Not on your nelly

Sweethearts, yes, I have neglected more than one of you shamelessly. Which goes to prove that absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Not at all. All it does is make you forget you ever existed. Who the ‘you’ in the last sentence is I shall leave for you to decide: You, me or all of us.

The good news is that I was once proposed to by a Professor of a language I shall not disclose to you.   He had accepted a posting in Paris (Goethe Institut), promised to take me to a Viennese Ball, allow me all licence taking my fancy and generally make my life as soporific as only I can appreciate it. Yes. Insert pregnant pause. And more yes. Except it was a no.

Let’s leave aside that at the time I was married already (to my first husband). Considering that I am not the marrying kind it’s never stopped anyone proposing to me. I wish I were one of Emma’s sisters (ref. Jane Austen). At least her mother wouldn’t have had any problems marrying me off.

So if I had married the Professor my blog’s readers and I would have probably never met, and even if we had, I’d be “Parlez-vous Francais?” NON? Well go away then. Because the French only speak French. Even when ordering French fries.

Fast forward – not that fast. Instead of which after gently disposing of husband number one I married an English man. An English Man of the most exacting type. You want a cucumber sandwich? You can have cucumber sandwich – extra thin. You want tea in The Ritz? You will. Just make sure to wear a tie. Unless you want to be humiliated by the doormen offering you a left over. You want an after-eight? Just make sure you … Don’t ask. I have suffered more than an education in the use of an apostrophe.

Don’t knock The Ritz. I had champagne there after getting hitched at Marylebone Registry Office (the church ceremony being in the father/motherland two days later). Wish that bloody scanner of mine be working to provide you with photographic evidence. Give me a few more months and I’ll be back in the money replacing all that is on its last leg.

Which brings me neatly back to where I started: Instead of speaking French 99 % of the day I now speak English 99.9 % of the day (I do swear in the mother tongue which accounts for the missing .1 %).

I leave all of you with offspring with a dreadful thought: Imagine I’d have married the Professor, the Angel wouldn’t exist. No contest there then.

May your egg hatch too. Happy Easter,

Ursula

PS Not so much an afterthought as a fact: The Englishman proposed to me in Paris.

PPS To keep the record straight: The Englishman is now – and has been for a considerable time – married to an American. A Catholic. The Englishman, apart from being a gentleman and a defender of the apostrophe, only has  two pet hates: Americans and Catholicism. One wonders. So far so good. And let me remind you: He is the father of my son. And few can claim that accolade.

Full Stop

You can’t beat it can you? Found myself saying this morning: “My life is now too short to keep pissing in the wind.”

My father, the sailor and ever so practical, will approve. As will any logistics expert. As will Looney and Conrad, the engineers.

There is no rush, guys and guyesses. Take it easy.

U

Fading

Sweethearts, I have been through the mill. All my own doing. No, not mill. What’s it called? Mangle.

I loved mangling. Helped my grandmother to pull those sheets in one end out the other. No wonder I find ironing satisfying to this day.

In order to head off my next nervous breakdown (I nearly had ONE aged 19 when I threw a sponge soaked in red red wine against a white wall) I have been archiving and generally tidying up my life in the last few days. Once it’s finished I shall not know what to do with myself. In fact, I live in dread: What do you do once you have cross referenced everything? We’ll see. I suppose I could dance with the devil on the blue sea.

Anyway, the point of this post that I AM IN LOVE. Yes, with my handwriting. I love my handwriting. I do I do I do. I have reams of the stuff. Where the typewritten appeals to my sense of efficiency, my handwriting appeals to my self. My handwriting is ME. My identity. As, of course, is that of others. A few months ago I tidied all my private correspondence received. By sender. I didn’t need to look at ‘sender’. One look at a squiggle, a slant, and I knew exactly which pile it’d go on.

To end on a slightly melancholic note: What we cherish most we live in fear and dread to lose.

U

Carnage

Dear Tom, before I say anything about your epic voyage into the swamps of first marriage, car engines and the Angolan judicious system, let me briefly vent my this minute’s two spleens.

Both have to do with sex, so right up your street. Or is it ‘streak’?

Yes, this comes from reading (quality) papers: One article asks whether you’d let your teenager have sex at home. YES, PLEASE. I didn’t nurture the apple of my eye with my organic self for him to be furtive and catch cold just because testosterone does what testosterone does. Give me a break. In the morning his friend with benefits and I look at his childhood photos. And coo over how sweet he was/is when he is asleep. Yes, that good a MIL I will be one day. I hope he won’t read this. He is 21 and a lot taller than me. Even his hair is longer than mine.

So far so nothing. Two pages later I encounter the MILF.  That’s a MIL with an F. Enter sweet little innocent me. Who’d have thought what the F stands for: “Mum I’d like to fuck.” No, not your own. Your friends’ mothers. I let all the Angel’s friends’ mothers pass before my inner eye and I do not think any of them will put temptation into the Angel’s way. I myself whilst being hugged and not averse to watercooler moments with the bright and beautiful of the Angel’s friends at three in the morning (in my own kitchen) can not see any of them make a pass at me either. Mainly because the Angel is strong, and anyway he didn’t invite his friends over to make out with his mother.

One thing is for sure: Being a potential MILF I can talk about this subject where FILFs cannot. They’d be carted off and shot (by other fathers).

U