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.

New year and new feelings

I am struck by how very much I want to start blogging just as soon as I have ten million other more important things to do. Two of last week's ten million things included:

1 Being ill - well not, obviously, that I have any control over this but it renders attempts to write impossible. Which meant lying on the sofa sweating and shivering by turns, recovery possibly impeded by mounting stress as I tried to write in my head and remember what I would want to say just as soon as I could get back to the keyboard.

2 Starting my job search, and I have/had (oops, one nearly now missed) two or three applications to get in. Let's call that two, then. Or three, I've just seen another 'possible'. Hum. As you see, I am not taking this eversoseriously. Possibly because I can only do part-time and because we have been talking of re-locating which creates a somewhat surreal and unreal air over attempts to find employment. But I am shifting from my position of 'we will manage by hook or by crook til Babe2 starts school in September' to 'somehow I've got to pay off that holiday in Tunisia and raise some cash to fix the roof and go on another holiday and actually I want to be back at work now more than I want time on my hands at home while Babe2 is at pre-school'. The advantage of this change in perspective is that a somewhat casual desire to find work takes some of the pressure off feeling that my next job has to be an amazing and career- propelling move. Although that would be nice. Meantime, anything that enables me to pocket any money at all over the next few months would do. Quite how we will cover school holidays and the like once Babe2 is at school and I simply have to find a proper job, I have no idea. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I suspect I have some rude awakening to do. I am clearly not going to land on my feet in any old job, just because I want one, am I? In fact, since starting this blog post five minutes ago I have had a rejection from Job One. But it was through an agency and I had barely bothered to update my CV, let alone tweak it to match the requirements of the job I was applying for. Which was in Bournemouth anyway. Oh me, oh my, I have to serious-up.

Job Two was (I say, 'was' because I am now blatantly not going to apply for it) with something that kind of matches a lot of my skill-set but with a health/pharmaceuticals provider. Bottom line, I do not give a shit about health or pharmaceuticals. At this point in my life at least. And one of my perennial problems, that I guess I have to shake off, is a need to really really really give a shit about what I do or otherwise I get depressed by it. Which is why I stayed with my last employer for so long. I really really really care about issues relating to global poverty. I wish I could shake myself up a bit and not be so choosy but I know how I have felt having made previous wrong career moves. I left one publishing job with a major women and girl's charity some years ago now for a job that had me jetting off to meetings in Spain all the time but because the new job had me working with publishers, authors and books for the Spanish education market that I didn't, well, give a shit about, suffice to say that I didn't survive in the job very long. I wasn't got rid of, don't get me wrong. In fact my manager started to cry when I handed my notice in. But I was bored out of my tiny mind and could not go on. How very middle-class white of me.

Ho hum. I have this excited feeling that things are going to turn out just tickety-boo, that the right job is out there and things are going to be ok. You are possibly thinking that I need to wake up and smell the coffee. I am determined to push thoughts that I will never be paid to do a decent day's work again out of my mind and be positive and optimistic. I do wish that I could be paid to do the voluntary work I do!

Anyway, snow has provided the latest disruption. It was predictably exciting on Friday of last week. Well, for those of us who have ski-wear in the roof and do not have too worry too much about heating bills or where the next hot meal is going to come from, I guess. (Not that OH gets paid if the site he's on closes because of bad weather conditions and it's closed again today which is going to make an already-overdrawn month into a very difficult one. ) But this talk of hot meals and work and the like takes me on to the subject of DBrother.

I felt both sorry for him but also vindicated when OH reported back that the work with the Greeks and accommodation they were going to provide for DBrother, starting last weekend, had fallen through. Vindicated because DBrother had told OH how shocked the Greeks (by 'Greeks' I am referring to the congregation at our local Orthodox Church) were that we are not putting him up any longer and that we had not found him work. At least I hadn't promised to and then changed my mind! It did make me wonder what had gone wrong and whether DBrother had just way too optimistically presumed it was going to come off. It had sounded highly unlikely to me - a legal job with a contract and accommodation thrown in. But with a Cypriot who had a liver problem and needs someone reliable which I presume DBrother would be... It seemed manna from heaven - not speaking English, DBrother needs to work for someone who speaks Greek and those options are clearly limited over here.

What on earth is he going to do now? He is simply determined to stay here, it seems. I was impressed that he got himself off to Athens and back via the coach to Gatwick, despite losing his return ticket and having to buy another. I had totally expected OH to get a phone-call from Gatwick on Saturday evening, asking him to go and pick DBrother up. But no! (Turned out DBrother hadn't taken his English phone with him which could explain that. But he does seem determined to demonstrate his desire for independence.) The thing is, what that trip 'home' (I'm not sure where he thinks home is any more) does now mean is that DBrother has, arguably and somewhat prematurely once more spent the last of his money and has only a tiny bit left to buy food, let alone enough to pay the rent which is now due on Thursday. And having handed in his notice to Mr Khan anyway, the last month there has been financed by my £300 deposit which I am looking less and less likely to see again.

Hells bells. I have been sitting tight. I know from a couple of the ridiculous suggestions that OH made in desperation before Christmas, 'DBrother could live with us and do our house up' and 'OK, so he could live in the roof and convert it at the same time,' that DBrother has been repeatedly asking OH to let him come and live with us. At least I presume he has, despite the fact that he is still not speaking to me.

Predictably, this weekend OH did formally - and angrily, because he does not know how to approach the subject with me - ask if DBrother can move back in. I resisted the temptation to say 'over my dead body' and 'you promised me it would never come to this' and 'only if he kisses my ar*e repeatedly first'. But I do feel completely cornered and angry. OH promised me that if his brothers come over here, he will find them work and accommodation and it will not impact on me. The goalposts have in fact, as you know, changed incessantly and I still don't see any way that DBrother is going to move on from a very basic and scarcely-managing hand-to-mouth existence without speaking the language. He got a day's work last week back on the site OH had found him some work on before Christmas and having hailed a taxi in the street he had to call OH at work to speak to the taxi driver and explain where he needed to go. For crying out loud!

He would also have had work today, but having texted the foreman for DBrother last night, OH did not notice the text sent in reply at 6.30 this morning saying that yes, he wanted DBrother there today. Having been sent home from his own job because the site was too snowy to work on, I then noticed this text on OH's phone at about 11am. OH called DBrother to tell him but he lies in 'til midday and did not therefore answer the phone, so OH went off to wake him up and drive him to work. Because it is too icy to cycle and DBrother has punctured one of the bicycle tyres anyway. They came back two hours later because they hadn't been able to find the site manager, and DBrother wasn't sure what he wanted him to do on the site. Finish what he had started the week before, I would have presumed, but... What a load of boring drivel! But you get the gist - it's like dealing with Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee. How long should we be prepared to cope with this for?

When I heard that Khan wants DBrother out I immediately pursued a message on our local email group that said a woman nearby has a room available for a month from the end of Jan. It would cost £270, a bit cheaper than Khan's. And presumably has a cleaner kitchen that DBrother might actually be prepared to use so that he can stop eating at the church/IKEA. She is then having her house converted into two flats but could keep him on for an extra couple of months at a reduced rate, if he's prepared to rough it a bit. I have said that I think he would be, and that he has skills she may be able to make use of in exchange.

There is a chance that I could pursuade Khan to keep DBrother on til the end of the month. And if DBrother gets some days work here and there he might have £270 by the start of Feb. But what if he doesn't have the money? We sure as hell don't. Would it be completely wrong of me to refuse to have him here? What choice will I have, where else will he go?

Believe me, I don't want to be ungenerous or unkind and have been asking myself repeatedly if I could cope with the scenario of him living with us for a limited period of time. When I asked OH how long he would need to be here, he said 'while he gets on his feet'. I said that I needed a time limit and he said 'maybe two months'. Am I a complete and utter bitch for knowing I do not have the will or the temperament to cope with this? Reasons I feel I cannot include:

*How long would limited be? OH plucked this time-scale out of thin air. If he has no work in two months' time, what would happen next?
*I know there is no point trying to agree goal posts.
*How would I get him out when I had had enough? Which may be less than two months anyway.
*We would have no privacy
*He would have our bedroom
*His would be another bottom needing to use our toilet
*He'd be cooking and watching Jeremy Kyle all day, as before, when not working
*He'd be in the sitting room all evening lying on the sofa as before with smelly feet and expecting to watch the football and horror films
*I would have no personal space whatsoever
*It's the wrong time of year to start turning the house into a building site and I just can't cope with the thought, I am DIY-ed out from years of OH balls'-ups
*All it would do would perpetuate his staying in the UK in a situation that is not likely to improve for him until he either finds a girlfriend or learns enough English to be able to take on a proper job
*I don't like him
*I do not feel comfortable around him.
*I hate losing and I said I would never have him back here again. Gah. Gah. Gah.

Reasons that I should say yes include:
*It would make OH happy (I say 'happy' - he has in fact confessed to me that he would pay his brother to go back to Athens but he wants the decision to be his, not ours)
*It is the right thing to do

Oh my life. All the above aside, his thick-skinned determination/desperation is causing us a whole load of stress that we don't need. And while on the one hand yes, he is desperate, on the other I think I would be moved by all this if he wasn't also an unrealistic and fairly choosy so-and-so who instead of saving his money or re-pay us, chose to nip back to Athens for a holiday last month. Where he has yet to sell his BMW motorbike. Although that is of course none of my business.

How do I cut through this crap and decide what the right thing is to do?

Resurrections and resolutions

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?!

In which Mr Khan throws the brothers out

Oh dear, I am feeling quite tired and world-weary. This post isn't going to be the catalogue of excitement the title has led you to expect, I'm afraid. I am definitely lacking in joy and enthusiasm. The high point of my weekend was watching the first half of the newish Ultimate Avengers film (or whatever it's called - and heck is it a tedious watch - I had to turn it off because I just didn't care how it was going to end) and trying to decide which one of them I 'would' if I had to. Iron Man? Lovely eyes, nice physique and great intellect plus sense of humour but self-obsessed or Thor, because he's simply 'manly' and there isn't anything metaphorical to have to grapple with. I didn't come to a decision but it was verging on Iron Man because from some perspectives he would be a lovely novelty.

The low point of my weekend in case you're interested, was lifting the blind of my street-side kitchen window at half past two on Sunday morning and asking the skate-boarders who were filming themselves crashing into our gable wall (yes, you read that right) to bugger off.

The medium point, while we're at it, was deciding to decimate the ancient grape vine that has grown with such strength and rapidity over the last few years that it has obliterated all sunlight from the rear downstairs of our house, while OH took the kids out. It was one heck of a job. And I did a really naughty thing, which was to gather up all the vines, leaves etc and stuff them over our garden fence, leaving them to rot in our horrible next-door neighbour's garden. This isn't as bad as it sounds as they rent their house and do not use the garden, which is completely overgrown, to the tune of ten-foot high vegetation. I am sure they never even open their back door so this is unlikely to cause them concern and it saved me lugging the stuff to the recycling centre. But if I had any sense I would notice that an innate tendency I have to take risks, which I tend to suppress, is rearing its head.

Despite the determined tone on which I ended my last blog post, I have now booked OBrother a ticket home for the end of November. I was told he had changed his mind and that he will come back again in January, but when I saw him today - we were forced to communicate because they needed my help at the bank - he said, 'I told you I'd go if I didn't find any work.' Tempted as I was to respond, 'No, you didn't, and anyway I told you not to come because you won't find any,' I kept my mouth shut. I presume he feels this is a definitive signal that he is off, but I'm pretty sure I can't trust OH not to keep inviting them back again next year. (OBrother then started to show me bits of paper he'd printed off at the job centre this morning but I couldn't face looking at them with him. And wasn't sure why he's still looking for work if he's going and don't want to ask what will happen if he finds another few days' work somewhere - might he change his mind and stay?) It turns out he has now argued with OH about why I have booked him two items of luggage for the journey back, despite the fact that they spent literally hundreds of Euros on excess luggage at the airport in Athens and getting boxes of stuff shipped here after that. Fifteen quid per item seems like a bargain by comparison. And if you think there was subliminal suggestion going on, on my part, that he doesn't leave anything here when he goes, I hold my hands up to it. He also agreed, today, to me booking him a coach ticket to the airport, as his flight leaves at 8am on a weekday and this would cost a lot less that OH driving him there at an awful time, ahead of a working day. But OH angrily informed me this evening that if I can't change OBrother's ticket to a Saturday for him, he will be driving his brother there through the night. Insane - OH picked the day and flight himself! I guess I need to be prepared for him exhibiting more and more extreme, irrational and protective behaviour as the likelihood of his brothers going increases.

Back to today and I had asked OH to tell the brothers to meet me outside the bank at 2.15, before I went to get Babe2 from pre-school, but they hadn't listened and had gone there immediately. After waiting there for twenty minutes or so they came to hammer on my front door to find out where I was. I was in the middle of completing and organising all the required paperwork - proving that they live at our address is tricky, but I'd had a meeting with the bank manager this morning and think we'd got around it - and not very pleased to be disturbed early as it meant an entire precious day of me-time was lost between trips back and forth between school, pre-school and Lloyds TSB, because of inconvenient timings. If you're wondering why I had relented and was filling in the paperwork, it is because OH was reaching the point of desperation trying to do it himself, and get clear answers from the bank regarding the paperwork required (six visits, oh how I wish I could have been a fly on the wall and overheard the conversations) and was threatening to take a day off to sort it out, which is something we can't afford for him to do.

DBrother glowered through the process, or at least that's how it felt to me, but perhaps he was feeling embarrassed at once again being beholden to me against his will. I hope that's the last time I have to help someone who is not talking to me apply for a bank account. It must have looked suspicious to the cashier. I suppose I could have cleared the air by expressing forgiveness and offering an apology but I am red hot angry (perhaps I should watch that 'red hot' actually) at his ongoing determination to stay here against the odds. I don't think he will dare turn up at ours to live if he can't pay for the rent - surely not? - but who will end up funding his trip home? Who knows.

In fact I am continuing this blog post after a heart-stopping couple of hours. The brothers arrived on the doorstep after OH got home, apparently claiming that Mr Khan was kicking them out. Something to do with them complaining about the electricity going off during the day, but I suspect he has the hump at them cooking in the bedroom. OH went round to sort it out and I presume everything is now ok, but I was really stressing! Afraid that they would be turning up this evening with all their clobber to spend the next few weeks here. Imagine how much worse that would be than it was before, with one not speaking to me and the other being civil to my face but going at me me behind my back! Surely their dealings with Mr Khan demonstrate the tenuous thread on which they are existing here?

Which, despite the mean stuff I'm saying and the bitchy tone - you don't need to tell me that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit - is the crux of the issue. I KNOW that the brothers have no long-term future here. For so many reasons. That isn't an unkind, superior and unduly negative 'I know', it is an 'I know' that is born from a realistic and open outlook. It is an 'I know' that I communicated to them before they came, and an 'I know' that OH refused to listen to. It is an 'I know' that he trampled on, knowing what having them here might do to me, a lover of my own space and a person who lacks patience and tolerance in the face of unrealistic and un-strategic thinking:

OH spent some time with us this weekend, but not as much as I would have liked him to. He can't let the brothers just get on with stuff without getting involved himself - they have been doing some work for a friend - and it drives me nuts. He disappeared at 9am on Saturday, to take them to the bank. Then spent ages in the roof looking for tools for them, then came with us to the supermarket, and then disappeared again. (Our roof is leaking and our downstairs toilet remains unflushable.) Last evening he did not bother getting back in time to eat with us, despite having agreed the time and I'd done his favourite. (Roast lamb - what else?) There have been lots of covert phone calls, early in the morning and late at night, but if I pick up the phone it goes dead, so I have taken to picking up the receiver and saying 'Who the hell is it?' in Greek. I don't know. I feel undermined and set against. And suspect it is going to get worse, while the brothers decide what they are going to do, rather than better. I think OH will wriggle all he can to avoid coming out of this looking unreasonable himself.

Could I come up with a plan that would get us all back on side? Just while I plan when to cut and run, of course.