friend and I decided a long time ago that my son and her daughter were going to get married, for us it's a joke. For her daughter it is a deadly serious betrothal. Sadly for this little girl my son has decided that he doesn't want to play with girls and he has a best friend that he's going to marry. And it's a lad. This playground menage-a-trois led to the most heart-rending note, in her handwriting, waiting on our welcome mat when we got home:

To E I love uoy are my best frend love fron C

His answer? 'Mummy, what's this card for?'. Poor C.

So, today his real male best friend came over and I met a new son. This son is excessively boisterous, obsessed by Ben 10 (which I don't let him watch) and has the strongest Yorkshire accent you have ever heard. Doing nothing to disprove Freudian theories of phallocentricity they even kept pulling their shorts out to compare willies (even though I told them not to. Repeatedly). This son doesn't put his toys away and doesn't cuddle me. He rarely sucks his thumb and runs like the wind. He shouts and shouts and shouts until I am sick. He looks very like my son, but he's just a bit more savvy, and a real leader.

It reinforced that men and women are very different creatures. Even if I do find someone to start a relationship with there's always a chance that anything I do for them will be met with an (unspoken) 'what's this for?'

A straw poll: did your Mum attempt to foist a friend on you? What was the matter with them? You can post anonymously remember.

Regrowing the family tree

I am back from France having gained a fair few freckles and lost a couple of grammes due to my salad-centric diet there. One thing that struck me whilst there was the whole notion of family.

The Mediterraneans know how to do family. Walk down the side streets and you often see a cluster of grandparents and parents and children sat on chairs on the pavement having animated and interesting foreign conversations (probably: "what the hell are those red-faced, sweaty, rucksack-toting tossers doing taking a photo of this street?"). Children are prevalent abroad: they go to restaurants until the middle of the night, they play on streets, the 13 year old ones drive scooters right at you full pelt (protected only by their insouciance: helmets and, heck, t-shirts, are for losers).

The odd thing for me was being a single parent. Now, I'm not claiming that France has no single parents but I didn't notice any. Everywhere there were couples with babies or extended families. In the hotel there was very firmly a Mum and a Dad collecting the kid's Coco-pops. Why is this? Are there far fewer single families abroad or is it simply that single parents can't afford to travel? It is shockingly hard to cope financially as a single parent: you have all the expense but only a half of the income (or in my case a third as my ex earned twice what I do). Additionally, it is exceptionally tiring travelling as a single parent: theoretically you can't even go to the loo on your own - you have to have your kid with you 24-7 as there isn't another pair of eyes to watch them. I remember the outcry after Maddie McCann's abduction about the children being left on their own in the apartment: it doesn't bear thinking about.

But luckily for me I am becoming more Mediterranean in familial matters. Trees regrow branches when one has been cut off. My family tree has had one major branch lopped off rather dramatically when my son and I were left by my ex, but instead we are relying on the older boughs of our family tree and holidaying with my parents. This means I can afford to take my son to places significantly more interesting and stimulating than my back yard; and - and this is a great thing- I can actually go to the toilet on my own abroad.

We're regrowing our family tree.

No, I don't eat fish. Or chicken.

In choosing the perfect holiday destination you should take into account characteristics particular to yourself.

Firstly, I have special skin that comes in four modes:
Mode 1: white
Mode 2: scarlet (following the least exposure to sun)
Mode 3: freckly
Mode 4: peeling

Additionally, I am a vegetarian. A proper one. I do not eat anything that once had a face or a parent and I call any pseudo-vegetarians who ´just eat fish´fish-and-chipocrites.
So, taking into account my skin type and feeding foibles where is the ideal holiday destination for me? Clearly (a) an organic vegetable farm in Reykjavik or, (b) my house.

In fact, I am in southern France.

French waiters have a special Gallic shrug reserved for vegetarians. In one shoulder move they can convey their total amazement that the namby-pamby carrot bothering Britons could ever have won at Crecy or Agincourt and in revenge all I'm going to get fed is an omelette. Hah.
However, there's something great about the holiday. I may be eating salad like a C-list celebrity on course for a 'How I shed the baby weight' special in OK Magazine, I may be smothered in Factor Duffle coat sun-repellent cream. But I haven't had a single argument all holiday unlike the humdinger I had with my ex on the train to Krakow this time last year.

That's progress.