Six Months to Get a Life (9 page)

I met the ‘your dog weed on my dog’s head’ woman again this evening during a walk on Wimbledon Common. She remembered me. Well, I suspect she remembered Albus more. Albus is about ten times the size of her dog, but that didn’t stop him trying to have sex with her. Again, I wish I had some of his self-confidence.

The lovely dog-walking woman and I chatted for a while and I even managed not to mention my divorce or my kids. I asked her about her strange looking dog. Apparently it is a shih poo (she pronounced it shit poo) – a cross between a shih tzu and a poodle. I suppose it would have been worse if a bulldog had mated with a shih tzu.

Actually, I couldn’t have embarrassed myself too much because at the end of our walk, she suggested that we meet at the same time next week. I went to bed with a smile on my face despite not even knowing her name.

The world cup starts in less than a month. Our work’s head office decided it would be good for morale if they organised an evening of inter-office football. I am not sure why, but people at work do seem miserable at the moment. Even more miserable than usual, I mean.

The powers that be decided on a sales-versus-back-office match. There is always a bit of good-natured banter between the sales show-offs and the back-office boys. As my boss wouldn’t let me within a mile of an actual customer, I am firmly in the back office camp, or the engine room of the company as we like to think of it.

Now I used to fancy myself as a half-decent left-back. When playing on the school fields of south west London I modelled my game on that of my hero, ‘psycho’ Stuart Pearce. In my heyday (I am not sure whether a very short spell of being slightly less crap than I normally am constitutes a heyday but we won’t dwell on that question) opposition strikers would have probably described me as a dirty bastard. I preferred the term ‘swashbuckling’.

I was quite chuffed when Daniel, my boss and the back-office team’s player manager, included me on his team sheet. The team was published yesterday on the work intranet. We
all turned up at Regent’s Park eagerly anticipating a hard-fought contest.

After a rousing team talk from Daniel (more David Brent than Jose Mourinho), the match kicked off. Now although I would love to be a football reporter, I will resist the urge to practise by giving a blow-by-blow account of the game. Suffice it to say that stock phrases such as ‘men against boys’, ‘shocking defending’ and ‘couldn’t hit a barn door’ would all feature. I could add in ‘it’s a game of two halves’ but unfortunately in this case, the two halves were the same. In short, the back-office boys were thrashed by the sales team. Flash Harry and fancy Dan both scored hat-tricks.

I should confess to one incident that occurred during the game. When the score was still goalless, I picked up the ball from our goalie ‘fatboy Tim’ and went on a dazzling run, right through the heart of their midfield, veering one way and another, carrying the ball right up to the edge of the sales penalty area. It was Maradona-esque up to this point. With only one defender left to beat and with a teammate unmarked in the middle in acres of space, I chose to shoot. Big mistake. Not just because the ball sailed way over the bar but more importantly because the teammate I should have passed to was Daniel, my boss. There goes any chance of my bonus this year.

In the bar afterwards, my team-mates christened me ‘Notta Hope’. I first heard this nickname some thirty years ago but I didn’t let on. Calling them unoriginal would have just rubbed salt in wounds I had already opened.

The work ‘strategic review’ report was published today. I have now realised what all that gobbledygook management-speak Daniel came out with meant. It meant they sack a few people to save money. They probably deliberately waited until after the football so as to avoid lots of career-ending tackles flying about. And I didn’t pass to Daniel. It should have been my job I worried about losing, not just my bonus.

Apparently instead of the current two logistics managers, in the future they only need one.

They are running a consultation on their proposals, so, as one of the affected logistics managers, I submitted a considered response telling them that I didn’t think the proposals were any good. I am not optimistic that my submission will sway their thinking.

Short skirt Sarah, who noticed the absence of my wedding ring a few weeks ago, is the other logistics manager. It looks like the two of us will have to compete for one job. Sarah is always in the office before me in the mornings and shows no sign of leaving when I am getting my coat on in the evenings. She is an attractive woman who, even before having to compete for her job, was very pally with Daniel. This is going to be a close fight then.

With the prospect of losing my job now a distinct possibility,
maybe now isn’t the time I should be looking to move out of my parents’ house. Maybe it isn’t the time but I am still determined to press ahead and move out. I need to believe in myself. I will get that job. And if I don’t get that one, I will get another job. Perhaps the strategic review is the catalyst that will force me into finding a newer, more interesting job.

This is the first weekend I haven’t seen my boys at all since the divorce. They have gone to Exeter with the ex. We used to go and visit her family a couple of times a year. Jack and Sean have never been particularly close to that set of grandparents but they trudged along compliantly with us. When I talked to them on the phone before they went, I got the impression that they were looking forward to this trip even less than usual.

‘Granddad spends half his time moaning about you and the other half moaning at us,’ Jack mumbled when I asked him why the extra reluctance to go. ‘Just ignore him, he’s a dickhead,’ I told my son. No I didn’t but I wanted to.

I am getting a real sense that the boys are beginning to find their feet again after a tricky time when their mum and I split up. Sean in particular seems to be coming out of his shell. I sensed on our recent camping trip that he seemed more upbeat, more relaxed. He told me to stop worrying about him when I asked him how he was. His exact words were, ‘Stop worrying about me and start sorting your life out.’ Cheeky git.

Like Sean, I am feeling a bit less insecure now than I was a couple of months ago. This isn’t quite the same as saying I am ‘a bit more secure’ but it is a start at least.

Despite me not seeing the boys this weekend, I haven’t spent the whole time moping about. I haven’t been too downhearted. The boys and I continue to get on well. They seem to respect me and listen to me despite me not being there all the time and they do genuinely want to see me. Both boys periodically drop in at my parents’ because they fancy a chat. They both want me to come to their various sports matches. They are both interested and engaged in my flat-finding endeavour too. If they had missed a whole weekend’s visit a couple of months ago I would literally have spent the whole weekend worrying about what they were up to, but this weekend I managed to function without them.

Of course, my different mindset has nothing to do with my Tuesday evening dog walks.

I actually took a couple more tentative steps towards achieving some of my goals this weekend. I went on a long bike ride and I made a concerted effort to sort my living arrangements out.

I spent most of Saturday in the company of estate agents but other than that I didn’t have a bad day. I may have found a flat with some prospects. It is off Martin Way in Morden. It is only a ten minute walk from school and on the way to my ex’s, which means the kids could drop in when passing. It is also only five minutes from my parents’ so I could go round there for dinner every so often, which might not be a bad thing because I may have forgotten how to cook since not owning my own kitchen. I will take the kids to view the flat sometime next week.

I thought a fair bit about my job too this weekend. It may be under threat but I am determined not to think of myself as a victim. I must not wallow. I must not wallow. I must not wallow. You see, who needs a stupid self-help book?

I do try to adhere to the philosophy that shit happens to those who let shit happen (not sure whether that one
was Rousseau, Plato or Marx?). In other words, I am doing a boring job at the moment and some jerk in a suit may decide I’m surplus to requirements. I could sit there and passively let Daniel not Dan kick me out. Or I could take control of the situation and find myself a better job. I got online and started working on a few application forms.

On Saturday night I stayed in and dog-sat as my parents went out for dinner with friends. The thought of my nigh-on 70-year-old parents going out on a Saturday night and me staying in on my own would normally bring on a bout of depression, but instead I just enjoyed having the house to myself and being in control of the sound system. The Buddy Holly CD was firmly ejected from my parents’ CD player in favour of a bit of Dire Straits.

When I drove through Raynes Park and up towards the Common this evening, I had little optimism that dog walking woman would show up. The weather was utterly awful. Albus and I got soaked just getting into the car. What self-respecting goddess would walk their dog in such shitty weather?

At this point I feel the need to make a confession. I have been looking forward to tonight since the moment I waved goodbye to dog-walking woman last week. And not just a little bit either. I have spent many a minute fantasising about us as a couple, eating dinner together, chatting over a drink and, yes, doing other things too. I haven’t admitted it before now because it would have sounded a bit over the top, even a bit creepy. We have probably only exchanged about a hundred words with each other. I don’t even know her name unless by some miraculous trick of fate her parents christened her dog-walking woman.

As I drove into the Windmill car park, my worst fears were confirmed. The car park was totally deserted. I was gutted. I sat in the car for a few minutes, firstly cursing the British weather and then beginning to wonder whether she would have shown up even if the sun had been out. She probably just decided I wasn’t the stimulating, attractive, intelligent hunk I wanted her to think I was.

Eventually, Albus became impatient being stuck in the car with the windows steaming up, so, feeling disconsolate, I did my coat up and braved the rain.

This is where things get a bit messy. Albus plodded over towards the café and decided that the path outside the café was the best place on the whole Common to do his business. Like any responsible dog owner I carried what are colloquially known as ‘poo bags’ with me. I was in the process of picking up the biggest turd in history with a bag that wasn’t man enough for the job when the shih poo and her lovely owner walked round the corner. This wasn’t how I’d imagined our next encounter to start.

But start it had. ‘Good to see you aren’t frightened of getting your hands dirty,’ dog-walking woman, who subsequently became known as Amy, said with a smile on her face that literally altered the rhythm of my heart.

‘Good to see you aren’t the sort of woman to let a little rain put you off a walk,’ I replied. Not a bad opener.

Somehow, Amy managed to look stunning even though she was soaked to the skin and covered head to toe in expensive rain clothes that would probably have passed muster in the Amazon rainforest. My cheap ‘waterproof’ wouldn’t have kept me dry in the Rainforest Café. She became known as Amy at about the point that I had dropped the foul smelling deposit off in the nearest dog bin.

We chatted away in the rain as we strolled across the Common. Amy lives off the Ridgway in Wimbledon Village. She is divorced and has one child, Lucy. Lucy is fourteen, the same age as Jack. She was with her dad this evening in Earlsfield. I am divorced, have two children, am in the process of sorting my living accommodation out et cetera, et cetera… Amy wants to be a travel writer when she grows up. I have tried growing up and it is thoroughly over-rated.

We might have talked about where we are going in life, but
we didn’t discuss where we were going on our walk. We just kept walking in the rain and increasing darkness. We ended up walking past Cannizaro House and found ourselves outside the Crooked Billet pub. And then inside, with our soaking wet, tired dogs at our feet and Amy nursing a steaming hot cup of coffee and me a pint.

Once we had stripped our clothes off in a frantic manner (OK, only our waterproofs), I got a better look at Amy. She happens to be the opposite of my ex in a lot of ways – redhead with long wavy (slightly bedraggled tonight) hair versus dyed blonde bob; striking emerald green eyes versus nondescript brown; tall and leggy versus short and anything but; and with an electric smile that she isn’t afraid to use rather than a permanent miserable frown. That just turned into an excuse for a rant but I am sure you get the picture.

I don’t know why but the nerves that have characterised my interactions with women over the last few months weren’t present tonight. Andy’s advice to me on the golf course was just to be myself and I would be alright. I didn’t try to come across as some sort of smartarse. I talked to Amy about relationships, about divorce and its impact upon us and the children. I held my end up in the conversation. I did OK.

There was no physical contact tonight. Was this because I still lack the killer instinct? Possibly. I said I wasn’t nervous but that isn’t the same as saying I am super cool, confident and cocksure. When all’s said and done, that will never be me. I didn’t even get her phone number but we did agree the standard ‘same time next week’ arrangement before we both got taxis home. My car is spending a solitary night in the Windmill car park which will mean another trip to the Common tomorrow night for me.