Six Months to Get a Life (4 page)

My ex was well enough to take the kids back today. She phoned up and asked me to send them home. I could have argued with her; weekends are my time with the boys. But I thought the boys would probably want to go home after Jack’s outburst at my mum yesterday, so I sent them on their way. Things will be different when I get my own place.

My sister Hilary turned up after the kids had gone. My sister and I have led slightly different lives over the years. Whereas I have been your model of conventional behaviour, Hills has ploughed a different furrow. She had her first baby at seventeen and her second at nineteen. The father, or was it fathers, remained anonymous. She did get married for a while when in her twenties but that union didn’t last long. Hilary had a couple more kids before eventually deciding that she preferred the company of women. She has been living with her current partner, Donna Anchor, for quite a while now. They have an old ‘Hope and Anchor’ pub sign hanging outside their front door.

Hills is about three years younger than me. I got on with her fine when we were kids. She went through a phase of wanting to be like me. No, that’s wrong: she wanted to be better than me. When my mates weren’t around we would play football and tennis in the street together. She would
tackle harder and run faster, not being content until she had beaten me. Sometimes, despite being younger than me and dare I say it, being a girl, she would beat me too.

I didn’t mind the competition with Hills when my mates weren’t around but when my mates were there, Hills still wanted to play with us. That was often truly annoying.

As we got older and she stopped idolising her big brother, we drifted apart. She became more opinionated and stroppy and wouldn’t let me push her around like I used to. Her interest in boys began to dominate her life and as far as I could tell she was the first in her group of friends to start wearing short skirts and revealing tops. I may well have found some of Hilary’s outfits attractive on other teenagers at the time but having your sister wear them was a tad embarrassing, especially when my mates started commenting on her body.

I was at university when she got pregnant the first time. And the second time for that matter. Andy told me at the time that everyone speculated about the identity of the first baby’s father. Dave’s name was mentioned but he has always denied ever sleeping with my sister.

Hills and I have kept in touch over the years but we don’t see each other that regularly. We still do this thing whenever we meet up where she tries her best to outdo me. It is a bit like a game of ‘top trumps’ with our lives. ‘I’ve got a better car than you,’ she would say. ‘My kids are getting better grades at school than yours,’ I would respond. My parents, who are ultra-traditional, have normally come down on my side in these games of top trumps but tonight my dear sister took great pride in blowing me out of the water.

‘I’ve been in a stable relationship for ages now but look at you, you’re over forty and you’re living with mum and dad. Your life’s a shambles.’

‘It’s not a shambles. I am just in a period of transition,’ I tried.

‘Period of transition? Listen to yourself; are you sure you aren’t Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones’s lovechild?’ she asked. Rather cruelly, I thought.

I got a call bright and early this morning from Jack. The boys wanted to come over for the day. That pleased me, not just because it felt like I had won a small victory over my ex but because I didn’t have a clue what I would have done all day if the boys hadn’t chosen to come to spend time with me. It is amazing how quickly I can recoup my ‘dad energy’.

When I see the children, I always wrestle with the dilemma of whether to ask them how their mother is. On the one hand I think they might resent it if I didn’t ask, as they naturally feel that their father should be concerned about how their mother is getting on. But on the other hand, I don’t want to appear to be too interested in case it encourages them to think that there might still be some future for the four of us together as a family. There certainly isn’t.

I asked Sean how mum was this morning, mainly because I was conscious that she was still recovering from her stomach bug. Judging by his reply, it would seem that my ex’s stomach bug is well and truly history.

‘She’s good dad. She went out with some guy last night and she was singing along with the radio this morning so she obviously had a good night.’

‘What time did she get back last night?’ I asked.

‘Don’t ask me, I was asleep.’

Here we go then. It is easy to say things like my marriage to my ex reached its natural end and that I am over her. It is easy to say it; but is it the truth? Before today I honestly didn’t think I would be jealous if my ex started a new relationship but after my conversation with Sean, I know I was wrong. I am jealous. Why did my ex bother asking for the boys to go back to her yesterday if she was only going to go out last night? Who looked after the boys?

It took all my effort to stop myself from giving Sean the third degree about this bloke. ‘What did he look like?’ ‘How tall was he?’ ‘What sort of car did he drive?’ ‘Was he a snappy dresser?’ ‘Was he a dick?’ Somehow I managed to keep my inquisitiveness to myself.

I know I am massively jumping ahead of events here, but I am now struggling to keep images of my wife in bed with a new man out of my head. She may not sleep with this particular bloke but she is bound to find someone to share her bed with at some point.

Why am I feeling jealous? Or more particularly, who am I jealous of? The more I think about it, I am not jealous of the bloke who went out to dinner with and will potentially sleep with my ex. I think I am jealous of my ex because she has found herself someone to go out with. She has found herself a prospective new partner before I have.

When the kids were upstairs, I got my phone out and found my ex on Facebook. Since we separated I had wondered about deleting her as a friend but I am not sure what the protocol is here. If I delete her does that smack of the act of a bitter and twisted man? Or should I keep her as a friend because she is the mother of my children? Anyway, this morning I was glad I hadn’t deleted her.

I looked through her activity. She doesn’t update her profile very often and hadn’t posted anything about going out to dinner with a new bloke. Her last profile update just said
‘off to have my hair cut’. I looked to see if she had any new friends but couldn’t find any tall, dark, handsome new bloke there either.

I could hear the kids shouting at me for something or other so I hurriedly put the phone away. I should probably defriend my ex, otherwise I worry I will keep peeking at her activity for years to come. Sometimes I wish I could work my real-life relationships in a Facebook-enabled way: just press a few keys and my emotions relating to any given person would immediately switch off.

Once I’d got over the news of my ex’s dinner date, Sean and I went to watch Jack’s Sunday league football cup final. Well, I say Sean went to watch his brother but he spent most of his time going to the café down the road with his best mate Robert, who had just finished his game. We took the puppy with us.

Albus is a great dog. My ex and I got him in October during one of our brief reconciliations. With the benefit of hindsight this was one of our more ridiculous decisions. My ex’s rationale for getting him was that it would give the family a joint project. We could walk him together, share responsibility for training and grooming him. My rationale was more realistic. At least the dog would wag its tail and be genuinely pleased to see me when I get back from work.

Albus was a tiny pup when we took him home, only nine weeks old. He was an instant hit with the kids but didn’t quite manage to achieve our unspoken and totally unrealistic hope of saving our already doomed marriage. By the time he was six months old, my wife had become my ex.

In the six months that we have had him, he has gone from being a tiny pup to a huge beast of a pup. He still has some growing to do, despite already being able to put his paws on the kids’ shoulders and lick their faces. I have given up reminding the boys that they don’t know where the dog’s
tongue has been. Actually it isn’t true anyway; we know perfectly well where his tongue has been.

Jack’s team were playing the league champions. In pursuance of my admittedly stop-start (more stop than start) attempt to get fit, I decided to jog around the pitch with the dog while I was watching the game. I managed about two laps before I got a stitch and had to stop to recover.

Somehow, when I was bent double trying to regain my breath, I let go of the lead and Albus invaded the pitch. He went straight for the ball, grabbed it in his teeth and ran in and out of players evading capture. I tried calling him but he just wouldn’t come. We have still got work to do with him on the training pitch.

It was like the scenes you see on a telly when the stewards are trying to capture a streaker. Eventually Sean got him back by offering him a bit of the sausage out of his hot dog.

Sean was in hysterics. Jack was mortified.

‘Dad, what did you let him off for?’ he shouted at me from across the pitch.

I acted all apologetic but actually I quite admire the dog. He just sees something he wants and goes straight for it. He’s got no inhibitions. I wish I was a bit more like him sometimes. Maybe if I was, I would be able to find myself a new woman and have the balls to approach her.

Jack lost his football so he was in a foul mood for the rest of the day.

Albus is in the spotlight at the moment. Today my beloved father turned his scorn onto him. It wasn’t as if Albus was chewing up their best cushions or anything. The best cushions are in the front room and the cushions he was chewing up were in the kitchen.

I have spent this evening doing mundane chores. Despite being ‘on my own’ for a while now, I am still struggling with doing some things for myself. In my former marital home my ex would do most of the domestic chores. This wasn’t because I am a chauvinist pig, but simply because I worked longer hours than her. It’s not as if I didn’t lift a finger around the house (I feel like I am being a tad defensive again here). I know my way around the kitchen and can make a mean curry. I can even use the washing machine and know how to operate a washing line. But ironing is a different matter altogether. In my marital home I tested out and proved correct the Jack Duckworth theory that if you cock it up enough times, someone will do it for you. It was almost worth staying married to my ex because she did the ironing, but the marriage guidance counsellor told me that wasn’t reason enough to stay with her, so I didn’t. What did she know anyway?

Since my divorce, I have repeatedly tried to cock up the
ironing but my parents are proving that every good theory has an exception. With the days heating up, I am not sure how much longer I can cope with wearing jumpers to cover up my latest inept attempt to iron a shirt. And the manufacturers that claim their shirts are non-iron or easy-iron should be sued for talking bollocks or whatever the technical term is.

When I wasn’t doing the ironing I was working my way through my old music collection - a collection I have hardly listened to or expanded since the 80s. Growing up in that halcyon decade, I was too young for punk and too old for rap. Anything ‘alternative’ left me cold. So pop and soft rock it is. The kids take the piss out of me constantly. Occasionally, in a token effort to look even vaguely cool, I will try something new. I thought I was being progressive when I bought an Adele album but that didn’t get me any street cred, nor did Bruno Mars. I did get some grudging respect when I took Jack and Sean to the Capital FM Summertime Ball last year, until when we got there I didn’t recognise any of the acts. So I gave up trying to keep up with the kids and now just listen to my extensive back catalogue. Today I immersed myself in my youth and listened to ‘The Joshua Tree’ by U2 over and over again.

Divorce doesn’t half play havoc with your finances. As a couple my ex and I were doing pretty OK, at least in financial terms. My job might be mind-numbingly boring but it does at least come with a half-decent salary. My ex worked too. We had only recently moved into our detached house in Surrey. OK, the house wasn’t a million miles from the local council dump and is only in Surrey rather than London by a matter of metres, but when all’s said and done it’s still a detached house in Surrey.

We used to go on decent holidays and generally didn’t have to count the days before our salaries were paid in to our bank accounts. But now, following the dreaded ‘D’ word, I am not sure how I get myself into a position where I can afford to even rent a home on the commercial market suitable for a dad with an occasional two kids, let alone get myself back on to the property ladder.

My dad didn’t help matters today when he suggested that it’s about time I started paying rent. I am trying to save my pennies, the pennies that I am not giving to my ex, in the hope that sometime soon I will be able to afford to rent somewhere. If I have to pay my dad rent then it will take me longer to move out. I explained this logic to him but he was nonplussed.

A part of me suspects that my parents are trying to push me in to moving back with my ex. I keep telling them it won’t happen but they aren’t easily put off.

I don’t normally feel like a gooseberry around my parents but I did tonight. It’s their wedding anniversary and they spent the whole evening banging on about the day they first met, their relationship and why their marriage has lasted so long.

‘How long were you married for?’ mum asked me at one point.

‘What does it matter?’ I responded. ‘It’s over now.’

I get the impression that my parents see my divorce as a black mark against me, an indication that I am not a great person. Maybe I’m not. I made my excuses and left them to it as soon as I had swallowed my last mouthful of beef Wellington.

My marriage might not have worked out but I don’t regret getting married. My union with my ex produced the two best things in my life, my boys.

Mum and dad’s wedding anniversary made me think a fair bit about my ex. As I have said before, this diary isn’t about her but she was part of my life for fifteen years so I can’t ignore her altogether.

Somewhat unconventionally we met outside a sexually transmitted diseases clinic in Roehampton. I got lucky one night. Not being a seasoned professional, I took my eye off the ball. Or balls. They subsequently itched so badly that I
waddled off to the STD clinic. As I began the drive home I was rather distracted (they had seen fit to give me a ‘routine’ AIDS test too) and crashed smack bang into the woman who was later to become my ex. Literally smack bang.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Are you blind?’ she shouted at me.

‘Sorry, I was scratching my balls.’

As well as exchanging pleasantries, we exchanged phone numbers for insurance purposes. After a few beers a couple of nights later I phoned her up, and although it may stretch the imagination a bit, we ended up getting together.

In the first few weeks of our burgeoning relationship we met up most evenings after work, walked along the river, drank in different pubs and ate out at every opportunity. We were love’s young dream.

On account of my sexually transmitted infliction it took a while before the relationship progressed to ‘staying in’. My lovely ex insisted on seeing a clean bill of health signed in triplicate by a surgery full of doctors before she would go anywhere near my nether regions. And I never did find out what she was doing at the clinic.

We were married within a few months. Morden registry office pulled out all the stops. My dad snored loudly throughout my father-in-law’s wedding speech, but no one blamed him because it was a mind-numbingly boring speech. We had a great day.

Fifteen years of marital bliss followed. I wish. In reality it was more like a few weeks of bliss and fourteen-plus years of more lows than highs. Our honeymoon was a high point, as were our children’s births, although I was already having doubts about our relationship by the time Sean was born.

The woman I had fallen in love with seemed to have disappeared fairly quickly after our wedding, to be replaced by an intense character who was either on top of the world or
completely stressed and miserable. The times when she was on top of the world were great but unfortunately they weren’t very frequent and didn’t last long when they did occur.

The rows we had were quite intense in the early days too, complete with raised voices and the odd projectile hurled in my general direction. She once picked up an apple from the fruit counter in the green grocers and threw it at me. It missed me and hit some poor unsuspecting old woman on the back of the head. Poor Granny Smith. I can’t even remember what I had or hadn’t done that made her throw the apple in the first place.

As our relationship wore on, the rows diminished, not because we were getting on better but because we didn’t have the energy or the passion to argue. My ex gradually became more and more withdrawn until eventually, a couple of years ago, the doctors diagnosed depression and prescribed her some pills. The pills did help my ex to regain her equilibrium. The lows were less low. Her relationship with the kids improved but the damage to our relationship had already been done. We couldn’t rekindle the passion we once had for each other.

For the record, our marriage lasted for fifteen years and two months.