It’s Saturday afternoon.  My boyfriend has gone to watch the football and is heading off to the pub afterwards with his mates.  I give my best friend a call and we head out for the afternoon.  We go to the cinema and stop in a bar for a few drinks afterwards.  We both catch up on some gossip, have a whinge about the minor imperfections of our partners, have a few more drinks and return to my house to settle down to a DVD box set.  Curled up on the sofa we can watch the DVD in comfortable silence, occasionally teasing each other or throwing a compliment each other’s way in a mutual ego stroking exercise.  The evening ends, a quick hug to say goodbye and my best friend potters off home.  Later on we text each other to say what a nice day we’ve had and arrange to finish watching the DVD box set one evening next week.

Now the scenario above is probably pretty typical for two girls.  But imagine if my best friend was a boy.  A heterosexual boy.  Doesn’t seem quite so normal now does it?

And therein lies my point.  Boys and girls cannot be best friends, unless one or both of them are gay.  Two girls going out for drinks and going back home together is a girly day out.  A girl and boy doing the same is, well, essentially a date.

Now I’m not saying that girls and boys can’t have friends of the opposite sex, but by laws of being human the relationship is entirely different.  I call my male friends my “mates” and I tend to only see them in group situations; not because I like them any less than my female friends, but because their interests and topics of conversation on a one-on-one basis tend not to be the things I’m interested in.  Men think differently to women, they generally like to chat less and while they can be great company on a night out in a group I think there are very solid reasons why men tend to have a group of male friends and girls tend to have a group of girl friends.  You just tend to have more in common with someone of the same sex.

I’m a modern woman and I don’t believe in the old social conventions of male roles and female roles within society, but I believe there are some very sound reasons girls and boys cannot be best friends. 

Perhaps it’s the media that has perpetrated this status quo.  How many films and TV programs are there where the girl and boy best friends suddenly realise that their feelings run deeper and they end up getting together at the end? 

Think about it.  Ross and Rachel get together at the end of Friends after years of being on and off and a series of will they or won’t they?  In between being together, breaking up and finally getting together again, Rachel goes out with Joey for a bit.  In the mean time Chandler and Monica get married.  Dawson’s Creek, another angsty teen program made their entire plot line about Joey, Pacey and Dawson and who would get together with who.  Okay, Dawson and Joey don’t eventually end up together but their relationship definitely went a little further than best friends on several occasions!  Other examples like My Best Friends Wedding, Made of Honour, Valentines Day and Human Traffic see the unrequited and (usually) eventually requited love between boy and girl best friends.

Fine, so all of those examples are fictional but from my experience of real life I’ve never known a boy/girl best friendship end in a healthy way.

On a more practical note, imagine if one of a boy/girl best friendship finds a partner.  What happens then?  It would only be natural for the new girlfriend of the boy to be a little threatened by the girl best friend and vice versa.  Hell, I get annoyed when my boyfriend spends too much time with his male friends at the pub.  Imagine how I’d feel if all this time out was with another woman?  Without wanting to sound like a bunny boiler I’d be pretty pissed off if my boyfriend was sacrificing his time with me to spend time with another woman.

What irks me most about the whole boy/girl best friend scenario is what it says about how they feel about each other.  If you really think about it, what’s being expressed is ”Yes we have chemistry, I feel comfortable enough to share my inner most thoughts with you, but I don’t fancy you enough to have sex with you”.  Nice.

Every boy/girl best friendship I have ever known in real life has resulted in one expressing their love to the other and them either getting together or ruining the friendship forever.  Or if one of them finds a partner while they’re still best friends then the dysfunction train sets off at full speed with Ultimatum Town being the final destination.

In my opinion, no good can come from having a best friend of the opposite sex.  It will lead to heart ache, jealousy and unbearable awkwardness. 

And if you’re reading this and thinking “What does she know?  It’s totally different with me and my best friend.” I request you to think long and hard about why that person is your best friend.  Ultimately either one of, or both of you are kidding yourselves.

So why don’t we just get married then you may ask?  You wouldn’t be alone in asking it, many people do.  My honest answer is that I just don’t think that the actual trappings of marriage are the right thing for our relationship.  And I know, cue the cries of

“But you can make a marriage what you want it to be…”

“You can write your own vows…”

“It’s an opportunity to show your friends and family how much you love each other…”

Blah

Blah

Blah

My problem with all of that is that you’re still voluntarily taking part in a custom that used to involve women being perceived as objects.  I don’t want to be owned by anybody.  I certainly don’t want to be given away either!  Over the centuries it also has significant religious connotations that just don’t sit well with my Atheist self.  And yes, I know that nowadays the institute of marriage seems to be a bit more open-minded about who is allowed to do it, when, where and how, but it still seems to me to be a little like trying to fit a Lucy shaped peg into a marriage shaped hole.

So I have a solution.  Instead of trying to shoe-horn your own interpretation of marriage into a centuries old tradition that is governed by oodles of law, why not just invent a new sort of commitment?  After all, don’t many co-habiting couples share the same rights as those that are married?  Isn’t a contract merely a legally binding agreement between parties?  Why not buy into my new legal status for those couples who love each other but not the idea of a traditional marriage? 

Here we go then…

There would be a relationship contract that the two partners agree upon.  This will not only lay out all of the legal stuff that marriage does like who owns what, gets what when someone dies and does what when someone’s ill; it will also stipulate expected behaviours of both partners.  I’m aware that all of this sounds a bit clinical and unromantic, but hear me out.  I would like my relationship contract to include things such as:

In all of their actions, both partners will think about the other partner’s feelings, how their actions may effect the other partner and the potential hurt that could be caused by acting unkindly.

Both partners agree that they will pay £x amount into the joint account on the 1^st of each calendar month to cover living expenses.

Neither partner can withdraw money from the joint account for personal use without the other partner’s approval.

Both partners are responsible for their own personal debts.

Both partners will maintain their own personal bank accounts for personal expenses and trivialities.

Neither partner will assume that anything the other partner owns is automatically theirs, however, there is an expectation that neither partner would mind the other borrowing their possessions with approval.  Both partners have the right to refuse to lend the other partners their possessions.

Both partners will make their best endeavours to ensure that they are free on the day of their partner’s birthday and for other significant family events.

Both partners will agree upon a housework rota and use their best endeavours to maintain it.

Both partners agree that time away from each other is healthy.  However, this time away should neither be excessive, detrimental financially to the couple or non-consensual.

If either partner is going out for the evening then they must let the other partner know when they are likely to return home so as not to cause unnecessary worry or hurt.  If the time of arrival at home is likely to change then the partners should inform each other of this by text message or phone call at least one hour before their expected arrival has passed.

I could go on but you get the gist.  I reckon that this could extend to all of the other minor arguments that occur in a relationship such as cooking, childcare, who to spend Christmas with etc etc..  It could even go as far as what to do in terms of having children, who would be the primary care giver and what you would take as a course of action if you can’t conceive naturally.  You could even cover what to do if you hit a rocky patch.

It might seem a little bit like a business partnership agreement, but isn’t that essentially what a relationship is?  Shouldn’t the ground rules of the relationship be laid out in black and white and reviewed every five years to keep them relevant?  Alright, it’s not the most romantic thing in the world, but you could always have a nice big party to celebrate how very down-to-earth and realistic you are as a couple.  I even think it would be kind of fun to circulate copies of the agreement to your party guests so that they can see how your relationship functions.  It’s all well and good agreeing to have and to hold, but shouldn’t we all be working out who does the hoovering too?

So, all I need to do now is find a way to get this to work from a taxation and inheritance point of view and to give this relationship agreement its own formal legal status.  Should be easy, right?!

I don’t believe in marriage and I don’t believe that you can promise to love someone forever, but I do believe that you can promise to give your relationship the best shot that you can.

Now, what should I call it……?

Over the last week I’ve watched two films that deal with the relationship between sisters.  The first was “Rachel Getting Married” starring Anne Hathaway and the other was “28 Days” with Sandra Bullock.   They both got me thinking about my relationship with my own sister.  Actually to be more accurate, the lack of relationship with my sister. 

I find this a very difficult topic to talk about.  Many of my friends have brilliant relationships with their sisters and I am green with envy that they can go shopping together, go out for a drink, go to a concert, hang out with mutual friends or even just chat on the phone, with their sisters.  I can’t seem to be able to be in the same room as mine without both of us regressing to our pre-teen behavioural patterns.

This isn’t a new occurrence.  If I’m perfectly honest we’ve never got on very well.  We are just incredibly different people.  For every ounce of me that wanted to conform and please my parents, she wanted to kick against that conformity and expectation.  For every bit of me that embraced academia and old-fashioned work ethic, she pushed towards alternative expression and rebellion.

I admit that I must have been a nightmare of an older sister to have.  I don’t want to sound like I’m blowing my own trumpet but there are parts of life that I’m willing to admit that I’ve found quite easy.  I’ve been incredibly fortunate that I’m naturally academic and love to learn in the traditional way that the schools taught us.  I was also quite sporty and did well at activities like dancing and gymnastics.  If that was compared to my sister who perhaps didn’t take quite so well to traditional teaching methods and wasn’t really into sports, I can imagine that she may have been a little resentful. 

However, for every thing I excelled at that my sister didn’t, there was an equal and opposite in her favour.  I suck at art. Hard. Even my stick men somehow manage to look abstract.  My sister is a brilliantly talented artist and was constantly being asked to produce art work for festivals and school events.  In all honesty, I think that if I’d offered to do something similar I’d have been paid to stay away.  She also managed to be popular.  I was never popular; I was far too geeky and my hair was never the right sort to have that coveted “Rachel” hair do.  In fact, I looked a lot like Lesley Joseph in Birds of a Feather.

Are those differences in character enough to ensure that we never got on well together?  I’m no psychologist but I wouldn’t have thought so.  There must be plenty of siblings out there with different interests and abilities who get on well. 

I think that it’s our position within our family that has accentuated our differences. 

I think that me being the older sister somehow destroyed our relationship.

I think that I hate being the older sister…

….and I know that nothing will change the fact that I’m the eldest….

I remember my sister being ill a lot.  As a child she had to wear an eye patch to correct her vision for a while, as well as glasses.  I remember her having febrile convulsions as a child.  She broke her arm twice before she was 10 years old and she always, always, had grazed knees. When she was 16 she was diagnosed with depression and I was further alienated from understanding how she ticked.  That sounds very selfish, after all, depression is a serious business, but the selfish part of me that longed for a normal relationship felt like this was yet another hurdle on the rocky path that was us.

I remember when we went outside to play with our friends that I was asked to look after her.  I assume that it’s natural for an older sibling to be asked that, but did I start to resent it and subsequently her?  If I’m totally honest, yes.  I resented being held accountable when she got into trouble or fell over or ripped her dress.  I resented being called out of my class in junior school to sit with her in infants while we waited for an adult to pick her up when she was poorly after an inoculation.  I resented having to look after her.  My childish mind thought “It’s not fair, who’s going to look after me?”.  But I’m sure she resented me for doing it even more.  Most of all, I resented being the oldest and all the things that went with it; the higher expectations, the need to set a precedent and the stricter parenting.  I resented myself for always rising to the occasion and being the “big girl”, the “big sister”, the “grown up”.  Why didn’t I just act out like my younger sister did?  Wouldn’t that have lessened the burden on me?  Possibly.  But I was a child and didn’t have the maturity to articulate the very grown up thoughts I had.  So I just did what I was told.

Of course, my complaints are not that uncommon.  A very quick Google search reveals that lots of people feel the same way as me about being an older sister.  We all seem to identify with the fact that much more responsibility was placed on us at a younger age, that we had to exhibit model behaviour as an example to the younger one, that we had to be the responsible one.  In fact, it seems a common theme that many older siblings feel like we skipped our childhood years and matured into a responsible adult before we were even a teen while the younger siblings have got away with never growing up.

What makes me sad is that many of these stories also talk about their sisters as now being their friends.  They talk about how as children, they fought like cat and dog, but now, they are best friends.  Or just friends even.   Or that they are at least capable of tolerating each other.  I can’t say that and it breaks my heart and I don’t really know why.  Apart from the fact that we shared our parents and home for a few years, is there any real reason that we have to get along?  That we have to love each other?  That we have to even like each other?  Isn’t that just what we’re brought up to believe?  Is blood really thicker than water or is it more realistic to go along with the philosophy that you can choose your friends but not your family?

I’ve had to make my peace with the fact that we simply don’t get along.  I’ve rationalised it by telling myself that if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re related, we probably wouldn’t know each other.  We don’t have any mutual friends, we live in different cities and our chosen paths are so different that, chances are, they’d never cross.  I have to rationalise it otherwise I couldn’t cope with the feelings of guilt and failure over my relationship with my younger sister.

Despite this, when I hear people talking about their sisters being their maid of honour, best friend, or about meeting them for lunch and a good chat, I feel deeply, deeply sad. 

I mourn for the relationship that circumstance, nature and nurture robbed us of.

Having dealt with the first two questions with a resounding “It’s not for us” our attention has turned to that third pressing question…. 

Just how would our relationship survive a Zombie Apocalypse?

It might seem like an odd question seeing that we have managed to survive both each other and each other’s families, but it is one that is vitally important.  I mean, despite the fact we’ve shunned the idea of marriage and kids for now, one day in the future it might be left to us and a band of plucky survivors to re-populate the earth with humans, and if you haven’t had “the chat” then how the hell would you know what to expect from each other?

Here’s the thing.  As much as I love Ben, I’m really not sure he’s cut out for life during a Zombie Apocalypse.  It’s not that he’s not manly and strong (swoon), and he’s an electrician so pretty handy with a tool belt (f’nar f’nar) but there are certain personality traits that I think you need to survive the onslaught of the lumbering undead and quite frankly, I’m not sure he has them.

I’ve done some research on the topic, (Yes, I have actually Googled “How to survive a Zombie Apocalypse”) and there are definite qualities that I think you’d need to survive.

1) Resourcefulness. When the undead come crashing through your streets, devouring your pets and neighbours you’d need to be able to pack a bag with the essentials and leg it.  This is Ben’s first problem.  I’ve been with the man almost 9 years and every time we’ve gone away on holiday he’s forgotten something vital, like pants (I know men don’t regard those as being as vital as women do but still…), his mobile phone, swimwear or his passport.  Now obviously there is a vast difference between spending a fortnight on a beach somewhere and dealing with the zombified masses, but I fear that should he be in charge of packing a bag of essentials we’d end up with an ipod sans charger, some chewing gum, a cordless drill (again sans charger) and some conkers. It’s safe to say his packing abilities don’t fill me with confidence that he’d pack appropriately in running from the end of humanity.

2. Focus. I reckon it’s pretty important to have the ability to focus on the task at hand when escaping brain-hungry ex-humans.  I’d need to be sure that my accomplice could be trusted to perform essential tasks like board up all the windows in our hide out.  With Ben I’d worry that I’d return from foraging for tinned goods to find that instead of boarding up the windows, he’d fashioned a makeshift sledge from the planks and would find him gleefully sliding down the stairs.

3. Being quiet.  Silence must surely be golden when you’re hiding from creatures that want to eat your gizzards.  Ben simply cannot stay quiet. Not ever.  I can’t read a book with him around because he gets bored and starts singing songs at me.  It’s charming right now, but in the event of hiding from the walking dead I may be forced to crush his vocal chords for my own safety.

4. Ruthlessness.  I’d imagine that a ruthless streak would serve you well in a Zombie Apocalypse.  You can’t be sentimental about Mrs Jones from up the road if she’s trying to eat you.  Yes, she might have had a hard year and baked you those lovely cookies last week, but the fact that she’s trying to have you for lunch means she deserves a short sharp bullet to the head.  I suspect that Ben would try to rationalise the situation with her, or tell her a joke rather than dispatching with the doddering zombie and thus ensuring our survival.  The same would go for animals.  Ben’s an animal lover and can’t stand to see them hurt and probably couldn’t bring himself to kill a goat, zombified or otherwise.  Personally I’d recant my years of vegetarianism if I was being set upon by a herd of zombie livestock but I’m not sure that Ben could do the same.

5. Choosing the right hiding place. When we had this discussion my first instinct was to go for a large supermarket, or perhaps some sort of hardware store with lots of gardening stuff that could be used as weapons.  Ben’s answer? KFC in Solihul. Why? “Because they’d never think to look for you there”. Enough said really.

So, I’ve come to the conclusion that our relationship will probably be fine until the day that the Zombie Apocalypse comes.  At that point I may be forced to evaluate where the relationship is really going….

That brings me to my point.  I’m good at travel – I always pack light (mainly pants and shoes) and my makeup routine is such that I have narrowed my two “looks”, day and night, to about 6 essential items.  I am truly a modern woman of the world, please applaud me! 

I like to congratulate myself on how modern and well-travelled I am.  Not in a conceited way – I love to travel, to see different countries, eat different food, learn about 10 words of a foreign language and then instantly forget them again when I reach duty-free.  I make a concerted effort not be overtly British; I don’t huff when I can’t understand accents, or speak loudly in English as a substitute for the 10 words of basic vocab I have learned to say.  But wherever I am that isn’t home I feel gawky and awkward.  No one else gets my jokes and my British sarcasm seems lost on the rest of the world. Yep, recently I’m appreciating more and more the joy of simply being at home.

I’ll never stop enjoying the feeling of going to a new place, the strange smells, the funny food, the hotel toiletries….but one of the best bits of being away is appreciating coming home again.

I noticed this feeling starting about a year ago.  In times gone by, come Friday night, I’d be the first one to dash home for a spritz of perfume, extra eyeliner and a cab to the nearest bar.  Then the following morning it would be off out of the house again to locate breakfast somewhere greasy and calorific.  Until recently, being at home was, well, a bit boring.

Then I had an epiphany.  Being at home is actually pretty great.  Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older and more boring but I do just like to sit around at home.  There are walls and windows that keep all the cold and precipitation out.  All my stuff is here, in the places where I put it.  I don’t have to put on makeup, or even clothes for that matter, unless I choose to do so.  Marvellous.

Why hadn’t I realised this before?  Why was it that every time I had a week, or a day, or an hour off work that I tried to scuffle off to other places?  To countries with dusty roads and heat that makes my fringe frizz up, or even just to manifestations of other living rooms like pubs and bars?  I feel like I shouldn’t be admitting all of this; being able to travel is a huge privilege and not everyone gets to do it, but I suppose it’s a case of not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone, right?

So, I’m sat here with the dog, no make up on, my feet in slippers, drinking my seventh cup of tea of the day.  I’ve watched TV and had a snooze on the sofa and pottered around inside my four walls where I can just be me and not worry about snorting when I laugh or needing to break wind discreetly in a conference room full of foreign delegates.  It’s not glamourous, but it’s me.

So the next time I start to feel like I should get out more, that I should do something constructive with my time off, or that I should get out and experience more things, I will remind myself that sometimes it’s ok to just sit around in my jogging bottoms, watch daytime TV and parp freely.

Home Sweet Home.

As a nation we have got whinging down to a fine art.  In fact, I am reliably informed that the Olympic committee are seriously considering introducing it as a sport in time for 2012.  The thing that we are not great at is actually complaining to the right people.  It is very easy to go home and tell your spouse how irritating it is that Debbie in accounts never files the petty cash receipts in the right place, but somehow actually telling Debbie to file things in the right place remains as difficult as trying to get toothpaste back into the tube.

To illustrate this point further I can share an exemplary, if slightly boring story with you.  My boyfriend and I had gone out for dinner with some mutual friends.  It wasn’t a fancy place, more of a pub grub affair but it served wine so I was more than happy.  Everybody ordered their food and was served their dinner fairly promptly, no dramas there.  As I tucked into my dinner I noticed that our friends seemed to be having a bit of trouble with their food.  Kate was asking Mike to try her steak because she thought it was a bit tough.  Mike tried it and agreed that, yes; he thought it was a little bit tough.  Then Kate asked my boyfriend to taste the steak and he too agreed that it was a little tough for his taste.  As I am a vegetarian I was spared from the ordeal of tasting the offensively tough steak but nodded sympathetically every time the toughness of the steak was mentioned.  

It was then that I made my big mistake.  I suggested that they called the waitress over and tell her that the steak wasn’t cooked as had been requested (and paid for I might add) and ask if it would be possible to replace it with a different steak. 

Well, anyone would have thought that I had suggested running into the kitchen and beating the chef with the steak until, quivering and broken he apologised and went to live out  the rest of the days in a monastery, regularly self-flagellating so as not to forget the terrible distress he had caused to Kate with his monstrously over-cooked steak. 

“But he might spit on my food” declared Kate, still aghast at my blatant disregard for this social etiquette of complaining only to people who could do nothing to help.  Amongst the commotion the waitress had noticed that all was not well at table 7 and came over to ask if everything was okay.  Just as I was about to open my mouth to say that, actually, Kate’s steak wasn’t quite right, I was kicked in the shin by Kate.  I was so shocked that I just opened and closed my mouth at the poor waitress like some sort of deranged goldfish while everyone else on the table assured her that “everything was just lovely thanks”.

Now, in principle I can understand that complaining can be a bit embarrassing.  As Brits we don’t like to make a fuss, especially not in restaurants.  Having worked as a waitress whilst I was in sixth form I can even understand where Kate’s fear of a steak marinated in chef saliva may come from.   There is one thing I cannot understand though; the whinging and complaining if you have absolutely no intention of attempting to fix the problem.  If you didn’t get what you asked for then communicate this to your waitress and politely request that the correct order be sent.  If you aren’t going to do this then shut the fuck up and stop spoiling my dinner with your incessant whining.  Simple.

This experience has led me to look at other areas of life where putting up with a substandard service is far preferable to suffering the humiliation of voicing a complaint.  As a business owner, if somebody was not happy with the service my company provides I would much rather that they told us so that we had the opportunity to rectify the situation rather than say nothing but spend their spare time bitching about a problem that we didn’t even know existed.  The chef who cooked Kate’s steak might have been mortified that he had made an error; it might have been the waitress who had written it down wrong, or maybe picked up the wrong plate.  The problem is that the restaurant will never know and this might still be going on even now.  Customers refusing to complain but just choosing not to return, the business owner not understanding why this is, because when asked everyone says things are “just lovely thanks” and incompetent staff are allowed to keep their jobs.  This same attitude extends to hairdressers who butcher your locks; I can’t count the number of my friends who have come home only to burst into tears and never return to the hairdresser in question rather than express their feelings at the time and allow the hairdresser to try and fix their wayward follicles. 

My point in all this is that by not communicating an unsatisfactory service to the person who has provided it you are shooting yourself in the foot.  You are not happy, having not got what you wanted and the unsatisfactory service is allowed to continue.  If this is to continue for years, standards will fall globally, incompetents will be allowed to stay in their jobs passing on their sloppy standards to their subordinates and the whole country will decline.  Some may say that this is already happening and it’s little wonder really if we can’t even send back a plate of food!  We really only have ourselves to blame. 

To summarise, wouldn’t it be nice if everybody took pride in their work and when genuine mistakes were made they were rectified because people had the bollocks to say when something is not right?  What an amazing, utopian world that would be. People get the food they have ordered and your friends don’t kick you in the shin over dinner.  Bliss.

Despite the raging mediocrity of my pre and post pubescent behaviour, there are times in my life where I regret and feel bad for some of my actions.  I assure you they are nothing major.  I haven’t stashed a secret family in a self build cellar-jail, swindled anyone or even broken many hearts (see previous physical description for evidence of this), but sometimes I have done little things that even now, as a bona fide adult, I feel bad about.

So in front of, probably all 10 of you, I will confess my sins and hopefully draw a line under something that has in no way held me back, but does niggle away at the place where my soul should be.

Here we go…

When I was 8 my friend Katie had a fancy pink super-duper-long skipping rope that I was secretly very jealous of.  Being a stroppy little sod we had a disagreement whilst playing with it and I threw it petulantly to the ground, cracking its fancy yellow handle.  Katie cried and I still feel bad about it.   Katie, I’m sorry.

When I was 14 I cheated on a Welsh vocab test.  Sorry Mrs Ifans.

When I was 15 I hid in the toilets and pretended I had actually done the cross-country run that I was meant to do.  I even went and splashed muddy water on my shins to make it look realistic.  Sorry Mrs Jones.

Dad, it was me that caused the leak that eventually resulted in the kitchen ceiling collapsing.  I wanted to show Wendall bunny what an empty toilet roll looked like to so I unravelled it and stuffed all the paper in the toilet and flushed continually, blocking it and causing the overflow.  I was about 5 and I still feel ashamed that I blamed the bunny.

Mum, those Clarks Magic Step shoes that I loved so much (the ones with the key in the sole), didn’t really get lost.  I just loved them so much that I didn’t want to tell you that they pinched my feet and I couldn’t walk in them and I wanted them so badly because my childhood nemesis Katherine had a pair.  I hid them under my bed and threw them away when I thought it was safe.

When I was 15 my Nan stayed with me while my Mum was on holiday.  I told her that I was going out to the cinema but I actually went “clubbing”.  More accurately, I attempted to go “clubbing” but was turned away from every licensed premises because I looked, well, 15.  I returned home cold and disappointingly sober, my virginity still very much in tact but my ego crushed.

It was me that ate the last chocolate chip cookie when I was 10, not my sister.

In school the only piece of art homework that I got more than a C for was done by my then 7-year-old sister.  I suspect that Mr McPartland already knows this.

When I was about 9 I undid the zip on a beanbag to see what was inside.  The little foamy things all spilled out so I swiftly re-zipped the beanbag, swept the foamy things under my bed and hoovered them up gradually over a space of a week like a derranged beanbag serial killer disposing of victims.  I’m sure my Dad wondered why the beanbag was suddenly a lot less bean-filled and looked more like a deflated boob. I inevitably broke the hoover in doing this.  Sorry.

When I was 14 my friend Becky had an inflatable chair that I loved.  One day it got a puncture and I feigned shock.  In fact, I had plopped myself down on it earlier that day and was dismayed to hear a sudden hissing sound.  On inspection, the metal bit from my jeans had popped it so I put a plaster over it and removed it when we went downstairs for tea, leaving you to discover your crumpled heap of once-turgid chair in your room hours later.  Sorry Becky.

I know that all of these things seem trivial and pointless, but late at night when I have nothing for company but my thoughts, I often hear the quiet hiss of that deflating chair and the crack of a skipping rope handle being broken along with its owners dreams and wish that I was a better person.

What are your confessions?

Children

I seem to have reached the age in my life when people ask me if I have children.  I don’t.  Perhaps my standard answer of “Hell no!” is a little bit much for some people as it always draws an inquisitive stare followed by the following question.

“You’ll want children one day though, won’t you?”

Before I open up that particular can of worms I should give you a bit of background.  I’m in my late twenties, I have been in a long-term relationship with my boyfriend for over eight years, we are not married and we never intend to be, much to the despair of my boyfriend’s Mum.  I guess that naturally, people are starting to question our relationship.  After all, what is the point of our relationship if we’re not going to get married and subsequently procreate?

The short answer to that question is that, fundamentally, there isn’t any point to our relationship.  Apart from the fact that we love each other and we’re happy.  Isn’t that enough?

It would seem not.  It would seem that the rest of the world wants us to breed and the older I get, the less anything else seems to matter to everyone else.  Couples around me are having babies left, right and centre and for every clutter-filled house, for every labour horror story and every pair of tired, red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes, my decision seems more and more sensible.  Their protestations that “it will all be worth it in the end” seem more to convince themselves than to try to convince me.

I recently asked my Mum why she had children.  Her answer was “Well, that’s just what you did next”.  How thrilling that my existence was decided by something as exciting as domestic conformity.

The thing is, I don’t want to have children.  I never have.  As a child I was busy climbing trees and doing experiments with leaves, not playing Mum with a doll and a pram.  The fact that I don’t seem to have any sort of biological clock ticking away at me, or any sort of natural maternal instinct serves to utterly baffle people.  Actually, it seems to make them very uncomfortable. 

I receive a fairly standard set of responses to my desire for a sprogg-free life:

1 – “You’re still young”
2 – “Oh, you’ll change your mind”
3 – “Is it because you can’t?”
4 – “But it’s what you were put on this Earth for”
5 – “What if you regret it in twenty years?”

Well….

1 – Yes I am still young, but in my late twenties I figure I’d know by now if I wanted them or not.
2 – How do you know my mind better than I do?
3 – No idea whether I can or not, I’ve never tried. And what a very personal question!
4 – I wasn’t put on the Earth for anything. I’m the product of my parents and the reason they had me was to, well, have me.  It wasn’t to eventually have grand children!
5 – Having children just in case I regret not doing so in twenty years is not a very good reason to bring a human life into the world!

Of course there is nothing wrong with wanting to have children.  If you do, then good for you!  But please don’t look at me like I have three heads when I say I don’t.

The plain old fact of the matter is that I don’t believe that having children will make my life any more fulfilling, will make me any happier or make me a better person; so I don’t want any.  As a general rule, if the “cons” list outweighs the “pros” list, I tend not to do it.  Obviously that makes me a crazy lady when it comes to kids.

I suppose I’m lucky that my boyfriend and I have come to the same conclusion regarding offspring.  We got together when I was 19 and he was 24.  Planning the future didn’t stretch much beyond where and what we were drinking over the weekend and where we planning on going on holiday.  We’ve both grown together as a couple and we’ve had The C Word discussion.  Now planning the future pretty much involves thinking about where and what we are drinking over the weekend and where we’re planning on going on holiday.  Selfish?  Yes.  Hedonistic?  Maybe.  Fun?  Definitely.  There isn’t a single part of me that envies my friends who are moving house to be in a better school catchment area, or who spend their lives treading on up-turned Lego, which as we all know is the most painful thing in the world. 

What I certainly don’t envy are the couples in my circle of friends who, having met young and are still in love, are considering splitting up because of The C Word, or who already have and now face the race to find a suitable partner for marriage and breeding before it’s too late.  To me, that seems a bit mental, but who am I to judge?

I don’t really have a point or a clever conclusion about peer pressure or society to round this off with.  I have someone in my life who loves me and who I love back and children just aren’t likely to be a part of our future.  If you want them to be a part of yours then I’m very happy for you and I totally respect your decision.  In return I’d ask you to respect mine and not to ask me questions about my ovaries.