I had my daughters over on Friday night. I had been asked to deliver them home earlier than usual (whatever that is) on the Saturday. This I did, to the minute, finding my ex wasn’t home when I dropped them off, one of her favourite tricks. I left a withering, but nonetheless polite message on her voicemail, but felt bad about it afterwards. She was only a few minutes late and in a spirit of fairness (damn my sense of fair-play!) I called her up within minutes to apologise.
Friday evening I took them to our favourite shop, Selfridges. We don’t shop like we used to. In the old days it was parking the S-class Merc in the car park for hours on end whilst we dined, shopped, preened and strutted around the whole of the shop. The days when I had my boots polished there and bought a box of cigars to round off a perfectly satisfying day.
I’m so glad I got poor for a while, it was a fantastic lesson. My kids benefited too and they will probably remember both periods with affection. My keenest hope is that they learn to put things into their proper perspective and live according to some balanced code. Insha’Allah.
While we were window-shopping (though I did buy a couple of cigars, not Cuban alas, but they were called Rocky Patel, so how could I resist?) I asked the girls when half-term was. They told me that it was now half-term. Poor things looked crest-fallen, but I tried to make the best of it, and so did my sensitive eldest.
I know their mum has told them not to tell me, they know that I know, so we just dance, skirting around the danger zone and not talking about it later, to clumsily paraphrase Suzanne Vega.
Once again, I have been denied the courtesy of sufficient notice to arrange any leave.
My ex uses the standard divorcee shit - and I’m sure she will when some feminist Nazi wants to get her side of the story (her side was spread so far and wide, the fucking planet must have looked like a slice of bread to her with a micron-thin-layer of I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-bullshit all over). Ah - the line she uses “He never wanted to see them anyway”
It’s always the same. Play the games to deny my daughters a father, lie and fabricate and mix in with just enough truth so that people might not waste the effort to peer behind the facade and everybody does believe that fathers are living it up while the mum is left carrying the baby(ies). Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.
Of course fathers get angry. Don’t mothers? They say a father’s anger is worse. Bullshit.
Someone who used to be a friend in the most unusual set of circumstances (I could never be sure, it’s too complicated, so let’s move on, swiftly) once told me something interesting. He told me to look at the men who had been brought up by women alone to see what they become. I looked and it wasn’t pretty.
Kids need a father.
Last night I watched Ocean’s 12. Don’t bother. It’s crap. It had the standard “daughter re-united with estranged father after a couple of decades believing him to be dead” scene. What a criminal waste. Who engineered the estrangement? Why the mother of course.
You hear about the odd story where dads “kidnap” their kids and take them abroad. When a fucking woman does it, do they call it kidnap? Do they fuck! People fall for the “he was the violent type” line. Yes, sometimes he is. More often than you might believe, it’s a deception. A facade.
A mother can be as cruel as a father - sometimes worse.
There are some things I could write about my ex that would be too horrible to believe, but I don’t know who’s reading.
All I know is that my children love me and want to spend time with me over half-term, but they can’t because of their mother. One day their mother will say “do you remember all those holidays your father couldn’t bother to spend with you?” and you know what? They will be too brainwashed to say anything back. Unless….
