say exactly what you think

Thank you for the phone call last night. Did we get cut off in the end? I had already started this letter to you so it will be a bit of a mish-mash of 2 days thought. I got back up again last night after we had spoken and stood by the kitchen door having a fag (no, I still haven’t given up yet) and another glass of wine just thinking. Have you considered stopping work for a year? You could sell a house and live off the proceeds and be able to pursue your house in France and have a lie in in the morning while you listen to the sea. I promise I’ll write to you twice a week when you are in France! I think I understand why you push yourself so hard and I don’t really know what sort of work / life balance you actually have, but it seems to me that your money gives you choices and yet you always take the hardest route. My wish for you would be that you have a person /people you love alongside you at the moment and I suspect you have some, but the problem is that the people you would really find attractive will be such high fliers that they genuinely wouldn’t have the time and I am not sure you have the emotional energy to let people be close. It’s not really your comfort zone. Anyway, how dare that f***ing mate of yours be too busy to come and join you for a week-end? Where are those qualities of loyalty, affection and the necessity for some development of interdependency if we are ever going to mature as a human race?

This will be my last letter before Christmas so I hope you have a peaceful and enjoyable one. No doubt you will be visiting your parents at some point and popping down to the M***** for a bevy.

The dinner with my brothers was a revelation in some ways with the new ‘say exactly what you think’ A*. My brothers are both extremely money conscious, rather traditional in their views on children and women and made the sort of comments that just had A* rising to defend liberated sisterhood in what I found quite an endearing way, battling off comments about the shortness of her skirt, berating my eldest brother for his platitudes, refusing to be labelled as not having lived in the real world yet, and in defiance of all obsessive women dieters (my two sister-in-laws are the starve yourself martyr variety) finishing the food on everyone’s plate – even though normally she obsesses too. I could understand her totally. They can be excruciating. R, the eldest is a lovely bloke with such a kind heart, but he has bought this RV to drive round America for a year and we were subjected to the colour brochure, a full cost benefit analysis, and then a detailed survey on which telephone company he was going to go with over there. Meanwhile S, who is also a talented hardworking chap, berates his ‘wastrel’ step son (who I think is the one with character) for logging on to porn sites and exalts his blood son who seems to spend his life coming first in swimming races and being terribly bright. A* got me in the loo at half time and just fell about laughing and demanding how on earth I came out so different and how I was such a rebel in comparison and must have been the black sheep. I was in a funny sort of way because my values were just so different. Anyway, I wouldn’t not see them for the world, but not for too long a time.

Oh! My former mother-in-law rang me up on Friday to complain about the fact that J1 is not speaking to his dad and what am I going to do about it and she can’t sleep at nights and it’s making her ill and she could understand it if FH had deserted his children, but he hadn’t and wasn’t J1 just being x, y, z. I was so angry, but at the same time sorry for her losing out on her ‘perfect’ family. I tried to reason with her along the lines of it being between FH and J1, but I was just getting deeper in hot water as she can’t acknowledge FH has any responsibility beyond that he left and when she starts criticising J1 my hackles go up. I hope I didn’t make the situation worse, but I don’t think I gave her the answer she wanted to hear. They obviously think that a word from me would sort it out, but it won’t. I have this feeling (and I could be wrong) that J1 has done his grieving and is now focused on getting on with enjoying his life. Having the car helps and this morning he got an offer from London Met of CDD which is pretty good.

Got the tree at the week-end. Am now angst-ing about when and what food shopping, but we are nearly there. I had a lovely complimentary Christmas dinner Monday cooked by the students at the local FE college as part of some work I do for their various working groups, another Christmas dinner on Tuesday with all the department (mainly fish this time and I actually ate prawns to be polite, but which made me feel queasy). Last night Jane, who I worked with at South Beds came round. I think she sees me as a big sister (she is 35) and we had a heart to heart about work ambition vs. raising a family (they want another baby). Tonight I am seeing Jenny whose ‘tosser’ husband (see, I don’t have to be logical about other deserters) who has been living with FH has finally decided after counselling and humming and harring that no he is not coming back and told her the day before their wedding anniversary.

Yesterday I also rang to book Sean’s vaccination and teeth rasping, someone to prune the trees in the back garden, after 20 odd attempts in yellow pages a potential builder to sort out my damp patch and I went out early this morning and bought my final Christmas presents. Only food outstanding now.

I probably won’t be able to write next week, but I will write when I get back to work on Tuesday 4th, hopefully to report on books I’ve read, any further domestic outrage – I have a horrible feeling FH is just going to turn up on my doorstep Christmas morning to demand to be there when they open their presents as he has come the last two years – but please – it is such an uncomfortable situation, we do alternate who has them Christmas day anyway and all I want to do is have a glass of champagne and chill.