Moving On

I've told everybody that now I need to make money I am going to limit myself to just one Lady Who Lunches a week.

This week I'm doing three.

Yesterday was the Jilted Wives Club, and today I simply couldnt resist joining my brother and his two edible friends on their yacht , as they sailed back from the Scillies via Newton Ferrers in Devon, and on to Chichester.  This is an annual event, and as usual they treated me like Lady Muck and took lots of pictures of me.

In fact it was the last time I had lunch with them, that they took the picture that I subsequently used in all my internet dating sites, so that has become very memorable.

I like sitting on boats in the sun, but am not too keen if they start moving along over waves.  So as the boys fussed over me with delicious 'Bladder Wine' (wine served from the bag - box and thus origin long since discarded to save space) and cold meat and salad, I found myself expounding on what had been bothering me during the night.

Once you are no longer a nuclear family, you don't fit in.  I scoffed at James, who charmingly tried to reassure me that all the wives are terrified of a glamorous single woman like me getting anywhere near their husbands.  "That's just a silly cliche!" I reprimanded him, meaning it.

I think people generally  like to be involved with people in similar situations to ourselves - our own 'tribe'. But I don't have one  near me.

X has just completed on a small flat at the poor end of Parsons Green in London and I think he is going to have loads of fun.  There are millions of single people like him living within a stone's throw of his new home.

No one at all lives within a stone's throw of my house, let alone anyone in my situation.  I'm wondering whether I am mad to be so determined to stay in this large, expensive, worrying, demanding, inaccessible place, especially assuming both my children will soon be at boarding school.  I am at a crossroads.  X has started a whole new life.  Perhaps I should consider that too.  Divorce changes everything.

The boys on the boat, all in sound, happy marriages, didn't really have any views on this line of thought of mine, and wandered off, doing the washing up and preparing to make the most of the sunshine and wind by sailing on to Salcombe that afternoon.

This Thursday my favourite aunt is coming down from Edinburgh to stay with my mother, 1 1/2 hrs away in Dorset.  I feel the irresistable urge of another lunch coming on.  Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes!