The teenager and I just shared a moment whilst trying to work out how the rather intimidating coffee machine. Pressing the button is rather like having a Chinook in you kitchen. We are both scared.

We both have moments but they very rarely coincide. There is yet another GCSE looming in the morning and true to himself - he has resolutely failed to revise. Instead, we sunbathed a little and then he planted lettuce, aubergines and tomatoes for his somewhat dishevelled mother.

So what exam do you have in the morning?" I ask

"Maths" he replies

"Good to see that you revised" say I, "Still, when you get your C's and D's you will at least be able to look back fondly at the afternoon we spent in the garden together"

I get a smile, a real genuine teenage smile.

Who cares about GCSE's anyway

I drove to Wales yesterday to make a bacon buttie. By the time we had filled the car with fuel, purchased food, paid for a multiple pack of butane, an emergency shop for sunglasses (I cannot drive without them) and paid the Severn Bridge toll, it would have beed cheaper to buy a free range pig and have it sliced at the bread counter.

Yet this was not the point. It was raining and my house was a mess. Faced with a day trying to overlook the chaos, I chose the cowards way out - the bacon buttie in Wales. So we set off; raincoats, backpacks, sturdy foot wear and the Bitch in the boot and drove until we found a suitable patch of forest. We walked for 45 minutes, sat down, lit the camping stove and the teenager made a hearty round of bacon and egg baguettes. Suitably replenished, we packed up and drove home.

It was a very long way to have a bacon anything but if you are going to have a bacon anything, it may as well be in beautiful suroundings. It all went rather well; the dog attacked none of us, the children walked for a couple of hours and with the exception of a punch up between the older two - was without major incident.

Driving past the River Severn, small child spotted a rather large orange bouy.

"That is most strange" He declared, "Why on earth would there be a very large piece of fruit in floating in the river"?

I was going to explain that it was a bouy but this is a child that once asked me if there was such a thing as seeboys and not just seagulls. We had a little chat about James and the Giant Peach instead. Curled up in bed that night, he declared that he simply loved going out with his family and even his big brother had been nice to him (apparantly, he is not much fun at home).

See - value of a bacon sandwich, priceless.

I had a friend come and help clean today. Trying to keep up with 4 children, washing, shopping, cooking, the garden, breathing and blinking is not leaving enough hours in the day for cleaning. I used to be known as the house of taupe, now I don't need to buy the paint, it is simply the accrued colour on the walls.

I shared my disatisfaction with my breasts - she shared her breasts. In a bid to make me feel better and convince me that mine were perfectly fine, she revealed hers. Very sweet but if you have decided that your breasts are not what they should be, do not let a 27 year old show you hers.

It will not make you feel better.

Too much wine again and still yet to solve the issue with the keyboard. I have things to be grateful for - the dog ate the keyboard, I posted on freecycle and a kind chap not only came up with the goods but delivered them to my house. Apparantly, I gave him a TV bracket a couple of years ago so my belief in you reap what you sow has shown some fruit. Had the dog not eaten the keyboard,  I would not felt so nice about the kind man who delivered.

Lets face it, kind men that deliver are scant at the present moment and my level of alcohol induced rambling is still at a bargain basement level. Two glasses, hardly impressive but sufficient that I can read the last blog offering and realise that no matter how bad my punctuation is; it is considerably worse after an offering of fermented grape. I can only apologise and stress that this blog has clearly become an outpouring of my mental thought process, which is a little prone to nonsensical rambling. This is fine - I do not consider it to be the genuine article and as such,  I write as I think rather than thinking what I write.

There are downsides - like meeting someone who you once shared a creative writing course with, who happens to be visiting the local area for the weekend with new hubby and friends, all writers. So not only am I seemingly happy to share part of me with people that either do not know me, or do not know me well but I also have to accept than in doing so I need to admit that more worrying than my appalling grammar and punctuation, is the fact that my need to get my words done somehow dispenses with the need. Rather like saying my desire to eat is more important than my need to have table manners. I am uncouth and lazy.

I was rubbish at creative writing. I only did the course to understand why I could not do creative writing and it is only tonight I have the answer: I am hopeless at pretending to be anything I am not. Yet at the same time I am writing a blog that presents a fraction of the reality and in so doing am presenting an image of my life that is not quite what it is. How screwed up am I?

I am realising that the image I have presented to myself of my marriage and my own life is one that I wanted to play a part in. This image was not the  reality, more of a mirage and yet I continue to do so. The lies that I have to tolerate are far deeper and more prevalent than I would ever be able to post on here and I am not entirely sure as to the reasons for my not doing so. Part of this is the children, what the wider circle know they will end up knowing and this will happen one day, just not now. The other reasons are power. So long as 'It' assumes that I am stupid, the wiser I become. I still struggle with enormity of this mans capacity to lie, his vision of fatherhood and his perception of both reality and morality - as long as he keeps digging, the longer I have to understand the true nature of this man. The further I stand back, the more clarity I get.

I need clarity. I need truth and one day, I will have both. 

So this chance meeting taught me a little more about myself and not only this, it gave great hope. I talk too much but in doing so I learn more about others. Tis' the balance. She looked fantastic - had been through a similar experience and was happily remarried. What I loved most was that she still had moments that she wanted to scream about her ex-husband.

So yes I am still comprehending the depths of this mans depravity but hey, its only been a while and I can still have moments of rage. If I felt no anger than I would have no morals. If there was no indignation,  I would feel deserving. I don't,  so the rage may simmer a while longer.

And flipping back to the superficial. May I recommend the breakfast at the castle in BoA. Very nice way of spending a morning. I fully expect a discount for recommendation and I go back to my original request for a job as a restaurant critic.

I have been thinking again. This is always dangerous.

I have pondered if me ranting and raving about It is local and indeed, does it need to be. Since I live locally and so does he - then it must be local.

Thought 2 - Middle Child has gone for a night on his own to the lair of It. It would be nice if the suggestion had come from him but it did not. If anyone would like to explain how it could be normal for a father of four, currently pretending he has 3 - to pick up one child and not show any desire to speak to the two small ones or even just say hello. Feel free to email.

Thought 3 - Why do I expect anything normal.

Thought 4 - I went to a lovely childrens party today. Hundreds of children and the two Dads fully involved in all of the activities. I felt sad. I felt sad because I was raising 4 children by myself and even sadder on learning to accept the reality that they never had the kind of Father that was ever actively involved.

Thought 4 - I still have an issue with this meeting someone 2 weeks after he left. No matter how much I am suppossed to believe that they were not having an affair before hand - I cannot buy it. One of things I have struggled with most is the text he sent to the PCS on the night I found out.

It read; So you get to use the angry wife excuse to get out of cooking me dinner.

Now I have thought about this and conclude: How likely is it that you would send a text like that to a woman you only met recently? You simply would not because even a woman of moderately low standard would think that a large warning sign and fairly contemptuous behaviour. So logically, there are only two scenarios. One is that this was an affair that started before he left and the other is that the woman he is dating has the morals of a bottom feeder.

Of course, both could be true.

There are those that believe that there was no sign of it prior to his leaving. However they had no idea that he was seeing anyone at all and like most were quite dumbstruck by the revelation so really, it doesnt make sense that since no sign was apparent before the no sign became crystal clear - there is no reason to believe that simply because you didnt see it, it didnt exist.

The thing about dishonesty is the acceptance that people will believe what they want to believe because the reality is often a little unpalatable. When someone shows themselves to be capable of deceit, does it make it better that you only allow yourself to believe that person is capable of a certain level of dishonesty. The only truth is that if it is in them, they will lie to anyone they need to. Will I believe the words of a man that lies…..will he treat anyone else any differently....

Nope.


Apologies for lack of punctuation. Keyboard gone greek again

Sometimes parenting requires skills that I simply do not possess. One of those is to remain suitably solemn when the occasion requires. There is nothing that weakens my position more than my inability to keep a straight face.

I received a phone call from school this afternoon informing me that the teenager and friend had been involved in an incident resulting in both being covered head to foot with shaving cream. The exasperation in the voice was clear.

"After all the other events of the day, this was the final straw and as a result, we have told the boys that they are not allowed on the school premises again, except for their remaining GCSE's"

So he was been unofficially excluded for being involved in a shaving foam incident. When they were sent over to the little ones primary school for an escort home, I found myself incapable of an even vaguely straight face.

When I was at the end of my time at school, it was routine to fill the Deputy Headmasters air conditioning unit with flour, remove the screws from the Heads door hinge and glue the receiver to the phone. It was also fairly routine to add rum into your can of coke in the examination room, smoke on the school field and do inappropriate things with the Tippex thinner and this was assuming that you were not in the pub. Frankly, a squirt of shaving foam seemed a little innocent and I felt just a little hint of pride.

Inappropriate, probably - but I have always had a little fear of having a child that sailed through the school system with no event. In a system catering for the masses and churning out thousands of children all tutored to the same level, and on the whole - incapable of independent thought, the thought of having raise another boring individual - fills me with dread.

It also irritates me. It seems that squirting a tad of foam after the last moment of the day or girls that had the sheer nerve of wearing oddly coloured tights is enough to gain informal isolation or being sent home. I have long called the Head 'Stalin' and well famed for his lack of tolerance for any form of amusement and his UK record for the Head with most exclusions on one day - it would appear that teenagers are no longer allowed to have that moment of end of education exuberance afforded to the rest of us. Miserable bugger.

Whilst I can roll my eyes at the Stalinist approach, there is my loathing of injustice that makes me itch to go in and point out that informal exclusions are not allowed and nor, I feel certain, is it okay for a teacher to grab a child by the back of the neck. Am I alone in thinking a simple "Stop that" would suffice for most in warding off further squirting from the shaving foam can?

Teenager 3, in reliving the moment looked at me with utter disappointment when he said

"We didn't even get the chance to do anything with the mackerel"

"What Mackerel?" Say I

"The one in my bag" as he proceeds to fish out a large mackerel.

"What were you going to do with the mackerel" I ask

Stupid question.

Now how are you supposed to keep a straight face? All over the press are teenagers that brandishing guns and knives. Gangs form, fights happen and people die. I am sitting across the table from a teenager brandishing a mackerel. The world is going mad.

As a punishment I allow him to go to a party. I call his friends mobile to check they are okay. "What are you up to" I ask. Now according to Stalin, the will be injecting by 10.30pm.

"We are bouncing on the trampoline" He replies in earnest.

I fear in terms of teenage anarchy, I have little to fear and neither do the residents of Bradford on Avon.

The middle child has just come downstairs. He is unable to sleep in his bedroom as there is a large insect with antennae poking its head out of his quilt. Reluctantly, I hike up three flights of stairs to discover the huge scary insect is in fact a feather. Technically speaking he is a teenager also. Such innocence.

There was only one moment that I managed a straight face. It was the one in that I realised that I have a son that has now left school.

I am old.

I got told a lovely thing the other night. A friend who has the patience to allow me to vent spleen at the cost of their own life, told me that I was dignified. It was a really, really lovely thing to be told.

However, in the last 48 hours I have decided that dignity is overrated and I feel a spate of undignified behaviour would benefit my karma.

I have decided to visit the cul-de-sac of the polyester clad shag with my voice activated recorder and announce that I am a journalist researching a piece of marital infidelity and the damage it does to the children involved. On asking her for a quote, she will be flustered and admit that frankly, she does not give a flying fig because like her co-defendent - the children are not her concern. I will then have to inform her that she is as deluded and given that she is uncannily like his mother - she is in fact sleeping with her son. Since he is behaving like a parody of a teenager, this is almost true.

O course, I will not do this. Dignified is not something of choice and in truth it is becoming a little more than irritating. I know I am better than this and knowing that I am gives me the firm believe that when I lie gasping on my death bed that any happiness I gain in life will be justly earned. If there is a thing such as reincarnation I am happy with my Karma. When I come back I will have two legs. When 'It' and PCS come back they will both have eight legs and scuttle.

Of course dignified does not mean saintly. 'It' will reap what he sows and I will make sure of it. I just haven't figured out how. I am a very patient woman.

The other thing I have decided is that I am no longer going to eat chicken and avocado panini's at the Neston Park Farm shop. Call me old fashioned but 6.00 seems a lot for a bit of chicken slapped in the midst of a posh role. It used to be something like 4.25 but since they have attracted more posh peopl that are happy top pay 30.00 per sausage, prices have hiked.

The teenager is now on study leave. Seems a little odd to give it after most of the GCSEs are taken. I struggle less with this than the concept that my sweet little baby has facial hair and has effectively left school.

I went to bed and now I am up. I am tired. I cannot sleep because my brain will not switch off and I ache. I forgot the rule about checking temperatures when life seems too unfair to deal with. I am ill. Then I realised the obvious - life being unfair makes me ill. Stress is bad for you and before you know it you are in a repetitive cycle of agitation and illness.

I have had many random thoughts tonight. The most superficial was on the Ha Ha Bar. No laughing here since it now has bouncers on the door. It probably has doe for some time but it has to be 4 years since I went last. How sad is the world that you cannot sit outside with your drink because your glass may be used as a weapon a facial destruction. If you know that downing your drink may lead to you glassing someone with it, why would you even go out?

Which leads me to other thoughts. I have been pondering the difference between being dishonest and being a liar. I conclude the following: You can be a good person that has told a lie. You cannot be a good person if you are dishonest. A lie is a choice that you make, where as dishonesty is part of your make up. Dishonesty is a means to doing what you want in life without taking responsibility. Dishonesty enables you to put yourself first because to be dishonest you cannot face the decisions that you make. If you make decisions that lead you to being a dishonest person, then you should not be making those decisions. Dishonest people know that, but the desire to present in a way far from the reality leads to dishonesty.

This makes sense in my head.  Dishonesty is failing to reveal the true facts and presenting a false picture. Lying is denial of the truth when asked. Lying by omission is worse than lying because it is dishonest. When you have a combination of lying and dishonesty, you have a person who lives in a kind of fictional reality and it is probably time to accept that you made a mistake knowing them.

Perhaps then, denial is dishonesty to ones self. I can look back at my marriage and know that all the signs were there, in my denial of their existence - was I being dishonest with myself or was I just plain stupid? Who knows, but I do know that 25 years ago  I had an emotionally traumatic event. Frightened and lonely I turned to It. 'It' announced that he could not afford the petrol money to enable any physical or emotional support. In the midst of one of my lowest points, he kindly sent a postcard informing me that he was on a drinking weekend with his chums in Blackpool and was having a great time.  I can only assume that petrol is in fact free up north. So, emotional crisis, emotionally void man. You would think a massive alarm bell would ring in my head and it did, but I ignored it. With this in mind, can I really complain that this man has the ability for contempt, lack of guilt, morals or simple decency? No, because the truth is, I was deluding myself to the reality because I wanted to believe better of him. 

So now I am at a stage where in my head, I need to apologise to my children. I am sorry that I made such a poor judgement call, choose the wrong sort for father material. I am sorry that you all feel that your father is nicer out of the house than he ever was in it. I am sorry that I allowed him to shout at you when he was depressed (Even though he will deny this ever happened) I am sorry that Daddy raised a family and still believed that anything he earned was his. I am sorry that I did not challenge the fact that he was never there, never wanted to be and always did his own thing.  I am sorry that the man I chose as your father is dishonest.  I am sorry that your father will continue to put his own need ahead of your feelings or perception of the world, but most of all I am sorry that I did not have the strength of character to see what was staring me right in the face. This is my fault. If Daddy was always fundamentally selfish then Mummy has spent her entire adult life being stupid. For this I apologise.

Of course they cannot read this, which on the whole is a blessing. For a while they can bask in the pretence of it all but there will reach a point where they make up their own minds and I hope that if they learn anything - it is that love is not always healthy. Giving love is healthy, simply taking is unhealthy. I may witter on relentlessly that this is all unjust but I feel content that I am not sitting here, having behaved badly, jabbing the finger of blame in justification of selfish thought and behavior. No matter how much my children may loathe the things I sometimes do and sometimes say, I will die guaranteeing that they will not leave home feeling that I ever put my own selfishness ahead of their needs. 

To the teenager I say this - I am sorry that you were of an age that you already had your own perceptions of events. Far better be young and unaware. The ability to see through the crap is indeed a double edge sword. Under all that Bravado is the small boy who's father cannot deal with on the level he needs to because his father does not want to face the reality of the last few years. I pray he sees that this is about his father and not about him - but we all want decent parents and life hurts terribly when we realise that the hand we were dealt was not as it should have been. you will learn from it, you will be stronger for it, you will learn about hurt, pain and values. What you choose to do with it is entirely up to you.

Clearly I am no saint and this only goes so far. If I have to choose between allowing an unnecessary game or buying a demon pair of platforms - then the shoes are going to win.

On another superficial note: sitting in the Ha Ha Bar the other night, I shared with a friend that one of the reasons that i used to like it was because the age range was late twenties to thirties and so not full of teenagers. then I realised that I am in fact 40.

I fear I may have to start visiting tea rooms and wearing Clarkes Springers