Tag Archives: Outside Italy

The power of the [foreign] people …. it’s a good thing.

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They’ve been on the streets, protesting. The police have been using tactics that are, at the least, undesirable. People have been in hospital as a result. They are protesting about the increase in tuition fees, the cuts in grant money, the large organisations that are avoiding paying too much tax. The government doesn’t like it; the police don’t like it.

Oh, hang on, our Deputy Prime Minister has something to say:

“It is incredibly exciting what is going on, it reminds me so much of the time when the Berlin Wall fell, the power of the people out on the streets, in a regime which ……… everybody thought was one of the most stable regimes in the region,” he told ITV Daybreak.

Ah but no. He isn’t talking about the protests in Britain, of course, but those in Egypt.

You see it’s perfectly OK for ‘the people’ protesting against the government ………. as long as it’s those foreigners doing it in their own foreign country, of course.

More differences in the after-death

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In my last post, I forgot something else that I have just found out!

It seems that, after a certain period of time, the cemeteries dig up the remains of a person and re-bury the bones (or whatever is left) with other members of the family! This saves space, obviously.

I’m almost certain that this does not happen in the UK although I’m hoping someone will tell me if it does.

I am aware that, sometimes, some very old graves, no longer tended and, maybe over 100 years old are, sometimes, ‘recycled’ and the ground used for new graves but not digging up remains of close relatives of people still living!

It is a strange place, Italy :-)

But it led me to think about my Nan. She was very involved in the local life. She was, for quite a while, a councillor on the local council, she was in the WI, she was one of the people, on a rota, for doing the flowers at the church.

The church, a medieval structure, sits on a hill top overlooking the beautiful Herefordshire countryside. To get to it, you used to have to drive through a farmyard (although now there is a ‘ring road’ of sorts to get to it). In the past, the farm was the only building near it although now, possibly because of the ‘ring road’, there are some cottages nearby.

If we were staying with her, we would go to the church on the Saturday with her. She would do the flowers. Whilst she was there, she would also tend three or four graves. The graves were special. Two were for her parents. Her parents died in their early sixties. She was about twenty-one. They both died not long before her marriage – to my grandfather. She didn’t get married in white as a result but, rather, in a red flapper dress with sequins. It wasn’t the ‘done thing’ to marry in white if you were still in mourning for your parents.

One of the other graves was a small grave nearby. It was for a sister that she never knew. From what I understand, this sister was born before her and was either a stillbirth or died within a short time. In any event, her mother was very old (even now it is considered old – in 1908 it must have been very unusual to have a child in your forties) at the time of both births.

My grandparents are both buried in the churchyard although, as is customary these days, they were cremated so are in a small ‘garden’ dedicated to this purpose. When F and I went over last year, I dragged him to the church and showed him the graves of them all – finding the ones of my Nan’s sister and parents was not difficult, having been to them so often in the past.

Of course, they are all overgrown and uncared for now (those old graves), difficult to read. No flowers at them like there used to be when my Nan put fresh flowers every couple of weeks.

Eventually, I suppose, the land will be ‘reclaimed’ for new graves and the stones will be gone. And, anyway, maybe I am the last person to know where they are and any story that is behind them?

I attach a picture of the church (the photograph having been taken, more or less, in the position of the graves I mentioned):

And one that looks similar to (but is not) the area where the graves are located:

In celebration of life

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Now that I have checked (as I needed to know the answer for this post), I have been here for five and a half years, not six as I often tell people.

You’d have thought that, after all these years, there wouldn’t be that anything that would be so unusual or different. But you’d be wrong. There are still things I stumble across that I find interestingly, frustratingly or horrifyingly different.

I’ve always had some sort of fascination with death. It’s the same sort of fascination that I have with overly-large breasts. I don’t want to physically experience it and, yet, there it is, in full view, so to speak.

I thought I would be dead by the time I was 42. This was something I thought of as a kid or teenager. 42 happened to coincide with the year 2000. It was a totally irrational thought, of course, but, nevertheless, I was convinced. It didn’t worry me. It was too far away and, by then, I figured, I would have had quite enough of living.

As you get older, with death no longer creeping but approaching at something closer to the speed of light, one wishes for ‘just a bit more’. I suppose it’s like money really – the more you have the more you want it. However, I am aware that my time on this earth is more limited now than it was 30 years ago when, even if my imminent death (42, remember) was coming, it still seemed ‘a lifetime’ away.

I see Rufus and wonder at how he has lived so long. I see his frail body and picture me in that state. Well, sort of. I am pragmatic in that I have smoked for so long and so heavily that I doubt, very much, if I would get to that state. We shall see. Stranger things happen. Everyone seems to have a story of someone who smoked all their life and still lived to be 95 or something. If we are honest though, these are exceptions. If I am also honest, I always think I shall be one of those exceptions as I’m sure most people do.

So, when F told me that his cousin (or uncle – it’s quite difficult to work out the correct relationship) had dropped dead with a heart attack at the age of 58, I couldn’t help but blurt out that he was just a little older than me. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t make me worried. In some way it amazes me that I am still here.

I’m sure I would be exactly the same as Anthony Hopkins in Meet Joe Black. I would be asking Father Time or God or whoever if I couldn’t just have another few years …….. or a year …… or, if I really DO have to go soon, couldn’t it just wait another 6 months? OK then – another month will be fine.

But this wasn’t really what I wanted to talk about. The guy had died. He was close family and, so, F went to the funeral, of course. And, although I was aware of how different things are here, I still find it all quite amazing.

The British have this propensity to party, it seems. Wetting the babies head; the christening; birthday parties; engagement parties; weddings; special anniversaries and, finally, wakes. In each case it gives the opportunity for families to reunite, have some alcohol and, quite possible, do some of that ‘only at weddings’-style dancing – to some of the worst music in the world.

But, mainly, it is a sanctioned ‘getting drunk’ time.

The parties are almost more important than the event itself. Certainly, in the case of a funeral, the party afterwards, to me, is the ‘best bit’. I don’t mean to be disrespectful. Let me explain.

One assumes you go to a funeral because you knew the person. Probably (almost certainly now that they are ‘gone’) you quite liked the person. And the funeral makes you take stock of the way that the person had touched your life: the funny bits, the sad bits and the many other ‘bits in between’. The funeral is your chance to say ‘goodbye’ even if the idea of that is quite preposterous, since ‘they’ can’t hear you. The funeral is really for your sake, not theirs. We all know that and accept that this is true. The funeral is sad and everyone whispers to each other as if, by speaking at a normal level you would wake someone – even the dead.

It’s stressful, particularly if you loved the person; if it was a close relative – an uncle, cousin, parent or, worst of all, your child, however old they may be. There might be some things said at the funeral – some speech by the vicar (who, in all probability never knew the deceased but has taken instruction from the surviving relatives) and or by a relative which may make everything excruciatingly painful – one can’t help but remember the truly dreadful speech given by Lord Althorp at Diana’s funeral – it is, after all, not really the best time for name calling.

Then it’s all over and the coffin has been put in the ground or been silently slid away behind some curtain to be burnt to cinders later. Either way, it’s all over. I always think: ‘Is that it?’.

And then there’s the party. The party, I think is the most important part. There is a release now that it’s all over and done with. It’s final. It’s done. Now you can get back to the business of living – and, in the case of the party, remembering the person – remembering the good times, the funny times, learning about things you didn’t even know about.

They were loved. They were good. You will miss them but they are still there, brought to life again by the stories and the laughter and the general ‘thinking about them’. And, maybe, that’s one of the reasons that my maternal grandfather has never really left me – I didn’t have that experience, that opportunity. To be honest, for the funeral wakes that I’ve been to, you didn’t really want them to end – you didn’t want to forget the person, to let go.

Not so here, it seems. The funeral is, I guess, more or less the same but afterwards, from what I understand, everyone just leaves! For me that would be an awful thing. It’s almost as if you would miss out on understanding them better, on reliving their past through others.

No, it doesn’t matter how much I try and understand, I just don’t get it. The party is the celebration of a life. Without which it is almost disrespectful – as if that person meant nothing.

Of course, having been brought up in the UK and our way being ‘the norm’ perhaps I am being unkind. I don’t mean to be but I hate the idea that if I were to die, there wouldn’t be some sort of knees-up afterwards. I would want people who bothered to come, the chance to enjoy themselves and celebrate my life. For that’s what it is really all about. The celebration of the life of someone who did touch you.

Perhaps your experience is different? But I find that our ways of saying goodbye are fascinating in their differences. Tell me I’m wrong, tell me how it is with you, tell me what you want – even try to help me to understand. I am, really, fascinated by the differences.

I am a truly grateful

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“So”, the voice queries, “how rich are you?”

It is, for sure, the most stupid fucking question to ask.

Worse still that I should ask it.

Even worser (yes, I know it’s not good English – it’s a joke) that the question is in my head.

And the worst is that this is inside my head – me asking this question of myself but as if I were someone else asking – not me at all.

Normal. My normal.

This morning was nothing different. On the way to work. And then I thought:

“Actually, I am a trillionaire.”

No, I don’t have loads of money. Instead I have my life, my perfect flat in the perfect street, my dogs, F, health, enough money to live on comfortably, a full-time job, I live in Italy and more specifically, Milan, I have good friends.

Yes, for sure, I am a trillionaire.

And, then I go and read this:

September 14
Was a complicated day – tried to get my phone to get bars so
Zach could talk to Julie. Finally got bars – one.

Zach called her ‘mom’ He sounded like he had prepared all
his words for days – honest – thoughtful. Calling her ‘mom’
when he could not hear her.

Julie raised her head the most she had all day. Using all her
strength that kept her living to talk with her son. Repeating her
words… she trembled – touched her face. She tried so hard to
be there in the last moments for Zach.

Zach said, ‘Thank you for having me…’

He told her that his favorite time with her was when she kissed
him on his head – he wants to be with her and never wanted to
leave – he loved her…

About a mother, dying of aids, speaking by phone to the one of her children, this child having been taken away from her when it was born and then put up for adoption and then found by the photographer who recorded, by photographs, the last 18 years of the mother’s life.

Read/view it (and you should ……no you must) here.

It makes you want to cry. How can we call ourselves civilised? Someone made a point in the newspaper that the USA should get a proper healthcare system. But, actually, they’re wrong. I’m sure you could do a similar photograph-documentary in the UK or, for that matter, anywhere in the Western world. And, anyway, it’s not just the healthcare that isn’t up to the job. It’s the state and the relatives and the people involved. It’s everything and everyone, even the person themselves.

And so, it reinforced my thought this morning. I am a trillionaire.

And truly grateful.

Good? No, bad, bad, bad!

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I put my hand up. I probably shouted ‘Me! Me! Me!’ It was my first (and only?) time at the ‘top table’. We had our lunch first, before others were served. The headmistress was an old dragon but I got my chance. I would get a second serving of the baked potato.

There was a problem, of course. I was 5 or 6. My stomach could not take 2 baked potatoes. And I struggled to eat it. In front of everyone I was told that as I had asked for it, I must eat it. I was in tears trying to stuff potato into a mouth that certainly did not want it.

It was a lesson, for certain. To me it seemed cruel. I don’t think I ever sat on the top table again. I’m pretty sure I never asked for seconds again.

But, nearly 50 years later I had forgotten that lesson and that incident …………. until yesterday.

In the canteen, at work, there were chicken slices in a tarragon cream sauce. In addition, left over from yesterday (because less people had come into the canteen than was planned for), were some meatballs in a tomato sauce. The meatballs had been rather nice. I asked Gina for a meatball too.

“Can you eat two?”, she asked.

“Yes, sure”, I replied and then, as I was taking my tray to the table, I remembered the first incident like this. And, as I ate the first and then second meatball, I remembered the whole horror of it. But now I am older and I had to finish it as Gina was also clearing the plates so would know it was me. It was delicious but I simply must be more careful in future :-)

Actually, thinking about that school, where I was for a couple of years only, I can remember nothing good. Only two bad things. The lunch I’ve just mentioned. Then there was the time when the whole school (it was only small) was playing rounders one afternoon. We were in two teams and our team was batting. I got a little caught up in the whole match. One of our girls (much older than me) hit a ball and started to make a run for it. Meanwhile, the fielders were trying to get the ball back to get her out. It got very exciting, everyone was shouting and cheering and encouraging their side and then, as our girl was almost at the last post, the fielders managed to stump the post and she was out.

I had obviously completely forgotten that I was on the batting side and was cheering along with our opposition. I don’t remember anything that was said but I do remember the stern look from the headmistress and I know that I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. It seemed that everyone had stopped cheering and I was left as the last person still cheering.

Actually, I can remember almost nothing good about any of my schooldays. I hated school – not for the lessons but for all the other bad shit that happened. Whoever said that your schooldays were the best days of your life was either completely off their head or didn’t go to any of my schools!

Lies, lies and more bloody lies!

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As I’ve written before, the danger with all the scandal over the undercover police ‘spying’ on the activists is that the focus is on the wrong thing.

At the moment, horror of horrors, it seems some of these undercover cops were getting a bit close with the people they were supposed to be monitoring. To the point where “Undercover policeman married activist he was sent to spy on” – except, when you actually read the piece, the implication of the headline and the facts themselves are at odds. He didn’t marry the woman whilst he was undercover – rather, after he left the work he contacted the woman a year later, TOLD her he had been an undercover policeman and only then did they get married. The headline isn’t exactly a lie, it just implies something different than the reality.

But, the big problem here, in my opinion, is not that they got too close. I mean, if you live and ‘work’ with a group, you get close – you really have no choice. The dividing line between the reality of what you are actually doing and what you’re supposed to be doing will blur. To be really convincing, NOT to have a relationship with someone you like would be the unrealistic and unreal thing – possibly leading to you being ‘found out’!

No, the real problem is the lies. The lies by the cops involved. The lies that must have been made in court. And then there is the lies made by the Chief of Police to parliament.

It’s the lies that are the worst of it. I mean to say, if you cannot trust the police to tell the ‘truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ (since they are supposed to be the law enforcement group), then one has to wonder if there is any point in them?

And so, how can this be justified, when, as it was being said by a person that we are supposed to trust, he knew it was untrue.

“We had no plain-clothes officers deployed within the crowd. It would have been dangerous for them to put plain-clothes officers in a crowd like that.

“The only officers we deploy for intelligence purposes at public order are forward intelligence team officers who are wearing full police uniforms with a yellow jacket with blue shoulders. There were no plain clothes officers deployed at all.”

They are touting it as ‘false information’. False information! How dare they! Let us call it was it is. It’s a downright, deliberate lie.

The police cannot be, nor should be in future, trusted to tell the truth. If the ‘top man’ can tell blatant lies then it goes to the very heart of the police – and it’s a very, very sad day. I remember when I was thinking of becoming a magistrate, that the most important thing was that you were to support the police and what they tell you. I believed in that, too, but if I were a magistrate now, I would have very serious doubts about anything the police were to tell me and I would tend to err on the side of the defendant. No longer would a policeman’s word be enough – in fact, I would have to question everything that they said that was not backed up by irrefutable hard evidence.

The police are liars and, if there were a confidence vote, mine would go against them. This is a shame for those of the police (and, surely, there must be some) who are not liars. But then, guys and gals, if your top man can lie so openly and brazenly, what chance do you have?

Unemployment – rising … no …. falling …. no …… rising

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Newspapers.  Not really to be trusted – as we all know, erm, don’t we?

Some, of course, are worse than others.  Unemployment figures have been released in the UK today.  The prediction was for a sharp rise.  Anyway, it wouldn’t matter as it’s all manipulated stuff, in my opinion.

However, to give you a taste of two completely different papers – here is the news:

Unemployment leaps to 2.5m as record levels of young people are out of work

Or, is it:

Overall jobless level drops below 2.5m.

Hmm. Forgive me but I would think that the first would be a Labour (loony left) paper and the second would be a Conservative (rabid right) paper, wouldn’t you? Well, in fact, it’s the other way around (although the Guardian is a bit tied to half supporting the coalition given that it moved from Labour to Liberal Democrats prior to the last election).

Even so. If unemployment is ‘soaring’ to the dizzy heights of 2.5 million, one wonders how, at the same time, it can be ‘dropping’ to 2.5 million.

But it’s all in the interpretation of the figures, as always. There’s the number of people claiming money (Job Seekers Allowance) in the short term versus those claiming it for six months or more. Then, of course, there’s the people who find some work – even if it’s not full-time employment – there seems to be more of those jobs about. Well, at least it takes them off the count of ‘unemployed’.

This big rise is in the number of young people out of work. We are, I believe, creating a disaster to be realised in 30 years time or so. The same is true here, in Italy. Who will be paying my pension when I’m 80-odd if we don’t give them work to do now? Or, maybe, I’ll still be working?

The conclusion is …………

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There’s this big furore going on about the infiltrator in the environmental movement. Was this police officer a victim? Did he go ‘native’ as some reports say? Are the police spying on all fringe groups?

Well, I suspect they are but, to be honest, that’s not really important. After all, if this group had decided to blow up the power station and done so, then there would be questions as to why the police didn’t know about it beforehand – a little like the 7/7 bombings in London. They are in a no win situation. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

No, once again, the point about all this is in danger of being missed. Whilst the concentration is on the ‘rogue’ policeman (or should that be ex-policeman), Kennedy, the focus should really be on two things:

1. Whereas ‘spying’ on a group is one thing, being actively involved in the things they have done and actively encouraging them to do these things, by assistance or providing money or, even, taking part in their ‘actions’ is another thing entirely. This makes him (and by virtue of that, his bosses), equally liable to the charges they bring against the protesters – and yet none of them are in court. This is so wrong as to be almost evil. It makes this thing more of a police state.

2. When the lawyer asked for the video evidence which would permit the defendants to be obviously not guilty, the CPS decided that they could not proceed any further. Now, this video evidence existed when the police raided the school. This evidence existed when the people were charged. This evidence existed when the people were taken to court. And, this evidence was going to be kept secret. There is a right in the UK of presumed innocence until proven guilty. And, were it not for the evidence, they would have been tried and ‘proven’ guilty – with the police sitting on ‘evidence’ that meant that they were not guilty. It is one thing to find and present evidence so that a guilty person is punished. It is another thing when you have evidence to prove their innocence but you are prepared to ignore some evidence in order to ensure that an innocent person is punished. That results in a miscarriage of justice.

And all of this begs the question: this evidence was ‘found out’ by accident – how many other convictions are unsafe – and by unsafe, I mean that the evidence which would prove them innocent has been withheld to ensure conviction?

Which leads on to: are the police to be trusted?

Read more here and here

Stop looking for your soulmate

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For those of you who have been reading this blog over the last 2 years or so, you will know that, having thought I had found my soulmate, I found that I hadn’t, apparently. At the end of it I thought that, given my age and, having already done it all twice before, I wouldn’t even be able to find someone else to live with but then I changed my mind. I decided that I DID need to be with someone and that there had to be someone out there, somewhere, who was looking for me. I did the internet dating thing to save myself having to go to bars and clubs, seeing it, as I do, as an alternative to those social places.

I was determined. I don’t know that I ever thought I would find my soulmate or, even, if that was important. What was important was to find the ‘person for me’. I had some preconceived ideas about who that would be. The criteria narrowed after a short while. They couldn’t be too young nor too old. In the end I found someone and, to be honest, that someone was a surprise and (partially) unexpected. But I remain intrigued about how people find their soulmates and, even, if that really exists or if it is your soulmate but only for a period of time (that period being undetermined and indeterminable).

I remember my sister. She, as I told her more than once, always tried too hard. Her criteria, it seemed, was always non-existent. If they moved and were male it was enough. Now I look back on that as probably her trying to hard to be straight and conform, since she has a girlfriend now.

I was at a friend’s house on Sunday. She is setting up this internet dating lark. She is very clear. She doesn’t expect to find the perfect man on the internet – only to determine exactly what she DOES want. To be able to refine her criteria. But, I wonder, is she just saying that?

Anyway, I was interested to read this:

Relationship gurus expend enormous amounts of energy debating whether “opposites attract” or, conversely, whether “birds of a feather flock together” – largely, it seems, without stopping to reflect on whether relying on cheesy proverbs might be, more generally, a bad way to think about the complexities of human attraction. Should you look for a partner whose characteristics match yours, or complement yours? The conclusion of the Pair Project, a long-term study of married couples by the University of Texas, is, well, neither, really. “Compatibility”, whether you think of it as similarity or complementarity, just doesn’t seem to have much to do with a relationship’s failure or success, according to the project’s founder, Ted Huston: the happiness of a marriage just isn’t much correlated with how many likes, dislikes or related characteristics a couple does or doesn’t share. Compatibility does play one specific role in love, he argues: when couples start worrying about whether they’re compatible, it’s often the sign of a relationship in trouble. “We’re just not compatible” really means, “We’re not getting along.” “Compatibility” just means things are working out. It simply renames the mystery of love, rather than explaining it.

According to the US psychologist Robert Epstein, that’s because a successful relationship is almost entirely built from within. (He cites evidence from freely entered arranged marriages, arguing that they work out more frequently than the unarranged kind.) All that’s really required is two people committed to giving things a shot. Spending years looking for someone with compatible qualities may be – to evoke another cheesy proverb – a classic case of putting the cart before the horse.

For F, of course, his most ‘successful’ previous relationship was with a blue-eyed, English, Taurean. He cites this often as if to explain why he is with me. He is saying that it is ‘inevitable’ that we would be together. Conversely, of course, it could also be inevitable that we will split up!

I look for things that we like ‘together’ and find few. I worry that we don’t have enough in common, the most obvious being my love of all food whereas he is so picky. As I said to my friend (mentioned above), if F and I had met in some bar or club, I’m not sure that either of us would have given the other a second look. We met only because we had chatted for some time first.

Yes, the pictures I saw of him – he was sexy. But, mainly, he was funny – he had the ability to make me laugh and feel better. He still does and may it long continue.

As his friend R said, he was ‘ready’ when we met. So was I. We both wanted the same thing and so, together, we can get the same thing from each other.

And, I suppose, that’s why V and I split up. We no longer wanted the same things. F is not V in any way. V wasn’t M in any way. F and M are not similar either. Being compatible or not seems, as it says, to be unimportant as to whether it works or not. You (both) just have to WANT it more than anything and be prepared to step off the deep end and see how it goes.

And that, together with making those small sacrifices to make your partner happy seem to be the only requisites to have a happy and loving relationship – for however long that lasts.

For the above ‘piece of advice’ plus other tips (that can replace your New Year’s resolutions) go here and enjoy :-)

F’s Birthday and stuff

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Well, further to my post below, Rufus seems much better. Ain’t it always the way? But I know better than to assume that he will remain this way for long.

Last night we went to Giacomo – it was F’s birthday. I had raw scampi to start (and some of F’s raw tuna) and branzino (sea bass) with artichokes as a main. F had the mixed raw fish to start and then a cooked tuna steak (he loves tuna and has it whenever he can). A nice bottle of wine, some mirto and then home.

This being a restaurant that is, as F would say, very fashion, there are the great and the good of Milan and many of the rich tourists or others who are here for business. In this case, there was a model who, apparently, used to work for Helmut Lang. However, I didn’t even recognise the name. Apparently, Giacomo has opened a new restaurant near Piazza Duomo, with views over the city. We are to go there for my birthday, I am advised :-).

Yesterday, I went to see FfC and go out for lunch. She is getting ready to return to work next week after months off whilst she had a baby. The baby is about 7 months old now. He is big. She suggested he looks like his father and asked me what I thought. As I’ve said before, babies, to me, just look like babies and not like either of the parents or anyone else for that matter. So that’s what I said.

Then, later, after we had been out for lunch, she was sitting on one of the sofas opposite me and the baby waved at me. Apparently they’ve been trying to get him to wave for a while so she was delighted that he had, finally, done it. She was going to phone R, the father, as soon as I had gone, to tell him.

She told me, during lunch, that she had, really, given up on the idea that she would become a mother and that was when she found herself pregnant. Maybe there’s a thing about trying too hard. We also spoke about FfI. FfI went back to her home country for Christmas and New Year. She planned to spend Christmas with her family and then New Year with her daughter who is in another part of the country. Her common line is ‘I hate Milan’, quickly followed by ‘I want to go back to my country’. I always thought – well, go then!

I email her to wish her a happy New Year. She emails me back to tell me that she cried every day (and that everyone except her one brother, she had fights with), she spent New Year’s Eve in a motel room all alone and that she was cold and miserable and couldn’t wait to get back to Milan. She also promised that she would never say that she hated Milan again. We shall see. To be honest, I feel sorry for her. What a dreadful way to spend Christmas and New Year! But FfC and I were talking (and we have much the same views on most things) and agreed that it’s really important to be ‘happy’ with what you have and where you are.

Milan may not be the most beautiful city in the world, nor with the best climate but it has charm and a character of it’s own. Without coming to Milan there are so many experiences that I simply would not have experienced, both good and bad, things that I would not have enjoyed and have made my life richer and more fulfilled as a result. Of course, the main thing is that I would not have met F and, for that, I would never want to change the past because it is the past that has led me here and to this point.

We also spoke (FfC and I) about V. She was quite disappointed when he didn’t turn up one evening because he was shopping for a new outfit for Christmas, after she had prepared food and everything – and he didn’t even text or phone but relied on FfI to tell her. It made me so grateful that I am no longer responsible, in any way, for him. I explained to her that my thinking on the reasons why he had, effectively, cut me off from his life was that (and I learned this from FfI) he had been telling the new boyfriend that ‘the breakup had left him with so much debt’. She was as incredulous as I had been. But it is his way and if I were too close, there would be questions from other people which would lead me to tell the truth and the truth would not be what he wanted others to hear. Ah well. At least, now, I can understand the reason even if it’s a poor one. I remember telling him, when there was the previous boyfriend – ‘don’t lie about stuff’. For lying always, at some point, bites you in the ass further down the line. But, with him, he always seems to get away with it. He is, as FfC says – always being ‘fabulous’. Fabulousness is all about show and does not necessarily have any substance. And it’s so true of him. I just hope that the fabulousness doesn’t wear off any time.