30 May - Pete & Kate

It just occurred to me that my current relationship has already outlived Peter Andre' and Katie Price (if we are to believe that the divorce is for real and not in order to sell a second wedding spread to Hello magazine later on when they iron out their differenes). Isn't that something?


But that's boring. Of course I don't ignore my boyf for the sake of spending hours on a horse, though, if I could ride and had access to such beautiful animals as she has (think her horse she carted off to USA was 500k, don't ask me how I know, a friend knows that dressage instructor KP is meant to be soft on) who knows how long I'd be out cantering.

Of more interest to me is what and when things happen in life. J. tells me about his sister who was a virgin till she turned 39! I have never met her and have no time to delve into the why's , I mmediately think that since J. is uber handsome, maybe sister is not bad looking either but hta really doesn't mean anything since it's not on bad looks alone that one would be consigned to never meeting a man. Anyway, he says that this status quo was changed a year or so ago when she started dating on the internet and since than has been shagging incessantly, to make up for lost time so to speak. I ask if she meets these guys in the casuals but he says no, it's mainly in the regular WLTM and then things evolve not into relationships but encounters. I say I have a relative who could benefit from similar outcome but she lives in a tiny town whereas J's sister has access to hot Spanish guys in Seville no less. Must get her to tell me some stories when she's next in London. Maybe only having her brother as an example, she's going for the straight version of the gay life which seems (sexually) simpler. Boy sees boy he likes, their eyes meet, the chemistry says 'go' and they shag, then they go.

I could contrast this with G.'s ice maiden 'I have to be in Love in order to have sex' stance, which just makes me think 'Girl you don't know what you're missing'. (see previous entry on ... ?). I don't know why but have always been deeply suspicious of people that don't seem to value their own physical side. I think there's something wrong with that, but I then admire the ascetic St. Francis or Milarepa etc. Then again, wait a moment, wasn't St. Francis at least a pretty dissolute young man till he decided to leave it all behind? By which I mean at least he had given it a good go. G. sounds scared of sex having only been with the same man since she was a teenager. All very well if she enjoyed that but doesn't sound like she does so why not try something else? Am sure the boyf is....

4 September - Violence & Stalking

A friend is working in Plymouth for a few weeks. The other night he and three colleagues, all form London, went to a local pub. On the way out my friend tripped on the stairs and reached out to steady himself on someone’s arm. After he got out, a man run up to him and said ‘Why did you do that? I’ll fucking stab you’. Admittedly he said this retreating, possibly as the others were a small group, but it left them stunned. Why would you say that? Why would you say 'I’ll stab you?' For what? For perhaps not saying sorry loudly enough? My friend is not a major drinker so I doubt his group was rowdy, they have to be doing something reasonably brain consuming at 9am every day, and he’s slightly built so, you know, hardly a threat. Don’t these people read any papers? It’s on the front of the Sun every day that knives kill. It’s moronic to say I’ll stab you. Anyway.. he’s just not going to that pub again.


This reminds me also of a domestic violence conversation we had with M. a friend of P. the other night. P. can’t understand why anyone would stay with someone who hits them. But I can, I read countless stories in women's mags, it’s easy, if you think that’s the only person who loves you and cares for you, even getting hit is .. something you just put up with … for however long. In this woman’s case a couple of years so she got out ok and was not too badly hurt. She stayed because she was isolated having gone to live with him in Geneva and because she was ashamed to be failing and blaming herself somewhere. She got out partly because it wasn’t the first time it had happened to her. Which brings me back to who falls into abusive relationships. Perfectly fine women but attracted to something in the man who turns up to be abusive though he's not abusive from the start, he has that in him and probably attracts them wiht the reverse of the coin, some macho stuff that makes them feel initially taken care of by a strong guy etc. Or a guy they want to fix/change for the better and of course none of us ever goes and has indepth interviews with the previous girlfriend who would tell us how it is/goes.

M. says it’s a woman in four who experiences this. I don’t know where they get statistics but nobody I know has been through this ordeal. And I know tons of women. She said it’s not something many admit to. Perhaps, but I’m not ignorant of the signs and I saw none in any of my friends thus far. P.said he had a lover who went through that…so maybe he has got my share of knowing a victim of domestic violence so to speak of the statistics. M. said the physical violence also goes hand in hand with other forms of violence, verbal for example but I think that’s different, it may destroy you inside but it doesn’t kill you. P.said his other friend had her nipple bitten off or almost by her husband/abuser? I can only imagine that there’s a lot of drink and/or drugs involved in these situations, red mist is not something that descends on sober people that easily. But take lots of coke and spliff for example and you get various psychosis if you were bent that way already. But I have read that it’s very hard to defuse any situation when the abuser is intent on seeing anything you say or do as a provocation that fuels his rage. Trying to plead or leave the room is not an option they allow you to take.
It’s scary.

I have another friend of a friend, male, M. who’s been going through a traumatic time (spent ten days in prison for something he didn’t do) and is in the middle of a court case that’s been adjourned where he’s accused by his ex girlfriend of stalking her and subsequently breaking the terms of his restriction - but not of hitting her. It’s a giant waste of time as he didn’t do anything. In the early days of the split he of course was devastated, crying his eyes out (saw him during that time) and spending ages on the phone to her friends/family trying to understand and not accepting it was over but if he threatened her it was a passing thing.

She had reported him though by this time. He was told not to contact her but she lives opposite the police station in Hornsey where he had to go and report. So yeah, he wasn’t stalking her, he was just there because he had to go into the station. He had then erased all the numbers associated with her from his phone but later when he sent a mass mail out text about something and it got to her brother who had not been erased and on that basis he was reported and thrown in jail for a week. They took his phone. For a couple of days he couldn’t let anyone know what had happened to him. Seems a bit excessive to me.

We think the policeman assigned to his case has a crush on his ex. He’s being very very nasty, to him and to some of his witnesses. You don’t call at 11pm to bully a female character witness for example. He’s since discovered one is a magistrate so he’s changed his tack there. He also coveniently can see her coming out of her flat at any time as the station is opposite it (see above).

Anyway… phones have been examined and there isn’t much to incriminate him … she’s had her day in court and his will come in a month or so. It’s going well it seems to clear him of all this. Part of the problem was that he was recommended to just plead guilty and he told them to fuck off which annoyed them as case would take longer. He thinks ex just told one initial lie based on justified perhaps fears and then could not extricate herself from the crisis she’d created and was counselled to go ahead with something that will then crumble in court. Saying he was stalking you from before Xmas when you have perfectly decent exchanges of texts on your phone and NY wishes and so on is a little undermining of your ‘I was fearing for my life M’lord’.

Clearly you then read of some woman who’s been killed by her ex who had or didn’t have a restraining order, and there’s a lot of it about, a lot, and it must be difficult to know who to believe and it’s best to believe the woman when in doubt as she’s less likely to turn psycho and kill you but… M’s case has now consumed various months and that’s now going to mark him as well in future dealings with relationships. He’s already talking about suing the police for various mishandlings after he wins. If he doesn’t I don’t want to think of what will happen, that’s probably when you turn nasty in some sort of reveng. Plus, if he’s not cleared, which he hopes to be, it’s been affecting his business plenty. He cuts my hair. I truly don’t know him that well though but my friend does and he’s a pussycat round her house, volunteers to fix the gate, do odd jobs and cooks breakfast for everyone if he’s stayed over the night and got up first and generally is a very sweet 40 year old. However, and this is just me playing devil’s advocate, he has a fondness for the Charlie and it’s well established in my writings that I think drugs are generally bad and being known to use a lot makes you a less credible character. They do alter your personality so it’s perfectly possible that one day you’re nice as pie and the next day you’ve gone a bit psychotic. So, only having M’s side of the story I could never swear on his innocence. But he’s sweet. He said ex’s parents were not in court ‘because they’re very catholic and she wouldn’t have wanted them there to hear her lie so blatantly’. What do I know. I’ll wait for the verdict and hope nobody gets punished if they didn’t do something

12 May - Turners & Turnips

I'm well acquainted with that waste of time that is retroactive jealousy… I'm the one who googles ex lovers of my lovers and get worked up about stuff that no longers figures in his mind.

But this morning a colleague takes the martyr top spot… Her husband’s previous past long relationship (12 years?) was with an artist who’s on the Turner prize shortlist and let’s face it, she has 1 in 4 chance of winning - £25k thanks very much and all the publicity and commissions you can handle, plus she's already repped by a top gallerist - and so er… yes… she’ll be in the public eye a lot. It will hurt a lot to see her face everywhere (pretty in an exotic sort of way) and the fact that it had ended in ’01 is not much consolation. My colleague is also an artist but as we’re not working in a museum or a gallery or in the arts period, you can assume she’s a frustrated and not so practicing one and has a long way to go to make it to the Turner/Turnip. I try to make light of it, after all, who can name the winner from 2 or 3 years ago, but she's not having it. I tell her that she earns twice in a year what the prize is but she replies that the artist has been doing what she wants, not what she has to. Fair enough.

I hold my colleague's hand, I feel dreadful for her, but the reality is that her husband is happy for his ex, and for the nurturing role he played in her development and not looking back. At least that’s what I want to believe. And did I say he also taught or mentored one of the other female short-listed artist? He must be feeling pretty good in the talent scout department. Wonder if he gets invited to the ceremony/dinner and my colleague will have to go and smile congratulations? Then again she could use it as a PR exercise for herself, but no, it would probably be too a poisoned evening for her.

3 May - Bohemian Rhapsody

Boy are my friends who got married the luckiest people in the UK. Summer has come out just for them and their grateful guests.

tbc

22 April - Thirties suck

Life may be hard at 42 odd extra years. For example, I run into a colleague who’s got an art magazine and he told me his next issue’s theme is ‘the future’ and would I perhaps want to contribute to it. I told him the future scares me. Because now there’s much less of it to f uck around with and f uck around are we still, no doubt about that. Still finding it hard to take decisions that would alter life for the better (like, disappear from these rainy shores for example) and certainly not possessing any impetuous ways any more. Everything is sort of planned and as I said plans are forever procrastinated. Till eventually you die when least expected.

But boy, is it so much better than being 35ish. As exemplified by a recent evening when I took Toph and a younger spare male friend of his out for dinner with a couple of women I know who are in their mid thirties and high achieving - (o be not achieving in your mid thirties is a sin… it’s only later that you can relax into a sort of ‘it went the way it was meant to go’ motif about your (lack of) career.

At dinner S. was giving Toph her thoughts on work – she works too hard, has just applied for a better/higher position in a rival firm but her other half of the brain is constantly telling her she should slow down, slow down, not be this hard nosed bitch who can jet off to see a fuck buddy in NY and go skiing with him in Aspen, but come back to London and on a Friday night have dinner only with the same old g/friends whilst endlessly discussing their sparse lives and agreeing to go run half a marathon on Saturday morning because they’re not busy in bed with a lover. Then they’ll have coffee and then they’ll ring around to see what anyone is doing on Saturday night etc. Which will be much the same and then they’ll go play tennis or run again on Sunday morning.

After dinner she’s still talking to Toph about all this and trust a man to spot the contradictions. In the car back he says ‘One minute she’s saying she doesn’t want a Ken and Barbie life, and two sentences later she’s saying she wouldn’t mind a Ken and Barbie life because she would like a man who’s more than a shag – she says she can get those any time. So which does she want?’. I point out that she would need to shut up first and let the conversation go elsewhere. I know she knows Toph’s taken and so was talking to him like you talk to a girlfriend, but I don’t know that away from business meetings, she can be normal with a man and just not make him part of the interior monologue about life. I also point out that Ken and Barbie are two unfortunate figures to aspire too. It’s well known that they’re both airheads with cash for swimming pools and personal horse drawn carriages but they’re not a great couple are they??? Toph says he enjoyed listening to her (gave him a chance to offload where he also thinks he went wrong in life) but that at no point did S. talk about movies, books, friends, family.. it was all ‘Should I keep working to get somewhere and how do I meet the right guy’. Not at the Walmer Castle on a Friday night counselled Toph. I disagree. We were there and we brought an eligible friend though he’s at the same stage as the girls. He sort of half wants a relationship that will be stable and has legs but he’s still not able to buy groceries for his fridge and compromise on basic stuff like participating in some sports if the g/friend likes them. No, he’d rather stick to being himself and keep his nose in a book. It can never work if it’s ‘me first, you later’.

But I also had to come off my high horse and try and remember what I was like at 35. Similarly banging on and on and on about what seemed like an unsolvable dichotomy. You have to remember that back at that age, the choice of partner is totally complicated by the ‘Would I have kids with this guy and if so, when? AS am so busy working /making progress and I want to be equal’.
It was damn easy to look at my watch at 11pm and say ‘We’re going home’ and leave the girls to it. But they chose to leave at the same time. They are Europeans so not for them the picking up drunken guys two hours hence.

20 April - Pimping for friends

I have been pimping for a friend lately, because I’m reasonably good at it. G. and g/friend split up around Xmas and it had been a long time coming, basic incompatibility I diagnosed, despite strong mutual attraction As it took a while, when it ended, he wasn’t exactly heartbroken. In the meantime he had met a woman through work and they’d gone to dinner a few times in a town where they both find themselves working, she during the whole week, he a couple of days a week, not every week. He was smitten, though it took this lady two meetings before she disclosed she has a boyfriend of 15 years back at her hometown. Sort of historic boyfriend who never visits her where she works and probably doesn’t understand her anymore and who has yet to marry her and she wants to leave him but….

So, of course she’s unavailable and of course he’s smitten. I point out that they only seem to meet at drinks or dinner and it’s kind of hard to get a full picture in the cosy limbo of expensive restaurants. They like each other because they can talk and talk and he buys her dinner but they don’t know much about each other really. I suspect they’re both lonely in the city they have to work in and provide a great respite from tiny flat for her and hotel room for him. Still, after 3 months of dinners, drinks, constant texts and emails declaring ‘you’ve changed my life, you’re my god’ and gifts from him to her, she’s still not gone further than some taxi snogs with him.

I think she’s treating him like the gay friend and she’s the one who goes home at the w/end and shags her boyfriend who she wants to leave but .. blah blah.
Eventually he reaches the point and gives an ultimatum and decides not to be in touch with her until she’ll have sorted out her situation one way or another. I predict she’ll stay with boyfriend. In the meantime he’s truly upset. For something that never happened! This must be like what courtly love was all about… Courting and hopes…

So time to take action and distract G. At a party in London I introduce him to J. who’s a high flying PA to movie directors and jets off to NY and LA often enough. I don’t know her at all (friend of a friend) but he likes the look of her and so they arrange to meet. I predict second base will be reached in no time but I forgot she’s 35 and so she’s also playing the long game and in order to do this, there’s no concessions except some minor snogging and once again he’s busy dropping hundreds on dinners and cocktails. J. sweetly buys breakfasts at the w/end but .. not post sex obviously. And after the breakfasts she’s off to Harrods for a massage in her cute BMW and he has nothing to do but read the Sunday papers with us. He finds himself invited to some wedding with her in Portugal, or to NY where she stays at the St Regis or to the forthcoming wrap party for latest movie. Clearly he’s interested and intrigued but his mind is still on the unavailable one… and was considering J. only as a one off, whilst now he’s being sucked into a relationship that hasn’t gone sexual yet.

In the meantime he’s being told off by a female director in his company who he’s close to because she says that J. is not blue chip career enough for G!. How dare she criticise my r ‘n’ roll acquaintances? I think she’s jealous. And she’s just moved out of her boyfriend’s flat. Another 35ish… Scary times.

Time for more distractions … this time I take him to dinner with a hedge fund lawyer I think he’ll like the look of if not the lifestyle (she’s very extra sporty and he doesn’t do sports, she’s very intense and he’s very laid back, but you know, am hoping chemistry will do the trick.)

However at dinner it’s clear that they’re not in a hurry to speak to one another. They’re not sat opposite each other. Darn, I didn’t manoeuvre that fast enough. He talks most dinner to A. who’s opposite him but she’s recently hitched up so I doubt she’s interested. At the tail end of dinner this other woman L. who I don’t know but is some kind of consultant/accountant friend of A. turns up and boy does she wades straight in. As a confident 37 year old she probably thinks that she has no allegiance to the other woman who invited her along…She ends up monopolysing him the rest of the time at the bar and then they disappear off to a club from which he returns alone at 3am. Snogging took place again but no deal.

Now, am beginning to suspect he doesn’t know how to close a deal, or is a very bad snogger or… he’s still thinking about unavailable woman, to really take a step in another direction.

Which will it be? He’s back again next weekend and this time he’s going to tell J. he has nowhere to stay and let’s see if she finally takes him home? As for the wedding in Portugal, I’ve advised he should go only if guaranteed that there will be top glamorous/interesting people in attendance, otherwise, why bother. Have become very straightforward with my advice these days.


But then I get a pang of guilt about the women.. Little do they know how many he’s juggling… but of course he’s not doing anything wrong. All is up for grabs and he’s not getting laid.

30 November - Malaysians & Russians

I win! So there’s C. this girl who’s very fond of Toph and they met at yoga class. She’s tiny tiny Malaysian and he likes her because her speech is incongruous with her frame. She uses English colloquial expressions which are apt but sound funny coming out of her mouth, and she swears a lot and says things like ‘don’t mess with me, or I’ll kill you, I’m no China dolll’. She’s 30 and she’s tired of playing ‘China doll’ to men who are into the exotic, but by the same token she’s not into dating people from her own ethnic group. She’s s smart but she has a car decked out in furry fabric and soft toys which always spells immature to me. Yet she’s got a tough job, a traditional accountancy /actuary one. She’s friendly to me (she likes my style) and she lets me know Toph is not her type. Good to know, cause last time I looked he liked a bit of tits and ass on a frame. She’s had her heart broken by the silent, tall and mysterious Russian, S. who also goes to the same class. They went out a few times and then he dumped her and she’s making an illness of it. Granted, it’s kind of embarrassing to be mostly naked in the same class as your former lover who dumped you but… there are other classes and he clearly is not about stopping coming to this particular one… Toph is a very patient person and he does a lot of listening and advising. I kind of find it odd that he should give her that much time but it’s part of his curious nature to also live vicariously and she’s a fascinating creature (in my book for about half an hour as there really isn’t that much going on in her life and I’ve never heard her talk about a book) and all men like to play that part, the sympathetic friend and let’s face it, I never give him much occasion to console me, strong tree that I am.

I’m sure it’s crossed his mind what it would be like to shag her. He marvels how someone with such small and seemingly fragile bones, can do such a tough class. I remind him about the oriental tradition of kung fu fighting etc where you’d never think that such small men could despatch the big western baddies they fight in those films. Anyway…. As am now older and wiser, I let him be. I just occasionally call up if his post-yoga drinks are going on too long and I’m waiting hungry at home. Then it all blows up because after one particular class, a mancunian woman, says she’s not keen to go to the drinks as she doesn’t want to be in the company of the Russian because… they did it and now it’s over. Poor C. starts hyperventilating and crying and my solicitous boyfriend consoles her.

A couple of days later she calls him and I listen in as I read. There’s precious little talk on his part and the 45 mins are taken up by her essentially saying she can’t go to yoga anymore and she can’t be seeing my BF anymore and it’s all crap and blah blah. I hear him saying ‘Why don’t you just take a short break and maybe return when you’ll feel better’. After the call he’s a bit shaken by what I simply explain as ‘Now you know what women are like, and how they can go on forever and a day relieving /stirring up any upset and passing it on to friends who console them, only for their advice to go unheeded and before you know it she’ll sleep with the Russian again and then he’lll dump her again and the whole thing will go on and on’. He nods agreement, he’s clearly tired out by the ‘scene’.

And then the following Saturday she turns up at the class as usual (she probably just wants to tough it up and not be driven away from something she likes by her bad shagging choice) and as if her call had not happened. He comes home straight after it finishes, not having gone to the pub this time. He said he’s had it with her as he feels she’s just using him to dump on (after all, I doubt he tells her much about his own life/worries). Once again I say, ‘This is what girls do, they use up your time with silly thinking aloud for days and months abut something relatively small and you keep going through it with them and unless they’re grade A friends, then why bother?’ He agrees, but he seems sad about it. Oh well....

31 October - Advice & Men

Well, it’s usually women who read self-help books and talk the lingo of therapy when it comes to relationships. Vis moi for example. After conversing with male friend at w/end who seems to be taking space from a girlfriend to mull things over, but in reality seems to be moving on (sex with ex and lunches arranged with several enticingly fresh new acquaintances), I did ask him if he wanted some suggestions in order to pick the future mrs. with a little more nous than before (you know, chemistry rules but if that’s all there is...). So I sent him something I’d saved from the internet ages ago and which talks about what to look out for in terms of compatibility, you know standard stuff, people who are not afraid of change, people who have leant how to communicate effectively, people who don’t rely on you to fix their world, people with no addictions or co-dependency issues and so on. Bless him, he said ‘Send it on.’ And so I did.

But I hold scant hope that he will read it, after all my BF left it on a kitchen counter top long enough till I chucked it in the bin. He never used it as a basis for some enlightening discussion. It falls to me to ask from time to time ‘Are we alright? Anything to air? Anything not sitting quite right with us’. I always get the ‘No, all fine’. Because that’s essentially what people do … till they pack their bags and leave.

Anyway, most men have a female friend or two and some are lucky enough to have a friendly ex wife with whom they still share a house. So it falls to ex wife to suggest ex husband goes to couple’s therapy with on/off girlfriend of a couple of years (or is it three) with whom he has major issues but they don’t seem to find a way forward. Am surprised he agreed to go to sessions as he’s very manly 45 odd Welsh man who had no time for fripperies (though the girlfriend has a pet rabbit and he’s not killed it yet, merely banned it from car journeys). I will not comment on women of 30 odd years who keep a rabbit as a pet. That would take a whole Freudian chapter.

The Welsh man could be forgiven for returning to his previous opinion that therapy is a waste of time though. He’s out with the ex wife at a function the other night and declares himself quite relieved that he has broken up (in no uncertain terms he thought this time) with girlfriend at the Relate session earlier that day. With therapist as witness. Imagine his and ex wife surprise when later that evening they return from splendid evening honouring Ms Kylie Minogue at some industry bash and pet rabbit and owner are on sofa smiling and waiting for him.

He is beginning to despair that he’s not being heard. But on the other hand if he doesn’t kick rabbit and girl out of the house instantly, his actions are not following his words and so you can see how people get confused. (see: 'ability to communicate clearly' on my checklist). Then again this is the man who had brought over the Thai girlfriend of two or three years in Bangkok and was planning to share himself between 'miss me love you lon-time' and 'miss pet rabbit'. Miss pet rabbit had hit the roof upon discovering thai girl ensconced in his house but then had forgiven him and thai girl had left. And the Relate sessions had started. Gosh, am beginning to think these three are beyond help.

10 September - Sagas

Over this w/end I've been told of three different sagas involving one ex lover, a friend of a friend and the husband of another. All v. complicated. You realise how exhausting life is just listening to what happens to a few people you know and all of it is regarding relationships, not life or death matters. I got home last night and had head buzzing. It wasn't just listening and relaying (of course I had to 'gossip' to other friends) but also lending an ear to phone call by upset (though not distraught) girlfriend of a friend. Being 'older' seems to give me some kind of consigliere position and frankly, am terrified of just giving my advice based on what has happened to me in the past or have experienced ie. not related to the situation at hand.

Oh, I forgot another one because it was on Thursday. When I wrote a month ago or so of 47 year old husband taking a dip for a twenty something woman he was working with... little did I imagine that she would dump him so soon for... someone more influential than him and thus more able to further her career. I had her down as a slip of a thing and she goes and nabs some serious player in her perfect strategy for success. So yeah, that's four dramas swirling around in my vicinity.

If I manage to find the point I want to make with all of this... I shall relate them. Or try to.

20 December - Bear with me... I need to get five free minutes

tbc.

No, I never did get the five minutes and am re-reading this post in mid-June 07, ie. six months' hence. God knows what were my hopes at end of this year for the next but am still not rich, nor have I moved to spacious, grand home, nor have I finished something I started. Am not one for lists but we all carry some nebulous one in our head at all times and those were the items...

However, back now I woulnd't have dared hope to be still in love with the same man or that his charms would grow even more on me. Let's face it, he doesn't do that much except for being adorable and for putting up with me and not walking away and for that he gets rewarded with what I do best. Ego boosting. Boy if I ever turned the other way you'd wither and die. But, no need for that now that we're all mature and grown up. Rambling... He's my boy. Here's to the next six months with Toph. More fun, more holidays, more sex.