Owing to a complete lapse of judgement that was triggered by a highly toxic, extremely damaging scene between us around 1am today, I have been a dick.
I like to think I have come to my senses.
I have tried to explain, to Sophie.
I have apologised to her.
I need to apologise to you.
Sorry.
It has been, as you might imagine, an eventful few days.
I’ll try and summarise, without going in to too much detail.
On Friday evening I met up with a few good friends in that London.
We had excellent and plentiful food and *cough* alcohol and, possibly as a direct result of the alcohol, there was a degree of talkage.
I spent the night in a hotel in Paddington and when I say ‘spent the night’ I mean ‘got two hours sleep.
On Saturday evening we went to see Frisky and Mannish at the Oxford Playhouse.
They were excellently funny.
Yay!
I got a parking ticket.
Boo!
Today I did a little washing, a little ironing, a significant amount of people-seeing and socialising.
I got asked to consider taking a person from my equestrian circle as a lodger; an attractive and dangerous idea which I declined forcefully.
Then I spent three lifetimes fruitlessly shopping for a piece of bedroom furniture.
And I’ve downloaded the guitar chords for three Missy Higgins tracks (‘Angela’, for which I have subtly altered the lyrics, ‘Special Two’, which I’m going to keep intact, and ‘Where I Stood’ which I’ll also keep intact).
Additionally, I have slightly edited one of the pages on this website (not telling you which one, you’ll have to guess!).
And spent some time reading the ‘Rules’ page.
That was a shocker, reading the rules, because it made me realise that I have been overly harsh and not considered the feelings of others – as my rules plainly say I would.
At the time I was angry and bitter and I let my anger and bitterness get slightly out of control.
I didn’t let them get out of control to the point where I was going to wreak physical punishment on anyone, even though that thought did (briefly) occur at 3am.
But I did let things get out of control, to the point where I publicly vented in a calculated, hurtful manner.
And that disappoints me; I fell off my own standards bandwagon.
I will try hard not to let that happen again.
Oh yes, and my friend Dave bought three months’ Match.com access in my name. He won’t be my friend Dave for much longer.
And that’s the last few days through my eyes – or as much as you’re going to get, bearing in mind the guidelines in the Rules page.
How’s yours been?
Things to do. Things not to do.
Today, despite being (in my head and externally) normal/cheery, I feel (in my heart) incredibly weepy.
Grief (or the act of grieving) seems to be sitting squarely and suffocatingly heavily around my shoulders.
Al I can think of is what I’ve lost (everything), and compare that to what’s left (…….) .
Still, onwards and upwards.
I have decided that I’m going to live the rest of my life alone.
Which looks very odd when I see it like that, but the decision is resolute.
I’m not planning on becoming celibate; given what passes for ‘normal’ in my libido, that seems very unlikely.
But I have decided to be by myself; keep my own company.
I can’t imagine putting any emotional trust in anyone ever again.
Speaking of trust.
I have to go to Cheltenham tomorrow. It will be, from an analytical point interesting to see how strong the desire to pull certain searches might be.
Today I will be buying a new iron.
And trying not to weep.
Being in bed is fantastic. ‘Especially with your wife’, adds the nasty voice that has begun to be part of my inner monologue, lately.
I’ve been here for a couple of hours and every time sleep has come close, some random thought generator has crunched into action, and scared it away.
So I’ve read, but that didn’t stop the nasty internal monologue.
Then I edited a few posts in the secret blog; just corrected a mis-spelled surname. Don’t go and look for it. Only I can see it now.
And then I just lay here, waiting for sleep. It hasn’t arrived, obv.
Have I mentioned that I’m going out on Friday? Pizza in Covent Garden with a few blog/Twitter friends.
I’m going to stay in town overnight, getting back here is such a pain in the arse.
Going to the Oxford Playhouse on Saturday evening. Frisky and Manish. Or that’s the plan, anyway.
Work is mental and busy.
The podcast doesn’t seem to be taking a hit in audience numbers, which is lovely.
And I’m not crying quite as much as I have been.
Though the urge to wreak terrible vengeance and swift and shocking violence on one or two guys, is incredibly strong.
So that’s it for now I guess. Let’s try for some sleep. Again.
It is *checks watch* 3.30pm, but I’m going to publish this post on a time-release.
I have spent the last hour in tears. It feels as though I have nothing left, no future, nothing to carry on for.
I am now angry at my childish naivety; that I let this woman almost destroy my life with her first affair, and forgave her and rebuilt our lives together, so she could have another go at ripping everything away from me.
Her first affair was bad enough, but the things she has done to me this time, coupled with the brutal manner she has done them, have killed me.
I have gone back over the secret blog and edited the entries to include the names of the people she’s been fucking and/or fucking about with.
I don’t know what’s left for me. I don’t see any future, just bleakness.
Daughter is, by now, back on terra firma, 1,000 miles away from here.
Bitter.
Sweet.
I shall miss her.
Having her around every day?
There are no words.
But on the other hand.
It is nice to have the house back to being ‘ours’, instead of being ‘ours plus one’.
The subtle dynamic change, while Daughter has been around, between Soph and I has been interesting to observe.
It hasn’t been a disruptive change, but the lack of farting and belching around the house during the last week has been notable.
And the lack of swearage.
And not being able to take my trousers off as soon as I get in through the front door.
But I shall miss her.
So.
Daughter is here.
I drove up to East Midlands Airport to collect her.
She looked slightly confused at some of the social differences between the UK and the her home district in Spain.
And then we went to Reading Festival.
I could write *loads* about Reading Festival, and not all of it good or complimentary.
We have also spent some time sitting around laughing, while I played guitar and made up an instant song about doing the ironing.
And pooing.
Obv.
And after our return from Reading we went in to Witney for breakfast.
And bought books.
And travelled in to Oxford.
And bought CDs (for her and me), and jeans and cake (for her and Soph, in that order).
My CDs are:
Daughter’s CD is:
And while some of this father/daughter-related activity happened, Soph did the (some may say) wise thing, left the two of us to our own devices and went up to visit her parentals.
It is an odd combination of lovely and peculiar, to have our visitor from Spain.
Lovely because I get to see her every day, obv.
Tiptoeing in to her bedroom with all the grace and enthusiasm of a stampeding herd of Rhino, to attempt to drag her back to consciousness, is a joy.
A joy that no end of Skype conversations can come close to colouring.
It isn’t just the waking up.
Having her around is excellent.
And also very amusing, she is a funny girl.
Gets it from her father, obv.
But it is peculiar having her here because we have had to moderate our (normally free, easy, open and unguarded) behaviour around the house.
I can no longer remove my trousers as soon as I get in and sit around in my boxers.
Similarly, my Early Morning Writing stints now have to take place with me fully-clothed.
And as for impromptu sex on the couch during University Challenge*, well that’s unacceptable.
Apparently.
She doesn’t eat much, Daughter.
But she does spend a great deal of time on the internet.
More, even (if you can stretch your credibility that far), than Soph and I do (not counting work-related activity).
Like most teenagers, she’s very guarded about what she’s doing on the internet, and who she’s doing it with.
Her time seems to be divided between a Tumblr site, AIM chat and a forum attached to a writer’s website.
I’ve (surreptitiously) checked out the former and the latter, but the chat thing could be a wildcard.
But I’m not going to police it, or get on her back about it.
We’ve had a mini-discussion about it.
My position is that I’m encouraging her to be a responsible young adult, and I will trust her judgement on her activity.
I’ll also trust her to tell me if she gets in to any kind of a dubious situation.
And I’ll keep an eye on traffic across the router.
*cough*
In other news, The Great Television Switch-Off looms ever nearer.
Yes, we will soon lose our analogue television signal and, as a result, will be forced to endure the utter pile of steaming garbage that is known as Digital UK.
Let me be clear.
We have been (and I hesitate to use this word in any kind of context) ‘consumers’ of the completely unacceptable bowel-movement of utter shit that is being presented, in a ‘take it or fuck off’, kind of way by our wonderful government and their civil servants.
Pick a digital TV station and we have it!
Yay!
Except we don’t have it because it’s completely unwatchable.
Uber-pixelated images married to audio that failed every kind of quality test known to mankind; this is what we, here in our glorious Prime Minister’s constituency, are forced to endure every fucking day.
To the point where we just switch off.
I’ve complained.
I’ve emailed.
I’ve called people on the phone.
I’ve put comments on UKFREETV, where some unbelievably smug cunt of an utter arsehole (yes, they do exist, really) totally fails to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the fucking lack of service that we poor plebs have to endure; poor plebs, I might add, who are, directly or indirectly, funding this utter dogs breakfast of a cock-up.
It’s as if someone said ‘You know how much of a cock-up the 2012 Olympics is going to be for everyone who lives and works in London? Well let’s take that level of a mess and throw it out on to the digital TV network!’
Treble fucking G&Ts all round.
Oh dear.
I seem to have had an accidental rant.
Sorry about that, it was unplanned.
I’m actually feeling very laid back at the moment.
Don’t know why, but I am.
It must be the company of Angels that I’m keeping.
* This is a joke, obv. What sick kind of a person would not want to watch University Challenge first, and then have sex on the couch?
Next Saturday, Daughter (ooh, three consecutively capitalised words, there’s a name for that but I can’t think what it is right now) will be arriving from Granada.
Daughter
She’s never been here, to Oxfordshire.
All of the getting-together we’ve done has involved me nipping over there for a weekend (or longer).
In fact, this will be just her second visit back to the UK since we shook the Mendip clay from our wellies, and headed 1,000-miles southwards (yet to an altitude significantly higher than the Mendips), to a village just below the snowline in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the far too-hot summers and distressingly severe winters.
I’m picking her up from East Midlands airport on Saturday.
On Sunday she and I are going to Reading Music Festival, because she wants to see Panic At The Disco. And besides, Muse are headlining.
The following day (Bank Holiday Monday), I’m going to Highclere Castle where I’m going to have a go at filming a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary.
I’m not too sure what we’ll do for the rest of the week; Tuesday we will probably have a breather and bum around the house.
I’d like to get her out to a gig; see one of the brilliant local bands, so she can experience the joy of music from the front-line of awesomeness.
The weather, obv, will play a part in the decision-making.
Maybe a trip to the flicks?
Anyway, speaking of the cinema.
This weekend we’ve seen ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ and ‘Inbetweeners Movie’.
The surprising thing was the number of people in both showings.
The screen for Cowboys and Aliens was about 2/3rds empty, but the screen for Inbetweeners was not only packed, the showing we attended – and the following show – had people queuing out of the cinema lobby.
It’s an unscientific survey, but based on the evidence of my eyes at the local cinema this weekend, the big-budget $163 million film was getting its backside totally creamed by an independent product that cost a minute fraction.
The other piece of news is that I finally got around to trotting Vin up this morning.
He passed.
The next stage is a visit from the back specialist to, hopefully, give us a thumbs-up and a clean bill of health.
Vin’s had two years off, recovering from this self-inflicted muscle injury, he looks really good on it – having two years off, I mean.
Ah well, wait and see what the back person says.
And that’s me, in a nutshell.
What about you?
David Cameron is a twat.
That statement relates to nothing in particular, apart from David Cameron’s natural twattishness, obv.
Early Sunday evening and we’re doing our best to become part of the furniture.
Soph’s mum, dad and nan came down for Sunday lunch.
We didn’t do the honourable thing; we went to the pub. I know, we’re shocking aren’t we?
We put in the absolute minimum of effort and by return Soph’s dad paid for everyone’s meal and later, both Soph’s parents weeded and tidied up our garden.
Afterwards we connected Soph’s new laptop to the TV and, as a reward for being quite so excellent, we bored them rigid with Californian/Nevadan photographs.
That’ll learn them.
I’ve put a bunch of photographs from our recent trip in to my Flickr account.
I didn’t wear my ‘I heart Cameltoe’ T-shirt on our trip out to lunch.
Anyway.
Over the last four days I’ve spent a huge amount of time tweaking and fine-tuning the functionality behind a website redesign.
I now need to do a PR job on the language; the message has to be broad but meaningful to a wide range of professional-level website users.
Quite a lot of challenge there, then.
If you’re a PR type and you’d like to proof/read the website and give me your thoughts, let me know.
In other news.
I am gradually pulling out of Facebook.
I’ve spent ages over the last few weeks deleting photographs in my profile, and untagging myself from photographs in other people’s profiles.
I really can’t be arsed to continually chase Facebook’s revolving security policies.
And I was recently pissed to a major level to get spammed, from within Facebook, by various – but unsuspecting – friends.
But the straw that broke the cameltoe’s back, and convinced me – without too much effort – to leave Facebook behind is paragraph 2.1 in their updated policies.
I own my photographs, buggerit.
If I travel somewhere – remembering my camera – and see something so amazing and/or intriguing that I want to photograph it.
And then I come home and upload that photograph to my Facebook profile, here’s my view.
Facebook doesn’t own it.
Understand?
Well no, Facebook plainly doesn’t understand, because according to their rules, Facebook owns all of my photographs.
Utter twats.
Except they don’t, because I’ve deleted them now.
Twats.
I *get* social media.
I don’t get the greed-driven motives of the social media giants.
Make a profit?
I’m good with that.
I understand the need to pay costs.
But Facebook stealing my intellectual property?
That’s just twattish.
But, just as Facebook are becoming even further embedded up their own arsehole, they’re not alone.
I think Google’s recent acquisition of the Blogger/Blogspot platform will soon reveal fundamental changes for the people who still use this tool.
Google never miss a trick to make money; their advertising is all over the Google web-brand.
It is just a matter of time – and not much time at that – before Google’s advertising campaigns infiltrate the Blogger/Blogspot products.
And anyone who thinks I’m wrong just needs to consider Google’s long track record in providing commercial services for no fee.
Oh. Wait.
