Curry and Chocolate

Swings & Roundabouts

2008-11-07T21:30:00.002Z

Singledom or Coupledom? The Diamond Geezer reviews the dichotomy with his experiences every year on November 3rd, the anniversary of his last break-up. Nine years to date. His lists the pros and cons as follows:

"Some might say that we single people are missing out on the joys of coupledom, and maybe we are, but I'm convinced that there are equally many positive points to being single:"

Single: You get the whole duvet to yourself.
Coupled: You don't need a hot water bottle.

Single: There's half as much ironing to do.
Coupled: There's twice as much ironing to do but somebody else might do it.

Single: You can hoover the carpet when you think it needs doing.
Coupled: Somebody else hoovers the carpet before you think it needs doing.

Single: Nobody ever tells you that the kitchen must be repainted and the bathroom must be retiled.
Coupled: Two people can repaint the kitchen or retile the bathroom far more quickly than one.

Single: You never have to waste a Saturday doing what somebody else wants.
Coupled: You never sit around on a Saturday wondering what the hell to do.

Single: You can play your music collection really loud, even the track that nobody else likes.
Coupled: Your music collection is twice the size.

Single: You can watch whatever TV channel you like, without arguments.
Coupled: There's someone else on the sofa to snuggle up to.

Single: Nobody complains when you burp, belch or fart.
Coupled: Somebody points out when you have dandruff on your shoulder.

Single: You don't have to put up with somebody else's niggly annoying habits.
Coupled: Somebody else puts up with your niggly annoying habits.

Single: The toilet seat is always where you left it.
Coupled: The toilet seat isn't always freezing cold.

Single: You never come home to a blazing row.
Coupled: You sometimes come home to a cooked meal.

Single: You get to eat the whole ready meal for two yourself.
Coupled: It takes just as long to cook for two as it does for one.

Single: You can spend all your money on yourself.
Coupled: There are two salaries coming in and only one set of bills.

Single: You can walk away from a flatshare, any time.
Coupled: You can afford a mortgage, together.

Single: There are no important birthdays or anniversaries to accidentally forget.
Coupled: Somebody actually remembers your birthday.

Single: You never have to buy useless presents for your partner, just for the sake of it.
Coupled: Somebody buys you presents occasionally, and it's the thought that counts.

Single: You're allowed to flirt with people in the street.
Coupled: You don't need to flirt with people in the street.

Single: You never have to spend entire weekends being polite to the in-laws.
Coupled: Your in-laws are always ready to provide advice on your faults and shortcomings.

Single: You can still have a riotous social life in your 30s.
Coupled: You can still have a riotous social life in your 60s.

Single: You have no friends to go out with because they've all partnered off and are staying in.
Coupled: You don't have to go out with those annoying friends you had while you were single.

Single: You don't catch every sniffle, cold and flu bug off your partner.
Coupled: When you suffer a major cardiac arrest, somebody actually notices and dials 999.

Single: You never get left all alone and desolate because your life partner's just passed away.
Coupled: When you get old and infirm, you don't end up in a care home because there's nobody to look after you.

Single: If you meet the partner of your dreams, it's not too late to marry them.
Coupled: Nobody ever meets the partner of their dreams, so better to get married before it's too late.

Single: Being coupled is restrictive, stifling and a sign of personal weakness.
Coupled: Being single is unnatural, lonely and a sign of personal failure.

Single: You never get your heart broken.
Coupled: You sometimes feel your heart leap.

Single: You can have sex with anyone you like.
Coupled: You can have sex whenever you like.

Single: The bathroom is always free.
Coupled: The bedroom is always full.

Single: You can lie in bed in the morning for as long as you like.
Coupled: There's a very good reason for lying in bed in the morning.

Single: Nobody sees what you look like first thing in the morning.
Coupled: Somebody loves you despite what they see first thing in the morning.

Single: You never discover that your partner took another bloke to the company's (very expensive) Christmas party, having insisted to you that "plus one" on the invitation was a misprint. Not that I'm in any way bitter, you understand...

Hmm, jury's still out, I reckon.

Frustration

2008-11-07T15:09:00.000Z

Physical, mental, emotional. The opportunities with D have been few & far between, and our last session involved a return trip for him to his room at 1 in the morning that was Benny Hill-like in his farcical attempts not to get caught. There would have been no point returning to my room - I had drifted into the arms of Morpheus with a smile a mile wide, and wouldn't have heard him.

But since then? I have expended a ridiculous amount of mental energy on worrying about the Ciderman. It has reminded me in a way I'd rather not have been reminded that I miss having someone to worry about. However, if/when that happens, I'm afraid I must insist that it is someone who is willing to worry about me in return. To be fair, his personal life has taken a turn for the Jeremy Kyle - but DNA tests will have to wait another 6 months yet. Is this something I want to be in the middle of? Most certainly not. However, he is so damned pretty - but alcoholic. He's been great at accompanying me to various gigs, but by the time we get home, he's pissed and he falls asleep. And I lie away worrying about him. NOOOOO. I want rampant, mostly meaningless sex where I can slip a bit of emotion (affection, tenderness etc) under the wire without having to admit it to anyone. Including myself. This is all going horribly wrong.

But I put my arms round him and feel the muscles at the bottom of his spine and my knees go weak. I saw him walk out of his house with his hair and coat blowing in the breeze and nearly came in my knickers! He looks fantastic - and while I don't just want him for his body, I sure don't just want him for his problems!! And I went back on the pill, which has flattened my libido to a shadow of its former self. Just can't bloody win...

Joke

2008-09-26T22:44:00.002Z

Going around the interweb: I'm getting DSS sex - I get a little bit every few weeks but its not enough to live on. Christ - this is like being married, but without the dirty socks. So slightly better?

Advice?

2008-09-14T09:21:00.001Z

Hmm, so this situation with S. We have set a date, I kid you not. 2 weeks time. So I have a fortnight to try and work out how to make sure he has a good time & I don't traumatise him for life. I've warned him that the first time with anyone new (regardless of how experienced both parties are) has a high potential to be anywhere from rubbish to at best improvable. I've also said that I reckoned the main aims were to be comfortable, leave smiling and not feel like life wasn't ever going to get better. Full sex may or may not be a part of that. I've mentioned that overexcitement is to be expected and is no bad thing, as the next time a couple of hours later will be slower. I've said that even if he isn't expecting it, stage fright can creep up - everyone has experienced condom wilt, but hey, at least he'll be giving it a go. God i've talked this down!

I've laid down that affection and laughter are part of the deal - I'm not a pro doing it for money, and what I get out of it is knowing that he will always remember his first time - I hope with a smile. So to all the guys out there, how would you have wanted your first time to go?

Cultivation

2008-09-14T08:51:00.001Z

Good heavens, is the "Wobble" post the one I've left up for nearly 3 weeks? Meh - life continues.

I've been on what might be considered disturbingly close to "a proper date" with the Ciderman. Since then he's been out of the country & its been a long week. I've missed him quite a lot, but its given me a chance to reflect, to try and separate out what I hope he's like from what he might actually be like and most of all to get my head around the fact that I really could risk getting involved again. Whatever that means.

There's been an "opportunity" with D, which was enjoyable, but necessarily brief as the hotel was crawling with the rest of the department. However, that has now got to the inevitable difficulty where any progression involves an increase in intimacy, and there's no point. Sometimes the futility of it makes me sigh, but he's nice, reliable and takes me out to dinner, so, one evening at a time. And he does do a delicious job of biting my nipples. However, its difficult to relax when my gasps & moans of pleasure might be overheard by my department director, my line manager and 3 dozen assorted others.

Further, a new situation has arisen with... lets call him S. S is another, younger, work colleague who has developed into a very good friend. However, he has some bedroom issues, and we have discussed a type of Mrs Robinson scenario as a confidence boost. He claims that apart from having zero experience (which I'd guessed) due to confidence issues, he had also, until this week with someone he's interested in, not kissed a girl for over a decade. Surely not! Despite his obvious heterosexuality, he's very in touch with his feminine side and would hate to put any woman in an awkward position and generally impose. Perhaps a mature, experienced, unfazeable older woman is precisely what is needed to administer a short sharp metaphorical slap round the head to move things along. Of course, it could all go horribly wrong, we could regret it bitterly and generally make things worse, but hey, I think "Ah fuck it!", and he is slowly starting to be less risk adverse and take a chance. So we'll see.

And that's about it from the world of the hair monster. I still haven't solved my lack of pub-mates, but more violin-playing opportunities are slowly coming about. The garden is slowing showing the benefit of a bit of TLC (that's the back yard, not the lady-garden!) I guess one might say that the lady-garden is having a better time of it than my brain at the moment. Training up young S could be amusing for it, but might screw me (& him) up. But well, this is the year of doing things differently, so bring it on. I hope Ciderman rings next week though.

Wobble

2008-08-30T23:27:00.000Z

Feeling very, very low tonight. I don't know why, but I let the Ciderman get under my skin, which is a predictably stupid thing to have done. But I don't often meet people I want to talk to, who interest me, who aren't 10 years older than me and married.

This evening I spent in the company of two nice couples - late 50s/early 60s. 20-odd years older than me, and reminding me with every shared joke, every sentence that they finish for each other that I will never have that. I will never grow old with a person by my side with whom I've spent the majority of my adult life, who is the father of my children, who remembers that disasterous holiday we had 30 years ago, who planned the house extention with me etc, etc.

But I'm back to the old problem, I'm too young to be old and too old to be young. While the 30-somethings cluster round the pub with friends, I realise I have none to do that with - they are all the old smug-marrieds. While any younger friends I have are having fun, I seem to be always refusing a pint in order to drive home. It's become ingrained over the last 25 years - its what I do.

The most wonderful, memorable weekend of my life was spent, 9 years ago at a music festival. It wasn't because the bands were great, although they were. It was because, after rushing to get there, after sorting out the kids, and making sure the shopping & washing was done, I dashed over to the campsite to wait for the next item on the checklist of things to do.....only for the realisation to dawn that there wasn't anything. I could just: put the car keys down, get myself a pint, dance in the sunshine and repeat - for the next 36 hours. It was revelatory. For a day and a half, I wasn't responsible for someone else, running children here, collecting them from there, organising stuff. It was the first time in my adult life I'd ever had that much time to myself. I was 31.

Occasions since seem few and far between, which is why I feel I have turned into the most boring, prematurely-aged old bag known to mankind. Its like I know there's a life out there, but have no idea how to access it. How will I ever meet someone? This post is self-indulgent and whiny and I'm not even pre-menstrual, which is even more worrying, really.

The Hand

2008-08-21T18:36:00.001Z

He teases my clothes off me, laughingly undoing my bra, giggling as my breasts fall into his hands. But sooner or later, his eyes will find me, drill into the centre of me. His hand reaches out and unambiguously closes around my throat, constricting, squeezing, choking. I gasp - surprise, fear - yes, but undisguisable desire. My mouth drops open a little, lips wet with the previous kisses. My eyes open that bit wider - my heart hammering in my chest. I am pinned to the spot, by his hand, by his look. All I can do is gaze at him, knowing I can't resist, knowing that he now controls my every thought and action. All I can do is gaze, and silently beg him to fuck me. Now. Hard.

The Seduction - Part 2

2008-08-13T17:20:00.001Z

In the story so far of how I came to be having this sordid little affair with D, I've mentioned in Part 1 how, as Hot Chocolate said, it started with a kiss. Well after this episode, November came and went, as did December with nothing more than blushing smiles and the sort of terribly mild flirting that your maiden aunt couldn't object to. But the idea was out there - floating between us, invisible but tangible. Come the start of the New Year, following a Christmas card and a NYE text, I thought the time had come to move things on a step or two. Christmas had convinced me that I was up for an affair, and without a doubt I found the thought as exciting as I did scary. So I ensured I was booked into the same hotel the night before a department meeting, and mentioned it in passing. The information definitely had an effect - he jumped and stuttered.

There were a number of us staying there and we'd agreed to meet in the bar at 7:00pm. Shortly before 7, the room telephone rang - it was him. He offered to escort me down to dinner and mentioned that his room was handily just across the corrider. Come on over, I said. A minute later came the knock. Pretending I wasn't deeply nervous, I opened the door and played it cool. He strolled straight past me and took a short tour of the facilities. I watched him with one eyebrow raised in a quizzical smile. I was taken aback and a little scared by his air of insouciant confidence. He looked like he spent most evenings walking around women's hotel rooms, and my conscience gave a twinge. That little voice of common sense that we all do our best to ignore started whispering that he was probably a total player who might have shagged every woman in the company. Still, we were only going down to the bar together, right?

During dinner, first his foot and then his thigh pressed against mine. Hmm, this is quite nice and not too scary, I thought. I generally relaxed and the evening passed pleasantly with the anticipation held level. A few glasses of wine later and I was ready to stroll back upstairs. His arm round me up the corridor, I wondered how you negotiated the etiquette of suggesting something improper, and if he would, or I should or what. To my relief, he asked if I was going to invite him in for a cuddle. YES, I thought, that's perfect. A nice, non-threatening way of suggesting something. I mean, as much as I might fancy doing it doggie-style in front of the mirror, no-one is going to condemn me for agreeing out loud to a cuddle! Gentlemen readers - remember this.

So it was that I found myself, for the first time in ten years, engaged in a passionate kiss in a hotel room with a man who was not my partner. Worse, a work colleague. Worse still, someone else's husband. At this point, my resolve began to waver. My thought processes went something like this:

"Ohhh, I really shouldn't be doing this! I work with him and its all a bit close for comfort and when work affairs go bad it can be hideous. What if anyone finds out? My reputation at work will be shot. Oh this is so not a good idea. How do I get out of this? I can't really without making a total scene and I really shouldn't be doi..Ooooohhhhhhh GOD that felt good...... but what was I was saying? Oh yes, I met his wife at the Christmas party the other year and she seemed really nice and I really should not be doin.. OH MY GOD - HE'S JUST UNDONE MY BRA STRAP WITH ONE HAND - HE IS A PLAYER!! I bet he does this all the time!! I don't even know if I really fancy him, I mean it seemed like a good idea earlier but now I don't know if the reality is really what I want and I really shouldn't be doin.. AAAAAHHHHHWWWWWwwwwww CHRIST that feels fantastic.... yeah where was I? Oh yes but that's not the point, I know K and I haven't been getting on, but this really isn't going to help, and I know what I'm like, I will give up on trying to make it better with K and sort out our problems, if they can be sorted, if I've got this distraction but this is so not a good idea on so many levels an..... OOOOOAAAAAHHHHHHHWWWWWWWW....oh, fuck it - I've got a live one here!"

And the rest, as they say, is history.

The games we play

2008-08-11T18:11:00.002Z

Now I have blogged before on here how I (somewhat irrationally) cannot sleep with two men concurrently - that if I start anything with someone new, it marks the end of an old relationship. But I've never been a married man's mistress before (at least not without any expectation of that status changing).

Last week was a funny one - a situation arose at work which I was getting very wound up about. Frustratingly, if I hadn't been screwing D, he may have provided a practical solution, but we had both previously agreed to avoid any situation in which he might become my direct manager again, for reasons of ethics. Or morals. Or whatever. However, a resolution that involved him was almost so obvious it was starting to raise eyebrows that it hadn't happened, and that was starting to reflect badly on me professionally. Typical - I knew this liaison would not improve my career, but I didn't think it would negatively impact it, even without being discovered. How naive.

So in the hotel after work, my heart wasn't in it. And worse, he noticed. Worst still, he understood, listened to me and sympathised. We have our boundaries and that crossed mine. Someone actually caring about how my day went and listening is alien. It makes me realise that there's something wrong with a life when a woman gets to the age of 40 without having experienced that before. That makes me feel sorry for myself and that makes me absolutely furious. I hate any suggestion that I might by wallowing in self-pity - I am not a victim. So I got up and left; drove home illegally fast, listening to Marilyn Manson. The one thing I wanted more than anything that night was not to spend it alone. The one thing I refused to do was admit that fact, even to myself.

But my slutty guardian angel was looking over me. Shortly after I got in, I got a text from one Cider Man - did I want to meet him for a pint and a round of pub games? Yes - yes I did. Lager & pool was just what I needed. He's going through some changes himself. So I got exactly what I needed: a warm body to curl up with, a chance to sooth my own soul by comforting someone else. All without having to admit to any emotional vulnerability myself. I rock!

Oh and today I charmingly knocked sufficient heads together so that the difficult situation at work has hopefully been resolved. Its just best when everybody does what I want!

The Seduction - Part 1

2008-08-09T16:50:00.001Z

I have been poking around the blogosphere this week and am particularly enjoying RiffDog at Ashley & Me. His writing is very accessible - humourous and addictive. It's seriously making me reconsider my writing style & content - more sex required? His descriptions of his various first dates reminded me fondly of the first night with D, and perhaps you good readers would like more detail of what happened.

As a recap, D is a married man with whom I work. Last November, in the bar after a departmental awayday, he unexpectedly kissed me goodnight. On the lips. In my natural surprise and confusion, I pinched his bum. Rewinding further, he used to be my direct boss. I really enjoyed working for him - he was relaxed but totally professional. The sort of boss that you want to work that bit harder for and I was rather in awe of him. In fact, when the reorganisation was announced and he told me I would no longer be working for him, a look passed between us - a complicated look, perhaps speaking of thoughts that were less about manager to subordinate and more of one adult the equal of the other. But the moment was fleeting, departmental lines were redrawn and for a year or so, we had no reason to be in contact.

Another reorganisation later, we found ourselves in the bar at the end of a long boozy night. Not even alone - a couple of others were there too. Which is why his kiss goodnight so totally confused me. We work in quite a macho, conservative industry - not a touchy-feely media-lovey-type world, so this was definitely not normal. I floated back to my hotel room like I was being borne along on a cloud. Did he mean it? What did he mean? Was I mis-interpreting it? He surely wasn't making a pass, was he? Yes - I know the blokes reading this will be thumping their heads against their screens screaming, "Of course he bloody was!", but you have to realise. I'd been in a committed relationship for nigh on 10 years. In all that time I'd barely looked at anyone else (apart from Cider Man here) and certainly no-one had made a pass at me. In fact in the previous few months, as things went downhill between K & I, the realisation of this was starting to grate. I wondered out loud to friends if this was because:

a) I'd been giving off "I'm taken" vibes,

b) because I was so out of practice that I didn't notice subtle indications, or

c) was the problem in fact that I had the body of a teletubby and a face like a smacked arse?

So that's my excuse for a grown woman lying awake wondering if the man who kissed her full on the lips liked her at all. Honestly, the thought seemed so bizarre and unlikely - I'm still laughing at my innocent bewilderment.

So after a good half hour's thought - I'm blushing here - I sent him a text of "Nice bum". And felt terribly shocked at my behaviour and instantly embarassed and convinced I'd made a total fool of myself, that I'd utterly misinterpreted an innocent, friendly kiss and I would probably be formally reprimanded for it. Breakfast was a trial. We studiously avoided catching each other's eyes and I decided that if confronted I would plead alcoholism. Or something. The conference session the following day was mercifully short and we left the hotel without a further word being spoken. The following day I got to work to find a short email from him: "Sorry - I should have said something yesterday. I'm out of the country, back Wednesday week." Well what did that mean? Did that mean that I would get the formal dressing down when he got back? Would we both draw a discreet veil over an embarrassing yet minor incident? I decided that least said was soonest mended and resolved to put the episode out of my mind. Which worked, until the day he got back. He came round to my desk, stood in front of me and eventually looked me directly in the eye. I looked at him.... and as the huge, goofy grins simultaneously hit our faces, I knew that whatever happened between us, things would be alright....

Sublime Symphony of Passion

2008-08-07T19:16:00.003Z

With the benefit of the distance of days, I can now being to consider my response to Prom 24 last Monday - a concert that began oddly but finished with magnificence.

The first half kicked of with Bach's Toccata & Fugue, but for Orchestra with Organ accompaniment (arranged by Sir Henry Wood - the instigator of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall). This seemed a waste; when the organ at the hall is cranked up, you realise that this strange building with its acoustically idiosyncratic design was actually constructed as part of, and an extension to, its organ. The organ is the pulsing heart of the building, which is why under-utilising it in that monument to the organ - Bach's Toccata & Fugue was a wicked abomination.

This was followed by a further abortion - a Violin & Horn Concerto by a raving Victorian lesbian. Tokenism at its worst. There's a reason there are no Violin & Horn concertos in the standard repertoire - it doesn't work. The horn drowns the violin. Its pointless. Its not worth the tube fare. Its a waste of everyone's time, patience and earwax. Add in the fact that there is no discernable melody for the orchestra (the inimitable BBC SSO) to get their teeth into, and my irritation overflows. But the second half - oh the Gods of passion smiled down upon us lucky souls in the hall that evening. Euterpe melded with Erato to produce an experience that will live with me til my dotage.

My spies tell me the 29 year-old conductor Stefan Solyom was so hyper before the start of his proms debut he threw up, but focused his mania into a stunning, tear-jerkingly mature performance of Rachmaninov's 2nd Symphony. The third movement in particular, when he discarded his baton in favour of naked-handed direction produced sublime, synaesthetic out-of-body moments. He understood that nothing should come between bare skin and the sound. He pulled the music from the air, phrase folding over and in on itself as the orchestra danced to the hypnotically sensual sounds that was so much more than the sum of the parts. The music swirled around the hall like a tangible thing - almost glimpseable in its profound physicality. Like ripened corn swaying in the breeze; as the band swayed forward into each phase the audience, like mesmerised odalisques continued to echo that motion under the direction of the the devilishly powerful Svengali Solyom. He controlled the thoughts, the actions, the attention, the life-force of thousands, sending us flying on the zephyr of passion-made-sound until he brought us back safely to land and the spell was broken by shouts of bravo.

I make no apology for the use of the term synaesthesia. Good music should, must be experienced by all the senses simultaneously with erotic, angry passion. Violins should stroke the neck, brushing finger-tips extended by cellos teasing down and round to the breasts, the nipples. Clarinets should caress the backs of the knees, up and down the rear and inner thighs. Oboes and bassoons should be breathed in - the smell and taste of their sound internalised. Lower brass resonates in the bones, the pelvis, the spine. Good music, be it classical or rock should be visceral. It should lift you from the moment you are in, far above the Earthly concerns, liberating, freeing, making all things & dreams possible. For that experience on Monday evening, Solyom & the BBC SSO, I thank you.

Life Begins

2008-08-03T13:33:00.003Z

Here I am, a woman in my prime, and you know what? Forty is fab! My confidence in myself is growing by the day. I can wear low-cut tops without thinking I'm being obvious or mutton-like (does that translate across the Atlantic?), simply because it doesn't really cross my mind. I have soft, round, gently tanned, welcoming full breasts - why shouldn't they see some of the light of day in the summer? I smile at everyone I meet, and they smile back. I'm walking around in my own little sunbeam at the moment, and that light is reflecting upon all the people around me.

After my serendipitious meeting with the Cider Man in town last week, we "hooked up" a few evenings later. It was such a pleasant change to spend time with someone different - met a few of his friends, went somewhere new, had a laugh, and had some incredible oral sex. I'd forgotten he had a tongue stud! Trust me - what all your friends say about tongue-studs is true. Every woman should have access to one at least once - and once you do, you'll want it again and again and again.... And he's nice, and he stayed the night and I had a fabulous time. He can come again - fnarr, fnarr. You know, his back had the softest skin I've ever stroked....

I am so unshakeably sure that I don't want a relationship at this point in my life. I want to cherry-pick the good bits: flattery, attention, plenty of sex, and you can keep the dross: Match of the Day, bickering about who's turn it is to go to Tescos (translate: Walmart) and whether his mother's coming to dinner. I guess that makes me perfect mistress material for the time being. Certainly D is very keen to give me my first fuck of my forties this week.

My social calendar is filling up - quiz nights, BBQs, chamber music, rock nights & tonight - the Proms. I'll be on my own, and enjoying it all the more because of that. Beethoven and Mahler, teutonic delights at the Albert Hall. All in all, I feel like the cat that got the cream. Is life allowed to be this good?

Crossing the Rubicon

2008-07-26T11:36:00.002Z

I have stepped across the divide, swum defiantly & purposefully to the other side. I have crossed the Rubicon - I am 40. Although it feels odd seeing it in black and white, mentally I'm fine with it. I celebrated with the offspring. Tonight, we're off to eat and drink with friends before ending up in a club to dance like diseased monkeys. Ah, one of the many advantages of having been a teenage mother that the reactionary rag, the Daily Mail, forgets to mention!

I said goodbye to my thirties in style. D booked into a country house hotel and to continue the incapacitated animal similes, we fucked like crazed ferrets for hours. Then we went for a stroll round the grounds, laughingly considering patches of long grass for privacy and daring, had a drink, had a meal, and did it all over again.

The last month has been an extended dry patch. Holidays interfered with our usual arrangements, which was tortuous. I'd forgotton how randy I get in the sunshine and there was nothing I could do but lie semi-naked on the sunlounger and fantasize. So a proper reunion was highly anticipated. I'd had the chance to warn / titilate him with tales of my near all-over tan, hard fought through sessions of topless car-washing, gardening, pool-cleaning and shed painting.

I was starting to get anxious that the tan would fade before it had the chance to be shown off, but I was able to parade; naked, laughing, brown and blushing for my lover. I told him that I hadn't been able to sleep the night before through anticipation, but I'd solved the problem by fantasising that he was licking champagne from my breasts. So he obliged for real.

Its soooo pleasurable to touch, feel, stroke, rub my cheek against his stomach, feel his cock in my cunt, his teeth on my nipples. To touch someone, to be touched. To fuck and be fucked. The end of my thirties was spectacular. Can my forties live up to it?

Six Month Check-up

2008-07-19T07:59:00.005Z

Looking back over the blog, I thought it might be worth doing a mid-year review to follow up from my New Year's Eve post. But its all so damn good! What a difference 6 months has made. From feeling trapped, defeated and negative, I'm now feeling positive, vibrant and alive. Ok, I'm not a grinning sunbeam every moment of every day, but then, would you want to hang out with someone who was? Or ring the local funny-farm and advise them to bring their biggest net?

So here we go - Midsummer Joy

Emotional
Living in my own space and skin, occasionally lonely but pretty content. Having an affair with that married man, but as long as it stays within its boundaries, all is good. I know where I stand and as long as I know when my next shag is coming, I'm fine. Involved enough to be edgy when I don't know where he is when I was expecting to see him at work and he's elsewhere. Involved enough to not particularly be interested in actually sleeping with anyone else, but not so hung-up that I spend my weekends & evenings pining. Yup, could be a LOT worse.

Professional
Brilliant! The shake-up in my personal life has left me feeling so much more positive and in control of my life and this has been reflected at work. My boss and I are getting on better. I bounce around like I'm walking on air, and I get noticed. I've been approached by the director of another function to transfer to his area to bring my unique blend of skills with me. Just need to negotiate a payrise now.

Family
One darling is living at home, and we're having such fun. Its so relaxed, we never row. She cooks, I shop, its no hassle. She says I'm the best flatmate she's ever had. Well, if you will hang out with born-again Christians, don't expect to be asked out down the pub too often. The other one is too far away for my liking, but she's doing what she wants and is pushing her way through life in the direction she wants to go. I can't help worrying, but then that's my job as a mummy. She's great.

Hobbies
Bugger the gym - not been near it this year. But I go out walking most Sunday mornings with some friends. Much more civilised. And I've joined a trio to play classical music, and am investigating joining a folk group for general laughs.

The future
Well perhaps that Ayn Rand was on to something. I have indeed turfed K out, sprog minor has moved in and its even better than I dared hope. My indian summer of whoring about is available to me if and when I want to explore that option. Talking of which, went out last night and bumped into Cider Man, (he of my February shinannigans) who was very keen to give me his number. Meanwhile, although I can't afford Australia, I shall be visiting my sister in SA later this year. So no longer stuck. I have options. I have control. I have a big smile. I have a hangover.

Wants and Needs

2008-07-14T21:15:00.003Z

The secret to contentment is to understand the difference between Wants and Needs, apparently. A number of books have been written on the subject, not least Affluenza, by Oliver James which warns of the difference from a material perspective. But how does this play with emotions - which do we need, and which do we merely want? Is the question even valid? Personal fulfillment suggests that we each have a "right" to all the positive emotions, and shelves of self-help books suggest that we can insulate ourselves from the bad with the right "positive mental attitude".

But where are the boundaries? Is it right to pursue your emotional wants, to elevate them to needs, regardless of the pain it causes others, or ultimately yourself? Or are they the same thing? My heart was wrenched reading this blog-post. I'm sure there are those that would condemn S for willingly involving herself with a married man - regardless of the heartache she could inflict on the wife and on herself. But how can the hardest heart not weep for her? To fall in love with someone unavailable is one thing, but to want to be with the man you love, comfort and nuture him, bear his children to fulfill your biological destiny is much closer to a need - sex and procreation are as much a basic human motivation as hunger & thirst. To have found the love of your life, only to be told he would rather live a half-life with a woman who does not satisfy him is surely the ultimate slap in the face. Worse - surely it is taking the very core of you and shredding it, trampling the pieces into the mud?

I suppose I am feeling wistful after reading this article. Am I alone in reading this article on an American married couple that decided to have sex every day for 101 days and be astonished that the response from her friends was so negative? I crave some sex, some affection, some tenderness, touch, trust, intimacy, to "sink in, trusting, to their pillowy ephemeral depths and to whisper, in the dark, to the comfort of flesh" as Z so beautifully puts it. Such a fundamental need, such a seemingly unachievable ambition, a want - the pursuit of which eliminates any chance of contentment.

Quest for the Holy Grail

2008-06-30T22:52:00.001Z

The holy grail of human existance is predicated on the fact that, as John Donne was perspicacious to point out, no man is an island. Or woman for that matter. While Harriet Harman gets her knickers in a twist over the differences between the sexes (she seems to feel there are none, just a male conspiracy to "keep the little woman down"), I think more of the similarities, or at least, the complementariness of the sexes.

Whilst I leave dissection of Harman's arrant (and dangerous) nonsense to others to complete, (Ms R for instance has a few, sharp words to say on the matter), the subject of today's rather wistful post is the need to find that other, complementary person - the one that fills the physical and emotional void at the centre of each of us. While women seek to fill the void more literally than men, metaphorically the need is the same in us all. Someone who fulfills us physically, who takes care of us emotionally, who gives and accepts our touch, affection, passion and lust. Who cares for us, even we care for them. Maybe the need to nuture is stronger in women, but is it not balanced in our lovers by an equivalent desire to protect?

Yet the more we reach for this ideal, total, all-encompassing 'other', the more of a mirage the existance of such an individual seems. For whilst we dream of Gods and Goddesses to place on pedastals, we are each of us aware of our own mortal failings. While we have a tendancy to expect perfection in others, we are only too aware of our own feet of clay.

Experience tells us that we will never find all we want and need in one person. But hope springs eternal, or else we make bitter compromises, risking stability for danger, family for fun. We compare and contrast, are kind and cruel at the toss of a coin, each of us at times taking turns to be pursued and pursuer, so rarely the two roles combining in serendipitious fate. So the chase goes on - we are careless that we are the object of someone obsession, whilst the object of our own continues their own life mostly oblivious to us. Or you share an obsession, but its pointless, cos its not going anywhere - its as much of a mirage as a Platonic ideal (as opposed to platonic - if I'm not getting my philosophical constructs confused and generally talking out of my arse. If I am, blame the Kronenbourg).

So what is the answer to life, the universe and everything? Is it 42 married lovers, in the faint hope that if you don't spend too long with any of them, you can maintain some shreds of emotional detachment, and kid yourself that it isn't a synonym for emotional emptiness? Or do you pursue the hunt for the "one, true other", and spend the majority of your evenings sobbing into the sofa? Or do you just marry the nearest person, and try to forget you ever had needs and hopes beyond Tesco and the school run? Christ I'm depressed! That's what seeing K today does for me. That and the fact that I haven't seen D for a week and won't for another two. My efforts at pretending to myself that I'm not slightly pining are wearing thin.

Sweet Seventeen

2008-06-13T22:54:00.001Z

This week gift to feature writers and bloggers is the publication of Mira Kirshenbaum's book, "When Good People Have Affairs". From the reviews I've scanned, the thrust of the piece is the argument that extra-marital affairs are so widespread, that it is ridiculously simplistic to label adultery (and by extension, adulterers) as bad. Rather than the certainty of black and white, it might be better to take a slightly more shaded view of the motivations, reasons and explanations for affairs, and avoid the knee-jerk, "They've cheated so its over" point of view.

Ms Kirshenbaum lists 17 reasons why people cheat. For ease, these are: Break-out-into-selfhood, Accidental, Sexual Panic, Let's kill this relationship (and see if it comes back to life), Mid-marriage crisis, Trading up, Heating up your marriage, I just need to indulge myself, Ejector seat, See if, Distraction, Surrogate therapy, Do I still have it, Having experiences I missed out out, Revenge, Mid-life crisis and Unmet needs.

She further suggests that you should stay with your partner if your affair is a heating-up-your-marriage affair, let's-kill-this-relationship-and-see-if-it-comes-back-to-life affair, do-I-still-have-it affair, accidental affair, revenge affair or midlife-crisis affair. However, she says that you need to think carefully about whether to stay with your primary partner if your affair is of the following kinds: the break-out-into-selfhood affair, unmet-need affair, having-experiences-I-missed-out-on affair, surrogate-therapy affair, ejector-seat affair.

Now whether this taxonomy of reasons is completely exhaustive, I don't know. Where does, "Well, he asked and I was a bit pissed and quite flattered" fit in? And the categories are obviously not mutually exclusive - my affair with D ticks several boxes, both for me and for him I imagine. Still, most of the ones on my side are in the "split up" category, and a number of his are from the "stick it out" side of the fence, so there's a nice bit of post rationalising.

Further the author is wholly convinced of the wisdom of NEVER confessing the affair, perhaps a route that Titus, the Lazy Philosopher wished he'd taken in hindsight. Still, if the affair is of the type to give the marriage a kick up the arse, how do you establish that yes, you really are that pissed off and things really must change if the other party is blithely unaware?

I find the entire subject quite fascinating from a philosophical stand-point. I was quite flabbergasted to read in the Guardian this particular quote: "'Adulterers are neither kind nor good people, so what sort of sympathy are we supposed to give them?', said Leila Collins, a psychologist who has given relationship counselling for 15 years. 'A good person doesn't betray their loved ones. A good person who is unsatisfied in their relationship ends it before starting a new one.'"

What? Are you barking?? And what exactly qualifies Ms Collins to go busybodying around in other people's lives? I'm not talking about the bit of paper she may have tacked to her office wall, I'm talking about some tangible life experience, wisdom and compassion. Are you telling me that one placement of a penis negates a lifetime of selflessness, devotion and duty? Total bollocks. But yet, the pain, hurt and devastation that the discovery of an affair can have is not to be denied. But to read that a bit of dissatisfaction is apparently sufficient reason to jettison the other parent of your children and doing so in pursuit of a new relationship makes one a "good" person is not only ridiculous, but both naive, dangerous and destructive.

Cuddle Time

2008-06-08T15:51:00.002Z

Last month I mentioned my Dichotomy - that life was pleasant but without extremes. Part of the upside was my saggy, baggy, deaf old cat. This morning I found him dead in his basket - 19 years of memories consigned to the incinerator. I'd expected, in my usual non-sentimental style, that when then time came, I would simply bag him up and drop him off at the council tip, but this morning, I uncharacteristically came over all mawkish, and paid £65 to have him lovingly cremated.

Wow, is there ever money in dead pets - I shall bear it in mind if I ever need a career change and feel I could manage to keep a straight face long enough. It was almost worth the money for the comedy value - the ever-so-sympathetic-wily businessman says: "Would you like to lay him out in the Chapel of Rest or shall I? You can take as long as you want to say your final goodbyes." Me: "Errr, can't you just take him away, he's starting to smell..."

Strangely enough, almost the last person to see him alive was D - he had a free evening and popped over to the house. His first visit to the house & the first occasion that wasn't a fumble on expenses. Life, eh?

All-male brothels for women

2008-06-07T21:04:00.002Z

I was reading a commentary by Ariel Leve from the Times earlier, on the subject of Heidi Fleiss' new venture in the Nevada desert - a brothel for women. Her column, although amusing, missed pressing most of my recognition buttons. Perhaps its because she's from New York. Apparently, she can't sleep with someone without wanting to talk on the phone afterwards. Talk? To someone you've just slept with?? Christ alive, we're British, don't you know. We don't talk - we go to the pub, we get pissed, we pull, we sleep with someone, we bump into them again, stuff is repeated and sometimes shuffles in embarrassed fashion into something resembling a relationship. Certainly no talking involved though.

There again, women from across the pond seem rather hung up on "dating", whatever the hell that is. Some Canadian bint was slagging off British men as "too polite, too repressed and too misogynistic" and has written an article called "The Tragic Ineptitude of the English Male" implying that British men are drunken women haters. Despite not actually ending up in bed with one the whole time she lived here (surely frigid?), she is cashing in on her lack of first-hand knowledge, xenophobic misandry (yeah the irony completely passed her by, but then Alanis Morrisette highlighted that Canadians never really had a firm grip on the concept) and general cultural missing-the-point to turn this drivel into a TV series. I'm sure the Canadians will lap it up.

Personally I know nothing about this dating malarkey; my history is all around long-term serial relationships. They all started with a shag, because then you both know where you are, and assuming neither of you actually blow your nose on the curtains, it then morphs into a relationship, (because you didn't chose a flaky feckwit to start with) and its just less trouble to carry on with the one that's there & willing, rather than cast about for someone new. Its not clever, its not exciting, there's a high percentage of danger of ending up spending your Sundays in B&Q, but hey, at least you get laid and the opportunity to go halves on a curry on a Saturday night. Perhaps I settle for too little, but many of my friends seem jealous of what I had. 1 marriage, 2 long-term relationships, 1 one-night stand that dragged on for a week (damn I'm good!) and the current entanglement. And not a single date.

But one thing she said did pull me up: "If I announced I’d like to have sex with no expectations, demands or agenda - I’d have to turn men away." That I suppose is exactly what I am doing currently - I have no expectations, demands or agenda in this fling with D. Why would I? He's married and staying that way, with my blessing. But according to her I should be beating them off with a shitty stick, as the saying goes. And I guess if I advertised the fact that I was that accommodating, I would be. Somehow though, it is a bit sad though that I have given up articulating even to myself what an expectation, demand or agenda might look like. It seems so fantastically pointless including someone else in your plans, even a hypothetical person. Is that just giving up?

Becalmed at sea

2008-06-02T22:20:00.002Z

I'm aware that my rate of posting has dropped off recently. This is mostly because I have nothing new to relate - there are only so many ways I can put "Saw D - shagged him". I have been attempting and failing to drum up a social life. I have identified that what I need is not a man, but a life. Unfortunately, all the good times outside of a bedroom I have had recently feature an offspring or two, and that is no way to proceed long term.

I have seen K a couple of times - I've even been in his new flat. That was.... a lot to describe in a simple blog. As a word association dump to give you an outline: Heart wrenching, bitter, detached, lonely, impatient, superior, guilty, miserable, quietly chuffed, relieved, horny, ashamed, motherly, lover-ly, nurturing, reluctant, exultant, sad, tiptoe, irritated and vindicated were some of the emotions and descriptive words that go part way towards summing up my feelings during the time it took to get a guided tour and drink a cup of coffee. Bottom line is that its over and he's not my problem any more, and worrying about him is detracting from the energy I need to rebuild my life. Tough but true.

D has been making considerable efforts to ask me my movements and invited me down for a "visit" at his hotel on my way past. I'm not sure he wanted me to stay all night, but I decided I would. I probably won't next time - good grief, hearing his snoring is a relief because it means he's stopped fidgeting. Temporarily! But I like him, oh I like him lots.

Over the weekend I called in to Hay, just to claim some literary boasting points. Unfortunately, we just missed Ian McEwan's discourse on "On Chesil Beach" (which is really rather poignant if you want reminding what crap sex is like). Whilst she was pottering round the poetry shelves in the various bookshops, I found myself browsing the Mind Body & Spirit sections, wondering if there was a way to magic up a social life. I came across a white (whoops, nearly typed that as shite....a Freudian finger-slip?) magic book of spells. I read the one that claimed it would draw my lover to me for ever. Well, even if I could be arsed to assemble the petals and rose oil and whatever, I'm not sure I'd want him hanging around all the time. There was also one for getting rid of a rival - you wish her good things apparently (and assemble even more crap) and she'll scoot off after them and leave the object of your joint desire alone. But then I decided that if by some coincidence, writing on a chicken's egg in green ink at moonlight were to coincide with a marriage breakup, I'd feel too guilty to get in there anyway, so best leave well alone. Too apathetic to make a good witch, I guess!

Tease

2008-05-22T22:41:00.000Z

There is something so deliciously naughty about having a serious, in-depth, work discussion with your lover in his office, whilst wrapping your ankles around his and inching your skirt up bit by bit until sudden changes in his facial expression and his tone tell you that he's just glimpsed a flash of your suspenders. God bless visually obsessed men.

I'm one of them

2008-05-15T21:57:00.002Z

I have recently been chewing over the issue of part-time lovers. Now it seems eminently sensible to me that in lieu of a full-time lover, I could substitute with enough part-timers to make a full-time equivalent. I have no moral objection in my particular case - I have made no commitment to anyone. It's rational, sensible, logical even, and I am a rational, sensible and logical hair-monster. But unfortuately, I'm just not wired that way. I have NEVER been able to regularly sleep with two men concurrently. I have no idea why, I just can't, and never mind the physical frustration, I'm finding that fact intellectually frustrating! I have managed a one-night stand in the same week as the start of an ongoing relationship, but I just can't ride two horses, so to speak.

However, through some nonsense at work, I dug out my Myers-Briggs personality type. Hmmm. It's like someone has been following me around with a tape-recorder and noting things I've said out loud to include in the profile. It even predicted what CDs I would have in the car. How does my attitude to unexpected invitations so correctly define me as a Vaughan Williams devotee? I'm an individual, damn it, and I took the Shostokovitch out of the car last week, so Ha, you were wrong there.

It said that my type had a similar attitude to music as they did to sex. I have said to D that music and sex are the only times I completely lose myself in a moment. It also said that my type "may analyse his/her own thought processes as if his mind and body were separate from their conscious self". Also that "They seek patterns and logical explanations for anything that interests them". So that will be why, as K was forcing me down onto the concrete path, careless of the cuts and bruises I sustained in his sudden rage, I was thinking, "Aha, this is the second time with me, the third time I know about, and you can triangulate from 3 occurances. Interestingly, the pattern appears to be doorways - each time he's kicked off, it has involved pushing someone out of or through a doorway. What's that about?" Someone more in touch with their feelings may have just thought, "Fuck this for a game of soldiers, I'm off." Funny lot, us INTPs.

But it does say that we are very loyal and faithful and entirely straightforward in relationships - never bother with game playing. See - we're not that bad. What's even better, I've managed to be one of the few INTPs that's not a trekkie - I'm almost human! Don't know that any of this is going to help me solve my shag dilemma though.

Saturday Mornings

2008-05-10T16:15:00.000Z

As has become the new routine, I am woken by my regular weekend visitor, a fat lazy wasp that never disturbs me on a workday - doubtless it is busy itself. But on Saturdays and Sundays it likes to pay a friendly visit and hovers above the curtains as the dawn chorus breaks, and with a sigh, I reach for the empty pint glass and paperback and hope none of my neighbours are out for an early constitutional as I prance naked in front of the bedroom window, trying not to trap any of its legs against the glass.

Today however, he obviously only had time for the briefest of hellos, before sinking back behind the curtain and according to the diminishing buzz, found his way out again. That left me sleepy but not tired, awake and alone on a Saturday morning. I tensed and stretched, yawning and wriggled sideways to find a cooler bit of sheet. Having a superking-sized bed to oneself, there's always a cooler bit somewhere.

Arching my back, I feel the duvet brush my nipples. Naked, warm, luxuriant, relaxed, one's thoughts turn to what nature intended Saturday mornings to be for, apart from saving wasps from human peril. The memory of teeth teasing that pink flesh is subconsciously echoed as my hands creep towards them, pulling, pinching, squeezing, twisting. The thoughts come thicker, fast, the warmth spreads. Writhing now, I imagine hands, tongues, fingers. Kiss my shoulders, I inwardly demand and twist over to offer an bared blade to my imaginary lover. I stroke my own neck, flicking my hair back to give the phantom easier access. I wonder how wet I am below, but resist from exploring there...yet.

Now the memory of his smell, the rasp of 5'o clock shadow as I rub my cheek against thin air. Leading my my jaw, I'm moving, twisting, rubbing as if I were a pet cat impressing itself against ankles. Flipping over onto my stomach, the ghostly feel of lips on my back, a tongue following the contours of my spine, down then up again. Hands pushing my hair away from my nape as I lift my neck in offering to his touch. Eyes closed, I trace the outline of my own jaw with a thumb, lost in imaginings, memory chasing sensation following fantasy. I am vaguely aware that I gasp audibly as my finger sinks past the initial resistance into a hidden lake of physical response. I waste no time in spreading it over my cunt lips, the tops of my thighs, bringing the finger up to my mouth to taste and savour, wiping fresh juice across my upper lip, tracing out the hardened nipples. Again rising in space so the highest points of my body are those two peaks, and my crotch. Up, higher, more, faster, and on and on. A blur of reality, a kaleidoscope of images and my moment is upon me. It builds and builds, the threat of the orgasm ending mitigated by squeezing my thighs tighter and tighter against my hand, bucking, throbbing, pulsating, a universe of sensation collapsed into a pin-prick black hole of time. Allowing myself to relax, to come down, to smile lazily into space, I replay special moments we've had together, I claim all the mattress, starfished with the duvet cast back. And as my mate the wasp considers another assault on its enemy's base camp, I make a mental note to add bleach and olive oil to the shopping list.

The Dichotomy

2008-05-09T20:15:00.001Z

Life is pleasant. I have, for company, much of the time, a delightful daughter who is witty, amusing and delightful. I also have, for the purposes of random stroking and fussing over, a fat, neutered, mostly deaf old cat. There are no highs, and the lows are controllable. For amusement, I have a low level affair with a co-worker. Its very civilised, mildly flirtateous when others are present, carefully worded arrangements to meet and enjoyable sex when the occasion arises. Mentally, if one can stay away from obsession, it's all quite pleasant. It gives one a reason to dress up for work, it brings a secret smile to the lips.

So why would I crave pointless obsession, wild passion, hopeless romanticism? Surely that way lies madness. Who would want the dizzying highs, if they are inevitably followed by excoriating lows? Who would need the overwhelming fixation which blots out all other concerns, who would want to be incapable of concentrating on work, hobbies, other pleasures? Who might want to invoke overwhleming passion in someone else? Who indeed, to what end?

All dressed up

2008-05-07T17:38:00.002Z

A quiet week - I had need to be away 3 nights recently, but nowhere near D. Last night I consoled myself with a spot of retail therapy in a huge M&S - my credit card is still whimpering softly as it cowers in the bottom of my handbag. I took the purchases back to my lonely hotel room to try them on. New lingerie and heels and no-one to parade them for. I looked pretty hot too.

Return of the Jedi

2008-05-01T22:21:00.002Z

I'm back - after a week of non-blogging. What have you missed? Well, to follow on from my last post, I decided last Friday to take the initiative and plainly ask his movements this week. Alas, there was to be no overlap, but in the middle of diary comparison, he looked up and with a complex sweep of facial expressions, asked "So - you still want to carry on seeing me then?" I stuttered an affirmative, parenthetically checking that he still wanted to see me.

Nevertheless, the weekend was not one adorned with a stiff upper lip. It was probably the lowest I've felt this year. That bloody rollercoaster keeps on trucking. I think it was partially due to the fact that having painted all the walls, there was nothing to do but sit and stare at them. And snivel, pathetically. Also a feeling that I may have screwed it up with D, by acting so offhand, he'd assumed I wasn't interested.

Still, I got it out of my system and I've felt more positive as the week progressed. I've separated out two issues in my mind:

1. My biggest fear is that I become so clingy, craven and omnipresent, the human equivalent of that bit of cellophane that you can't shake off your fingers, that I end up irritating him and embarrassing myself. Currently, in my efforts to avoid this horror, I behave very off-hand to the point of rudeness, especially immediately after sex, when at my most emotionally vulnerable. The reality is that I am so hyper aware of the possibility that it is very unlikely to occur, and this fear is easily communicated if the need arises.

2. I have been recoiling from any D-related happiness with the alacrity of a scalded cat. In my current, isolationist mood, I am deeply suspicious of allowing happiness to exist as a result of this affair. I want, unrealistically, all my happiness to spring from an internal well, of which I am in control, rather than be at the mercy of external emotions. Essentially, I want to be able to make myself happy, rather than let my happiness or otherwise be reliant on someone else (cos they're all unreliable bastards, yadda, yadda, yadda, yawn). However, friends and lovers are meant to make you happy! Its not D's fault if I'd forgotten 50% of this equation. I am simply grateful if a friend rings, I'm not terrified of the subsequent consequences of acknowledging that good feeling. I just go with it.

I'm sure this sounds a little mad. Ok, a lot mad. But I guess its part of the break-up recovery stuff. Anyway, once I'd got this straight in my head, I was delighted to find a "hi how are you" text and to enjoy bathing in the warm glow of happiness. Cos its undeniable, when he smiles at me, or I get an unexpected text, the sun comes out in my little world. And, wouldn't you know it, he got stuck away this evening, let me know, I was due to be driving right past anyway on my way back from a training course, so I invited him out for dinner, and myself in for an appetiser first. Smiling again.

Communication

2008-04-23T05:29:00.001Z

Time to be honest with myself - is this affair doing it for me? Am I hiding behind my determination not to appear clingy and vulnerable? Is it stopping me from pointing out that a fortnightly shag with minimal contact in-between is not making me feel better about myself? The problem is, I can rationally understand that using work email or comms is stupid, that affairs limit contact time and points, but nevertheless....

Part of it is my history - I seem to have ended up with the sneaking suspicion that every man will treat me in a way I feel is crap, unless I intervene and have the difficult conversations, which, being a coward & unconfident, I don't, til far too late. It seems unfair to suspect everyone's motives as being negative, and of course the possibility exists that they don't see it as crap at all. I'm not specifically referring to D here.

Still, Tuesday night, I was in the mood to take it slower, as I hadn't seen him for a week. He was eager to go straight to it, and I can't blame him as the week before, the roles were reversed - he'd been surprised at my urgency. His ebbing jetlag this week meant it would have been a cruelty not to have dispatched him back to his own duvet as soon as I'd finished with him, but something's missing.

On the other hand, I see the way he looks at me in the office. Before his recent trip, we had a conversation, mostly about my career, and it was so damn inspiring (temporarily - the effect has worn off now!) Verbal communication is so complicated compared to sex - the latter is so bloody easy, its a shame its not the be-all and end all of life.

Then

2008-04-18T13:34:00.000Z

Sitting here, I stroke the crust, the scab of too affirmative attention. Just the underside of the right nipple, just in little patches. And as I stare into space, the faint smile on my lips matching the warmth below, I remember...snippets, snapshots, glimpses? A sensation of heaviness, lying across him, one arm trapped underneath, the other without the energy or urge to defend or push away. Physically fucked out, mentally floating away, untethered to reality. I am powerless to protest, incapable of speech. Longing only to wantonly acquiesce and to submit to those nails and those teeth that grate, twist, puncture and torture. The only sound I can form is a betraying whimper of desire. The only conscious thought is....more.

The Good-Mood One

2008-04-12T15:21:00.001Z

The hormones have delivered, I'm cheerful today! The offspring are back from their two-week jaunt: tanned and exuberant, babbling in Italiaise and bearing gifts of food and wine. Sometimes I sit back and marvel that I; a short, round, antisocial, misanthropic Hair Monster managed to produce two such sophisticated, sociable, culinary-enabled polyglots. If it weren't for the obvious height genetic influence, I'd assume a mix-up at the maternity ward.

Anyway, they've swept off to play with their little step-brother & sister for a few hours and I plodded off to the shops. I live at the bottom of the hill, at the cheaper end of town - to get anywhere interesting on foot, one has to perambulate past the posh houses and tackle the gradient. A couple of years ago, this was a challenge to which (to my shame) I was unequal. Attempting the hill would leave me breathless, panting and with stabbing pains in my shins. Eventually I decided that if that was the state I was in in my mid-thirties, how much pain and discomfort would I be storing up for myself come retirement? So although Hair Monsters are not gerbils, and the treadmill is not their natural habitat, a gym membership was lashed out for, and some determined exercise and stretching routines mean that I can at least now nimbly nip up the hill. Still. But only just, 'cos that membership has been collecting dust for the last 3 months.

I'm in a money-spending mood, unfortunately. This isn't fantastic, considering my newly straitened circumstances, but occasionally, needs must and in celebration of my newly single status, some new makeup and extra perfume was purchased. This is in addition to the £100 frittered away over the web at Figleaves during the week. Those little scraps of silky nothingness arrived this morning, and are delightful. I have a major presentation coming up at work in just over a week. We each have our own version of smoke and mirrors. Mine will be to distract the audience from criticism of my proposal with subliminal consideration of whether I'm actually wearing suspenders under my new dress. Oh the delights of working in a male-dominated industry!

Whilst in town, I scoped the coffee-shops for pulling potential. I chose one on a corner, with plenty of windows for people watching opportunities and ensconced myself at a window seat with a cappuchino and a book. This is part of my longer-term plan for the single life - become a regular and force myself to talk to people. There were a couple of blokes there together, obviously there to pass the time and watch the world go by. I was idly wondering if they were straight, mentally discounting the one with the facial fungus, despite his rather dishy bum, when a woman in a wheelchair manoeuvred her way into the cafe. She charmed the staff, clocked the other one as someone she recognised from her gym and chatted them both up for the next half hour. Well, if she can do it with gammy legs and a speech impediment, I've really got no excuse. Its humbling when a cripple is doing better at pulling than I am! So on the mental checklist - make the cafe a regular stop, and go back to the gym.

Entitlement

2008-04-09T22:19:00.002Z

The quality of the writing on some other blogs: The Naked Truth, Bittersweet-Me never fails to impress me - how they manage to capture a moment in time, freeze-frame it, spin it out microsecond by microsecond, describe and make explicit the implicit, the subconcious with clever metaphor and simile and I tried to mentally photograph moments to describe here, but its no good. I get lost in the moment too completely and it slides through my mental grasp like a wet paintbrush over the bit of carpet you didn't cover.

Alas, the discreet hotel was full, so his secretary booked him into the usual, goldfish-bowl one. I bowed to the inevitable, and got a different secretary to book me in too. Despite the fact that I have spent less time thinking about him this week, seeing him occasionally during day between meetings made me realise that I was absolutely gagging for it.

We rushed away from work to check in early - to get a couple of hours' peace and quiet, and we made good use. Orgasm followed hard upon orgasm but as the count rose higher, so did the emotional overload. Too many hard orgasms can make me cry even at the best of times, and this is not the best of times for me - vulnerable, rocky and unstable are all words that wouldn't be out of place to describe me at the moment. At least I didn't break into full-on, snot-snorting sobbing; let's be grateful for small mercies, but it was touch and go at one point. I was so pathetically pleased to be with someone, for a touch, for a conversation, for him.

"Has it been very quiet indoors?", he gently inquired. He knows the offspring are away, to return on Friday. What could I say? That, yes, it has been, and sometimes that's ok and sometimes it isn't. Again he mused out loud on how long I will want this reality, how long it will be enough, how long I will want him. I wonder too - the stubborn, invulnerable, fuck-em-all part of me thinks that I shouldn't settle for the precarious state of mistress for a second longer, that I should need nothing and no-one unless they are prepared and free to court me fully and properly, and that I should demand nothing less for myself. But the human, vulnerable needy me that I don't like to admit exists realises that as little as this is, its a precious something, and its removal would leave a gaping void. No promises, no expectations, I told him. One occasion at a time - that way there's less room to get hurt, even though we all know I will be.

I want to say to him that I was touched that he'd bought champagne the other week, even though we didn't get a chance to drink it. But if I did, I might go on to admit that I was so touched, because no man has ever bought me champagne before, and fatally, go on to wonder out loud if that was because I wasn't that sort of woman, or because I don't attract that sort of man. I can't decide which answer is more depressing.

Oh I have the grots tonight, it must be hormonal. I promise in a day or two, I will post happy, positive posts. My ceanothus bushes are poised to burst into glory, the Mexican Orange Blossom is pregnant with budding beauty, the aquilegia is verging on colourful delight. The occasional snow-flurries can't stop the march of Spring and now the decorating is finished and BST-lit evenings are here, fresh air and exercise will prod your blogger into better moods, I promise.

The Past, The Present

2008-04-06T22:42:00.001Z

Today started like the last few, with a steely determination to finish the interminable decorating, which I have. Give it another few hours for the gloss to really dry before I rip off the masking tape and I can reassemble my living room. Rehanging the curtains was a relief and the sofa covers are washed, clean and replaced. It won't be long before my house will be my home again - new, improved, lonely?

I met K for lunch today. Ostensibly to transfer temporary ownership of the paint stripping heat gun, but also to chat, to explore. I had no concerns about the meeting - he did. He confessed to nervous shaking. But he looked good. Losing nearly 3 stone suits him and the antidepressants seem to be kicking in. He's more positive, more relaxed, more like his old self.

And it is my turn to be depressed. I realised that I do miss him a fair bit. I certainly miss his cooking; I think I'm getting scurvy. Most of all, I miss the life we should have had together. Before his first visit to the counsellor, he canvassed his ex-wife for her opinions on how he was to live with, which he repeated to me. It just confirmed to me that we should never have got together in the first place - she remembers him as social, fun to be with, sulks that lasted no more than an afternoon. Why did I get the rough end of the deal - what is it with me? Perhaps now he'll go back to the happy person he used to be, before I screwed up his life. Oh I know this is negative thinking, but part of me wishes that I had some security, some certainty, something reliable.

Tonight I had a ticket to go the Barbican to hear Midori play the Britten Violin Concerto. I had been looking forward to this hugely - I booked it up the weekend K left. When I mentioned this to him this afternoon, he offered to come with me, and started complicating the simple pleasure I was looking forward to. In the end, we decided that he shouldn't come, but it still took the edge off the whole experience. Rather than looking on it as an adventure, I was just watching the couples, wondering I would ever be one of them, in a happy, stable way. Crap. There is a theme - see/speak to K and I'm down afterwards. Despite the fact Midori was breathtaking.

Gadget Glory

2008-04-03T22:07:00.003Z

I can be just a little bit geeky sometimes, and I've just treated myself to a new toy: a Logitech DJ media streamer. Its fantastic! Nearly all my music is stored on various pcs but who wants to listen to music on the pc speakers? The transmitter is currently plugged into my daughter's desktop upstairs, the receiver is plugged into the hi-fi down here and I can search her pc and listen to all her Nine Inch Nails tracks. Ok, maybe not, but I have most of a pc littering up the spare-room. I just need a new motherboard, or to sufficiently cannibalise what's already there and I can leave my spare hard drive plugged in up there and listen to it down here. Cool!

Expectations

2008-04-02T20:26:00.005Z

After a couple of days characterised by frequent episodes of "Angry & Bitter 10 Minutes", accompanied by spontaneous sobbing fits, I woke this morning feeling much calmer and more peaceful. Yesterday evening I was full of self-pity and dramatic internal declarations that I would not stand for being ignored and that I would not be at D's beck and call, pathetically waiting for crumbs of attention.

And this morning, when our paths crossed at the distant office, I was cool, possibly even frosty. I put him out of my mind for the rest of the day, but bumped into him later. I knew he was staying over tonight, so was prepared that, despite Monday's stammered excuses that there would be a lot of people at the hotel and he would need to entertain, he might have a change of heart and invite me back. And of course, he did. Did your intrepid blogger crack? Of course she bloody did, the pathetically easy tart! I thought about the state of the motorway at that time of day and considered the pleasure of a stop-over of a couple of hours with benefits, and smiled, "Ring me when you're leaving".

Ring he did, but to apologise that he had been called into another meeting. I said I'd give him half hour and if he wasn't out, I'd go, which is what I eventually did. He rang again when I'd been on the road a while, hoping to persuade me back and apologised again. I mentioned that he'd seemed much more distant since Easter, and I had been wondering if he wanted to continue our arrangement. Again, more apologies, but more interestingly, the promise of a night next week in a more discreet hotel. We shall see.

In a comment, Akrazael wrote that she was grateful for being in a relationship herself as a guard against how possessive she might otherwise become. I am utterly useless at caring for 2 people at the same time. It would be helpful if I could, but I have failed to achieve this state on a couple of occasions in my life. I'm astonished that I waited as long as a month to ask K to leave after sleeping with D. If it had been a ONS, then perhaps, but knowing that I had every intention of doing it again put the mockers on continuing the relationship - what was left of it - with K.

Which begs the question - how long will I be happy being the "other woman", and how will I transition from that state to a more conventional relationship with someone who is free to form one, when I'm ready to? Why have I finally decided to stand up for myself against what I perceive as K's inconsiderateness and lack of appreciation, only to form a relationship of sorts with someone who can only spare me specks of time? Well I think the answer is the heading I've given to this post. A full-time, serious, one-on-one relationship carries huge expectations with it, and if there's one thing I think my life has taught me, its that putting expectations on the behaviour of others is a waste of time. Or maybe that's a self-fulfilling prophecy, I don't know.

I do know however that in contrast to the complications of negotiating wants, needs and expectations in a full-time relationship, having a fling is wonderously, seductively simple. The unspoken expectation is of pleasure, for a short, allotted few hours, and nothing else is promised. It might be implied, it can be bargained for, but the bottom line is that you meet, you have a great time, you part, you have some good memories, and if all else is equal, you do it again. I like that, I understand that and right now, that feels strangely honest for an activity derided as cheating.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Addendum
Reading back the first paragraph, I think I need to clarify that my misery and bitterness were caused by mulling over the gap between what I had hoped from a long-term relationship with K and what I ended up with. Yes, I wanted to guard against being pathetic again, but I wouldn't want anyone to think I was gnashing my teeth that an inevitably short-term affair might have already reached its conclusion!

Protein Feed

2008-04-01T00:13:00.003Z

Gloomily inspecting my first obvious wrinkle in the mirror this morning, I identified why my skin elasticity has taken a turn for the worse recently. To my horror, I realise that I've only swallowed twice so far this year and we're in April already. At this rate, by my birthday, my face will look like a crackle-glazed wardrobe. This is a dreadful turn of affairs, I don't actually think I can go much longer without.

Up, Down and Sideways

2008-03-31T23:50:00.002Z

I have no idea how I feel today - at any given moment I am seconds from either tears or laughter. K is just plain miserable - i got 15 texts in 12 hours from him over Saturday night/Sunday morning. I am giving him some support, but I need to keep back some energy for me. I miss - if not him - then the security of a relationship, of a future. And of all things, I'm mourning the lack of holidays - 10 wasted years with him - what was it for?

Then there's D. He's been elusive, to say the least. Over the Easter weekend, his wife accused him of having an affair - obviously he denied everything. Apparently his 'performance' takes a while to recover after I've finished with him. Also I'm sure there's more to it that he hasn't said. So, due to my schedule and his, it was only accidental that we ended up in the same place last week, and he has declined a possible opportunity this week. He mentioned a chance the week after, and I was ambivalent. I'm currently feeling rather like an unpaid prostitute, on the basis that, as we all know, they are paid not for sex but for going away afterwards.

I want to crawl under the duvet and hide away, but I can't even close the curtains in the living room, til I've finished painting and put them up again. Its taken 5.5 days just to strip off all the bloody woodchip wallpaper, and there seems a mile of glossing to do. Sigh. On the day he left, I told K that I intended to start decorating. He looked around and admitted that we could have done it together years ago. Then he hit me with, "You should have nagged more." Sheesh - and they say there's no pleasing women - shame he didn't appreciate my numerous wonderful qualities when he had the chance.

Happy Easter

2008-03-23T23:32:00.003Z

Its been a good one - spent entirely on my own, but in the company of beer, chocolate, the radio and about 30 square metres of peach-coloured woodchip wallpaper to strip. Doing the latter is quite cathartic - not my favourite distraction, but therapeutic nevertheless.

Of course I did have to drag myself away from a pornucopia of web-based smut this morning. The essential finale to this was a wank, sitting on the floor in the living room with my nose pressed to the window, knees spread wide. My breasts were pressed up against a warm radiator below, which in turn hid my blushes from passers-by, of which there were few, due to the inclement weather. Pity.

Six word memoir

2008-03-22T20:34:00.002Z

I've arrived - I've been tagged, thanks to Akrazael. My six word memoir is:
Passionate about life, music and independence.

The rules are:
1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible, so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4. Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

I'm tagging Titus Pepper, Duke Orsino, Ro, Ms R and the Naughty Secretary . Over to you guys.

Freedom

2008-03-21T20:11:00.003Z

Now that I am officially single, and "of a mind" to play, I am mostly thinking in my spare time about cock. Seeing cock, holding cock, sucking cock, fucking cock. I am mentally running through the cock-owners of my acquaintance and considering the possibilities. I am aware that I could launch myself like an Exocet through their lives, and I should be wary.

There's F, a good friend who put in an early bid when he found out that I might be coming back onto the market - but I am also close to his girlfriend, so that doesn't feel right. There's Y, who so desperately needs a confidence boost, but I really must not go back to giving sympathy shags and really, he needs a full-time girlfriend, not a session with an older woman who will confuse him.

Work in general is already delivering complications enough. Orchestra would deliver my choice in septuagenarians. Hmm... new hunting grounds required?

Meme of the day

2008-03-21T13:38:00.002Z

As Duke Orsino and Z have given this a go, I thought I'd bounce on the bandwagon...

Greed:	High
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Very High
Envy:	Low
Lust:	Very High
Pride:	High

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

Curry & Chocolate

2008-03-20T23:02:00.002Z

Last night marked the first hotel-based escapade I've managed with D in a couple of weeks, what with the moving out of K. There have been a couple of car-seat shenanigans, which makes one shake one's head with minor embarassment that all these years further on, you're still acting like a randy teenager. But there's nothing quite like a full-on, mattress-enabled hotel-room fuck to remind you that age has its compensations.

The entrance and egress to the hotel was complicated by the fact that half the senior management team were staying there again, and at some point someone will twig that D & I keep shuffling off to dinner by ourselves. As I pointed out, after a staggered, comedy-routine escape, we were either going to have to pack it in, get a bit smarter at booking hotels or just take out a full-page ad on the company intranet and have done with it. As it was, I had to smuggle out the gift of the chocolate egg he'd bought me, if only because he'd been out at lunchtime and met a colleague who'd stayed with him while he bought it. Eventually we escaped, for a pie & a pint for him, shiraz & curry for me.

But the necessary irritations of the mechanics of work affairs aside, the compensation is the moments of time-arresting pleasure. The countless orgasms are delicious, the novelty of cumming through having my neck kissed, my nipples pinched, helped along with penetrating fingers, tongue and cock is joyful. The memory that sticks with me though is D falling asleep; two fingers still buried deep in my warm wetness, head resting on my breast where his teeth had been teasing my nipples. Pulling him to me, cradling and rocking him to temporary oblivion makes me wistful - that urge to protect, tend and nurture is so strong. I have to remember that like a library book, I'm only borrowing him for a few hours - I have to give him back.

Still, back indoors for the long Easter weekend, I'm embarking on that enterprise that traditionally marks the time of year or the end of a relationship - decorating!

Power

2008-03-17T22:57:00.000Z

I am a woman in charge - in charge of myself, my space, my sexuality, my time, my attention, my body. Power displayed by men is purportedly an aphrodisiac for women - but I never really grasped my own power over men before. This year has been astonishing, I am newly aware of lines of men desparate to sleep with me. It's amusing, it's astonishing.

I could have them all, I need none of them, I may choose some of them. Casual cruelty could come as easily as warm affection. Why didn't I realise the extent of my power 20 years ago? But perhaps I didn't have it then - time, experience, wrinkles and carefreeness of survival pipping the carelessness of youth and naivity.

My lover jumps when I walk into the office - he finds excuses to talk, to touch, to smell me. He is distracted, infatuated, overwhelmed with lust. And I smile, safe in my power, enjoying every single minute. If we meet this week, excellent. If not, it will wait. I can wait.

The Aftermath

2008-03-16T05:13:00.004Z

So, the deed is done, I am now officially single. K and his stuff have gone, leaving behind a beautiful letter, a huge bunch of flowers and the crap furniture. Amazing; he's had 10 years to buy me flowers, why wait til the morning I throw his arse out?

I can't quite shake the suspicion that as soon as I have the house straight and everything sorted, I'll think, "Hmm, that's better, now when will K be home to see it all?" I'll miss his smile, but I've missed that for ages now. Part of me thinks I'm being incredibly selfish, immature and unrealistic to expect a relationship where we were both happy. From the example of my parents' marriage, judged a "success" by society simply due to its length, I learnt that I never wanted to spend my adult years in the poisonous atmosphere of the silent war, like I had my childhood. But that's often where we ended up, unless I folded.

Apart from the sly attempts to meet women off the Internet (and lie about it), the passive aggressive silences and the occasions when the aggression had nothing passive about it, it was the emotional manipulation that wore me down. Strangely, it was often around food. K had very definite ideas about the purchase, the preparation, the cooking, the time and location of eating and the clearing up afterwards. Neither I nor the off-spring were that fanatical in our beliefs about any of it, so to keep the peace, we'd go with the flow, mostly.

But it was extremely difficult to point out the difference between the reasonableness of the request (can someone wash up afterwards) and the unreasonableness of the full-on sulk if he didn't immediately get his own way. Sometimes people get phone calls straight after dinner, and so don't start the washing up for an hour or two. That shouldn't be an "issue" but it always was. It was so difficult to point out that there was nothing wrong with requesting that we usually eat early due to his work schedule, but there is something wrong when no-one dares have a life or arrange anything after work for fear of upsetting his cooking schedule. Try to make the point, and you are bombarded with the reasons that his request is reasonable, and it is. What's not reasonable is a 4 day period of only speaking to answer questions with a grunt because someone forgot to mention they'd eaten the last of the bran-flakes, despite there being a cupboard full of other cereal. Or something equally petty., but he could never see that.

So I was left with the choice of continually rowing over petty, nonsensical trivia, or not sweating the small stuff and giving in. The problem was that the expectation became set that emotional manipulation works, and the situations in which it was deployed spread and spread. Thursday night, we had the classic, "Either you share a bed with me tonight, or you'd better look after my sleeping pills for me." No direct threats to kill himself, just the wild implication in the hope that emotional blackmail would get me onto the same mattress as him once last time. The joke is that after Monday's heart scare, I'd promised to spend one last night, just cuddling. I don't mind doing something freely offered - I object strongly into being manoeuvred into the same thing. "This - is precisely why you're moving out on Saturday." I tartly informed him.

Waiting...

2008-03-13T22:14:00.000Z

In deference to the current situation, I didn't stay away the night before today's monthly meeting that has become a bit of a regular fixture, but got up at sparrow's fart to drive there instead. D was there, of course, and the challenge of touching each other with a room full of potential witnesses was the name of the game. On a tour of a new facility, he managed to sidle up behind me, and I rubbed myself against him in passing a couple of times. The most fun was in the lift - squashed in at the back gave us 8 floors-worth of opportunity to touch, rub and hold hands.... childish, but amusing.

However, his faced dropped when I mentioned that I have tomorrow booked off. Its the final packing for K & I said I'd help out. But next week, I will be free to pursue this affair to my heart's content. I hope I have more sense than to sit around and wait for opportunities to do just that - but if the alternative is "speed-dating", I may take up hermitry full time.

You must be joking. Right?

2008-03-11T00:30:00.004Z

Just when you think everything is sorted....along comes fate. I got home this evening to a bizarrely quiet house. It was hard initially to say what was wrong or what was out of place - the living room is full of half-filled boxes after all. But K's car was there, with no obvious sign of K. He might have been asleep upstairs, but instinct and a quick check showed otherwise. Prowling around, I got alarmed to find his heart-rate monitor abandoned on the sofa, and the empty medipak of single-use patient electrode pads on the window sill confirmed that I really should start considering the possibility I was trying very hard not to.

No answer on his phone, none of his family had heard from him. Just as I was about to wildly accuse them of ganging up to exclude me, he rang the landline. He was in the local hospital, having an ECG, having had palpitations most of the day. Funny how imminent tragedy can focus the mind. I was surprised on the dash to the hospital how concerned I was - despite the cool, bitchy part of me hissing that is was probably a panic attack. But its not - the ECG shows a definite physiological problem. The diagnosis is yet to be finalised, but the most likely outcome is yet more daily tablets to prevent further problems.

He looked so sad and lonely, I just wanted to put my arms around him and tell him it will be ok, that he won't be alone, that I'll look after him. But the cool bitchy part of me knows that once the immediate shock has worn off, the issues will be back and as much as I want to make him happy, I don't want to have sex with him again, and that relatively minor point is nevertheless quite critical in relationships. I told him that he didn't have to move out on Saturday. But when I got back to the hospital with an overnight bag complete with new slippers for him (God bless 24-hour Tescos), he gently reminded me that if it wasn't this week, it would be in 1 month, 2 months' time, and what was the point?

I've realised that I habitually spend the first few years of new relationships focusing on making the other person happy, and that, in itself, is enough to make me happy. However eventually, I notice the person as an individual and not as a container for my attention, tenderness, affection, sexual indulgence, whatever and I stop asking myself what I can do for them, and start wondering what they can do for me. I'm in considerable danger of doing it all over again. I know I can make D happy for a few hours at a time with lashing of attention, flattery, wild sex, concern, etc, and doing that gives me short-term comfort. It saves me from focusing on my own fuck-up of a life for a few hours. Where's that going to leave him though, poor sod?

Thank Feck it's Friday

2008-03-07T21:26:00.010Z

A busy day today.

I got up early to beat D into the office to leave him a card and a pressie for his birthday over the coming weekend. Obviously I had to get in before anyone else or the office feckwit would comment long and loud on why I'd bought D a present, where was his, blah, blah, blah. And what do you buy the married man you've been seeing for only 2 months when you think its probably not just sex but neither of you have explicitly confirmed otherwise? A chocolate sportscar of course - a token of a mid-life crisis from a token of a mid-life crisis!

As we were chatting, I thought I'd better drop in the news about the split from K. He'd gathered something was up and asked me out for a drink after work - conveniently our company still honours the tradition of POETS day. Surreptitious arrangements were made and we convened at a suitably remote hostelry for a pint of shandy. It was a relief to just sit and chat in comfort and relative privacy. When you're in a hotel*, its a wicked shame to waste the bed-time and although you think you remember that this person is someone you could have a conversation with, its nice to have it confirmed. After we finished our pints, he suggested we go for a "walk in the country". Too bloody perishing - we'll go for a drive.

I know you're supposed to find a hidden lovers lane under the cover of darkness, behind high hedges, discreet-like. But hey, I have needs, it was his birthday and the countryside offered nothing but endless open fields. So we pulled onto the verge.

The thing about which I am most smug: this morning's classy decision to go with the matching knickers on the off-chance I might get some action.
The thing that took me most aback: he said he wanted to arrange a night away next week, and the week after, and the week after that, and the week after that, and the week after that....
The thing that made me most impatient: his repeated fear that I would find someone younger and leave him.
The thing which most made me catch my breath: His admission that as soon as he got near his office this morning, he knew immediately that I'd been there as he could smell my perfume; that he could always smell it for a day after he'd had me.
The thing that was the best: feeling his teeth on my nipples again. It still works.
The thing that was the close second: hearing him gasp as my lips slid over the head of his cock.

So the day was generally lovely, and then home to K. I made what I thought was a reasonable offer of more cash in order to keep the bedroom furniture. In fact, not all of it, just the one chest of drawers I use. He replied that he wanted it all and felt he was being "done over". This irritated me beyond belief. I've subsidised the git for 10 years on living costs - his quid pro quo was to provide the big ticket items. Anyway, I'm pissed at myself for getting riled, and I'm reminding myself that at least I was smart enough to make sure his name isn't on any of the bills, or it could all be a lot worse. Deep breaths, deep breaths. Roll on Saturday week.

Oh, and even if that trip to Australia is off because I can't afford it, I'm determined that this will be the year I finally do that weekend in Amsterdam, perhaps for my 40th in the summer. I've got my girlfriends lined up to go with me, it could be great!

* Nearly forgot to mention, the incredibly talented Z describes moments in hotel rooms so perfectly here that I find myself screaming, "yes, Yes.... Yes, oh fuck yes, God Yes, OH. GOD. YEEEES!". Its all so true, and wonderfully written.

Maggot or Caterpillar?

2008-03-05T18:39:00.003Z

Well, its all over, including most of the shouting, with K. He officially moves out next Saturday and the house is being pulled apart and tagged as his or hers. There have been some dicey moments when the threat of a row around who had absolute right to the wok loomed, but we've managed to back away from total insanity. We've even been getting on reasonably well, until he started to try to pin me down to what nights I was eating at what time and I could feel my blood pressure start to rise again.

And I've cried and told him that I'm sad its over. He's found somewhere to rent that is a state at the moment, but hopefully will be tarted up before he moves in. The location is perfect for him and he may even be able to buy it. If I give him a whacking great lump sum for the deposit. Which will sting a bit, but is fair enough. I'd rather see him settled - its one less thing on my conscience.

So I'm now starting to face up to reality of life on my own. I swing from ecstatic to terrified. The sprog is contemplating moving out, so I may have to get in a lodger at some point. Yuck - but perhaps that's too negative. And I have to acknowledge the growing infatuation with D. You know the pathetic thing where you can't settle until you know where they are, but once you do, you're just happy to be sharing the same building with them? Pitiful!

So which am I - a maggot for ending a 10 year relationship, or a caterpillar, about to metamorphosise?

Like it says up there

2008-03-02T22:10:00.001Z

This week has been rather stressful and I have reacted to it mostly by focusing on the two items up top - curry & chocolate. Which is quite nice, but I've eaten too much and drunk too much and not slept enough. That will all have to be reversed, but I don't reckon March will be the month to do it....

Hurts so good

2008-02-28T20:46:00.004Z

Ok, so I've always "got" bondage - the mental power exchange of restraint, of control, of dominance and submission, but I was never a pain freak....or so I thought. The very first moment of the first time D & I got into bed together he confessed that he had a fetish for having his nipples bitten. And so I obliged, but I was worried that I was hurting him. Last night he admitted that it was never hard enough and demonstrated on me. Oh Christ, I'm a convert. Yes, I was imagining my wrists fastened behind my back to stop me pushing his teeth & nails away, but just a look from him froze me to the spot as his head went down and his lips pulled back. Who knew I could orgasm just from having my right nipple bitten? Not me - took me totally by surprise. I'm purring now!

Oh, and the best version was Susan Cadogan's.

Ooooh, you're my best friend

2008-02-26T21:14:00.001Z

John Deacon's nauseating lyrics aside, a mate is....

someone you are braying with laughter with, 2 minutes after meeting, despite not seeing them for six months,
someone who has your best interests at heart,
someone who challenges you intellectually,
someone you can have a philosophical row with, without either of you taking it remotely personally,
someone who strokes your ego....and punctures your pomposity
someone who makes you feel good about yourself,
someone who guesses all your secrets...but makes you confess them anyway,
someone you trust with those secrets,
someone you can share the good stuff, the sad stuff, the scary stuff and the scandalous stuff,
someone who fancies you just enough to remind you that you are sexy
someone I'm glad I know

Respite Care

2008-02-24T22:58:00.003Z

I have made the point, repeatedly and firmly and calmly....and then less calmly and with rising hysteria...that I need some space. So K is going to spend the week with a friend. Except that as I'm away a couple of nights this week, he's threatening to come back on those nights. I've said that as I won't be here, it's no skin off my nose. I could make the point that being somewhere different might allow him to think differently, but I haven't got the energy. I feel sorry for him. I look at him and remember why I fell in love with him, but know that it hasn't gone the way I hoped.

Tomorrow I have the first of a number of two day training courses at another site. Apparently, the woman running it specialises in emotional rape - she ferrets out your mental Achilles heel and sinks her teeth in. Everyone who has done this course has cried...or seen others cry. As many of them are software engineers, we're not talking touchy, feely, in-tune-with-their-feelings types, we are talking taciturn geeks with the depth of a puddle. They have all come back, mentally reprogrammed with mad-eyed zeal to save the world, and become great "leaders" and "communicators". So great timing - my plan is to indulge in a little passive-aggressive silence myself, while ferreting out her emotional weaknesses and exposing them to the harsh light of day. Wish me luck!

But more pleasantly, on the evening in-between, I hope to catch up with an old friend. Every girl needs a good, platonic, honest, male mate who tells it to you straight and he is mine, although we've drifted apart a bit the last six months. Nevertheless, he is someone that within 5 mins of being with, I'm spraying saliva over through laughing so hard. Could be just what the doctor ordered. And if that doesn't fix it, a session has been booked with D for Wednesday night. I sincerely hope that Z is right, and the emotional rollercoaster is on its way up.

Today, Hair Monster is...

2008-02-22T15:20:00.004Z

This is turning into a bit of a Facebook style status dump, but after yesterday's optimism, today I feel flat, down and slightly tearful. I wasn't this morning; I continued with my enthusiastic desk-tidying fetish and went through the drawers. I got down as far as the Paleolithic period and filled 2 bins with tut, rubbish and old paperwork.

But the early cheerfulness and conscientiousness started to evaporate into edginess. K texted a few times, and I was explicitly forcing myself to expect it to be him each time. And then D rang. As I thought he might. Just to confirm who was where next week. As much as I want to see him, I don't know how to talk to him. My current private life is so big in my head that I worry that one hint of concern from him and I will burst into tears. I don't think that's really what he's bargained for.

Crap, everything is big and heavy and tragic at the moment, and some lighthearted fun could be a good antidote - I just don't know how to get it at the moment. I wonder if WtC is around?

Ch..ch..ch...ch...changes

2008-02-21T20:31:00.004Z

This is turning into a good year. I've never been one to be afraid of changes, I just don't assume I can inflict or direct change on others. However, the sessions with D and the realisation afterwards that things in my life couldn't continue as before has shaken up my determination not to be unhappy. At the moment, I seem to be stoically bearing my unhappiness as the price of not making anyone else unhappy, specifically K. I told him that I had had enough of living in this atmosphere and refuse to continue to do so. That prompted begging and tears (which isn't great) but he accepts that he needs help, so I accompanied him to the doctors this morning. A short course of anti-depressants and a referral to a counsellor is the outcome. When the doctor asked what he might want to talk to a counsellor about, he mentioned grief and I mentioned his "Conflict Resolution Strategies", which is shorthand for his passive-aggressive 5 day sulks, his emotional manipulation, his juvenile attempts at controlling the behaviour of others around him and his occasional propensity to snap and turn physical.

He is facing up to his problems and I am hugely relieved that there will be a competent professional to help him. Its no longer my responsibility alone to "make" him happy - he's realised what I mean about taking responsibility for himself. I've told him that I can't guarantee that I will fall in love with him all over again, or even still be able to put up living with him, but I would feel less guilty about turfing out someone who could cope with life, as opposed to someone who plainly can't at the moment. And who knows? Perhaps we will get through this difficult period. I keep reminding him that we can't go back to the way things were when we first met, we need to go forward, as the people we are now.

Its a step forward, and I'm sure that there will be two steps back pretty soon, but at least I see where forward is now, whereas a few weeks ago, I could just see us frozen in this hell for ever. One day at a time.

What's more - unsticking this situation in my personal life has had a huge knock-on effect on me, which is showing up in a far more positive attitude to work, which is making my boss happy as I get all proactive on him. So all round, I've got a lot to thank D for. He should be back in the UK any point now, but we won't be in the same space til next Wednesday. A little bit of me fantasises that he'll find a reason to nip out and ring me tomorrow afternoon, but that's pretty unlikely. And if he does, I'll assume its for a "It was nice while it lasted" conversation. No, probably best we bump into each other in the office and see where we are..... This is a year when I get more selfish, on the basis that its probably better for everyone!

Blogging

2008-02-19T23:33:00.003Z

Now I hate it when bloggers come over all introspective and precious about their blogs. They start singing to the gallery once they get plenty of regular readers - something I don't currently have to worry about. And like the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, taking a measurement of your place in the world affects your output - its skews it to one definite position or another when the internal reality is too subtle to be committed to words.

But one of the better posts I have read on this point is this one from the Naked Truth on Words of Lust. Her assertion that sex, despite its grunting, noisy, funny reality can sometimes be transcendental rings true to me - an escape into a moment of physical bliss beyond that which our nagging, analytical minds can follow is exactly what I seek to find, to describe, to fit into the jigsaw of my emotional life. Fat chance.

Thoughts

2008-02-18T23:35:00.008Z

Today's behaviour - totally out of character? Can't really say that, can I. When I said that I first snogged Cider Man a couple of years ago, it was in reaction to the first time I caught K lying about keeping online relationships online. I was so angry that he'd lied. If there was nothing to it, why was he ringing her 8/9/10 times a day? Why was he sitting outside the house in the car to talk to her when he got home from work instead of coming in?

From his phone bills, I discovered that he'd rung her from the hospital the day his mother died. That hurt - I was right there. Was the emotional support I was providing not enough? All wrong?? I tried to hold it together for him through that time but it was difficult. My mother had died at the same hospital 4 years earlier. Except in her case, they didn't lay her out afterwards in a nice, large side room with a red rose in a vase. They shoved her in an oversized cupboard where I had to clamber over spare drip stands to get to her body. With his mother, the staff tried everything, with mine, they'd given up long before. K had the opportunity to be with his mother when when she died. Mine died alone, in the night, undiscovered til the following morning.

Whatever comfort I tried to offer never seemed enough. He was distant, brushed me off, but I didn't expect him to have an affair. Which to his mind, he wasn't as they had never met. But he was acting like he was, and that shook me. I knew the signs, having been his other woman. It made me question the emotional investment I had in him, which was why I ended up snogging CB- the only time since I started seeing K that I had done any such thing, or wanted to until this year.

I kid myself that I'm a one guy woman, so what was today about? Mentally I've moved on from K - I'm just too cowardly to tell him. But there's no point directing all that attention on D (yes, that's the code letter I've gone for), and I have to be careful that I don't do it simply through force of habit. I've had a series of long term relationships; which means that I unwittingly think along certain paths, without realising that I'm making certain assumptions. But then I think D does too - he has never made any noises about just wanting a quickie fling, he's not the type. He's been married forever, and he's doesn't seem to be wired for short-term assignations either. He's a rubbish liar - if he says anything that he feels remotely guilty or ashamed about, he looks straight at his feet. Although thinking about it, it's interesting the times he doesn't do that.

But today: partly I was innoculating myself against caring too much, but on the other hand, a blazing illustration that I can do meaningless sex. It also spells out unmissably to me that D isn't meaningless sex and I'm kidding myself if I try to pretend it is. Also I'm feeling randy and yes, the attention from D has made me realise that perhaps I am generally attractive. A bit. But what was I thinking of?

What was I thinking of?!

2008-02-18T20:35:00.005Z

Well I put it down to Mercury retrograde in my house of love, making me act a little crazily. According to www.moonology.com, I can comfortingly allow for one last blast of mayhem. So its obviously not my fault. What's not my fault? Well the fact that in the pub on my usual lunchbreak, I met up with a chap that I had a bit of a snog with a couple of years ago. He does have an entrancing arse - that's my excuse, and lovely eyes, and a flirty manner that's not too scary and..... that and a retrograde Mercury, obviously. Last time, I gazed so deeply into his eyes when I was meant to be on an evening out with the girls that in the end, I had to ring K to come and get me before I did something stupid. This time, I wasn't in the mood to ring K, and well up for something stupid.

It's struck me that I have been to bed with someone in their teens, their 20s, their 40s and their 50s. What I haven't had is someone in their 30s. So when....Cider Man, shall we call him, mentioned that he was firmly in the middle of his 30s, it was green light for an extended lunchbreak. I was a good girl, I went to the bogs and bought condoms, because I've noticed that blokes don't. Not that I needed them, we stopped short. I indulged my other passion, after he'd been down on me, and I'm still licking my lips. But I can't keep doing this. This is how girls get a reputation. Mind you, I'm a woman not a girl, and do I really care? Frankly, my dear, I don't think I give a damn. I would like some extended sex though. A quick lunchtime bunk-up isn't that satisfying and to be honest? I'd rather have been in bed with...Terribly Addictive Stud? Instructive who I feel regretful about cheating on, isn't it...

Politics of Food

2008-02-16T14:09:00.005Z

They say the personal is political, (they being 1st generation feminists) and these days, it seems there is little in the UK more political than food. From the junk that we feed our kids to the sleeping arrangement of the chickens we consume, there's a celebrity figure or a government spokesman waggling their finger at us.

Now Delia has weighed in contraversially, saying that plenty of people can't afford organically reared chicken and you shouldn't make pensioners or the low-paid feel guilty about buying the food they can afford. I have to say, I see her point.

This morning I was whipping round Tescos, in my usual whirlwind of efficiency, when I ruefully grinned at how bleddy lower middle-class the contents of my trolley were. From the natural, fat-free, bio-yoghurt to the type of bagged salad that doesn't contain iceberg lettuce. From the wholemeal bread to the branflakes. From the imported raspberries I agonised over due to the airmiles and carbon footprint they represented to the processed meat products that I walk straight past without a second glance. Even slim-line tonic for splashing over the gin. You'd think I'd been brainwashed by some Whitehall numpty telling me what's good for me.

Of course, it wasn't always like this. It used to be Aldi & Iceland - cheap white bread, fishfingers & oven chips. Yes, I fed my daughters that sort of crap - is there a support group I can join where we beat our breasts in guilt? Back then, I bought what was on special, haunted the BOGOFs, and concentrated on what I knew they'd eat, as opposed to what was good for them and might get wasted. Organically reared, corn-fed chicken didn't come into it.

What's more, food inflation is shooting up, so thank goodness the government were sensible enough to move away from the nasty old target of RPI at its current rate of 4.2% and concentrate on the much more benign CPI. Its current rate of 2.2% is drifting further and further away from the old-fashioned RPI but that's because we spend lots of money each month on cheap Chinese dvd players. Not food, energy, petrol, council tax.... you know, those tempting extras of life. As wage inflation tends to follow CPI rather than RPI, we're all getting poorer, so pretty soon, it won't just be pensioners living on tins of dog-food or single mothers with 5 kids on the breadline who will treat themselves to the occasional intensively reared clucker - it'll be me too & those like me.

Perhaps the subtext of Delia's comments are, or should be that we could do something about human overcrowding before we bleed over chickens that we're going to kill and eat anyway. In the UK, babies under 1 do not count at all. Officially, they require zero space. Anyone who has a baby is patently aware of how much space they and their stuff require, but according to government statistics, its not even a square inch. Children between the ages of 1 and 10 count as half a human. This is a national disgrace, not the social lives of chickens.

VD - The Aftermath

2008-02-16T13:59:00.003Z

Well, perhaps it would have been less trouble to have gone back out at 10:30pm for a card. It would have saved the (one-sided) conversation he was keen to pursue at 4:30am on his way out of the door to work, along the lines that he couldn't see a card for him, so I obviously hadn't bothered, so what was the point, and I had a go at him when he didn't buy me one last year, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I wasn't really awake enough to defend myself by pointing out that we were only 4.5 hours into VD. Give me a bloody chance. Anyway, I bought the cheapest, least foul one I could find that promised nothing about loving him forever on the way home and left it on his pillow.

Question: why did the text I received, sent from somewhere hot & glamourous, from someone holidaying with his wife, consisting of nothing more than "x x" make me so much happier than the card purchased by the man I live with, who tells me he loves me? That's pretty fucked up.

The horror of VD

2008-02-13T23:07:00.001Z

Oh the torment - its Valentine's Day again. Earlier, I got home from my usual Wednesday evening amusement to find as expected, K was in bed. However, less expected, waiting on the sofa for me was a red envelope. I thought about turning round and going straight out to the 24 hour Tesco to see what they had left, but I couldn't be arsed. I might go tomorrow before work. Or after....

Honestly. He'll talk to me over the phone, but face to face he's back to the passive aggressive sulking, which it is my duty to break down and mollify him sufficiently until I am worthy of being spoken to again. I can't be arsed!!

Start at the End

2008-02-12T23:47:00.000Z

So this affair (if it is that). When do you know when to finish it?

I kept reminding himself, (whom I'm going to have to designate with a code letter sooner or later) that there may not be another episode. I think he thinks that this is because I'm not necessarily enjoying it that much, or I feel too guilty. Whereas in fact it is purely because I know that life will go back to being grey and dreary and dull when this is over and part of me thinks, well if life is going to do that, I may as well get straight to that stage now. Do not pass Go, do not collect £200 and a clutch of orgasms, go straight to jail. How defeatist is that?

But its all so arse-achingly predictable. It starts off with you both claiming its just the sex and no chance of any feelings being involved, no siree. But you get sucked in, until the sun only shines on days when you see him, and you rearrange your life around snatched moments with him, and resign yourself to spending Christmas and New Years and holidays and birthdays alone. What's the point? I may be cheating but I'll still feel cheated. What I fundamentally want is a nice, normal relationship, where you have two people who talk to each other and make love. Is that so much to want? May be a bit of affection, tenderness & appreciation thrown in for luck? I could even see an affair holding together a shaky marriage by filling in some of the cracks, but I have no commitment to K - I just feel sorry for him.

Jesus, is this ever a textbook case of jumping ahead, making assumptions and general girly over-analysis! Lets face it, he may not even be interested when he gets back. I won't see him for another fortnight, I don't suppose we'll get a moment to even discuss getting a moment together til next month. Sheesh - what a load of crap I'll be posting here in the meantime!

High Days and Holidays

2008-02-11T22:37:00.000Z

Hmm, that last post was a bit of a self-indulgent whine, but as my daughter says, "That's what the internet is for!" Of course, me and Trekkie Monster know the internet is for porn, but hey, I can multitask.

So holidays - what do I have against them? Well, its more a case of what they have against me. The fact that the current interest is off with his wife sunning himself in a tropical paradise has reminded me of a nasty trick that life has played on me. I just don't get to have holidays.

I can't really say my parents had a bad marriage. After all, they stuck together for 40 years and who am I to say it was all bad? A fair chunk at the beginning was probably good, and they were kind to each other at the end. It was probably only 10 years or so that they weren't on speaking terms. Its just a shame that ten years had to coincide with my childhood. Thanks, guys. So after my older sisters left home (which they did with unseemly haste the instant they could), there was just me left. Mum and dad used to take it in turns to drag me away on holiday, because they refused to go together. So there was one bored, sullen kid and one bored, resentful adult, stuck in a tent in a field in the middle of nowhere. So that was a riot.

Then there was the occasion after shitface left. Its okay, my daughters know I privately refer to their biological father as shitface. I kept it from them for many a year, but they probably have an equivalent name for him - not that they need a name for an individual who (at his own insistence) hasn't clapped eyes or ears on them in nigh on 20 years.

Shitface came home from work one Friday night, announced he had fallen madly in love with a woman in the office and was leaving with his stuff first thing in the morning. And yes, he was as good as his word. As the door slammed shut behind him, the phone rang. It was my mother. She said, without really pausing for breath:

"Hi, you know your dad's been ill for the last nine months? Well we hadn't really spelt out how bad it was cos we didn't want to worry you,
but the specialists say he actually needs a heart transplant and he's been on the waiting list and a heart has just come up and they're just running the tests now to check his immune system is up to scratch as much as possible and he hasn't got cold or anything but hopefully they'll go ahead later today but we won't know anything for 24 hours so I'll ring you tomorrow. Bye."

As weekends go, it was a bit of a shocker.

Happily dad survived, and by about the Wednesday, I realised I had to get a bit of a grip. A quick tally up revealed that apart from £27.28 in the bank, I had: no money, no income, no assets, no job, no experience, no qualifications, no childcare, no friends (they were all away at uni), no family support (they were still quite busy at the hospital). What I did have was a brand new mortgage, only 4 weeks old, 3-year-old twins and less than 2 weeks to go before Christmas. Which meant that even if I managed to sob my way through a social security interview, I wasn't going to get any cash before the new year. So I rang shit-face, to ask for some money to feed the children with. I was told in no uncertain terms that he had no money for me as he and his new girlfriend were about to get on a plane. Apparently, "Lesley needs a holiday, she's had a really rough time of it recently." Wow, I can't imagine how bad it must have been for her.

Which brings me slap bang up to date. Why aren't K & I having loads of fabulous holidays? In the intervening 20 years, I've sorted the money issue and while I'm not rolling in it, between us we have enough to keep the wolves from the door. Well, we did have one very nice holiday, to Cyprus. Its a beautiful place and I couldn't believe my luck. I thought I'd broken my holiday jinx. Until the last night, when K got the hump and turned on the silent treatment. And on and on, despite all my efforts to jolly him out of it. Eventually I snapped and walked off by myself, determined that I wasn't going to have my last evening ruined by spending it in an atmosphere of tension, just like my childhood. Except when I got back after a not incredibly exciting meal in Pizza Hut, he refused to let me back into the room and an "incident" kicked off. Its not the only time it has happened, and I'm not prepared to go abroad with him for any length of time because I have nowhere else to go. In the UK I can walk away, drive away, let things cool down. I'm not coming home from another holiday covered in bruises.

So no, I don't get to do holidays like other people. Wah. Life's snot fair.

Heart or Stomach

2008-02-10T16:27:00.003Z

K and I haven't been getting along too well recently - probably no surprise there. However, one of the major souce of rows is around food. He gets home several hours before I do & prefers to eat early. He likes cooking, I don't - should be perfect, no? No.

Somehow this has transmogrified into a control issue. If he is cooking, then I must be at home at the time he decides. There is no option (without a row) of, "Oh I bumped into a friend - if you want to cook, leave mine in the microwave - if you don't, I'll ring a pizza when I get in or knock something up." This is allegedly totally acceptable, as long as I let him know in advance. The problem with spontaneity is that you can't always diarise it, and spontanteity that doesn't include him is apparently selfish.

Likewise, meeting friends for a walk on Sunday mornings, maybe ending up at a pub, maybe having something to eat, depending how we feel is selfish. He might have to sit at home waiting for me to come in and that's not right because he does too much of it. My view is that if he chooses to work unusual hours, that is not my problem and it is more than unreasonable to expect me to have no social life in the evenings, just because he's already been home for a few hours.

The problem is fundamentally that I told him that I no longer care about his behaviour - on or off line since the last little episode. He has realised that its perfectly true - I don't care, and is scared witless. Which is making him cling, which is pissing me off. He feels insecure, I feel smothered. The problem is, he just adds tension to my life. I can't go for a drink after work with my daughter without planning how I'm going to "manage" him when I get in. I'm rushing out of the pub because I know he will have the arse because he wants to cook and we must be in the house before he starts. The smell of frying onion must be mingled with the stench of burning martyr. He can't accept it's controlling. I can't be doing with it. It ain't good.

Four Seasons in one day

2008-02-07T17:32:00.000Z

We were more low-key this time, no sexy texts, just a straightforward phonecall to confirm time and place, but yet again, the anticipation built during the day.

When he reached my room, there was no discussion, just murmerings of appreciation. Again, an urgent need to strip each other and explore, touch, taste, lick, nip, bite. My room made me with laugh with anticipation - shagtastic, baby: 4 poster and well fitted out - just as well, as his room was damp, featured twin beds and mould in the bathroom. I grinned that the bedposts might come in useful after I confessed a mild prediliction for bondage. Regretfully, he seems entirely vanilla. Perhaps I should feel guilty that I feel no guilt, but the pleasure was overwhelming.

I had such a fabulous evening - sensual, fun, amusing, passionate, affectionate. But when he suddenly announced at 1:30am that he was going back to his room, I was crushed. Seconds before, I had been idly thinking that my face was starting ache slightly with the grin I'd mistakenly thought it would take a blowtorch to remove. But I couldn't work out why until today.

Obviously, its not the biggest crime of the century, to want a good night's sleep, and obviously a cold, single bed in a mouldy room is enticing compared to the alternative (!) He owes me nothing, he was knackered but my reaction was entirely out of kilter with the lack of crime. Today it hit me. Last time he'd reminded me what good sex felt like. This time, he'd unwittingly reminded me of how it felt to be simply, daftly, uncomplicatedly happy. Last time I lay awake wondering how I could go back to a life without sex. This time, I lay awake wondering when the last time had been that I'd been truly happy, and why I hadn't even noticed its passing. How sad is that - to have not noticed? Every day features a background radiation of dull, scratchy, low-level tension and vague, unspoken resentment.

It's a bit like the English weather; you accept grey skies as normality. Yet you jump on a plane and soar up through the clouds and realise the blue sky was there all along, just hidden. I know this episode is just a holiday from reality, but I'm
starting to realise that this reality can't continue indefinitely. Can it?

Philosophy of Infidelity

2008-02-05T23:39:00.000Z

I've been reading the Philosophy of Infidelity blog; I recommend it as well written & honest. I particularly find it interesting that he's not afraid to say that he fell deeply in love with his mistress S. However, as he now admits, married man & single lover is not a good combination, and they eventually separated. He emphasises that working on your marriage has always got to be a better bet & I concur - yet we're all human. Oh, and his number 1 rule is: Never have an affair with a co-worker; everyone in the office will know and its inescapable when it all goes wrong. Again, I concurr but I'm human...

I have always been quite highly sexed and spend a fair amount of time thinking, reading, looking at or actually having sex (even if its alone, in the work bogs cos I'm bored), but I'm aware that sex without the expression of affection and tenderness (backing away from the L word, because its not quite the same) is empty and pointless and simply unsatisfying for me.

I know that I have an obsession, an addiction to giving head. Its one of the few pastimes in which I can totally lose myself in the moment, and a fair part of the attraction is that its a "safe" way to give pleasure, to show that tenderness, to be almost nurturing, without giving anything of yourself away. Its like an emotional condom - I could give blowjobs for hours and have the emotional release without getting emotionally attached. And as for my own physical pleasure - well the delight of bringing someone to orgasm with my lips and tongue, feeling their body rise, tense, release as a gush, feeling their muscle tension, hearing their breath, perhaps even a muttered word, particularly when I did it all myself, well, its wonderful in itself but as part of a longer session, I've been known to come in unison.

Oh Christ I want more sex. But K cannot oblige with all I want, and I can't bring myself to pick up some chancer off AdultFriendFinder. So what choice do I have? At least I'm not emotionally involved. Yet. But part of me wants to be. Its like that urge to stick your hand in a bare flame - you know its going to hurt but some stupid bit of you is egging you on. Actually, all I want from this fling (its still a fling til tomorrow and I'll decide on the new label then) is appreciation & gratitude.

Breathing him in

2008-02-04T21:29:00.000Z

So we walk around the office, pretending not to share a secret smile, but eventually we end up in the same space, with few observers. We close in, magnetically drawn, whispering confirmation of assignations, teasing shorthand, breast touching arm, thigh brushing arse, anything to stand near enough to breathe each other in. Smell is supposed to be the most ancient of senses, routed in the deepest, most primal part of the brain and it drags me instantly back to that hotel bedroom. Flashbacks firing, senses throbbing, breath speeds up as I am transported to moments of gasping, urgent wanting, disbelief that I am in the moment, desperation for the moment not to end. I want Wednesday to be now, the waiting is tortuous perfection.

Love and Marriage

2008-02-02T23:40:00.000Z

A book has been written and reviewed by many of the UK dailies that postulates that sex and marriage are incompatible. It is possibly one of the saddest things I have ever read - a whining litany of complaints against the 23 men she has slept with (tart!) by a 45 year old publishing executive, married to Hal, some poor sap from the city.

Now it may be that he is too exhausted by being a master of the universe to fancy a bit of conjugals when he gets home, and to be fair, that's not a flattering photo of her (if it is, then God knows how she shagged 23 blokes), but to have effectively unilaterally decided that she will remain celibate within her marriage until the children are grown up is selfish in the extreme, not to mention breathtakingly hubristic. She also laughably maintains that she will then embark on a "sexual odyssey" to find a man who will reliably "give" her an orgasm. Well that had me rolling on the floor. Sister, if you've got to the age of 45, having tried 23 blokes and still reckon an orgasm is something that comes giftwrapped like an expensive bauble from Tiffanys, then a lifetime of disappointment awaits! I may only be a sexual lightweight with 5 knobs under my belt, but hey, I enjoyed screwing every one.

But this issue of women effectively thinking that because they no longer fancy their man, that's ok & he has to put up with it and carry on paying the bills and not seek satisfaction elsewhere otherwise they will divorce him, bankrupt him and sever his children from his life is as common as it is monstrous. Women in middle age no longer being bothered to swing from the ikea light fittings is not a modern phenomenon. However, in the past, it was tacitly accepted that the husband may make other arrangements on the side and as long as he was discreet and came home for his tea, little was said.

Now, am I wrong in thinking that modern men have become so emasculated that they no longer have any say in the ending of their sex lives? I don't actually subscribe to the cliche that men just want sex - there are plenty enough around that want physical affection. That certainly includes sex, but doesn't exclude a cuddle afterwards, a touch, a kiss, a caress, an acceptance of their physical existence. Does a man who's wife will no longer touch or acknowledge him physically feel loved, or believe that his wife still loves him? Does a man expect love to be expressed through sex in marriage? But conversely, assuming he comes to a discreet arrangement on the side, does he expect his mistress to have sex with him without love? Perhaps he's quite happy for the mistress to love him as long as it places no restraints or expectations upon him? I must admit a personal interest in the answer to the last point. Comments welcome - from men or women.

O.M.G.

2008-01-29T23:06:00.000Z

Its taken a while to have the time to update here in peace and quiet, but I know you're all (!) desperate to know what went down. Or who.

I have to say, with a bit of warning and some wind-up texts to get us in the mood, he did not disappoint. Au contraire, he confidently span me through some positions that had me gasping with astonishment.... and pleasure. There was one particular one, well! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I got to his room at about 6:00pm and he'd suggested a session before dinner - fine by me. Can it only have been an hour or so? Felt much longer. Was enjoying myself exquisitely particularly with the Karma Sutra special, when he mentioned I should try it out with K. And it all came crashing down around me, really. We had frantic sex, lazy sex, tired sex, languorous sex, lustful sex, (though none from behind) all of which was fantastic, but in the dark, I was left with the thought that I had to go back to normality with K and how was I to do that when I'd been reminded so graphically what I was missing?

Also, I wasn't too chuffed with an air of smugness (intentional or otherwise) about how fabulous his life was. Mine, of course, is an utter fuck-up, and reminders of this fact aren't welcome. So, all in all, I was fairly unsure come the morning how I felt about it all. And then we started again, but we were both "well-used" from the night before and not much was happening, so I went down on him.

Oh the joy and delight of having access to a live cock that doesn't only respond to it's master's hand. I could have lost myself down there for hours, but a gentle mouthful bought things "to a head". He apologised for coming - no idea why. I'd warned him that I wanted to taste him. He didn't think this was what I meant. I made it perfectly clear that this was exactly what I meant! And it cheered me up enormously!!

However, by making a reference to him as sex-toy of the month, I led him to understand that a repeat showing was not cut & dried. He seemed sad about that, but I needed time to absorb the sensory overload. Its hard to go from near famine to a 20-course banquet and not be overwhelmed. I stopped in a bookshop on the way home and found myself in the self-help section. I suppose I was looking for some inspiration, and I found it. I inspirationally realised that if you take anything in life too seriously, you might end up actually reading some of that shite.

So over the weekend I went some way towards making things better with K (who has finally delivered an xmas present), and messaged the lover through an internet BB that I stalked him to, in order to indicate that negotiations were still open. He is keen to repeat on an opportunistic basis... and as it happens, an opportunity will present itself next week. After that he's on holiday for a fortnight - somewhere hot, glamorous and expensive (see what I mean about smug - he'll be offering to show me the photos next). That might be a natural break, but we shall see. But oh fuck - the sex was good!

In for a penny....

2008-01-23T22:29:00.000Z

So tomorrow is the big day - or night. Cliched Fling - the rematch. The last few days have seen text messages flying back and forth, winding us each up to fever-pitch. He has promised to remove my knickers with his teeth and tongue; I have promised to let him.

Unfortunately, due to a delay in my booking, his hotel was full. And so was the cheap one down the road that you pay for in advance.... so I'm just staying in his room. All night. Gulp. Does he snore? Who knows? Its rather alarming that I have effectively no escape other than the car - I wonder if I should stick a blanket in the boot in case of emergency? This episode might destroy my air of mystery - your secret lover is supposed to be spared the sight of you farting and picking your nose in the morning.

And of course its all a bit intimate. I said that I was more nervous this time - the anticipation is no longer hypothetical, but very real. He said that he hadn't expected to advance to staying all night so quickly...I gave him the option to postpone, but he didn't take me up on it. Mind you, my foot was caressing his balls under his desk at the time.

Much more worryingly, he is lining up other dates, occasions - next month and when he returns from holiday. Whoa nelly! I want to be able to extricate myself from this affair with dignity and grace - I don't want to become the subject of office gossip, I don't want to get emotionally involved and I don't want to be around if his marriage goes tits up. I may have to have a serious chat with him tomorrow, and point out that his wife WILL know something is going on. Just because she hasn't got the hard evidence won't stop her antennae twitching and that is going to have an effect. He would do himself a favour if he took the opportunity of the holiday to start again.... but what do I know about his marriage? For all I know, they have an "arrangement", but then again I don't think so. However, my timing isn't great for mentioning all this - Yes, listen to me, do the sensible thing and throw me out of your hotel room to sleep in the car!

So, once is an accident, twice is a fling, three times is an affair? But perhaps there's room in the scale for dalliance & liaison... and I am sick of doing what I should do instead of what I want to do. I'm reasonably clear what I'm getting out of this: exciting sex, an ego stroke, a mental re-alignment of the power balance with K and an indulgence of my wild streak, in descending order. Him? I expect he's bored indoors, his wife has other interests, he's had/having a major birthday or anniversary and perhaps a health scare that has highlighted his encroaching mortality - a rage against the fading of the light? I'm guessing, but as building the kit car hasn't assuaged his midlife crisis, a sleazy affair is the obvious next step.

This year really does have disaster written all over it, doesn't it.

The Cheek!

2008-01-12T21:14:00.000Z

Well, the slightly-more-observant-than-I-give-him-credit-for K has accused me of having an affair on the strength of finding some new lingerie in the dirty clothes bin. Well, technically yes, not that I was going to admit it so I leapt for the moral high-ground on the basis that his further evidence is that I haven't been going to bed at the same time as him for some months. Well that's because a) he goes to bed exceptionally early and b) he will want to attempt unsuccessful sex. Again. He claims that "normally", I show him the things I've brought. In answer, I pulled out various items of clothing and grilled him on whether I'd shown it to him before it saw the inside of a wardrobe or after. He had to concede. And I certainly haven't been having an affair for months!

Then there's the small matter of the number of times I've caught him on the internet chatting up women. Now I'm a relatively easy-going person, not out to stop anyone's fun and I took the line that as long as it stayed as online fantasy, then fine. But I caught him ringing up one woman 8-9 times a day, and 3 months ago, directing another one to our local train station once I was due to be safely out of the country. He claimed that he wouldn't have gone through with it. We'll never know because she bottled it. But for 3.5 years, I haven't gone on about the lack of full-on activity, he's been (not very) secretly attempting to find out if the problem can be solved with a different shag, can I be blamed for cracking and getting some attention elsewhere?

Meanwhile the other lover is agging for a replay. Perhaps once more....

Ooops I did it again

2008-01-09T22:53:00.000Z

The potential is now actual. It was quite nice not to have to make all the running, and he was keen. Oh he was keen. It was very strange, a different shape, smell, less hair, more hair, pleasures and interests, but surprisingly relaxed and bizarrely, after he left, emphasising that I should knock on his door if I couldn't sleep, I really missed him. Which is not like me at all - I like to sleep in my own space, but the urge to cross the corridor was nearly overwhelming.

And I was so turned on that night - I nearly humped his leg like an excitable Yorkshire Terrier. He stroked my neck and I came...for the 8th/9th time, and not the last time that night either.

"Don't be embarrassed in the morning, will you?" he asked anxiously. And I wasn't. We sat side-by-side in the boardroom for 5 hours with ne'er a twitch, but back at base today, we chatted quietly, gently, legs entwined under the table. He wants another round - I have an "issue" that will wait for another post, and I can't say that I don't want to, because I do.

So where does this leave me? I'd always assumed that if I had another affair, it would be with a total bastard, just for the sex. I hadn't counted on someone I genuinely liked and respected making an irresistible pass at me. I hadn't allowed for someone who is worried that I might think he was ignoring me at work, when obviously discretion is paramount. I hadn't expected to feel so comfortable around him, happy to share a moment of tenderness. There's nothing hard-faced about this at all, and I had been steeling myself to don that persona, because, well, that's what you do, isn't it? I'd mentally prepared for a player, and instead I've got a naive sweetie - and surely those are the most trouble? But he was exaggerating when he said this was the first time he'd done this in 30 years? I reckon so. So the song for the day is: "There may be trouble ahead...."

Potential

2008-01-06T21:46:00.000Z

So, tomorrow night, I will be staying over in a hotel for a meeting early the following morning. The potential will be staying there also. Not that I'm planning anything... I'm sure it was purely co-incidental that I rushed out and spent £100 on new lingerie yesterday. Well....like the girl guide I never was, I like to be prepared. For what? Humiliation, disappointment, a knock-back? Or something scarier... He's not really interested, is he?

Mind you, if he ever reads this: The Maestro, his lover and her facebook revenge, then he would run screaming, wisely. I started reading it thinking it was funny - but Christ, what a car-crash. Bunny boiler extraordinaire.
Basically, she set him up with an online honey-trap, blogged about it and hoped to get a publishing deal out of it.

After several weeks the affair began to peter out. “I was very upset and so thought up this revenge,” said Slavin (in her late 30's)

Yes, this affair was measured in weeks. Men, be afraid, be very afraid! Ladies, have some dignity, please!

London Buses

2008-01-01T00:37:00.000Z

None for 10 months and then 2 in an hour.

Sprog Junior mentioned to her ex, you know, the one who dumped her over the phone that she's arranged to meet an old friend in January, and he's blown up, instigated a huge row and she's desperate to leave. Except that she's at his mother's house the other end of the country and they take Hogmanay very seriously there. I did mention to her that they should meet up somewhere neutral - she put this to him and he said, "That's a good idea, why don't you come up to my parents' house. Of course that's neutral, you lived here for 6 months..." Words fail me, but my palm is itching...

Oh and on the other front, amongst my Happy New Year texts, I got one from You Know Who. In itself, utterly blameless, nothing to convict either of us, but none of my other ex-bosses or senior colleagues remembered me at this time of year. Like I say, potential...

New Year's Bloody Eve

2007-12-31T22:47:00.001Z

Never good, is it. The pressure of being on the verge of a whole new year, virginal in aspect, yet you know that despite all that potential for change, for rebirth, for reinvention, it's pointless - you'll just fuck it up like all the others.

2008 has a whole new horror for me -the dreaded 40th birthday. Six months off, yet monolithic in its unyielding, ticking unavoidability, like an essay deadline or an execution. Oh I'm sure its possible to emerge, unscathed and blinking into your 5th decade without a dose of the screaming heebie-jeebies, but to be frank, the omens aren't good. 30 was a bit of an issue for me. It was also the year I reached my seventh wedding anniversary, having known my husband for 10 years in total. Well guess what? This year I'll have known K for 10 years and we'll have been shacked up for...you guessed it.

And as for the state of play there? Well, his obsession with eating does nothing to help his high blood pressure, the medication for which does nothing to remind me why we got together in the first place....if you get my drift. Yes I know that was stupid - you can't build a relationship on sex. I knew that but hey - see 1st paragraph. Me? I'm very aware that I've been avoiding losing weight because I kid myself that if I had a great body, I'd want to use it. Actually, I'm not kidding myself about wanting to, I'm kidding myself about the opportunity to.

Mind you, having said that, in the last month, a "potential situation" has arisen. And of course, its with someone I work with. What a bloody cliche - I can hear you all (all 1 of you that stumbles across this in 8 months time) screaming "No - don't do it." I don't know if I will, I don't know if there is any chance for the potential to turn physical at any point. I just know that a bit of mild flirting that wouldn't scare the horses has put a spring in my step and encouraged me to lose 1/2 a stone. That's 7 lb for the merkins. Actually 8lb now, due to this poxy cough I've had all Christmas which has kept me away from the wine and beer far more effectively than a 12 step programme. Just another 40 to go. The irony isn't lost on me that this is probably as good as it gets - all the ego stroke with none of the embarrassing disrobing issues. Quit while I'm ahead maybe. But his Christmas card had "xx......" and damn, I want to explore those dots.

So - an inventory. A stock-take of my present position.

Emotional
Living with a man with whom I have little in common, who has no subject of conversation beyond work, food and rugby, without much in the way of sex to fill the silences. Considering an ill-considered affair with a married man from work. Potential for happiness in 2008: 3/10

Professional
Not fabulous. Not particularly gelling with my new boss. Am giving in to my inherent laziness and frankly, just don't care that much. Performance review wasn't brilliant, although not unexpected for someone newly promoted. But I basically need to get some inspiration and get my finger out or things will not go well. Too apathetic to look outside the company. That final salary pension thing sucks you in. Potential for happiness in 2008: 4/10

Family
The children. A current major worry. Not that there's anything wrong with them - its just when they are around I see my life through their eyes and I feel like I'm letting them down. They expect perfection from me and I feel punctured by their low-level barbs of disdain. One has just officially left home. Its not like when she left to go to university or abroad to bum about, because each time then, she had plans to come home again. Not this time. She's moved in with her student boyfriend and I felt bereft. Until I logged onto facebook and found she'd left a message for her boyfriend (unaware that it would appear in my update page too), saying that she couldn't stand the stultifying atmosphere here and wanted to leave there and then. My crime? Watching tv on Christmas Day. Christ, what does she think overweight 39-year-olds with flu do on Christmas Day?

The other one has gone to see the unsuitable boyfriend who dumped her at the beginning of December, because he hadn't succeeded in emotionally blackmailing her into coming home from abroad a month early. Not that he had done anything about finding them somewhere to live together - he is perfectly happy living with his parents and spending his spare money on computer games. Understandable in an 18 year old - less so in a 25 year old. Obviously I don't want her giving in and moving to where he is at the other end of the country, but as he apparently said to her (as reported to me by her incensed twin sister), "well, your mother is hardly the best person to take relationship advice from". Possibly not, but life advice from someone who has not only been self-supporting from the age of 16, but single handedly bought up 2 children as well has some weight. Just do as I say, not as I do.... I wouldn't mind if he made her happy, but he doesn't. She likes eating out, or at least stopping for coffee when out shopping - he considers it a waste of money. Alternatively, she likes long walks in the country. He sulks and stays indoor playing computer games while the rest of his family go for walks. She loves travelling, happy to rough it and submerge herself into a country and its culture. He joined her for a month and whined the whole time, ruining it for everyone else in the party. Honestly he needs a slap! You'll just have to trust me on that one. Potential for worry in 2008: 9/10

Hobbies
Well, I was making good use of that gym membership earlier in the month, til this bloody head cold and interminable cough ambushed me. I've joined about 4 different orchestras this year, which has been variously terrifying, exhilarating, tedious, unintentionally hilarious, touching and in the case of chamber music, passionately fabulous. If only I'd practised more as a child....

The obsession with web stuff has dwindled to zero. I really should have carried on promoting WW, but as the bank-charge reclamation stuff that was driving so much traffic to my site was cut off by OFT indecision, I lost the drive. I always secretly knew that the fun was in the design and putting it together, rather than the intrinsic subject. Potential for happiness in 2008: 7.5/10

The future
So what do I want to improve in 2008? According to the superficially seductive philosophy of Ayn Rand, "Happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values." So according to her, I should feel no guilt about turfing K out because I'd rather live in my own space. Sprog Junior could move in here as the atmosphere would be so much better, and I could enjoy an indian summer of whoring around before preparing to "go gently into that good night". I could also consider going to Australia with my sister, who invited me just before Christmas, leaving spring or autumn. I frankly wouldn't want K dragging along behind and there's no point suggesting I go alone with her for the moping. Can't really afford it. Mind you, I could get another job somewhere else entirely with more money - sell the house or rent it out. But K won't move further away from his job or brother or kids, so that's a no. So the bottom line is that I feel suffocated and hemmed in, the obvious solution to which is to leave my lover, except I won't be going anywhere, its my house, and as he has little in the way of assets since I persuaded him to leave his wife, he can't afford to go anywhere either. So I guess we're stuck...for another year....

...and wine

2007-02-28T07:52:00.000Z

The esteemed Dr Thomas Stuttaford in his column in The Times proclaims that giving up chocolate and wine for lent is ridiculous, and potentially fatal. Your blogger could have told you that for free. Wine, obviously along with curry and chocolate form the 3 most important food groups and should be consumed every day for optimum cheerfulness.

Now the offspring came back from uni with some very strange ideas. Having survived for 3 years on lentils and organic veg boxes in the vegetarian, Jewish, hippie commune one found herself in, (an amusing contrast to the Catholic convent school she'd just escaped from), they arrived back post-finals with the glassy-eyed fervour of the born-again proselytiser, determined to convert me to the sanctimonious worship of brown rice. But then I reminded them of steak, and they got a lot more bearable.

Nevertheless, they cling to an unhealthy obsession with fruit and vegetables. I have no personal objection to these harmless botanical growths, I just don't feel the need to count my cauliflower florets to ensure I have assembled sufficient to meet the government-busybody-determined amount for 1 portion, and hyperventilate if they aren't joined by enough other garden rubbish to meet the 5-a-day target.

The other defining quality about one particular of the offspring is her wind. God help us all, its foul. I don't just mean a bit stinky. I mean Porton Down manufactured biological weapon. She's lost count of the times she has cleared supermarket aisles, shop and even pubs. She is particularly sheepishly proud of the time she cleared a Post Office on pension day. Old people generally have no sense of smell left. The highlight of their week is queuing at the Post Office. Yet they melted away like summer snow when Sprog 1 let rip her silent killer.

It is sufficiently bad that a contingent of her co-workers approached personnel and asked the unfortunate woman to "have a word - or don't renew her temp contract." So to save her blushes (and her workmates' concussion as they bang their heads on passing out), she now tramps the streets of the Barbican at lunchtime.

It was suggested to her during this squirming interview that she might like to visit her doctor for a second opinion. This she duly did, into the face of a silently astonished GP, who referred her on to a nutritionist. After a month, appointment day arrived. Off she tramped, food diary clutched in hand. The nutritionist was very thorough, went through everything with her and her verdict? You eat too healthily - too much fibre. Eat more crap for a while and see if that helps. Less veg. White bread. White rice.

Ha. Should have listened to your mother!

Fat Kids, Thick Mothers

2007-02-27T12:01:00.000Z

Now far be it from me, a short, round woman as I may have mentioned, to get unduly fattist, but for God's sake, how thick must you be, how big a wet drip to let this happen? "He doesn't like it, he won't do it, I can't make him" For crying out loud, what is your existence as a mother for, if not to impel your kids to do things that they may not necessarily want to do, but are good for them. It's called being a parent.

I would say its called being an adult, but as I had twins at 15, and managed perfectly well to encourage them to eat sensibly, study hard, get qualified and start their own lives without the benefit of being old enough to vote at the start of the process, I will simply refer to it as common sense.

If the kid gets ill and needs antibiotics, are you going to acquiesce to his whines that they're too big to swallow? Are you going to avoid giving him his jabs cos he might cwy? Are you going to let him not go to school cos its a bit hard? Apparently so. This woman has it right, if you can't outwit a kid, what the fuck are you doing having one?

Curry 'n' Elvis

2007-02-27T00:16:00.000Z

Who could resist? Just got back from a curry house in Rayne in Essex where they had an Elvis impersonator. Let's say he enjoyed his job! I think he was paying them in the end, but he put on a good show and the restaurant was packed. Cheesy but fun!

Irritating but partly right

2007-02-26T08:40:00.000Z

The indefatigably irritating Jeremey Clarkson in his latest column rails against this governments growing war against the middle classes. He points out that "They tell you not to go to Tuscany this summer, and they throw withering
looks at the Ryanair flights to Gascony"
and that they have declared war on the Chelsea tractor, but

"when Kentucky Fried Chicken starts advertising a bucket of supper with
disposable plates and nonbiodegradable plastic cutlery so you don’t have to get
your fat arse out of your DFS sofa and wash up, do we hear a murmur?"

Now personally, I neither have nor want a 4x4, nor can I afford flights to Tuscany nor do I have a second home in France. Nevertheless, I am aware that as a tax-paying, car-insuring citizen, I'm an easy target for the lazy, revenue-raising, target-obsessed, Chief Constables of our fair land, and that this is just a subset of a wider mentality.

If I were the chavvy type who was quite happy to hide behind the "no speak English" excuse, or merrily considered car tax and MoT as farty bits of paperwork of no concern, I could drive where and how I wanted with impunity, with nary a uniform to impede me. This is starting to sound like a BNP rant, which its not. This is not about colour, race, nationality or creed. Its about contributing as much or more to the society you live in than you withdraw.

As much as financial debt has become the norm, there is a growing acceptance that its okay to take and not to put back. The nonsense of taxing vast swathes of people in order to give it back to them in tax credits, thereby keeping full track of their earnings and movements just encourages this mindset. "We owe all we have to the state. Long live the state!" seems to be the message. Well bugger that.

More Intro

2007-02-25T08:29:00.001Z

and I realised I missed out sex. Hmmm, what does that say about my life :(

The intro

2007-02-25T08:09:00.000Z

So a new blog - why?

Well I started an entirely different blog on a particular subject. This has got me looking round blog-world in general & I'm finding loads of fascinating, interesting, readable blogs that have nothing to do with my first blog (which is about debt), so I thought I'd start a personal blog so I could link to them.

Plus I could ramble on about politics, religion and any other taboos I might have missed, having covered money in the first one.