Six Months to Get a Life (8 page)

Today’s good news is that we are having a ‘strategic review’ at work. I didn’t have a clue what a strategic review was so I asked my boss Daniel (‘Don’t call me Dan, my name is Daniel’). Apparently it means they look at the purpose of the organisation, refine and narrow it, and then see what human resources they need to deliver it. I didn’t know what that meant either so I gave up trying to understand it.

My ex phoned me today to tell me that her dad has got worse, she is going off to Exeter for a couple of days to be with him and would I have the kids? The best thing about my divorce was that my father-in-law became my ex-father-in-law. I suppose I wouldn’t wish illness on anyone, but if it gets me more time with the children then so be it. And the kids’ school is closed for teacher training too, so good news nearly all round.

I have booked tomorrow off work and the three of us are going to go camping.

My ex was never one for sleeping under canvas. She needed her home comforts and particularly couldn’t stand having to walk to the toilet block. We did try camping once. We went to a campsite by the sea in Devon. After a four hour drive in steaming hot sunshine, the heavens opened the minute we arrived at the camp site. We got soaked and had a row over how to put the tent up.

The kids were young on that trip. The first and only morning we were there, the boys woke up at half past three and wouldn’t go back to sleep. They were told in no uncertain terms to shut up. Five minutes later they were chatting again. My then wife told them that if they didn’t shut up until at least six o’clock we would go straight home.
They were too excited about the adventures that lay ahead. Within ten minutes they were talking again so their mum made me get up, pack our things back up and drive home. Needless to say, I didn’t bother suggesting we go camping again as a family.

The boys have been camping several times since that experience. They go regularly with scouts and cadets. In fact it was Jack who suggested the camp site that I have just booked, in Swanage, Dorset.

Jack is well up for our trip. He loves the outdoors and can’t wait for the challenge of building a fire and cooking sausages over it. Sean took a bit more convincing though.

‘Can I take my PS4 with me?’ he asked as we were packing the car.

‘There won’t be anywhere to plug it in when we get there,’ I pointed out.

‘I wish I had gone to Exeter with mum,’ he said, somewhat sulkily.

I am going to make it my mission over the next few days to have a great time with the boys.

I am feeling quite pleased with myself. Our boys’ weekend in Dorset went well. Even Sean had a good time despite not seeing hide nor hair of a computer screen for four days.

The weekend wasn’t without its trials and tribulations though. We took the dog with us but I hadn’t thought to check whether dogs were allowed at the campsite. The prominent ‘Strictly No Dogs’ sign at the side of the road alerted us to our error. Jack put his coat over Albus, who was laying down in the boot, as we were let through the security gate and into the campsite.

The site was pretty primitive. It consisted of a large sloping field and a toilet block. There were only a couple of other tents up when we arrived. Because we had the dog we chose a position in the furthest corner of the field, as far away from the other campers as we could get.

At Jack’s insistence I let the boys put the tent up. They did a great job of it. Jack might only be fourteen but he is already more practical-minded and good with his hands than me. Sean was his willing assistant, content to take orders from his older brother.

While the kids were bashing the last few tent pegs in to the ground, I nipped down the road and bought us all fish and chips for dinner. We sat on the grass and were eating
happily until Jack hit on a thought. We hadn’t packed the dog’s food. I bet you can tell who used to do the packing in our household. Off I trotted back to the chip shop.

‘Large cod and chips for the German Shepherd please.’

We had a decent night’s sleep on that first night. The following morning, after a breakfast of bacon sandwiches for four, we went for a long walk over the Purbeck hills. The views were spectacular.

Albus spent hours barking at sheep and chasing the boys. My ex and I had bought the dog in an effort to create days like this. It is a shame she wasn’t there with us to enjoy it. I do still miss her sometimes. She would have put Albus on his lead to stop him chasing sheep, she would have brought the dog food with her rather than buying him a half-pound burger for lunch and she would definitely not have let him lick my ice cream when I wasn’t looking, as Sean did. But despite being the sensible one, she would have added something to the day.

When we returned to the campsite, it was jam-packed. Half the world seemed to have decided to converge on our corner of the Dorset countryside. They were there for a kite festival. Until this weekend I had thought that kites were things that kids younger than mine played with for five minutes before they got tangled up or stuck in a tree. Apparently I was wrong. Kites of all shapes and sizes were laid out over cars and on every spare inch of grass. People were admiring each other’s babies. It was quite funny to watch.

The other thing that made the boys laugh was that we now weren’t the only ones to have smuggled a dog in to the campsite. As we were busy cooking our sausages for dinner, Albus was chasing his new BFF around the neighbouring field.

Yesterday we hit the beach. We thought we had better find somewhere off the beaten track because we didn’t want
the dog to keep running off with little Bobby’s football or Angel’s sandwich (he has got a taste for sandwiches now) so we drove to Studland Bay, a less well-populated beach than Swanage.

I hadn’t known in advance but I chuckled to myself when I saw the ‘naturists beyond this point’ sign as we were walking to the beach.

We were the first ones on the beach and had an hour of fun trying to entice the dog into the sea. Gradually, though, other people started arriving. It was only a matter of time.

I was digging a hole with the boys and the dog when a shocked look suddenly appeared on Jack’s face.

‘Dad, that man’s got no swimming trunks on,’ he exclaimed.

‘Son, didn’t you see the signs?’ I asked him.

‘What signs?’ Jack queried.

‘The ones that said ‘naturists beyond this point’,’ I enlightened him.

‘I did but I thought it meant bird spotters or something boring like that, not naked people,’ Jack said.

My boys are at either ends of the spectrum when it comes to their attitudes to nudity. Sean will parade around the house naked and proud, whereas Jack won’t even get changed in front of his brother. Jack literally got into the hole we were digging and refused to come out. Sean and I got naked and ran in to the sea laughing.

We finished the day off with a pub tea (the kids wanted to buy Albus a steak but I thought sausages in onion gravy was a better option).

‘Thanks, dad, we’ve had a great time,’ Jack said as he was polishing off his last mouthful.

It was a shame to have to come back home so soon. Especially as the first thing I did when I got back was have another row with my ex.

When I dropped the kids back at her house, she told me her dad wasn’t doing very well at all. She was now even more seriously thinking about moving to Exeter. I didn’t learn from the mistakes I made the last time we had this conversation. In fact I repeated them pretty much verbatim.

‘You wouldn’t want to miss out on your dad’s twilight years, would you,’ I agreed. ‘Go to Exeter. I promise I will bring the kids to see you at least once a month.’

‘You’re a twat, Graham. I hate you,’ she shouted as she slammed the door in my face.

I wasn’t particularly proud of myself for that remark. If my dad was ill, the last thing I would want is my ex taunting me. I had only got out of her drive when I decided I should go back and apologise. I turned the car around and knocked on the door.

‘I am sorry, that was uncalled for,’ I told her when she answered.

‘Just fuck off Graham,’ she said and slammed the door again.

I know I can be a dick at times. My glib remarks have quite often got me into trouble. If it’s any consolation though, I am not bad at apologising when I am wrong. My ex never apologises for anything. She is never wrong. And she is probably going to take my kids to Exeter. Why is it that she has all the power when it comes to making decisions about the children?

Tonight I enjoyed another evening out with Julia. You may note that I am not referring to it as a ‘date’. Do middle-aged people date or do they just fall into polite companionship? I hope they can date, but my times with Julia feel more like companionship. They feel completely different from the first few times I met up with my ex. With my ex I just wanted to touch her, to kiss her. I dreaded that point in the evening when it would be time to say goodbye. With Julia, I am not experiencing any of those feelings. There isn’t a spark there, no lust. But I do enjoy Julia’s company and it makes a pleasant change from spending the evenings with my parents or my blokey mates down the pub.

I am not sure whether Julia fancies me or not. I am rubbish at telling whether women like me. Maybe it is because not many do so I haven’t had much practice in seeing the signs. Even when I was younger, in my pre-married life, I could never read the signs. A strong fear of rejection kept me in check. I would often be told by girlfriends once relationships had been consummated that I could have moved from the ‘flirting’ phase to the ‘action’ phase a lot quicker than I had. Thinking about it, most of my girlfriends kissed me first rather than me making the first move. My ex stuck
her tongue down my throat at the end of our first meal out, at the Barley Mow in Horseferry Road.

Even though there was no spark there, I thought about kissing Julia tonight. It would have at least shown me whether or not she fancies me. I would like to think she does. It would be nice to have some affirmation that I am actually an eligible single bloke.

Instead of kissing Julia, at the end of our Thai meal in Wimbledon Village, we smiled at each other and went our separate ways.

My ‘get somewhere to live’ goal came a big step closer to being achieved today, but not in a way I had anticipated. Andy emailed me to say that his work have asked him to head up their new office in Toronto. Until today I thought he was just an office manager – the man who buys the staples and hires the cleaners. But he is obviously more than that, unless Canada is lacking in staple-buyers.

Anyway, Andy has a two-bed maisonette in St Helier. That’s the south west London St Helier rather than the one in Jersey. Knowing that I am trying to move out of my parents’ house as soon as possible, Andy asked me if I fancied renting his flat out for a year while he is away. It is a decent flat and even has a garden. It maybe isn’t quite where I would have chosen to locate myself in an ideal world, but Andy will do me a good deal on the rent and it will mean I don’t have to listen to any more inane bollocks from estate agents.

I am minded to take Andy up on his offer. I will talk to Jack and Sean first though.

Although his flat might be a godsend, I will miss Andy’s company. He is the boring one but if truth be told, I probably have more in common with Andy than with most of my other mates. He likes his sport, he follows the news and isn’t frightened to get off his backside to do something
different from time to time. Like relocate to Canada. The only thing I don’t have in common with Andy is his taste in music. If I do move in to his flat, I need to make sure he takes his Jean Michel Jarre electronic pop or whatever it is called CDs with him.

Jack and Sean seem a bit less excited about me moving in to Andy’s flat than I am. They are concerned about the location. The fact that it may be in a crime hotspot on the middle of a once-notorious estate doesn’t bother them. It is just that it is a bit of a trek from their school and it isn’t ‘on the way’ to anywhere. My parents’ is on the way to their mum’s from school so they do drop in there sometimes unannounced and on a whim – even after the kipper incident. I guess I am going to have to politely decline Andy’s offer. Back to the drawing board, I suppose.

I tried to help Sean with his homework tonight. His English teacher asked his class to write a short story using lots of descriptive writing.

‘What’s your story going to be about?’ I asked him.

‘It’s about a family whose parents don’t like each other anymore,’ Sean told me matter of factly.

Once he had written his story, he let me read it. He has written about the two parents splitting up and the children living with each parent for part of the week. The gist of Sean’s story is that the children are happier because their parents are happier. The other angle to Sean’s story is that the two boys help each other through the hard times and are
closer than they used to be as a result. The big brother does still smell though.

‘Is this how you feel?’ I asked Sean after finishing reading the story.

‘No, it’s not about me dad. Mrs Pearce said it had to be made up,’ Sean explained.

My boy has a good imagination but I am not sure it is that good. I like to think that there was at least an element of truth in his writing. In fact I got a bit emotional when I read it. Even though he said it was made up, I gave him a cuddle and ruffled his hair.

The boys and I are going to Turkey in about two months’ time. Yesterday, a little voice inside my head told me to check Jack and Sean’s passports. Lo and behold, Sean’s runs out the day before we are due to fly.

So today I went to the post office at lunchtime to renew it. I filled in the forms surreptitiously at work this afternoon and took them back to the post office. I paid extra for the woman behind the counter to check my form and send it off as I have been known to cock forms up. I wish I hadn’t bothered paying the extra.

The clerk tried to tell me that Sean’s mother had to fill in the form, not me.

‘What if she’s dead?’ I asked.

‘Is she?’ the woman replied.

‘No,’ I was forced to admit.

‘Well, then she has to sign the application,’ the officious jobsworth pronounced.

I am sure she thought she was striking a significant blow for women’s lib. I got stroppy and told her I wanted to see the specific clause that prohibits a dad from signing his son’s passport renewal form. She couldn’t find it so on my insistence she phoned her head office who eventually told her
that she was talking out of her arse. When she stamped the form I smiled. Dads one, post office woman nil.