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?".

D-i-v-o-r-c-e

What do you usually find on the day you come back from holiday? For most people it's a pile of letters on the doormat and that you didn't remember to throw the milk out after all... For me, it is that my ex has had some change of heart and is about to drop a bombshell.

On New Year's Eve 2007 I was travelling back from holiday and at the service station at Donington on the M1 I rang my husband. He chose that point to tell me he was moving out. Move forward a few months and at the same sodding services I get a text asking me when I'd be home because he needed to talk to me urgently. Now this could have meant one of two things: (a) he wanted to get back together or, (b) he wanted a divorce. I know it sounds unlikely that I wasn't sure which it would be but he's that bloody mercurial that it could be either.

Anyway, I get home and he turns up late (he'd fallen ASLEEP at home. How ungallant). It turns out that he wants a divorce so he can 'move on'. I did question how much more moving on there was to be done considering he lived in a flat and had another girlfriend... Which is the problem. Apparently she's not happy that we're still married and whenever he mentions the 'W' word* (wombat? Wakefield? weaving? windscreen wipers?) she has a stropette and goes all silent for a week. So we need to get divorced.

Now I have absolutely NO problem with not being married to him but I do have a problem with getting divorced. Mainly that I object to spending over a grand on doing it. I spent £14,000 on a wedding for heaven's sake and that was FUN, a divorce is just a big waste of cash that could be better spent on clothes or shoes or nights out or holidays or .... well, anything apart from a decree nisi. So, I won't divorce him because I don't want to waste what little money I have and he can't divorce me because I haven't committed adultery (but I live in hope :-) ), my behaviour isn't unreasonable and I don't consent.

So, it looks like his new girlfriend is going to have to put up with me being wifey for a lot bloody longer. Oh dear.



*wife, apparently.

Things that make you go 'ah'

Blowing one's own trumpet and showing off is Not Done. But I got this card from my Year 13s and it made me cry it was so sweet. So, I'm going to reproduce the comments and be quietly proud of myself.

Thank you so much for everything: you have by far made law my favourite subject

No one could ever have come up with such ridiculous ways to help us remember about a zillion cases. Thank you for being brilliant ... and a little bit weird!

Dearest Mrs __, I am ever so grateful for your teaching in law, I enjoyed the classes enormously, your personality brightening even the most boring parts of law.

Thanks for being an amazing teacher. We love you!

Law would never have been so enjoyable without you as a teacher - God knows what I'm going to do at Uni! Thank you ever so much

Thank you soooo much for your help over the past two years, you're a lovely person and a hard teacher to follow

Thank you for EVERYTHING!! You have been a great teacher, they will never live up to you at Uni...

Thank you for being the most random, great teacher and for convincing me to do law.

I'm very proud to be random and a little bit weird if it can make sane human beings love studying law...

Two-faced, me?

Lots of things are proving to me that I'm two-faced. I don't mean that I spend my whole life air-kissing past people's cheeks one moment and then turning to slag off the size of their arse the next. No, I'm learning that I have two faces and they look in very different directions.

Most women have these two faces but I'm not sure that we are conscious of it. The first is the face our friends see. Women are most the person they are, deep down, when they're with their friends. The other face is the one the person we're in a relationship sees: it looks identical but it's very different. Because this face represents the person that we've become in THAT relationship. Sometimes women are almost the same person with their friends that they are with their partner, and I reckon these are the happiest couples. At the other extreme there are two entirely different faces because you have to change your expression dramatically to cope with the relationship you're in. I barely saw my friends with my ex as it was impossible to maintain these two masks at once. The scrutiny of publicity made it clear that what was on show wasn't a face, it was a facade.

Last night my real face was on show because old friends came over. Ironically two of my bridesmaids were at my house whilst my ex's best man was at his flat. I know what face my ex showed: it's always the same. Me? Well, there was no facade and a huge beam all over my face. I'm not in a relationship right now and you know what? I'm enjoying not being two-faced.