Out of the blue, my wife looks at me seriously. “I know you think you’re worthless,” she says sternly, “but you’re wrong. YOU’RE WRONG.” I’m taken aback. Is she a mindreader now, scanning my innermost thoughts? The trouble is, I know my own self better than anyone, both the hidden and the known, the inner …
On our way back from tuition on the eve of his mocks, our lad declares, “I don’t need GCSES. I’m getting an iPhone anyway.” The promise of a shiny smartphone was supposed to serve as motivation, to give him something to aim for. This worked for his sister, as the promise of a HiFi or …
Climbing into the car, my kids castigate me: “You are so socially unaware!” I’m being told off for chatting with a West Indian chap in the doorway of the grocers, while collecting the shopping. “They were shoplifters,” my daughter growls at me. “And how would I know that?” I ask, “He said he hadn’t seen …
I’m the kind of person who tries to make everybody happy, and ends up upsetting everyone.
It seems that we’ve completely failed to articulate what it is that we believe, and why.
It’s true: we cannot be fair, caught in the middle of these sibling rivalries. If we try to encourage one of them, we are unfair to the other. If we tell one off, we are unfair again. On and on it goes. He said, she said. She did, he did. If that was me… Yes, …
“Careful or he’ll be after you.” Erm, well, not really. I wasn’t after anybody. True, there was somebody I liked, though they’d never know it because I kept that to myself. Yes, these are my gardening ruminations. The delayed reaction to events long gone, forced to the forefront of my mind by the monotony of …
It’s amusing to think what a quiet life I could have had when I was my daughter’s age, if only I had understood what my best mate was on. True, I would still have had to contend with reactions to my nerdy face and form, forever a source of derision. That was inescapable. But had …
Time definitely compresses as we age. My youth looms as an epoch in my mind, still occupying me all these years on. Recent decades, by contrast, just feel like minutes and days. Between us, we share recollections of those early days of marriage in west London, returning often as if it was the neighbourhood which …
I think I must just accept that I have a personality that invites others to be extraordinarily rude to me for no apparent reason. No, it’s worse than that. This rudeness follows an act of kindness, after I’ve gone out of my way to serve them. It seems I exude the notion that I’m unworthy …
It’s our fault, for settling so far away from our families. We could have stayed Up North, I suppose, to have grandparents near at hand. But then, they too moved to the South West in recent years, near to my sister. A few years back, my parents would take the children for a couple of …
All night long, my heart pounds in my chest, nausea pulsating through my veins. The monitor has already revealed we both have very high blood pressure. We believe it’s stress-induced. All night long, I lay awake, watchful of my beloved’s breathing, intervening whenever it seems her dreams may take her back to those moments of …
You know it’s bad when we say to one another, “If anything happens to me, carry on with your life…” That was with palpitations racing through our chest, shocked by the violent rage that exploded from nowhere. It’s hard to deal with the insults, abuse, and threats that nowadays cascade into our lives, obliterating any …
I sound bitter towards everyone. But, really, I’m bitter with myself. This is me reaping what I sowed.
