I thought that the glass of wine I had beforehand would relax me; after all, it’s been so long since anything’s been up there, I thought that unless I took a muscle relaxant, nothing short of a JCB was going to do the job without some assistance.
Category: That’s Life
I was such an innocent, if they’d shown me Last Tango in Paris with Dirk Bogarde’s infamous sexual butter scene , I’d have thought it to be a promotion for Anchor to put on my scones.
The discipline of manners is something that never leaves you, and is, to me, the foundation of good behaviour. I was taught so many.
Valentine’s Day is inevitably a reminder of what was and what might have been, but mostly a reminder to be grateful for my having dodged not just a bullet but an AR15 assault weapon.
For legal reasons, no companies’ names have been mentioned, the locations have been changed, and, for legal and ethical reasons, the identities of the bores, incompetents and lunatics have been disguised.
But here’s the reality: having a mortgage does not make you a home ‘owner’; you are, essentially, renting from the bank or building society with whom you have taken it out, and they, just like any landlord, if you fail to make those monthly payments, will turf you out on your ear.
But that’s me now. An adult orphan. I’m no Oliver Twist, humbly asking for another bowl of gruel, but neither am I Black Panther the Orphan King with his superhuman strength, speed, stamina and endurance. Because I feel weak. Alone.
Dad’s 60th birthday party is different. It feels like a farewell: a rehearsal for the funeral. I try not to think of it as such, but the house has an air of broken past about it.
It was only when the words were coming out of my mouth during the interview – alone, in a room, with only a microphone and tape for company – that the reality of abuse hit me.
Barbie was my dream girl. A fantasy. The girl I thought I might become, who would live happily ever after with the man of her dreams, the penis-free Ken.