“Spite and Malice, also known as Cat and Mouse, is a traditional card game for two or more players. It is a form of competitive solitaire with a number of variations that can be played with two or three regular decks of cards.” The film The Wars of The Roses was the first time I thought of divorce as a […]
Tag: family
A day in the life
Even though I’m constantly aware of what’s coming if E keeps withholding child maintenance, it doesn’t actually dominate my life – there’s no room for it to. Generally, my life is not just ‘carrying on’, most days it’s enjoyable, funny and rewarding – although nothing ever goes quite to plan. Whilst I’d love to live […]
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 […]
Frozen
I spent the rest of the Friday after E’s CMS bombshell, in shock. I knew I should be calling the CMS again to find out more about why E had applied for a financial variation, I knew needed to call the Secured Loan Company about the fact that he’d defaulted on the loan (handily a […]
Bigger
I was talking to my Aunt on Tuesday. As I’ve mentioned on here before, we lost my lovely Uncle last year, and she is at the beginning of the long hard path of learning to live a life without him. She was saying that she’d seen an illustration about grief, which showed grief as a […]
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 […]
Humpty Dumpty
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” I’ve spent a lot of the last two years wondering how E would describe his behaviour or behave when confronted with it. I’ve seen (and quoted) emails he […]
Trust
I’m pleased to report that E has now paid the January installment of Child Maintenance that the Child Maintenance Service asked him for. He’s still not paying anything towards his share of the mortgage, or any maintenance at all for the girls (I receive child benefit for the boys, so the CMS can only arrange […]
He-total: Life without Ex 