“Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and material. The war will usually be won by the side with greater such resources.” It’s now approaching five months since E communicated with me at […]
Tag: accountancy tuition
Weasel
When asked to describe what his plays were about, Harold Pinter famously replied: ‘the weasel under the cocktail cabinet’. This perfectly describes the sense of unease, even dread, that pervades the seemingly ‘normal’ world of his plays. Like a Pinter play, without the long pauses, on the surface everything in my world is perfectly normal […]
Damage
One thing that I have been more or less constantly aware of for the last two years is the effect that E and I splitting up has had, and will have, on our children. I grew up in the 70s/80s, a time when children of divorced parents were seen as coming from a ‘broken home’ […]
Nero
Like most children, when I was little I was irrationally scared of ‘monsters’. My personal demons were the monster under the bed, the Cybermen, the Sandman (horrific concept), and (bizarre, I know) the Roman Emperor Nero I can’t remember how I learned about Nero – it may well have been because I was aware of […]
Heard
I got a text from Oldest Daughter yesterday. One of her essay questions is ‘Defend the thought that silence can be heard’ (she’s doing Philosophy, it was inevitable), but her next comment made me laugh out loud: she said, “Was thinking I could write about my father”. I’ve often talked about Oldest Daughter’s perception and the […]
Christmas Spirit
When he realises that the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come have done their work all in one night, and not over the course of three consecutive days, as originally promised, Ebenezer Scrooge is both surprised and delighted. I love this story, but I always thought that, despite his conversion, at this […]
Consequences
Never one to mince her words. Youngest Daughter jumped straight into the comments thread with: “ooh look, it’s my dad, haven’t seen him since 2016” and frankly it then went downhill for him from there. I was in the room with her whilst she was commenting, and she was both exhilarated with and overwhelmed by […]
Teens
In the midst of all of the worry about money and what, if anything, E intends financially for December, life goes on. Despite the fact that I’m living in a state of almost constant anxiety about money, most of my time at home is still spent cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and shouting at the kids […]
Silence
Whilst E’s withholding money in November (I’ve yet to see what his plans are for December) has caused me personal anguish, the financial stress and worry I’ve felt has been nothing compared to the effect this has had on the children. I’ve tried to not let them see how distressing I’ve found it personally, but, […]
Food
When Oldest Daughter was 18 months old, she came down with a nasty bout of gastro-enteritis. Literally everything she ate went straight through her, causing her huge distress (and causing me a huge amount of washing and carpet cleaning). The best treatment for this was just to give her minimal, very plain, food and lots […]
He-total: Life without Ex 