My Choice

I sit on the tube eating cockles individually from a cockle jar full of vinegary water. This has to be the most impractical choice of a tube snack and I'm bemused as to why I chose it. Cockles remind me of my stepfather and I don’t think my purchase is a pure coincidence. I don’t want to be eating them either. It feels like I’m offering a tribute to him and right now, I don’t much feel like saluting him.

I make this journey every Wednesday to see her, past the Halal butchers, fast food joints and staring teenagers along the Uxbridge Rd. It’s become a ritual, a comfort blanket that I throw around my shoulders weekly. An opening, a quiet moment, sitting opposite her in my chair, the presumptuous box of tissues on the table by my side. I won’t take one of these tissues on principle. I don’t like them assuming I’m going to cry.

In the beginning, I fought with her. Despised her cool, blue gaze. Felt she was judging me. Asked her as many questions about her own life as she did about mine. Wanted her to prove her worth. Wanted to know that if we were going to drag up shit that I’ve never talked about, that it wouldn’t do me more harm than it would do me good.

I almost didn’t notice the questions when they came. Clever questions that made me think differently, that hit nerve endings and scattered hot salty tears of recognition into my lap.

I tell her about the dream, the document and my stepfather. She doesn’t need to encourage me to understand what it means. I already know. We’ve discussed it. We’ve discussed the fact that back then; I didn’t really get a choice in what happened to me and my family, about who came into my life and who exited it. We’ve discussed too that now, as an adult, I do get a choice. I get to make lots of choices about who I want to let into my life and who I don’t. And slowly, tentatively, things are changing. I’m becoming more demanding. But I assumed that if I asked for more from people, I would lose them. That they would turn around and walk away. And maybe some will, but if they do, then they were never really worth having in my life to start with were they? I’m not saying I’m a dab hand at it yet. But I’m better at it. And things happen when you make choices. Blue Moon hasn’t walked away. He hasn’t said that he’ll stay either. His head is as full as mine. But he’s offered more. He’s let me out of my ‘dinner date’ box. We’re going to the beach tomorrow, out of London. We’re staying at his mum’s. We’re both a little scared I think. But it will be OK. We both love the sea. Tomorrow we’re going to see the sea together. That's worth smiling about. And out of principle, I won't be eating cockles.

Funny How...

Now how does that old song go? Funny how the girls you fall in love with never fancy you, funny how the ones you don’t do? Which also works vice versa - with boys.

Sorry for it all coming down to boys again but the only thing of note that has happened to me recently is a re-enforcement of Sister Bridget’s treat ‘em mean adage.

For once I am really rather happy being single but that doesn’t mean to say that I’m not on the look out! A couple of weeks ago my friend tried to set me up with a work friend of hers. The boy in question was not drop dead gorgeous but seemed sweet enough, if a little quiet. I keep saying to myself that I will control my drunken behaviour now that I am a grown up but it never quite works, so as three drinks turned into four, quiet turned into mysterious in my drink addled mind and I set about making him mine for the evening.

The next morning I awoke bleary headed with only a number of digital photos and some misspelt texts to tell me how my evening had gone. It seemed that I had invited him down to London the following weekend. I wasn’t too sure about him coming to see me at all seeing as he lives a while outside London and he’d have to stay at mine. I ignored several phone calls and texts the next week but as the week rolled on, I relented, and against my better judgement, replied to his increasingly sweet texts and arranged for him to come down to see me.
He arrived the following weekend and I quickly realised that he wasnt' going to be 'the one'. He was terribly nice but just not what I need.

The really sad thing is that under other circumstances I would love to meet a man who barrages me with lovely calls and texts and is willing to wait five weeks until he sees me next (I told him I was busy for the next five weekends), but it’s the same old thing. I don’t like him so he is keen on me and the more I distance myself the more he seems to like me. This has happened to me several times before and whilst it seems like a rather nice problem to have it always leaves me feeling down. I begin to wonder if he’d like me as much if I liked him and if this isn’t why when I do like people things have ended up going wrong. I also wonder if (as my friend who set us up suggested) I only dislike him because he likes me. That is an even more frightening thought. My friends words to me were ‘you’re always saying that you’d like to get married but if you did meet someone who wanted to marry you, you’d run a mile’. What if she has a point……?

Corners

I had a visit last night from an old friend. He padded up to me, a robust lump of fat, fur and whiskers, squawking in unrefined manner. If he had been human, he would have existed much in the vein of the Dad, Jim in The Royle Family, sitting dribbling in an armchair, wanting only for the bare necessities in life - food, love and sleep... in that order. I'm delighted to see him. It has been a while. I pour him some milk, a delicacy reserved only for his later years, Persians aren't allowed it usually. He finishes lapping it up and looks at me expectantly, his bib tangled and wet from his treat. I gather him up in my arms, his reassuring weight pressing heavily against my chest and we turn a corner in my mind together.

The Stepfather sits at the long kitchen table with my mother, the table divides us. There is a document needing three signatures on the table. They are waiting for me to sign. I pause uncertainly, the cat's weight roots me to this spot on the safe side of the table. But they are waiting. I stumble forward and picking up a red pen, I sign... all the while knowing in my gut that I shouldn't... despite the encouraging smile on my mother's face.

Self Help or Self Hinder

Inspired by some discussions which have emerged from previous blogs, I have lately been thinking about Self Help books and how helpful they really are. Working for a large publishing house, I am surrounded by books of this nature, such as ‘Why Mr Right Can’t Find You’ ‘How to Mend a Broken Heart’ and ‘Simply Irresistible’ each one full of advice on how to catch your perfect partner and hold on to him so he doesn’t disappear, or if this doesn’t work then how to cope and move on if he does! I must also ashamedly admit to going through a phase about this time last year, of avidly following The Rule Book. If you’ve never heard of this husband catching bible, I suggest you take a look, even if just to cast it aside and decide never to indulge in such manipulative behaviour. The Rule Book taught me never to accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday, never to be on the phone for longer than 10 minutes with a new love interest (in fact you’re even supposed to have an egg timer by the phone to prevent this terrible behaviour from occurring!) never to leave anything of yours at his house until you have a ring on your finger, and basically to never show any signs of liking him until you’re married – and even then you must still keep him on his toes by playing by the rules!!

I would never advocate following these rules to the T, but we all know that treating them mean, does to an extent certainly make them keener, just as it does when the situation is reversed. By some miscommunication between Mr Bridget and myself before we got together, I got the wrong end of the stick, leading me to believe he was gay. This in mind, I gave up any hope of trying to impress him by my cool sexy breeziness and spent all day emailing back and forth never waiting the allocated 1 hour between emails, or giving any false impressions of being the most up-beat, secure fun girl he would ever be likely to meet. By the time I realised he was actaully as hetro-sexual as they come; it was too late to start taking my cards back off the table, and we began an honest, pretence-free relationship.

I look back on previous dating disasters, however, and wish I had been a little more clued up. Drunkenly calling my university crush at 2 in the morning and screeching ‘Why don’t you like me?’ probably wasn’t the best way to win him over. I learnt the hard way that they can tell you on Saturday night that you’re the most amazing, sexy, witty and intelligent girl they’ve ever met, but a day later, not care if they never lay eyes on you again! Reading a couple of self-help books may have prevented me from committing these desperate acts at 18, but doing that has certainly ensured I’ll never do it now I’m in my 20s!! Learning the hard way can be fun, and I don’t completely regret yelling at the oh so gorgeous and popular cricket captain at university for ignoring my calls because quite honestly he damn-well deserved it! Acting all coy and disinterested, sort of allows these players to get away with it, without letting us show them that we care. Sometimes I think they deserve to have their bunnies boiled – at least they won’t be so keen to jump into bed with the next girl they meet, just in case she is also a psycho!