Tag: relationships

384: nomad

Regular readers (hellooo!) will recall that earlier this year I made the decision to end my relationship with the father of the Things. 22 years together meant that there’s a lot to untangle and that this would happen slowly – affordable accommodation is in short supply these days, and even more so outside London. We’re amicable, at least, and still working on the new world order with the kids as my priority. It’s not easy though.

I’m too old to consider a room in a shared house, and wherever I go there needs to be space for my small (ha!) people. I’m filling in time at the moment with a lot of housesitting while people are away on their holidays or staying up a mountain in Wales for a few days every month.

This does mean that some nights when I’m home I sleep on a blow up bed in the front room, or if A is away at his girlfriend’s I get the bed. For the last week I’ve been over at Miriam’s dog-sitting which is close enough to come home for dinner which has been good. A brought his girlfriend home for dinner a couple of evenings this week and while I was welcome to join them that just felt a bit…weird.

Since Covid I’ve been hot-desking at work as nowhere these days has enough space for people to have their ‘own’ desk like in the the old days, and I find this stressful enough – I like to be able to arrange my things in my own way, to leave my tasks for the next day ready to pick up when I get in, to have photos and things that make a space feel homey as – after all – we still spend a lot of time in our offices. There have been studies that show hot desking creates added stress at work – not knowing where you’ll be able to sit, loss of familiarity in the workplace, sensory overload if you’re near the window/door/radiator, lack of control of your environment. I usually get in very early to work so can choose where to sit, but right now my whole life feels like I’m hot-desking, with all that goes with it. Of course hotdesking can also help you get to know new people in your organisation – but we’re a tiny organisation and the people I don’t know well don’t use the offsite office.

In an ideal world I’d have a set working pattern of three consecutive office days and could work around that in terms of lodging somewhere more affordable but the sector I’m in doesn’t really lend itself to that – I do work the odd weekend and love interacting with the public on those days. So, the solution isn’t immediate but I’m working on it…until then I’ll just make like the Littlest Hobo….

Things making me happy this week:

  • Reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and making wiggly caterpillars in the Little Owls session this week
  • Dinner with Amanda at Flat Iron on Wednesday, followed by a walk round Granary Square as we ate our ice creams
  • Random sunflower in the borage field
  • Catch-up with Miriam and Roy on their return from Scotland, including reducing their smaller daughter to hysteria with our rendition of Garth doing his Foxy Lady dance
  • Stacking up all the mini guinea pigs. It’s the little things…I think I want to make a shawl now though
  • International Cat Day – insta filled with cats

What I’ve been reading:

The Rainshadow Orphans – Naomi Ishiguro

The Woman in the Seal Skin â€“ Lauren Keegan

A Court of Mist and Fury/A Court of Wings and Ruin â€“ Sarah J. Maas (Audible)

320: navigating murky waters

This weekend I’m coming to you live from halfway up a mountain in Wales again, which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite places to be. I’ve been here since Thursday and am making the most of a long weekend before the madness of pre-opening hits. We announced last week that we’ll be throwing the doors to the Centre open on 5 June – tickets are on sale, celebration planning is underway and it’s all happening…

A bit of mental getting myself together is sorely needed, I feel. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that there’s a lot going on in my life these days. The biggest change is that I split up with my partner in March and we are navigating our way through what sharing a small house, five children, five grandchildren and three temperamental felines looks like now. I hate to use the term ‘conscious uncoupling’ à la Gwyneth Paltrow but essentially that’s what’s happening at the moment, after 22 years together.

People keep telling me how brave I am to have made the choice, and one or two have offered to help me negotiate the weird world of dating apps. I have thanked them and declined – I spend enough time hearing about the terrible people on these apps that the mere thought fills me with horror. Of course there are some nice people (like my friends) and successful relationships that have come from these apps, but they are few and far between.

Navigating both situations simultaneously has been tricky at times, to say the very least, and I’ve been extremely grateful for the support of friends and family – offering beds and emotional and other support, while recognising that there’s no easy solution. This is just as well as the doctor already has me on the maximum dose of my antidepressants….

The hardest part of all these things is telling the children: while they’re all in their mid to late teens it’s still inevitably going to be a big change in their lives. Thing 2, being an MI5-level investigator, interrogated her father within minutes of the event and wormed the situation out of him despite an agreement to tell them together at the right time. This put her in the position of knowing something her brother and sisters didn’t, which wasn’t fair on her, and meant that we had to tell the others sooner than I would have liked.

Thing 2 takes a while to process things and now is beginning to ask questions like ‘are we going to have two Christmases?’. That’s nine months away so I don’t want to make any assurances, of course, but what do you say? At 17 she’s incredibly perceptive and sensible which in some ways is great but in others…not so much…

Thing 3, being a 15 year old boy, took it very much in stride – at least I thought he had, until one evening when he said ‘why are you sleeping in the living room, mum?’. When I reminded him that his father and I had split up, his response was ‘oh yeaaahhhh!’. Perhaps he just wasn’t listening to his aged parent as usual.

Thing 1 was mostly angry and upset, and didn’t speak to me for several days other than in monosyllables. I told her the news when she was with one of her older sisters so she’d have support. Their father spoke to the oldest one over the phone. Both the Timeshare Twenty-somethings have been incredibly supportive – I still get to be their step mum and Granny K which is lovely. I think they’re just used to me now.

As the unmarried, unstable daughter my next biggest worry was telling my parents that my relationship has failed at the age of 52. It’s daft the things that you think about at these moments – I know that all they ever want is for their children to be happy and I very clearly wasn’t. London sister explained the situation to them and I phoned them the next day. They were, of course, supportive and wonderful as always and at my age the ‘balance and options’ conversation with Dad is taken as read.

I don’t know what the next steps are, but I do know they need to be carefully navigated. A previous boss, now a valued friend and mentor, talks about moments like this as being swimming in murky water: being able to see what’s straight ahead but not knowing what’s under or around you. This seems apt.

Things making me happy this week

  • Dinner at Caravan in Granary Square with Amanda on Monday, and this week we have an evening with David Olusoga to look forward to.
  • Moving all the learning materials and kit across to the new Creative Studio and buying storage crates to put things in. For someone whose alignment in D’n’D is always chaotic (and mostly good) my love for a good storage solution can’t be underestimated.
  • More sunshine than rain in the forecasts.

And now I am off to appreciate the weather while it lasts…same time next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

Kathy Reichs – Evil Bones

Jonathan Kellerman – The Ghost Orchid/Open Season

Ian Hunter – Diary of a Rock’n’Roll Star