Friday, November 24, 2006

I'm finding it harder to be a gentleman every day

M heard back from the lawyers he should have gone to see ten years ago. They said:

Dear M,

Thanks for sending us copies of your correspondence with your scary ex-wife. We can confirm the following:

1. She is proper scary
2. You should have come to see us ten years ago
3. You did officially get done
4. She's not going to budge an inch without a court order
5. You might get one, but you might not, and either way it would cost you a screaming fortune

We therefore recommend the following course of action:

1. Go and get very pissed
2. Berate yourself for a few weeks
3. Be thankful that you're not married to her anymore
4. Don't do it again

We are pleased to note, however, that your taste in women seems to have improved recently.

Yours sincerely

Hard, Rain, Gonna and Fall.

The chilblains are deigning to communicate with him again following this development, but it's with pretty much the same la-la-la-can't-hear-you conditions as before. In fact, I think it's worse, because he did try and say something after years of long-game silence, and if the lawyers had written a different letter I think they'd still be ignoring his calls. Well, I guess the long game is better than no game if you're a parent, but hey, I'm not, and I'm not playing it anymore.

I had a long chat with R the hairdresser about it when I was up north. His children didn't speak to him for years after he left his wife. You get to the point, he said, where you just think 'well, they can piss off'. I think I've got there, I said. Not forever, probably, but for a while.

And on that unusually sober note I'm off to finish On the Beach, then spend the weekend partying like it's 1963.

joella

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