You have the right to be economical with the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth

Boychild returned last weekend from a week at a PGL (Parents Get Lost) summer camp. This was a gift from Grumpy who expressed concern that me allowing him to play unfettered on the xbox, mostly virtually shooting zombies, will result in him wiping out a future cinema audience with a sub-machine gun. There are no shades of grey, and certainly not fifty, where my father is concerned. I had no difficulty accepting the gift since it meant a week free of three squabbling, bored children, that Jack would undoubtedly love it, and I am a self-confessed bad parent. It was rather amusing when asked by Grumpy which activity he enjoyed most: air rifle shooting. My father paid hard unearned pension income training the Boychild to learn to use a real shooter, and providing him with the knowledge to make his massacre prediction more likely. And now, instead of incessantly pestering me for the latest xbox game he wants his very own air rifle. Game, set and matchlock to Jack.

I was late delivering the would-be shooter to camp on account of a two hour wait in A & E to have a cut in the Boychild’s pinky glued. He had found Frank’s Swiss Army knife, and unbeknown to me was playing with it in the back of the car. When I pulled over and couldn’t avoid the fact that the seat looked like a crime scene, then realised that it was a crime scene on account of Jack being in possession, not only of the age of criminal responsibility but simultaneously a bladed article, I began my sermon on economics and the truth. Repeat after me – the accident happened in the privacy of our home… Whilst writing it occurs to me that a private motor vehicle may be deemed a private place, but I wasn’t about to google Archibold for case law.

Evil Twin told Jack not to mess up. Angelic Twin’s jaw dropped. The next sermon was that it’s ok to lie to anyone in a uniform, especially traffic wardens. It doesn’t count. End of. Well unless you count Judge’s robes a uniform because I would never ever lie to the Court, and every rules has to have an exception. That’s a rule in itself.  The first question from the nurse was, where did this happen. Jack replied, on my mum’s seat, which technically wasn’t a lie since I do own the bloodied car seat he was sitting on at the time. It is refreshing, yet rare when my roles of badmother and lawyer coincide.

Venturing Forth

Several living, breathing, thinking people have encouraged me to try to get this blog published, and I’m starting to accept it as a possibility, and not just friends being kind. This has led to a kind of performance anxiety. I’ve started making notes – I have a proper little writer’s notebook with me at all hours of night and day. I might even proof read. It’s a pity that it’s not that simple.

Frank was not the sort of person that was phased by anything. In the early days of my career I would feverishly prepare every time I was in court, even if it was for a two minute bail application. This amused Frank because he seemed to get an adrenaline rush appearing before a High Court Judge after a mere squint at the papers. There was one moment however when he admitted that he was capable of experiencing anxiety. While wedding planning and discussing the future we agreed that we did want to bring new life onto the planet. He made me promise not to tell him when I stopped taking contraceptives because he feared, if he knew he was engaging in baby making activity it might adversely affect his performance. You get the gist n’est pas? Since I’m really crap at keeping my own secrets (I promise I’m ferociously protective of other peoples) I had to stop taking the pill immediately. Hence the Twinset’s premature arrival on more than one level.

What everyone knows about writing is you should write about what you know. The most pertinent subject for me just now is learning to live without Frank, and hopefully guiding the kidlets to adjust to life with a single parent. I’m going to briefly digress here and mention how fucking teeth-clenchingly irritating it is to hear mostly right wing pundits bang on about the carnage that is brought forth from fatherless families. Some of us don’t have a choice. In any event, a friend recently suggested that I should write about grief. Here goes…

During my twenty year relationship with Frank we got to know each other pretty well. It reached a point that we could often predict what the other was about to utter. This is no doubt very common. It was a huge comfort to me in the first six months or so after Frank died that I would instinctively know what he would have thought or felt about a news item, bit of gossip or world changing event. He would have been completely indifferent to the latest royal birth, unsurprised by the ongoing “revelations” about Catholic paedophilia, and really very angry indeed about the proposed changes to legal aid. My confidence in knowing what Frank would have said or thought is now starting to dwindle, and I’m not sure that I like it.

 I’m going to attempt an analogy (I’ve had two glasses of rather nice Chabis so please forgive me if it falls flat). Grief is like giving up smoking. For anyone that has done that – I will  do but  don’t want anyone to see of me as a quitter just now – I believe that you will recognise that it is impossible to stop thinking about it. I’ve never stopped long enough to evolve from this stage. After a couple of weeks I have a smoke and then comes the unadulterated relief, mostly that I don’t need to think about it every minute of every day. I’m sure that if I find the fortitude to persevere without tobacco in my life this might happen.

I used to feel sad at the moments Frank missed. Sports Personality of the Year was his most favourite show of the year. He would predict, wrongly generally, the winners, and we would bet on it. The loser had to clean the winner’s car. This never happened on account of some technicality. I couldn’t watch the programme last year and don’t know whether his predictions would have led to a myriad of rule bending that meant he won, or I would have been extracting crisp wrappers and children’s socks from his Saab.

As I said in an earlier post I think about Frank, and the day he died every day. I want the image of finding him dead to go away, but I have drawn great comfort from the memories of our time together, whether it’s from questioning of the little darlings, passing a place that evokes a sweet memory, or wondering what Frank would have thought about something, and rehearsing an imaginary conversation in my mind. Where the analogy ends is that when I’ve forsaken the evil weed I’ve implored the day that I don’t think about it to materialise. I fear the first day that I don’t have a thought about Frank. It’s in the post I know. If it has to be signed for I’ll be sitting on the bottom step refusing to open the door.