A spate of Facebook messages from kind and lovely friends saying that they'd enjoyed reading this blog and enquiring as to whether I am still alive has prompted me to write a New Year's offering for 2013. (The stats are testament to the pleasure - or something - I am giving my readers, luckily only one of whom is in Greece. Anyway, huge apologies to the hundreds of thousands of you, and my mum, who have or find time to keep checking back to see if I've written anything new...)
Tomorrow we are going off to a Tunisia for a week, courtesy of my flexible friend, as I felt it essential to create some time and space for the four of us to re-connect over the holiday period and enter 2013 in better spirits than we leave 2012. As you know only too well, the last three months have been a living hell for all of us. And the Brothers. Well, something akin to that a lot of the time and simply horribly bloody miserable the rest of the time. (I do appreciate that those of you who have experienced greater pain and real hardship will not appreciate the hyperbole and exaggeration I apply to some of these descriptions.)
I am setting the bar for my expectations of the week away (note, I am not describing it as a 'holiday') low and hoping that it will at least provide a rest and a break. There will be no housework or cooking to do! I am taking a DVD player and loads of colouring, cutting and glueing etc for the kids to do. I am taking our beach tennis. Hooray! There is a gym at the hotel and apparently an inside pool but the cynic in me will not believe this until I see it. OH is refusing to let me take a fan-heater, despite the fact that the accommodation is only three star and the woman who sold us the holiday was lying through her teeth when she said it would be swimming weather in early January. Having since checked where Tunisia is on the map (oops!) and the predicted daily temperatures I think it will be mild but not hot and hopefully not wet. But could be chilly in the evenings, hence my desire for heating. I have stayed in all too many cheap Greek places off-season and found them intolerably cold.
The deal is an all-inclusive one, so we won't need to worry about the kids wanting to try everything on the menu before choosing chips to eat. I am taking hats and gloves and so on and am determined that OH and I will enjoy the sea view on the balcony after they go to bed. Having never had a family holiday I wonder how normal people manage the 'all sleeping in one room' thing? I also wonder if there will be a kettle in the room but can't muster the will to overcome the embarrassment of trying to find out. Although if I did I could ask about the heating at the same time I suppose.
Heigh ho. My pet hate is wind so I guess I should be prepared for some bluster. I hope not too much of this will be provided by OH and I, sweeping everyone in the vicinity along with us, as so often happens. We can barely tolerate each other's presence at the moment and the anger and frustration we are feeling is palpable. In fact the blunt truth is that we are behaving towards one another in an utterly unkind and unbearable way. The smallest of actions turns into a hateful exchange, even when the sub-text is an attempt to be loving. 'Why did you buy me fresh crab? Why didn't you ask me first if I want fresh crab?' You get the gist. We are both behaving like stubborn children. It feels to me as though OH is doing everything he possibly can to annoy, irritate or rile me. The bottom line is that, whatever the truth of this, I am being all too easily irritated and riled.
Gee whizz. Today this has been making me feel desperately low. Close to hurling myself from an upstairs window. I can't waste any more of my life like this. Something has to change.
Maybe what we need is the thrill of a camel racing experience in the desert? Or bartering for gold we can't pay for in the local medina? Or bracing ourselves for cold night-time swims under the stars? Anything, anything, to lift us out of ourselves, right out of our shoes and our skins and our tiny minds and bring us back down to earth in a new spirit of forgiveness and goodwill. What are the odds? Thanks to mobile technology, friends, I'll share the fruits of the trip with you.
Talk of coming back down to earth brings me back to the Brothers.
Since our bank trip which was now about six weeks ago, the Brothers and I have not been in contact. OBrother knocked on the door a few evenings later but refused to come in. He had come in readily enough when he wanted me to spend an hour filling in papwork for him! Remembering this, I shrugged quite rudely and went to get OH. I can't stand these petty displays of asserting - what? Male pride? I then changed my mind and decided that I wanted to ask him outright why he wasn't prepared to use the cheap coach ticket I had found him to get him from here to Gatwick the following Wednesday, in light of the fact that we have little money for petrol and that OH has to work a ten-hour day after getting him there for 6am. He told me it wasn't my problem and that I should mind my own business.
One of my many faults is a profound inability to let things go when I think they matter. This makes me a brilliant proof-reader and accurate copy-writer (and, at times, defender of those who need defending) but the most terrible pain in the arse on matters closer to home. I just have to have my say. Back in November, Babe and I had a convoluted 'argusation' before school about whether or not he should take his teacher literally, she having said that he should bring in 'a penny or two' for the poppy appeal. I didn't have any penny-pieces. At the end of a long, tedious and bordering on emotional exchange, he randomly asked, 'What am I demonstrating?'. The question threw me. 'The ability to argue the hind legs off a donkey?' I offered. He looked at me for quite a long time without saying anything, and then walked downstairs. He gets more and more like his dad every day. But the point of sharing this example is that I know full well from whom he has inherited said talent for determination to win in the verbal stakes.
That comment from OBrother escalated into another short-lived ding-dong in the street outside my house and sadly the very same friend who walked past witnessing ding-dong-in-the-street number one walked past at this very juncture, thus witnessing this one as well. This friend lives round the corner and came round to borrow a screwdriver one evening at a point when I was yelling very loudly to make myself heard above the sound of Euronews, for someone to bring some toilet paper upstairs (the Babes having scarpered post-throwing the one that should have been to hand into the bath I had just run for them). I am sure that she thinks I am totally bonkers. Anyway, I couldn't help but tell OBrother that I thought he was really selfish, expecting to be driven around after all OH is doing to sort his life out. OBrother told me that I need a therapist. I told him I thought he was especially selfish since he knows we don't have money to throw away. He told me OH owes him money. I expressed my extreme disbelief. He said that I have eaten at his home for 15 years and that I owe him, too. I said this is rubbish and he knows it. OH appeared and told me to come inside. Yes, tensions were still running high and I should have just SHUT UP.
The next day the applications for bank accounts that I had helped the Brothers complete arrived back from head office in London covered in pink higligher pen indicating gaps in information and a letter saying complete photocopies of their identity docs had not been supplied. If I had had the time and the inclination I would have gone back down to the branch to ask the manager what exactly the staff member who went though the applications with us is paid to do. OH then informed me that the Brothers think I sabotaged their applications on purpose. This provided me with the opportunity to shout 'the bastards!' into the air once again, for all that it achieved. They now both have current accounts and savings accounts and internet log-ins etc etc etc thanks to a different high street arms dealer who for some reason sent the letters with pins and everything else here, but the cards to our next-door neighbour. I find this amazingly inept. But I think it's even more amazing things have got this far with OH as interlocutor.
Meantime, OBrother returned to Greece a few weeks ago. I have no idea if he's coming back or not. He didn't come and say goodbye which is no surprise. OH drove him to Gatwick at 3am and then worked all day afterwards. DBrother went along to keep OH company on the way back. He has been working here and there for little money since then which has incensed him sufficiently to want to wind OH up and try to get a number to call to dob in the people who are exploiting him. OH asked me to look for one online. Since at least one of these 'outfits' know where we live, (i.e. the house across the road where DBrother was doing some plastering for cash in hand) I was vocal about not wanting this to happen, which accrued me further negative equity in terms of Brownie points.
Currently, good fortune is suggesting that the visits DBrother has made to the local Orthdox Church have paid off and he has been offered work and accommodation with a Greek Cypriot starting in January. Mr Khan has been notified of his intention to leave and my deposit has covered this month's rent. He had started turning up here with random queries that were worrying me: 'Where is your husband, I've got a problem with my wife?' etc etc and I will be more than happy for that connection to be severed, which I presume it will be. OBrother is going home over new year and his being here did not stop us from going to my folk for a day or two over Christmas. He is still not talking to me. I'm not sure if this is because he is proud or because he thinks I am not talking to him. Short-term, I pray to God that the work for the Greeks comes off so that he can start earning some proper money. Medium-term, I still don't know how to deal with my possibly unreasonable fear that if this works for him, the rest of OH's family will all be here like a shot. Longer-term, he won't have a pension and as long as he's working for Greeks - what other work would he get, not speaking the language? - he is not learning any English, which still leaves him heavily reliant on us for an awful lot. For example, booking the taxi he needs to get him to the bus station the day after tomorrow when we're away. And I want to start thinking in serious about how long I/we stay living where we are. But if we move, will we be pursued?
I usually start each New Year with a raft of resolutions. Good friends will know that I like to do a 'reflect on the past year, look forward to the next' with my family. This year I am not going to bother. I have one resolution: to start meditation classes. I have to chill and bring my stress and anger down a level. And stop shouting. I can't think of any way to achieve this beyond paying someone to help me become a more mindful and loving individual who can start 'enjoying the journey' once more. Only something that will stop me going from 0 - 10 in the anger stakes in a matter of seconds will give my relationship with OH any chance of succeeding. And if it isn't going to work, then I need to be able to deal with that by being calm and collected. My kids have witnessed so much anger and verbal aggression in their short lives. And being demonstrated by the people who love them most.
So, on that serious and possibly a bit depressing but also hopefully proactive note (!), I would like to wish you all a very happy and successful 2013. I have a feeling in my bones it's going to be a good and an exciting one for me, and one of change. Feel free to place a bet on that on my behalf, or put some money on one side to take me out for a drink if I'm wrong. I'm brave to put it in writing, don't you think?!
