Six Months to Get a Life Read online

  So, back to tonight. I am going out with Dave, Ray and Andy. Dave is my cool mate. He is in a band so he knows his music. He loves his dancing and knows all the ‘moves’, whatever they are. He is a bit of a bragger and likes to tell people that he’s a big-shot city dealer, but a few months ago I went into the bank on Threadneedle Street when I was up in the City and Dave was serving on the cashier desk. He used to be married but his wife left him for a librarian. He once told me he could have coped if she had left him for a famous pop star but he was a bit choked up for a year or two about the librarian thing. Dave is the stud of the group.

  Ray is, according to my ex, hot. He is the sort of guy who always seems to be the centre of attention without having to try. Despite this, he has never really settled down but that doesn’t seem to bother him.

  And Andy is, like me, more reserved and considered in his actions. Some might even say he’s boring but at least he will keep me company propping up the bar while the others are strutting their stuff on the dance floor tonight. Andy’s wife died in a car accident a few years ago and he has never found anyone who can replace her. He is a genuinely nice guy who some woman would enjoy introducing to her mother over afternoon tea.

  So tonight is four single blokes going out on the town. I do have happily married friends, but tonight is for single guys ‘looking for action’ as Dave puts it.

  When I was at university, I used to go out of an evening with the aim of ‘pulling a bird’. I rarely (actually never but don’t tell my mates) succeeded. I haven’t needed to ‘pull’ for the last fifteen-plus years but I am sure that, come this evening, I will slip seamlessly back into the old routine of making a fool of myself on the dance floor and coming home alone. The only difference between now and fifteen years ago is that this time I am more than likely to fall asleep on a train on the way home and end up in Effingham Junction or some other godforsaken place.

  If I am going to meet a new woman over the next six months, it won’t be on the dance floor. But I am going to go out anyway as Dave tells me I have got to put myself in the shop window.

  Saturday 29th March

  So, do you really want to know what happened last night? Can I just tell you I made a fool of myself and leave it at that? No, I thought not. OK, we went for a few beers in the Raynes Park Tavern. I was fine with this bit of the evening. I held my own in the banter stakes and even managed to have a few quick conversations with women (‘four pints of lager please.’ ‘OK, coming right up’). Things went downhill rapidly though when we moved on to Wimbledon for part two of our evening’s entertainment.

  I hadn’t been to a night club in years so I hadn’t even given a thought to dress codes. I had a row with the bouncer who told me I couldn’t come in wearing trainers.

  ‘They aren’t any old trainers, they’re fucking expensive trainers,’ I protested. Actually I would have been quite happy if the bouncer had sent me home but Dave slipped him a tenner and he let me in.

  The club was as bad as I had feared it would be. The music was thump, thump, thump; the average age of the clientele was about fifteen (even with us there) and the strobe lighting did my head in. I know this is making me sound old but it is just the truth. Night clubs and I just do not mix.

  I did my best to stay at the bar with Andy but even Andy ended up dancing. The traitor seriously let me down. Eventually Dave physically manhandled me on to the dance floor. Dave, Ray and Andy had managed to infiltrate a group of mature women out for a good night. I use the word infiltrate deliberately. To me the dance floor felt a bit like a war zone, with people parading their weapons, ready to engage the enemy at the slightest opportunity and eventually move in for the kill. I just worried I would be caught in the crossfire.

  I did my best to wobble from foot to foot in time to the beat and once I had mastered that bit I even threw in the odd hip jerk or two.

  Drinks came and went. Women came and went. Until eventually I looked around and realised to my horror that my mates were nowhere to be seen. They had deserted me. They should be shot. The woman dancing closest to me was looking at me with intense but slightly unfocussed eyes. To my untrained eye, her dancing was no better than mine. This bolstered my confidence further, to the extent that my dance moves became a bit more exaggerated. Suddenly I thought I was Tom Jones or Michael Jackson.

  I was concentrating so much on my ‘moves’ and on the woman opposite me, who by this point looked like she was about to topple over, that I didn’t notice the ring of people encircling us. I was just about to move in for some hand to hand combat with the lovely drunk woman when Dave tapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘Mate, what the hell are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Piss off mate, I am in here,’ I replied, somewhat irritated at being thrown of my stride.

  ‘You’re fucking twerking. Men don’t twerk, especially fat blokes.’

  It was at that point that I noticed the ring of on-lookers laughing hysterically and pointing at me. It was also at that point that my dance partner threw up all over my shoes. I got my coat and exited the battlefield with my white flag raised.

  Where did last night get me? It reminded me how easy being married is. It got me poorer, it got me embarrassed and it got me a hangover. And it got me in trouble with my parents because for some reason I left my sick-encrusted shoes on the kitchen table.

  I am missing my kids more than I am missing my wife. I mean my ex-wife. But I must confess that I wasn’t particularly missing the kids first thing this morning when the doorbell rang and Jack and Sean turned up on my parents’ doorstep. My first official single dad act was to try not to run to the loo and throw up within the first two minutes of the kids being there.

  Only having my kids for the odd evening and weekends will take some getting used to. The general rule is that I get the kids every other weekend but we have agreed that, over and above the formal requirement, they can come and stay with me whenever they want. If this morning was anything to go by, that won’t be very often. Still, things picked up as the morning went on. They played on the PS4. Maybe not the quality time the child psychologists might have in mind, but there isn’t a PS4 at my ex’s so that’s one reason they’ll want to come to my parents’.

  The other reason they will want to come is to see the dog. Yes, my wife gets the house, the kids and the best car. I get the mortgage and the German shepherd puppy. Albus is his name, after Albus Dumbledore. If you don’t know who he is, then where have you been for the past ten years?

  I made some progress on goal one today – getting a new place to live. My parents threatened to throw me out if I didn’t get off my arse and start sorting my life out. Well, it may not be the proactive progress I might have wanted, but I am one step closer to getting a place of my own – even if it might be a park bench.

  Sunday 30th March

  Living with my parents isn’t easy. Having your old bedroom back more than twenty years after you left home and sharing the house with your parents is a big change from having your own kids, house, garden, telly and wife (yes, in that order). This significant step backwards in my life has taken some getting used to. I have to remind myself to abide by my parents’ rules while in their house. Rules like washing up straight after a meal rather than when there aren’t any clean dishes left in the cupboard, and cutting my toenails in the bathroom, not in front of the telly. Talking of the telly, I also have to make sure that the next time I watch Playboy TV when everyone else has gone to bed, I turn the channel back to BBC before I turn the TV off. Mum is still getting over the embarrassment of having her Women’s Institute friends thinking she watches porn.

  Having me as a lodger isn’t easy for my parents either, especially at their age. They are both approaching their seventies. They are physically fit but my dad had a hip replacement last year and needs the other one doing too so he is temporarily less mobile than he would want to be. Mum could probably still climb a mountain faster than me and both of them can drink faster than me.

 
Before I moved in, they were very set in their ways. They had a routine for what rooms in the house they would sit in at different times of the day (kitchen in the morning, conservatory in the afternoon, front room in the evening). Meals were served at one o’clock and six o’clock and after dinner they would listen to The Archers then move from the radio to the telly in time to watch the soaps. They would go to bed straight after the ten o’clock news.

  Except for a short but explosive teenage stroppy period, I have always got on with my parents. We don’t do cuddles and all that stuff, but pre-divorce, I used to go round there once a week with the family, have dinner, play board games and generally drink too much London Pride. I made another of my vows when I moved in with them. I wouldn’t just use their house as a hotel. I would make the effort to continue spending quality time with them. This isn’t proving easy.

  ‘Quality time’ these days seems to mean sitting around a kitchen table littered with empty London Pride cans and prosecco bottles, picking my life apart. Now anyone over the age of two would probably be capable of picking my life apart. But my mum and dad consider themselves uniquely qualified to do the job with a forensic precision. They were both social workers in their former lives. My mum used to do something worthy with the parents of children with disabilities and my dad used to manage a ‘family services unit’, whatever that means.

  There is only so much frowning over my previous life choices or suggestions about future life choices that a man can take. I reached my limit today. Mum cooked a traditional Sunday roast, beef and all the trimmings. We washed it down with our usual beverages. Our plates were empty, our stomachs full and our tongues alcoholically lubricated when mum asked me where it all went wrong.

  ‘What do you mean ‘where did it all go wrong’?’ I asked.

  ‘With your life, Graham. How did it come to this?’ She even did that palms up, arms outstretched hand gesture thing when she said ‘my life’, presumably meaning everything. Where did everything go wrong? Thanks mum, build me up, bolster my confidence.

  I thought about going for a glib response but the earnest look on mum’s face made me change track.

  ‘I don’t know mum, I guess my marriage just wasn’t meant to last.’ OK, so it wasn’t exactly an insightful answer but it was the best I could do.

  ‘That’s nonsense and you know it, Graham,’ mum continued. ‘Marriages need to be worked at. It wasn’t as if either of you had an affair or anything that drastic. Surely you could have worked through your differences?’

  ‘You didn’t even see a marriage guidance counsellor,’ dad chimed in. We did actually but I hadn’t told them about it because they would have had a go at me for walking out in the middle of a session.

  And so it went on, two against one, tag-team wrestling. My parents still seem to think the sun shines out of my ex’s backside. They act as if she is their daughter rather than me their son. They still hold out a hope that my perfect ex will have me back. I wouldn’t go back even if she would have me back. Which she wouldn’t.

  I have told my parents time and again that my ex and I split up because of our terminal irritability with each other, our mutual intolerance of each other, our irreconcilable TV viewing schedules. We just didn’t like each other. I tried to explain that to my parents but, to them, not liking your other half doesn’t constitute grounds for divorce.

  ‘You should have paid more attention to her when you had her,’ dad advised. Why didn’t I think of that?

  ‘Those poor children,’ mum offered. Why didn’t I think of them too? I was on the ropes by this point, being seriously double-teamed by my parents, but wasn’t about to submit.

  ‘Bloody hell, will the two of you just leave me alone? I have had it with your sniping at me. You might have been married for ever but all you ever do is sit on your arses watching crap on the telly. I’d prefer to be single and living than married and dead.’ The ‘atomic drop’, the ‘full nelson’ and the ‘gorilla press’ all combined into one move. That told them.

  ‘Happy mother’s day,’ mum muttered as I was heading for the door. Shit.

  At this point, I think I should make a confession. Being divorced, separated from my kids and my marital home (not to mention my ex) is quite stressful. It is quite a large upheaval in my life and may just have caused a slight emotional imbalance in my otherwise rock-solid equilibrium. In other words, I may be a bit self-centred at the moment, even a bit emotionally unstable. Not to the extent that I am about to charge around Morden with a lethal weapon killing random strangers, but enough that I may snap at my parents from time to time.

  I need to put an end to alcohol-influenced conversations about my life.

  Wednesday 2nd April

  My mood was bolstered this afternoon when I found out that my ex had a stomach bug.

  I miss my children. Just writing those words doesn’t do the feeling justice. On the days that they aren’t with me, i.e. most days, the first thing I think of when I wake up is what are they up to? Are they out of bed yet? What are they watching on the telly? What are they having for breakfast? Particularly at weekends I wonder whether they are out with their mates having fun, or sitting at home bored and wondering what their dad is up to.

  I have been quite a good dad up until this point. As you will have gathered by now, I can be moody. I can even be angry and have absolutely on occasion been known to shout at my children. But generally, on balance, I don’t think I have done a bad job as a dad.

  I have always spent lots of time with the kids, going to watch countless football, rugby and cricket matches and taking them on loads of days out to the latest ‘must-do’ theme park. In our marital home I was in charge of holidays and we did the Florida Disney thing and had lots more fantastic holidays besides. I also genuinely enjoy Jack and Sean’s company on rainy days in. I am telling you this so that you realise that, for me, undoubtedly the worst part of being divorced is being away from your children. So I was pleased my ex was ill because it gave me the opportunity to spend time with the kids when I got home from work. You didn’t think I was just gratuitously pleased that she was suffering, did you?

  Like most parents divorcing, I have had my fair share of heartbreaking conversations with the kids. The conversations with Jack and Sean were far more heart-wrenching than the conversations with my wife, which probably explains why we got divorced. We had another such conversation tonight.

  I took my boys to Frankie and Benny’s in Colliers Wood for tea. I needed the space away from my parents and thought the kids deserved a treat. We had a good time discussing everything from football to computer games to what fancy things we would buy if we won the lottery (Sean would have a waterslide going from his bedroom window to our own swimming pool and Jack would have a full-size football pitch with proper goals ‘with nets and everything’). As the boys devoured their huge chocolate-laden puddings, Jack steered the conversation in an altogether more serious direction.

  ‘Things are never going to be the same again, are they dad?’

  ‘What do you mean, son?’ I asked, even though I suspected I knew exactly what he meant.

  ‘I hate us all not living together as a family anymore,’ Jack explained. ‘I hate the quiet in mum’s house when you aren’t there. I hate watching the telly without you. I even hate eating tea without you taking the mickey out of us trying to hide our vegetables under our knife and forks.’

  ‘I hate going to bed without you mixing me up a story,’ Sean joined in. I hadn’t made up a bedtime story for him in years but I didn’t bother pointing that out.

  ‘I even hate it that you aren’t there to call me smelly or Jackie,’ my big boy said. ‘Can’t you come home?’

  Both boys looked at me expectantly. They have asked me that question a few times before. I never know quite how to answer it. On one occasion I remember saying something along the lines of, ‘Your mum and I don’t love each other anymore so we can’t live together.’ That seemed like a perfectly reasonable answer to me
but I don’t think the kids could really get their heads around it.

  The next time the question came up I tried emphasising the benefits of having two happier parents even if they lived in different houses. That response seemed to tick some boxes for Sean but even the prospect of getting double the amount of birthday and Christmas presents didn’t sway Jack.

  Tonight I went for the blunt approach because I had run out of alternatives.

  ‘Your mum doesn’t particularly like me anymore, boys, so I can’t move back in.’

  ‘She told us you don’t like her,’ Jack said.

  ‘Maybe we don’t like each other very much,’ I conceded wearily.

  And that, in a nutshell, is why we split up. Both answers are true. My ex doesn’t really like me. I don’t really like my ex. And when it comes to talking to the kids about it, we both find it easier to heap the blame on the other party.

  Without wishing to get all defensive, I feel the need to justify my answer and I suppose by implication my ex’s answer too. I can’t tell the kids I don’t like their mum because I don’t want to give them permission not to like their mum. I suspect my ex’s rationale is the same. She is generally a really good, conscientious parent who wouldn’t want to give the kids tacit permission not to like me.

  Life is hard. Divorced parents have to walk a real tightrope when trying to do the best for their children. I can only imagine how hard it must be when you throw anger into the mix. Luckily, there wasn’t much anger when my ex and I split. It sounds hard to believe after fifteen years of marriage but we were too worn down to fight. We didn’t care about each other enough to get angry.

  I paid the bill and took the kids back to my parents’, tucked them in to bed and mixed them up a story about a boy who won the lottery and built lots of fancy things in his garden.