Argument, Aung San Suu Kyi and Au revoir

I would have blogged this, my final entry, sooner, but I was disrupted by the habitual life-clutter that arrests my time and energy. And which this week included me popping round to the corner shop one afternoon to buy potatoes and coming back to find a huge great sodding alarm wailing from a carrier bag beside my house. My state of nervous tension being what it is, my brain went into hyperdrive and I presumed it to be a bomb. Well, not exactly. I am of course a woman of perception and intelligence. But I just wasn't sure what the protocol was for dealing with a situation like this. And the noise was embarrassing. After clumsily sending out a round of quickly-fired e-communcations, I decided to take the advice of the first that arrived back in response, which was, 'Run!'. So I did. Only to rush outside the house and hear the alarm disappearing into the distance. The device had been nabbed. And in it's place? Well, a pair of black leather male slip-on shoes of course. Worn in the sole. Size, I don't know, eleven? If I ever free myself from the shackles of this particular home-ownership, please, dear friends, remind me never again to go for an end-of-terrace property in a part of town like this.

Moving on to issues on the home-front (entirely the right terminology to use here) well, OH has been flailing around a bit, kind of acting like nothing is wrong or going on. Since 'usual' for our dynamic is constant criticism, anger and abuse from both sides, that's what I, at least, have still been getting a fair bit of. He, in turn, is getting quite a lot of cold shoulder as I have been trying to disengage, to withdraw, to choose my battles and keep the peace for the sake of the boys. This is very, very hard. But I have been blessed with a new feeling - don'tcareverymuchanymoreness. This helps me control my anger, walk away, ignore things that don't really matter. To a degree at least. My theory was that if I could change, then that that in itself might be sufficient to make OH try and do things differently too. But since the impulse behind my change in behaviour is detached disengagement, rather than a desire to make things better, it might prove to be too little, too late. And let's be honest, genuine change is hard! I'm not sure that I believe change is even possible. Unless the words, 'a' and 'of clothes' are wrapped around it.

Literal, physical change can be a great stimulant though, and it was wonderful to get away to Dorset last week and into the fresh air and, amazingly, some sunshine. Hills and green and breeze and laughter. I am blessed to have the family that I do. We have such a great time together and the boys provide the icing on the cake. They are so lively and energetic and interested in everything. Pure joy! (Well, a lot of the time at least...)

While I was there my mum and I went for a drive around some of the urban beachy areas further east along the coast from Purbeck, where I am from, as for some time now OH and I have been thinking about re-locating to be by the sea. One of our (few?) shared aspirations. Purbeck itself isn't a go-er on account of poperty prices, job prospects and most importantly, the fact that neither of us are really that keen on living in a small community. Sadly, the places we looked at only made my stomach lurch. The beach is wonderful but it reminded me how much I enjoy living in a city. I love that there are buildings I can go to for inspiration and elevation. I really value the fairly left-wing credentials of the city and more specifically the community where I live, both of which have a significant alternative scene and lots going on. A place that is shaking and moving, that is aspirational, innovative and with relatively strong eco-principles. Well connected and only a short journey to get out of, into the green. I have purposefully concealed where I live during the life-span of this blog, but it might be obvious from that description!

I came home on the train alone - a rare luxury, wow! -  as my mum and step-father had offered to have the boys for the weekend some time ago. OH picked me up from the station near where he's working at about half past five and within five minutes of leaving, his brother had called and broken the awkward silence between us. OH did of course take the call and for a scary moment I thought we were on the way to pick the brother up from work, despite having checked earlier with OH that this would not be the case and having been told that he had cycled to work. I think (think - because my Albanian is not great) I understood OH to be saying:
'Hi, DBrother, aren't you on your bike?'
'Don't worry, I expect he'll pay you tomorrow?' and
'Are you going to come and get your food?'

Indeed, when we arrived home it was clear from the smell when I opened the front door that DBrother had been cooking there while I was away. Not unexpectedly or unreasonably, I suppose. There was also a box of groceries on the floor that were clearly for DBrother (he has a passion for milk chocolate digestives, I believe) and I surmised that they had gone shopping together the previous night.

We started to empty the car and from inside the house I realised that DBrother had arrived outside on his bicycle and was talking to OH. Soon after OH came inside and explained that he was going to take food and groceries round to DBrother. He then added half the contents of our fridge to the box on our floor and disappeared with the car keys. So much for a romantic evening in. Couldn't they have just taken the food round the night before? I asked - jaw clenched - if DBrother had slept here while I was away and OH smiled guiltily and said no. It may not have been a guilty smile, but more one of those smiles you do when you don't want to look guilty and then find your face impossible to control. But either way, I felt incensed that I didn't know whether I could believe him or not.

I drifted around the house a bit, waiting for him to get back. When he did, he said,
'Just as I was leaving, Mr Khan's boiler broke.' I completely ignored him.
'He's there with his kids!' he continued, 'And it's cold and there's no hot water.'
'I know what a boiler does,' I retorted. 'If DBrother is a plumber, can't he have a go at fixing it?
'The problem is inside the boiler,' he replied. 'I told Mr Khan that if you could find someone to fix it for him, I'd call him back. I hold my hands up. I was on the point of exploding. Like said boiler.
'Mr Khan was, until recently, a builder.' I said. 'He knows everyone up his street. I am sure he has more than one property and will know some-one who can help. I don't. And I'll be effed if finding someone is what I am going to spend tonight doing.' I am sure the above is probably true: I know he has electric heaters and only has the kids for an hour or two at a time and I don't have a contact number for a boiler-fixer, in fact I need to call the guy who installed ours to come and look at it and can't find the number anywhere. But do I need to justify myself? Gee-whizz, surely we had greater priorities than Mr Khan's boiler to attend to during the precious time my mum having the boys affords?
'You could look on the Internet,' OH said. 'That's what a nice person would do.'
I slammed the dining room door shut and we spent the evening apart.

After a stonkingly amazing lie-in - friends who are parents to young kids will know what this is worth - we spent several hours on Saturday talkshouttalking at one another, going round and round in circles before going to the shops late afternoon and getting a takeaway on the way back. And watched a film together in reasonable harmony. It is insane how you can slip in and out of complete and utter row mode and then in and out of let's act as though nothing is going on mode. Perhaps it's a survival technique.

On Sunday morning we spent another few hours doing the same thing. I was trying really hard to hear what OH was saying, and accept some, at least, of the responsibility for the mess we are in. OH refuted point blank almost everything I was saying, did his level best to continually deflect it all and abnegate himself of any responsibility whatsoever and then suggest that the only problems in our relationship are down to my issues. I will draw the line here at sharing the tawdry detail of what we feel one anothers' issues to be, but what we did agree was:

1) He wants us to go to counselling and although I do not want to, I have said I will think about it. I suspect the money would be better spent on paying for a spa weekend and takeaways as I have just remembered that we did actually go to counselling quite early on in our marriage as well as the other two occasions before the kids were born, none of which were very successful. Thus making this counselling attempt number four. Hum.

2) He wants to go and see his mum in the Spring, when it will be a year since he has seen her last. This is only fair. But he wants to take the kids. Which is not exactly unfair, but, golly, I'm finding this hard. Having decided that I will not spend another 'holiday' in Albania, clearly I have to be reasonable. I disagree with OH that Babe2 would be alright on his own with him (I know for a fact that he would be totally freaked out as he is very clingy and it annoys me to death that OH can't see this for himself), so I found myself agreeing to OH taking both kids with him. Bottom line, he is at some point going to expect to take the kids with him to see his family, and the sooner I accept that this is going to happen the better, I guess. Once we made this decision, I went ahead and bought the tickets (on our overdraft, DBrother had better pay us back...). OH knows what a big deal it is for me to let him take the kids abroad alone. And he knows that in refusing to come too, I am drawing a clear 'Things are Different Now' line in the sand.

3) We do not respect* one another.

4) I can't remember what no 4) was. Oh well. It might have been him agreeing that DBrother is welcome round here when I'm out, but to encourage him to turn up while I'm in, when our disagreements are still unresolved is not really fair. And I have, somewhat childishly I know, not put forward a schedule for resolving said disagreement with DBrother (or been asked for one) because I don't want him turning up all the effing time anyway. Ho hum.

*This concept of 'respect' is simply HUGE in Albania. 'Te respektoj shume' - 'I have a great deal of respect for you' - is one of the first phrases I learnt. I'm not quite sure why so many people felt the need to tell me that they respected me. The cynic in me felt they were lining up afterwards to ask favours. The humourist in me suspected they were commenting on my amazing and possibly foolish strength of will in persisting in the challenge I was taking on in hooking up with OH. Most likely, I guess, is the fact that since respect matters so much, as I have said, people thus bother to communicate the fact that they are feeling it.

But I still haven't really got my head round the extent to which is completely and utterly pervades everything. I do know that it means younger siblings will do anything, right down to letting their marriages disintegrate, for elder siblings. And their fathers. I know it means that there are many situations when women should be seen and not heard. I know it means a great deal of hand-shaking when you meet and take your leave of people. I know it means that if you see people you know and they invite you into their home, it is very rude not to go, no matter how fed up knackered or possibly needing the toilet you are and how unable to understand the three-hour smoke-surrounded conversation that then goes on around you. And I know it means that to have a hell-blazing row in the middle of the street is completely and utterly unacceptable. Even if the person you are yelling at had disappeared at eleven pm with the kids when he said he'd drive them straight back from his brother's house and your parents who had made the effort to come over to Albania and who were waiting at home with you to put them to bed and getting anxious and pissed off....

So although OH and I have agreed that we don't really respect one another any more, I only half know what it is that I am agreeing to and I guess the same applies to him. I know that we repeatedly and frequently fail to trust in one another's judgement. At times we do not respect one another's opinions. We each do things that totally annoy one another time and time again (but him way more than me of course!) and I guess this indicates a lack of respect. To be honest, I'm not really sure that I understand what the concept of respect means in English any more. After so many years of speaking Greek at home and being so heavily influenced by OH's culture and languages, there are times when I feel strangely dislocated from the semantics of my own.

One last conclusion I can offer on respect, is that blogging about our problems and our relationship probably amount to quite a significant amount of disrespect.

Hitherto, the need to write all this down and get it out and laugh about it have made it worth it. Massively helped, in fact. I still think there's content here that other women in similar situations would find helpful that I might make use of in another format in another place and time. But for myself, I feel I'm reaching a new chapter in my life. I no longer want to be writing from within a context in which who I am is defined by the medium of what my relationship with OH and his bloody brothers makes me. I want to leave that anger behind. I have bigger challenges ahead. Challenges that include making the most of the increasingly sagging parts of me I see when I look in the mirror! Challenges that include overcoming the voice inside me that tells me I'll never be paid to do a days' work again. Challenges that include doing what I need to do to be the best I can be, as a person in my own right, who deserves nothing less.

I have a new writing project in the pipeline, fret not! I'll keep you posted. It will probably be called something melodramatic like, I don't know, 'Rising from the ashes' and include a fair amount of scrabbling around in said ashes and having to spit them out.

And all the crap with the brothers? It won't get any worse, will it? It might get better. It might get repeated a few more times. Whatever... I don't think there's anything left to put in writing about it. I am reasonably confident that no-one else will be expecting to turn up on my doorstep.

Finally, a borrowed offering from Aung San Suu Kyi, who was interviewed by Kirsty Young for Radio 4's desert island discs very recently. What a woman! And these words made me stop in my tracks when she said them: 'When people have chosen a certain path, they should walk it with satisfaction and not try to make it appear as a tremendous sacrifice.' I'll leave you all with that thought. You will guess some of the reasons why it resonated so with me. And I know it has resonated with quite a few friends and loved-ones I have spoken to. Life is for living! Let's not moan about the choices we have made. Polish those boots or find a new map! I'll see you on the journey. Au revoir!

Acts of Love

When I was eighteen, I went to work on a kibbutz for a year. My 'A' level results had turned out better than expected (‘Better than expected’ is a bit of a perennial theme and I must find a way to convince potential employers of this. Given the chance there is nothing much I can’t do but I could do way better at selling myself…) so I decided to take a year off and re-apply. At least I think that’s what happened. I’m amazed lately at the things I have started to forget.  I tried to list my class teachers through school for the fun of it the other night and couldn’t. Exciting evening, though.

I wanted to do something worthy, honourable, peace-loving and different! I was also quite good at copying in those days and two of my then best friends, a couple of boys from school, were going. So I went with them.

I can honestly say that I hated almost every minute of it. And left after four months. Four months that felt like four years. We were treated like scum of the earth from the off which, naïve school-leaver that I was, shocked me horribly. We were given the shittiest jobs to do, like stand on ladders in howling winds and pouring rain at 3 o’ clock in the morning to get the last fricking avocado that had been left hanging at the top of the tallest tree at the furthest end of the most remote avocado orchard. Or clearing sheds of dead, stomped-upon chickens the day after the night before when other volunteers had had to catch and crate up the live ones to go off to the slaughter house – as a vegetarian I objected to having to do this but my complaints fell on deaf ears. Our clothes were nicked from the communal laundry, the drains in our quarters were constantly blocked and over-flowing and one night all the sirens started wailing and the lights went out (we were right next to the Golan Heights) and no-one came to tell us what was going on so we ended up cowering under our beds like mice. Well, I did. It wasn’t long before we started to behave in entirely the manner it seemed that was expected of us, buying huge bottles of vodka with the few shekels pocket money we received each week, and getting off our faces in time for the weekly discos held in the bomb shelters. Coach-loads of billeted soldiers were brought in for these end of the week festivities so that their needs could be attended to by willing volunteers, so to speak.

I travelled home from the kibbutz with a friend I had made there, determined to see as many famous European sights as possible and then do something else worthier, more honourable, peace-loving and different etc for the rest of the year. In fact when I got back to England I spent a few days at a Max Factor factory from which I was sacked for incorrectly – and quite accidentally I can assure you, I just couldn’t believe the task was as simple as it had been described to me – placing the tops on the lipstick holders, thus creating several days’ work for someone else to undo, and then a few months working in a plating factory to get some money together to go off inter-railing in the summer. It was at that factory that I developed a lifelong hatred of Rod Stewart and Phil Collins, but that’s another story. In many ways, I feel my life never got properly back on track after this stupid wasted period of time. But that’s another story, too.

We started our journey from the kibbutz by taking a bus to Jerusalem, where we spent a few days before getting a flight to Athens, from where we intended to travel the rest of the way home over land. What a place! Having been brought up a Christian – baptized a Catholic, confirmed C of E and then lucky enough to go to a Quaker school thanks to reduced fees because my then-step-mother was the librarian – to see places of such significance that I’d heard spoken of for so long was simply amazing. And the tangible evidence of conflict dividing the city moved me even more. Approaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a guide pointed out an old ladder stuck on a ledge many windows up, explaining that the Christian denominations present there could not decide whose right it was to clean the windows/remove the ladder/deal with the issue/whatever.

I guess it was partly my age but the beauty, sadness and the irony of the city hit me hard. And it felt very important to me to gather gifts of significance for all my nearest and dearest back home while I was in Jerusalem, so that I could take a piece of the place home with me for them. I did not want to purchase the usual tourist trash. No, I wanted to buy things that were really special.

For myself I bought a black rose pendant. I remember thinking it seemed like a good ironic metaphor! For my mum, a large painted vase from Bethlehem. Hmmm.  For my sister, little black sheepskin boots. I think I was thinking about the Christmas story and the shepherds or something. I have no idea what I bought my brothers. But when I saw long, wooden, curled-handled cedar of Lebanon walking sticks, I knew I had to get one each for my step-father, my dad and my grandad. Somehow romantic and religious and just perfect for when they got older and closer to death!

The purchase of these three walking sticks is probably not what you were expecting me to write about under the post title, acts of love. But you have no idea what a tortuous pain-in-the-arse piece of hand luggage they became. How many times lost and found, forgotten and returned for, space-stealers, time-takers, mischief-makers. Yet my (very patient, kind and lovely) friend and I brought them back with us, over land and sea, home. (They were also quite useful when having to beat back a couple of well dodgy Italian men near Naples but that is another story too.) Bringing them back for the then most important men in my life felt like a huge act of love.

Unrequited! I have no idea where they are now. My dear grandfather died before he ever needed a walking stick and neither my dad nor step-dad are in need of one yet.  And I suspect these things need to be made to measure anyway?! 

Perhaps it is because yesterday was Valentine’s Day that I am thinking about these things today. For the first time in nineteen years of Valentine’s Days, both OH and I ignored it. Helped by the fact that I was at my mum’s.

Our first was at a flat I had rented in Athens. A rooftop flat where we had giddy parties on very hot summer nights. He had never ‘celebrated’ Valentine’s Day before. I was his first girlfriend. His first and only. Back in Albania, people didn’t get to celebrate things like Valentine’s or Christmas or even birthdays other than the dictator’s. Or have lots of girlfriends, I think. OH has told me that his brothers tried to lock him up when they suspected his involvement, age 17, with a girl visiting from East Germany. Because they knew that if they didn't, the police would.

OH was determined to pull out all the stops for me. I returned home from work in the evening to a massive heart-shaped cake. On it were two candles (I still have them in fact, and used both the ‘2’ and the ’5’ on Babe’s birthday cakes) with the numbers 25 on them, because I was 25! Sparklers galore. Flowers. Several cards. He always sends several cards per occasion and I have never got to the bottom of this but it might be so that he can copy the rubbish poem from one into another and hope it goes un-noticed. Even after years of living here his written English is terrible. If memory serves me correctly, he also sent my mum a card on that occasion. I’m not sure why. With a very respectful loving message inside, albeit very poorly-spelt. And somewhat undermined by the very naff picture of a bare-topped man in jeans snogging a hot young lady seated on a motorbike by the sea on the front. My mum still has the card, having rescued it recently from a garage of junk that had to be disposed of. It will probably become a family heirloom, kept for the boys.

I think one of my earliest acts of love was buying a small porcelain mouse at a pottery in Tintagel, where we went on holiday when I was about 13. I was asked out for the first time there, by a friend of the boy staying in the next caravan, on whom I had the most terrific crush. I think he asked me out because his friend had told him that I had a crush on him and because he wanted me to give him 20p to play on the space invaders. Untouched as I was, by male hand – and it stayed that way for a long time as one or two readers will be able to testify – I could only scream ‘no!’ in response and rush out crying. It was all too much. Anyway, the mouse was bought in memory of that day. And actually I know bloody well it was 1983 because it sits on a flat stone I collected from the beach there and on the bottom of which I wrote in silver pen – metallic pens were new and all the rage back then – ‘Cornwall, ’83.

Another act of love I remember carrying out (is that the right verb to use?) was also in my teens, when I had a crush on the brother of a girl who went to my school and whose family attended our church. I posted him a passion fruit tea bag one Valentine’s Day with the message ‘think of me when you drink tea’ on the label. I still think that was good. What romance! What mystery!  The perfunctory nature of the way Valentine’s Day is celebrated by so many seems pointless to me. But the thrill of receiving a missive when you are not sure who it is from… now that is cool!

I have one or two treasures – no more – that I have kept for many years. A very sweet message left on my desk from a boy at school, ‘Sophie S, I love you!’ that I carefully wrapped in sticky-backed plastic and carried in my bag for the months that we were together. And then kept. And a map drawn for me by someone special from my university days, who wrote his name on a bit of torn Silk Cut packet at the same time. I'm not sure why he wrote it down, I wouldn't have forgotten it.

I also have a Peruvian vase which was given to me by a Latin lover from my Barcelona days. The only thing belonging to that scumbag that I have kept, and only because I quite like it. And strangely, because I know it mattered to him and at the time he had nothing else to give me and throwing it away doesn’t seem quite the right thing to do. I must relocate it, perhaps to a charity shop.

Sigh. I think OH would consider coming to live with me here in the UK as an act of love. He always had his sights set on moving from Greece to the United States and I am quite sure he would have, had it not been for me. I suppose I consider marrying him, at Hackney registry office in 1997, for immigration purposes, an act of love. I had no dream of marriage or respect for the institution and continue to hold that view. And would have much preferred not to do it. But I couldn't bear to be parted from him and that left me no choice. I sometimes think that letting me move outside London yet keeping me on as an employee was an act of love bestowed upon me by my previous employer. An act that arguably gave me a lifeline that would have been better off severed years before I was made redundant. But who knows?

Perhaps some acts that we think of as loving, are not loving at all. They simply perpetuate an already-unhealthy dynamic. But how easy it is to say that with the benefit of hind-sight! I hope that any future acts of love I am party to can be made with eyes wide open, and from a position of honesty with myself that I know I can struggle to occupy.

Love, tears and peanuts

Mr Khan knocked at my door on Monday afternoon. His knock is distinctive in that it lasts for about thirty seconds. I was looking rather glamorous, if I may say so, as I had put some make-up on and been walking round the house trying to take a portrait photo of myself in the right light, that is to say light that does not reveal the true extent of my chinnage and which takes ten years off me. Judging by the Facebook likes, it worked. Though people walking past me in the street who had seen it would probably not recognise me.

I had the strangest feeling that he'd been standing outside my house watching me lean backwards into my living room curtains, trying to smile seductively while the impact of holding my laptop aloft for the last twenty minutes was taking its toll on my biceps. There was a little something lurking in his expression, perhaps in the angle of his eyebrows. Something softer than usual in his face. Which is, incidentally, rather lovely. He has a very attractive skin colour and because he is bald this leaps out at you, in all its shiny mainly-smooth but also a bit weathered completeness. He touches his head a lot, rubbing and slapping and it's kind of sensuous I suppose. It draws attention to it if nothing else. I've always liked men without much hair which is ironic given the heady mop that OH possesses. I think Khan must be around fifty. Or sixty. I don't know, I've never been any good at judging age. (I still think of myself as 18 and if I'm asked off the cuff what the date is I'll usually be two weeks, several months and a few decades out.) His eyes are bright and there's a kindness in them, even when he's starting to shout, that I feel I connect with. Hells bells - perhaps he is where the next exciting instalment of my life is heading!

I opened the door. I was trying to make my face say nothing as I didn't know what was coming. Which despite years of practice, I find challenging. Making my face say nothing, I mean. I find it hard to hide what I'm thinking. Which these days, quite often, is 'prick!'.
'You are good woman good woman, I respect you,' he said.
'I know,' I answered.
'But this brother he drive me crazy he drive me crazy I had enough I had enough!' he shouted. Slapping. He came here to tell ME this? I thought, inwardly starting to sigh again.
'I am so sorry about that, Mr Khan,' I replied.
'He have two key for two room for one week now,' he said. 'He lie to me he say he going to move stuff but he not move stuff he creep back late last night I see him he not move stuff he think I not see him you tell your husband he pay for two room now I had enough I had enough other man he give me six hundred quid he want room I not give him room this man this brother in my both rooms.'
I started to speak and my eyes starting crying in a quiet runny way. I was tired and hormonal. And to be honest, I do cry rather easily at times.
'Mr Khan, I am so sorry,' I said. 'You are right. He should not be occupying both rooms. I will call my husband right now and tell him to tell him.'
'You tell him I want money both rooms now,' he whispered, stepping forward and lifting his fist in what, if you were in a pantomime, would probably be described as a menacing way. The tears became more obvious I suppose, as they hit the incline of my cheeks and he took a step backwards.
'This brother is working long hours,' I said. 'At the weekend too. I know he asked my husband to help him move something on Saturday and he said he'd help him on Sunday instead, but then he was working again all day and he couldn't. But he must know that he can't have both rooms. I agree with you, Mr Khan. This is not right.'
'You tell your husband,' he whispered - this time, I think, because he presumed it was less aggressive than shouting - 'He now pay two rooms.'
'I will,' I said, aware that my voice, which I had been keeping steady, was rising. 'And I will also tell him that you and I have both had enough of his stupid bloody brother! He's a stupid bloody bastard! They are both stupid bloody bastards! I've had enough, Mr Khan, enough! My husband can come and live with you and his stupid bloody bastard brother. I've had enough! Finished! It's over! I don't want him anymore. You can have him!' (Do I emulate John Cleese sometimes? Yes, I do.)
'NO!' he shouted and then lowered his voice to continue. If this had been an audition we would both have got great parts. 'Your husband good man, I swear to God your husband good man. Brother, yes, stupid idiot but your husband good man.' He closes his eyes and rests his right hand briefly on his eyelids when he is swearing to God. I have noticed relatives of OH's in Albania do the same. Usually when they are bullshitting. But anyway.
'Mr Khan,' I said. 'You can see my situation is unhappy and ridiculous. I've had enough. I can't do this any more. I don't want to have to keep dealing with my stupid husband's stupid brother's problems.'
'But your man good man and you have children,' he said. 'You keep him,' he said. Backing away and I noticed he was wearing flip-flops. It was freezing.
'I'll call him,' I said. And we waved goodbye. And then I did.

There is no reason to transcribe the conversation here. It was actually brief, to the point and my tone was ice-cold and detached. Mainly because I'd done my ranting the night before and all that was left was excess emotion that was leaking out where it could. Clearly I was not crying in front of Mr Khan because DBrother is in possession of more than his fair share of his key collection. As long as he stays living there I couldn't give less of a shit about what happens within those four walls. No. I was crying because something had clicked within me the day before, a Sunday afternoon, when I got back from a meditation course (using the indefinite article there makes it sound as though I casually attend a variety of courses when in fact I rarely do anything for myself that costs money) and found the house in complete and total disarray. So much chaos and mess that if I didn't know better I'd have thought it had been done on purpose.

Not the kind of mess that comes of OH having made dens and done lego and built steam ships out of paper and had fun with the boys, but the kind of mess that had come of him doing what he thought he needed to to keep them happy so that he could sleep on the sofa all afternoon - kinder egg chocolate and wrappers everywhere, evidence of more new toys having been bought despite our agreement to stick to a new budget and to stop spoiling the kids, fast food wrappers in the kitchen - which is fine, but that very morning I had been accused of never cooking the boys 'good food' - and having spent £35 on getting them into the zoo in the morning he had left with them after an hour because he hadn't bothered to pick up drinks and snacks for them as I'd suggested and he didn't want to pay for them to have lunch there and by that time they were of course hungry. All lights, heaters and electrical appliances that can be turned on, on. Babe1 clearly having been allowed to play on the Wii for hours. Babe2 sitting on the stairs singing him to himself tearing up a piece of paper into tiny shreds.

This is pretty much the kind of mess that I come back to every time I have an evening meeting, even when I have begged OH to get the boys into bed so that I won't have to on my return which is too late for them still to be up on a school night. It is the kind of mess that if I complain about I am called a nagging control freak.

I don't know if it was the contrast with the relaxed places I'd reached during some guided mediation during the day that set me off, but whatever it was, something inside me snapped when I got home. I don't know if it is the years of constant criticism and feeling disempowered by me (if that is what has happened; I try and reflect fairly on things) that turns OH into this disconnected passive-agressive lunatic who does everything he can to drive me insane so that he can then wave his arms and point at how insane I am. I don't know whether it was residual resentment on my part that he had jumped out of bed at the crack of dawn on the Saturday to drive his bloody brother to work and then refused to come anywhere with us in the sunshine for the rest of the day. I don't know if it's what I suspect are pre-menopausal hormones rocking my system and making me hypersensitive - CRASHBANGWHALLOPBEINGAWOMANCANBETOUGHNOTOFCOURSETHATIWOULDCHANGEITBECAUSEGIVINGBIRTHTOBABE1WASTHEMOSTINCREDIBLEEXPERIENCEOFMYLIFE
- all I know is that a roaring voice was welling within me saying that I deserve more and that I can't cope with any more shouting and conflict and abuse, which I deal as much of as I receive. Clearly something here is NOT RIGHT.

I won't draw you, dear readers, into any more detail. But you can see that I am in a devil of a pickle.

***

By Tuesday night Babe2 had shoved a huge peanut up each nostril that resulted in an evening and a morning in A&E, narrowly avoiding a general anaesthetic but not so a terrible load of screaming and several very unpleasant episodes of having to hold him down while different methods of removal were attempted. I should have kept the buggers - the nuts I mean - and framed them or put them in one of my memorabilia boxes but they ended up on the floor somewhere. Which is where I threw them, as soon as they were ejected, to ensure they could not be sucked back in. No-one else had a free hand. I was lying on my son, my legs doing most of the work. Yes, some of you will be wondering how it is that I didn't crush him.

The worst part was being asked to perform a 'mother's kiss' to try and remove the nuts. 'All you have to do is open your mouth wide, mum, and get your lips over his, and get a really good seal and then breathe really hard and get those nuts out. Nine times out of ten, this works. Oh, and do it when he's not expecting it.' Three utterly humiliating attempts and all I did was scratch him with my teeth, get snot and saliva everywhere and completely and horribly upset him. I then called OH in to give it a try - this was by now quite late at night and the nurse agreed it would be better to try that the go for a GA (for some reason they were not letting on at this point that they had a range of instruments other than the ones they'd already tried at their disposal.)

Thanks to a friend who jumped out of the bath and down the road to mind Babe1, OH was able to drive into town and to the hospital. Full of manly bluster, 'I've done this a hundred times before', we were taken to a bed with a curtain around it in a large ward full of people. And the nurse who'd watched me fail sat on the bed to observe. After about five minutes of shuffling and moving our son around on his lap and blatantly swearing his arse off at me in Greek, he shot snot and saliva all over his face, too. My fault, of course. Everything always is. On our way back to the waiting room he heard the doctor from Ears, nose and throat (or whatever they're called) telling the nurse he'd be calling us back in the morning for a GA, so he then insisted on going straight home with our son instead of waiting an hour or so to be told this via the official process. Which I kind of understood but since I am a bit of a stickler for aforementioned process we argued and he swore at me and then stormed off and I was left alone.

I mention this only because I wanted to talk about love here, as well as all the crap I've been banging on about above. Perhaps friends who knew the peanut episode was happening wondered if this trauma would bring OH and I together. Shared glances of affection and appreciation between two pairs of eyes brimming with love and tears above the little ginger nut playing with the books on the floor of the emergency waiting room. Etc.

Far from it. The next day we agreed that although OH would take the day off work he would not come to the hospital with us because we were both very stressed and knew that we might argue and disagree and could not be relied on to behave appropriately in public. Bottom line, we found that we could not help one another through distress, because we were not in control of our anger.

In which I give Mr Khan an enormous BJ

Ha! Bet that grabbed your attention. Of course I did not commit such a lewd and inappropriate act. On his doorstep. But unhappily I did have to prostrate myself before him metaphorically if not literally, in order to appeal to his better nature. So any reader who already finds my blog over-the-top and disloyal be warned, you might be better off going back onto Facebook in search of more high-brow articles to read, or music quizzes to complete...

Having spent the last, what - weeks? months? fortnight? I don't know, what a whirlwind! - since Christmas wondering what on earth DBrother was going to do when last Thursday arrived and his tenancy at Mr Khan's (to whom I will now refer to simply as 'Khan') ended, it fell upon me to take action of some kind that morning, to avert catastrophe.

You may remember that OH had asked if DBrother could come back and live here with us. A request that I flatly refused. I am now convinced that that was the right thing to do and that agreeing to such a request would be an act that would cause my life to unravel catastrophically, as I am once again fairly stressed and OH is already once again sailing very close to the wind in the relationship-termination stakes. I have thus agreed with myself, and my dad's spiritual advisor, that either the brother makes a go of it here without any more financial or other major input from us, or he returns to Greece and his huge family, friends, network and two grown-up and employed children.

Following this flat refusal, OH had been trying to bring the issue up casually, while watching random Channel4 comedy or Wildlife-on-One type viewing while I fiddle around on my laptop in the evenings:
'So, what shall we do about DBrother?'
'I don't know.'
[Pause] 'Wow, what an amazing lion. Any suggestions?'

'No.'

[Pause] 'What amazing communities those meerkats live in.'

'Just eff off.'

I have felt awful refusing to engage. It is far from my natural response. Although I have also found it a tad empowering. Sometimes I feel tired of being a busy bee in the background who goes unnoticed and unappreciated. Suddenly ceasing to make practical suggestions and problem-solve is somewhat liberating. I know OH has been finding it kind of weird and scary, probably. You can see in his face that the cogs are whizzing super-fast and silently while he pretends he's doing something else, acting casual and unconcerned. The thing is, I am OVER arguing about DBrother and the raft of problems he presents us with, the stress of which is making life difficult. If I did engage, the conversation would probably be something like this:
'So, what shall we do about DBrother?'
'I don't know.'
[Pause] 'Wow, what an amazing lion. Any suggestions?'

'You find him somewhere to live?'

'He hasn't got any money'

'Nor have we, we're at the end of our overdraft.'

'But he really hasn't got any money.'

'Look, the bloody idiot should not have handed in his notice! He should either have paid the next month's rent, or returned some of what he owed us,  instead of jiggering off to Athens for New Year, thinking - THE BASTARD! - that he could rely on us to bail him out should it be required.'

You see? It is better that I do not engage.

However, I did take on board that unless something unexpected happened, DBrother was going to be homeless as of last Thursday. And as luck would have it, a woman on our local email group mentioned that she had a room going for one month as of 31 Jan, before she has builders in to convert her house into two flats. For less than Khan's, at £270 for the month. And as we exchanged emails she flagged that if he just needed somewhere to doss for the following two months at a much lower rate, that might work. I replied saying he had practical skills that she might find useful and - phew - it looked as though I had lined the next place up. In the meantime, DBrother has had a couple of weeks work on the same site as before (cash in hand, shafting bastard who still owes him some money but what can you do?) so it looked like he'd have the money for the rent. (It also means that if OH gets up even earlier than usual he can take DBrother to work and then bring him home afterwards as well, thus getting home to us even later... I might start to see this as a good thing before long.) Anyway, I lined up an evening for DBrother and OH to go and meet the kind lady and see the room.

In the meantime, I had to decide what, if any action to take to find DBrother somewhere to live for the Thursday-to-Thursday gap that needed filling. And I decided that to prostrate myself before the definitely-odd Khan and beg him to keep DBrother on for one more week was better than giving in and having DBrother back round here. So after mulling it over in the IKEA cafeteria while Babe2 ran around in Smalvarld or whatever's it called - who ever thought that place would be such a life-safer? - we called round on the way back home.

I saw his shadow linger behind the blinds in his downstairs front bedroom room for about four minutes, deciding whether to open the door to me or not. I knew this meant that he was not happy and that he wanted DBrother out of his house just as much as DBrother wanted out. He started slapping himself on the head even before the door was opened. He whispered something I did not understand about his wife's sister being in his bedroom room to which I did not respond. How to start?

'Um. You want him out?' I asked, gesturing towards the upstairs bay window of DBrother's room.
'Yes, yes, yes, this brother no good, I had enough, no good, no good.' (Slap slap.) 'I had deposit and one month money from 'nother man nice man he give me money he want room I want him out gone now, no good, no good.'
'Um, right.' I said. 'Mr Khan, is there any way you could have him for one more week? I have found him a new place from next Thursday.'
'No!' (Slap slap slap.) 'Why one week? No good to me, one month maybe with rent and deposit. One week no no good no why?'
Hmmm. So maybe he didn't have anyone lined up to take the room after all. I am trying to transcribe the conversation exactly and not to ridicule the man by the way. He is very hard to understand.
'And Mr Khan, (cringing) I understand that he has done some work for you on a door down here that you have not paid him for. And he never charged you for the locks that he used to replace the broken ones on the door upstairs, although you did say you would pay for them.'
This met with a string of vitriol and untruths. Which suggested to me that there was no use trying to swing a room for free although technically DBrother was kind of owed as much. I decided to try a new tack.
'Mr Khan. I understand that you do not want him in your house. I do not want him in my house either. I married my husband, not his brother. If you keep him here for one more week, it is not much longer than the amount of time you have had him here anyway. But if he comes to live with me it will create a new situation that will be very difficult for me.' I could see something behind his eyes soften.
'You are nice lady, I respect you.'
'Come on then, Mr Khan, please do me a favour!'
'What good is one week? No no no.'
'What about the other spare room downstairs, could he sleep there for one week?'
'No no no, it smelly not good room no good no good.'
'We will of course pay you.'
'No no no no no no.' But I sensed another shift. I had one last card to play. God help me.
'Mr Khan,' I implored. 'Do it for God because it is the right thing to do.'
'Ok,' he said, 'But you pay me not him,' and he shut the door in my face. I presume he meant that he did not want DBrother, not God, to pay him.

So, having organised a reprieve, albeit one that we had to finance because DBrother was not paid at the end of that week, things looked sorted. Huge relief! Not that I was thanked. But that, of course, is because I am the witch who is insisting on his living somewhere else instead of with us for as long as he needs to. I do apologise, by the way, to friends and readers who will feel I stooped to new depths in the course of that dialogue with Khan. I ask that you try to understand how desperate I feel.

On Monday night, OH and DBrother went to view the room I'd lined up and meet the woman. OH came back with the keys kindly given to him in advance, saying how much nicer it was etc etc. I took the opportunity to remind him that it was for a month. Four weeks. And in that time he had to find DBrother the next place to live because there was no guarantee that he'd have the room for longer. And that we weren't going to find anything else that nice for that money. At £300 p month all inclusive Khan's seemed expensive but other rooms we've been offered nearby were £370 plus bills. And deposit required. Too much! And we'd have to act as guarantors which, given DBrother's work prospects, was not what I wanted to do. (He and his brother are still, incidentally, registered with the IR as living with us...)

Tuesday was relatively peaceful.

The next evening OH was strangely late home from work and I wondered what he was up. He got back as I was putting the kids to bed and I heard him stomp in, rustle around and stomp out again. Hmmm. When he got back in again, about ten minutes later, I went downstairs and asked if everything was ok. He explained that he had returned the keys to the woman up the road. My stress level shot up to '10' in nano-seconds. 'Why?' I yelped, wondering what the hell was coming next and glanced into the hall to see if there was a suitcase there.
'Because I have found DBrother somewhere to live long term for just £240p month.'
My nerves took up position at about 7.5 until I realised that although this was good news, we were letting down a lovely neighbour I had not yet met who had, as it happened, called me ten minutes before OH and DBrother went round to see the room on Monday to check that they really needed it as her friend had said she'd take it. To which I had replied that yes, it would leave us in the lurch for reasons she already knew.

I don't know how a normal person would have responded. I just started shouting about how ridiculous this was and how embarrassed I felt to have to email this woman back and apologise. It then occurred to me to ask where the room was and how he'd found it.
'At Mr Khan's,' OH replied. 'He's got a room downstairs that he'll let him have for less.'

***

As I stood in the kitchen, mouth opening and shutting and for once not too much coming out, someone knocked the front door. I was expecting a friend to return some things and presumed it was her. It was DBrother. We temporarily forgot our hostilities and that we are not speaking to one another.
'Oh hello!' I said.
'Ah, excuse me,' he responded. 'I was just wondering....'
'Hang on a minute!' I cried. 'Can you please tell me why you have just turned down that room up the road? What am I going to tell the woman?' His stress levels rose to 10 to match mine, also in nano-seconds.
'Why would I take a room for a month?' he yelled.
'Because you had to leave Khan's!' I responded. 'At least that what's you told OH. And why did you go and see the bloody room if you knew you didn't want it for only for a month? Do you two communicate at all?'

Suffice to say that we had another huge ding dong on my front door step. Dear Lord. During the course of which he started to wave his wallet in the air, opening it to prove he is penniless. I was mortified and tried to keep calm. Which good friends will know still looks and sounds as though I am warning the proverbial ladybird to fly home because her house is on fire and the children are gone. I asked why he'd gone back to Greece and why he thought it was ok to keep borrowing money from us. Etc etc. Luckily his phone rang and he chose to take the call. I came inside and cried. He probably went home feeling bloody miserable too. I think the last thing I said to him was something like, 'I want you to understand that in all this mess, my problem is not with you. It is with OH because he has created this situation that he is unable to place reasonable limits on and sort out.' And that is the unhappy size of it. OH is not being honest with me, or his brother, or himself. For a range of reasons, many of which engender my sympathy. But how much more of it can I take?

***

So, what had happened? I suspect that seeing a nice warm clean room in a friendly shared house made OH realise how hard it was going to be to find somewhere similar once the month was up. I also suspect that my pearls of wisdom (shame so many have been ignored) when he got home that evening made him realise that moving DBrother was going to create a whole load of hassle for us. And I think probably reality hit home quite hard for both of them - Khan's is cheap and easy to be in. No need for small talk which DBrother finds impossible not speaking the language. Or social niceties to adhere to. But why am I the only one who seems to anticipate all these moves?

You will be pleased to know that when I emailed the woman to apologise she was very gracious and said that happily her friend still wanted the room. She expressed understanding at what was obviously a  difficult situation for me.

I have now resolved not to involve myself in further attempts to find DBrother accommodation.

And let us hope that Khan is happy to have his lodger stay on. I am pretty sure that he has no-one else moving in and needs the money. And let us also hope that DBrother now views his accommodation there - which I have to say is a hell of a lot nicer than some of the places I've lived in in my life, notably as a student - as somewhere he has chosen to be in because it is cheap and long-term instead of viewing it as an overpriced slum his bitch sister-in-law (me) found for him.

After a couple of days of hurt silence, OH and I started talking again and he admitted that yes, he regrets having got his brothers over here. But still not enough, clearly, to start managing the situation in any meaningful or rational way that makes life bearable for me. Perhaps he can't. I guess things will go one of two ways with DBrother over the next few weeks: either he will stay employed and self-sufficient and therefore be able to re-pay some of what he owes us (which increases all time because OH is pretty much grocery shopping for him as well now, albeit cheap bits and bobs which I do not resent, beyond the fact that this is far from what we originally agreed) or the work will end in which case he will not have enough to pay next month's rent. And we'll face another catastrophic situation.

There is obviously more I could say about OH and I but, well, you can only take one day at a time which is what I'm trying to do. And I have plenty that is rich and good in my life to focus on to be able to keep all that crap on the back-burner for now.