ANYWAY. BACK TO THE POINT.

I have my annual advice for those of you considering this daunting prospect. It’s Blue Monday week – the most depressing time of the year so here are some pointers to help you on your way:-

HOW TO SURVIVE DIVORCE (hopefully)

1. Your friends (and family if you’re lucky) will get you through it more than you will ever know. Don’t ever take them for granted but make sure you surround yourself with them wherever possible. They will be there with you on your long journey back out of the black hole.

2. Be prepared. You are in for a long hard slog. Get a good lawyer. Rumour has it that it takes half the time you were married to begin to get over your marriage. If that is too awful a prospect then bank on it taking AT LEAST four years. The first year is almost better than the next one because you will no doubt be a little unhinged and angry in the first year – so try not to behave too irrationally. The second year can be your reality check and it’s all highly depressing because not only are things just as hard but you’re exhausted from Year One. If you’re lucky, by Year Three the drama has died down a bit and hopefully by year 4 you are able to see the wood for the trees and can finally start reassessing your life.

3. In the early days make sure you get out of bed every day. Sometimes your body feels so heavy it won’t move. It would have been so much easier to curl up into a ball, ignore the kids and have a quiet nervous breakdown in a corner somewhere. But it doesn’t work like that. You have to “face the dragon”. Deal with the shit. Go to the meetings. Brush your hair. Remember to eat. Remember to breathe. Pick your kids up from school. Put your make-up on. Fill out that complicated form. Go to that party on your own. Do the stuff you dread. You have to. It will make you stronger and consequently it will all get easier. You will do most of it on automatic pilot and then be amazed with yourself that you got through it. I managed to learn how to be a fitness instructor on autopilot, during my most traumatised time. It saved me from myself.

4. Be kind to yourself. My old school friend wrote to me at the beginning of the whole process. She told me to do just that. To treat myself as if I was going on a date with myself (which frankly had no appeal whatsoever – I hated my own company – thankfully she invited herself along on most occasions which helped hugely). Have a massage, or go to an exhibition or a film on your own.  Put yourself higher up your list of priorities.  Sometimes it pays to be selfish.  Try not to feel sad that you have no one to do things with or to buy you presents, buy yourself some stuff. Treat yourself to things. It’s important. Do the things that give you pleasure and forget the rest. Go on a cooking course, a knitting course, ride wolves, sail, play poker, write a book. Whatever. It. Takes.  Buy a big comfortable bed and spread out in it by yourself.  Learn to enjoy the solitude for a minute.

5. Cut the crap. Don’t go to everything. Do some sifting. Do the stuff that makes you happy for whatever reason. Let go of the social events that no longer work for you and of the friends that take more than they give. Drop the stuff that’s taking up too much time and getting you nowhere.

6. Most importantly keep your sense of humour. You will find that different friends are there at different times and for different reasons. Some can take you out and make you laugh and push you in at the deep end of your new scary life. Others are there for when you find your feet again and want some semblance of normality. It won’t always be funny, but there is always a funny side to be found. A different perspective to look at.

Sometimes, when you look at what is going on in the rest of the world and what other people are going through, having the time and space to mourn for your marriage is almost an indulgence. I am still a very lucky person who has three lovely children and a roof over my head and lots of fantastic friends and lots of lovely stuff to do and, and, and, and another year has gone by in a flash. It’s cold in London at the moment but maybe just try to remember that “in the kingdom of hope there is no winter”.

Dear all,

In haste, this is just a quick note to wish you all a Happy Christmas – or as the Archbishop Of Canterbury recently said, “I wish you all a Messy Christmas”.

Which in my case is what it will be. It is early Christmas morning and it is only my mother and I in the house. I have to go and pick up my children from their father’s house later (because I can’t bear the thought of my teenage son driving his two siblings back to me on fast roads and that was the only other option given to me). My mother and I were meant to go to Midnight Mass last night but after a little too much champagne my mother decided she didn’t want to at the last minute. So that was that then.

Once my children are back we will have our traditional lunch – but there will only be 5 of us, which is the smallest Christmas day meal I have ever done. Then we’re off to friends for silly party games and much drinking Baileys and eating Quality Streets in the evening and at some point we will have to watch the Queen I suppose.

THEN tomorrow we have our big family day with the rest of my family arriving so we will then have a big meal for 11.

Although technically it will only be 10 to eat, because the 11th family member doesn’t have any teeth yet. In fact she will only be three weeks old.

Her first Christmas. My brother and his wife’s first baby. How lovely. This is what Christmas is all about – family and friends. Young and Old. Such a shame my father won’t be there at the table with us – he’d have been so proud – but hey, that’s life I guess and she will bring us much joy and we will make a toast to absent friends and hope my mother won’t cry. She’s put out the Christmas tablecloth – the one we’ve had every year for about 30 years. Everyone who has ever eaten with us has signed the cloth where they sat and then she embroiders it. I’ll take a photo. It’s pretty amazing actually. A good way to remember friends and what we were doing. My father’s name is all over the place. Every year for 30 years he’s signed it. So. I guess he’ll be with us in spirit.

ENJOY.

EAT, DRINK AND BE MESSY.

We were having dinner with some friends on Saturday night. Their son was cooking us a three course Cordon Bleu meal because he needs to practice his chef skills. My son and Builder Bloke’s son was there too along with about six other adults. At some point during the proceedings I picked up a text from above mentioned friend. Before even thinking about whether it was inappropriate behaviour or not I shouted out – “OMG Matt LeBlanc is in the pub just round the corner – we have to go!! Who’s coming with me?” Up got the chef, my son, BB’s son and off we went – “Back soon!” just need a quick photo’ I said, but still, HOW RUDE!!

Anyway, at the pub we were all attempting to do a casual not really stalking you Matt sort of lean against the bar stance but it wasn’t a good look and we all worked out that our best chance of success was if we sat outside and waited for him to come out for a fag. He was with about six friends having a lovely time and we obviously couldn’t just go up and disturb his evening. There was barely anybody else in the pub. Nobody else appeared to have even noticed him. Anyway, we had to sit outside for ages – some of the smokers in our group were attempting to blow smoke through a window near where he was sitting to entice him out. “BLOODY HELL, how long is he going to be? Why can’t he be a massively heavy smoker? It’s been at least 25 minutes since his last one”……

Then success. My friend inside texted “FAG!!”. Honestly. It was a finely tuned plan. Worked wonders.

But of course when he did finally come outside with his mate for a quiet chat and a fag it was me that had to pounce – mostly because the only way I was going to be able to justify abandoning my friends mid mouthful was by pretending it was essential material for my blog. Also the teenagers were way too cool to do anything but sit there and ignore him even though for my son “Friends” has been his all time favourite programme ever whilst growing up. So I marched up, apologised profusely for disturbing him but asked if I could take a quick photo of him with my son and I was trying to be cool ish and then my friend came up and went “actually my daughter loves you more than her son so can i have a picture too and then my son arrived and was ridiculously uncool – shaking his hand and telling him how much he loved him and what an inspiration he’d been and then the other two boys came up and they all shook hands with him and he was totally surrounded. So we took our photos and skipped away. Back to our party. He was really lovely about it but I felt bad because we sort of started a little mini tsunami of photo opportunites from all those people in the pub who had pretended not to notice him.

Oh well. Perhaps if you’re paid £1m a show you have to be prepared for a little bit of that.

Anyway, here is the full photo, disappointingly. Although I have to say he does seem to be leaning more towards me.

Is he single? I forgot to ask him.

It’s not quite as simple as that…..but I’m just giving myself a little moment of pure pleasure before I tell you the whole story.

Of course most of it was lovely, birthday parties and catching up with old friends. The children were with their father and the sun was shining……and yet, still, here and there, I moped. One set of friends had come over from Australia. They are the all time beautiful couple. Gorgeous, happy and still in love after all this time and I love them, but it always saddens me slightly because we spent so much time together when our children were born – when I was in an entirely different, happily married place. I can’t help but pine for “the way we were”, which I am told is odd, all this time later, but I don’t care, I think it is entirely normal and I wouldn’t be very human if I didn’t sometimes think about the good times we all had and what my children have lost as a result. I know our friends find it difficult too – seeing us separately in entirely different lives.

I had lunch with BB yesterday in the knowledge that my Aussie friends were off to see my ex and meet his new wife and see my children and sit by their pool in the sweltering 30 degree heat of the day and therefore I was sulking. About life. I was in A. Very. Bad. Mood. I’d had a lovely day at the Cybermummy Conference the day before but was aware that my blog was no longer providing me with the support and pleasure that it had done in the past. Many of my blogging friends that I bumped into were sympathetic about the fact that it had been discovered and that I was in trouble. That I had lost my natural voice as a result. I was miserable about that and I was still cross with BB about his recent dispute with his ex wife. Stuck in a wife swap scenario means that if one person misbehaves we all suffer the consequences.

I talked to him about my concerns. About my misery. About how it all felt like it was getting on top of me and he listened. Tried to understood. But as ever, he seems to see life differently to everybody else. I don’t always agree with him. It’s hard. He didn’t say anything particularly insightful – he’s a simple soul at heart. Very clear about his likes (his children, beer, wine, curry, golf, Portugal, Jeremy Clarkson and me) and dislikes (I won’t go into those). I told him that everything felt wrong and the only thing I actually remember him saying was “is duck the new chicken?”. I’m still trying to work out WTF he was talking about.

I was also dreading the meeting I’d arranged with my ex later that evening when he dropped the kids home. To discuss our impasse regarding maintenance and my blog. We sat outside and talked it all through whilst drinking wine. Actually we both remained fairly calmly. I told him I understood his concerns and apologised on the basis that of course nobody likes being written about from an opposing side of the ring, but tried to explain how important it was to me when I started it. He made it very clear about what he thought of it but we somehow managed, I hope to reach an agreement.

I of course don’t want to stop writing stuff down. Don’t want to stop my blog. But maybe I can find a way to make it readable without upsetting anyone. Maybe it will be possible to continue. I don’t know. We’ll see. It’s certainly not easy writing when you don’t get that warm glow of knowing other people agree with you. But I guess that is the nature of the beast. It’s a risk. It’s not a risk worth taking if it ultimately affects my children, but I don’t believe that is the case. He wasn’t asking me to stop blogging per se. Just wanted me to be more reasonable when it came to writing about him. I think I can do that. I hope I can. Of course I’m warning you it’s going to turn into boring bloody blog and I’m going to have to just write about Builder Bloke all the time because he doesn’t mind – BB & the BBB I shall rename it.

Apologies in advance.

Lots of friends are going through stuff. One girlfriend has just had a nipple transplant. Thats not something you’d be prepared for is it? I used to have a recurring dream about my nipple falling off when I was breast feeding. Perhaps it was meant for her. We are all keeping our fingers crossed it’s going to work. Apparently leeches might have helped keep the blood flow going, although that really is the stuff of nightmares.

Another friend (divorced) has made a spectacularly bad discovery about her boyfriend. Details not reasonable at present whilst she decides what to do.

Another friend is worried about her husband’s hearing – concerned it might be due to a brain tumour – I sent her a text saying “it’s wax, not a brain tumour” but inadvertently sent it to a male client instead who was then immensely concerned that I was trying to tell him something awful.

Another friend is drinking too much. In fact a few of us them are. I noticed an article in the paper the other day about just that. About how it is now middle aged women going through relationship traumas who are responsible for most of the drink driving statistics. Well. I am not surprised. The police are trying to work out the best approach to how to approach this group. Giving them fines or sending them on anger management courses may well not work, might make them feel worse. Hmm. What about sending us them all off to Ibiza together to get their misery out of their system and then hire a mini bus to get them all safely home?

In addition I have noticed that a lot of my married male men have gone overly mad with sport. Why is that? They are all bulking up and running marathons and triathlons and duathlons and are buying bikes and heart monitors and have become obsessed with entering competitions and winning. What is all that about? Midlife crisis? Mortality panic? Just a desire to feel fit again? Be attractive to their partners? If that is the case then why is it only Builder Bloke who wanders around with a beer belly and a can of lager telling all the blokes they look FAR too thin and stressed and are clearly miserable. He did a bizarre announce he thought he should be a counsellor last night and when I pointed out he’d be rubbish and loads of people would end up topping themselves he said “well if they’re going to do that it’s best if they just get on with it and don’t bore everyone stupid for hours”. You see? My point exactly.

We went to The Derby yesterday and hung out on the Espom Downs. What an experience that was. I kept wanting to climb over the fence into the exclusive enclosure but BB wouldn’t let me. Initially the experience was terrifying. PACKED with people. Oozing flesh. However, after several drinks I changed my mind and decided that it was the place to be. Our kids loved it, placing bets with our help. We all won money on “Pour Moi” thanks to BB’s top tip. Very exciting. Dress code for future reference was “anything goes”.

Where all the posh people were on the other side of the fence I wanted to climb, including Princess Kate and The Queen:-

Look at how many people were queueing round the block to go in:-

Last week six of us went out for dinner. One of my friends had just had braces fitted and was not coping very well with the initial shock – they are the train track ones, but they go behind her teeth so they are completely discreet and you can carry on with your life as if nothing has happened….not. For a start she couldn’t speak without lisping and she was dribbling. They hurt so much that she hadn’t really been able to eat anything but soup and they had ulcerated her tongue. The friend sitting next to her was a dental surgeon who was pointing out that those particular braces can make people suicidally depressed. She recommended macaroni cheese from the menu for her to eat because it was soft.

Well. I’m afraid I got the giggles as my friend, quite pissed by now suddenly discovered that macaroni cheese was possibly the worst thing you could eat. Large lumps of macaroni had wedged themselves with the help of metal and that cheesy glue to the inside of her mouth. Her tongue was pushed back to the middle of her mouth and as she attempted to have a normal conversation about something, she literally couldn’t pronounce the words. She made no sense at all. Poor thing. They’ve got to be on for a whole year. Luckily for her she’s got a lovely husband. I don’t think it’s something I’m going to consider for the moment – not the best look when you’re single.

Last night I went over to my oldest friend’s house. There were a few of us who grew up in Hong Kong together and we were reminiscing about our time there. My friend used to live on Lantau for some of the week – where the airport is now, but at the time, it was an incredibly remote outlying island. She really did have the most extraordinary upbringing, living on a tea plantation and right next to a Buddhist monastery in the middle of nowhere. We were laughing about how eccentric her stepfather was. Their house was always full of feral animals, dogs, cats, snakes, spiders – I remembered lying in bed one morning and her mother warning us about the rats nest above her bed…when and if any ever dropped out, her stepfather used to put them back in the nest.

Again, just a lovely girly evening reminding me that even though, when you live abroad as a child you don’t have the root system your friends have who don’t move away… the reality is that there were four of us there last night who had been to the same primary school and secondary school – we’re so lucky to have that shared history, our heritage and we have got roots after all – tap roots established in two totally different cultures.

When I acquired my first boyfriend at the scarily young age of 13, I went out with him for 4 years!! 13 – 17 – what a ridiculously long time to spend with one person. I don’t regret it though, we had a fantastic friendship and learnt everything together – it might however give some indication of just how crap I have been throughout my entire life of letting go of things.

This was pointed out to me yesterday after taking my friend’s advice and going to see my old counsellor. The one who didn’t really want to see me again after spending a lot of time easing me through the pain of divorce. I think she was terrified she’d never get rid of me again. This time, after our session she told me she didn’t think I should invest lots of money in coming to see her, that I should be able to work it all out for myself and anyway, she was moving very very soon. “No, she didn’t know where exactly”.

I have written down the key things she said. Not very much because she is just meant to “guide” rather than “advise”, but perhaps enough to think about for a minute. When I told her about why I felt I had to split up with Builder Bloke again and about the two hour meeting with my ex husband she had the same reaction as everybody else:- “of all the many divorced people I know, not one has to go and pick up a cheque”. When I said that I didn’t mind that much because I understood his anger at having to give me lots of his money she looked horrified. “You deserve that money. It’s what was agreed. If he’s angry it’s his issue – why do you feel the constant need to engage with him? You are divorced. Why can’t you let it all go?”.

I told her it was because I wanted to be friends again one day. That it was important for the children, as much as anything else and she said “but he didn’t like you when he was married to you. Why do think he would like you now?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He had an affair remember, he can’t have liked you”.

It got me thinking about whether you can be friends after divorce. Perhaps it depends entirely on the reasons for the separation – but not everybody agrees with the above statement surely? Sometimes having an affair is about not liking yourself, or your situation or some other trigger….

Or is it?

One of my bestest friends in the world is moving to Australia with her family next week. Tonight is their leaving party. I can’t really imagine life without her and yet I have fully encouraged her to make the move. It’s got to be done. It’s a fantastic opportunity for all of them and what’s the worst that could happen? They hate it and come back. Far better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all…and all that bollocks.

And yet…I am feeling very, very sad about it. She and I started walking around our local park together every Monday, joined a year or so later by another two very good friends and this has become our own private, very necessary institution. We have been walking religiously now for 5 years. I don’t honestly think I could have got through my divorce without her – I must have had about 800 hours of the best counselling one could ever hope for. Laughter, tears, advice, support, you name it, I’ve had it.

She has set up a blog that she’s going to write from Down Under – a “glob”? Her second entry was about her friends and our walk:-

“We have walked round the park every Monday for the last 5 years , which is about 260 times …covering about 18,200 miles roughly speaking. But emotionally we have covered much, much more. Divorce, affairs, pregnancy , babies, fall outs, difficult teenagers, jobs, boyfriends, no boyfriends, husbands and lots of tears. A true mark of a friend is when something happens to you and it hasn’t happened properly until you have told it to those friends. That is how I feel about my Monday morning walkers , we cover everything and each concern is discussed, diluted by telling them and each joke funnier by sharing it with them. Everybody has this, but until you leave you can’t evaluate how precious people are to you”.

She will leave a large gap in my life. My other two friends and I will carry on without her, but it won’t be the same.

Still. It is not forever. It’s for three years. So that is another 16,400 miles we have to walk, another 120 coffees we have to drink, another few hundred tears we have to shed and another 1000 laughs we have to have before she comes back. We’ll save her place though- she could never be replaced.

Our friendship has been one of my life’s greatest privileges. I can’t bear to let her go.