Outed

My life is slightly tricky and sad at the moment. I am about to file for divorce and as much as I'd love your input and advice (especially on the subject of how I can raise the £50,000 I need to buy my ex out, actually if you do have a notion of how to do that, please email me) I now feel I can't talk about it.

For 2 and a half years I have spouted the gospel according to St Gwen on a largely unsuspecting public. I have loved every single minute of it, it really has been an absolute privilege to be a part of this community and I am massively grateful for what I have got out of blogging. I love my blog and I thought I could never give it up. It really has been my voice.

Despite the fact I have photos up I feel I have managed to retain anonymity if I have chosen it. Some bloggers I have chosen to be with in my regular life and have become very dear friends, some I am going to meet soon and some I most sincerely hope that we will meet face to face. There are very few people who knew the me I was before blogging.

My ex husband told me today he'd found and read my blog. Around 2 years ago.

He had logged onto my computer in my home and was intrigued by the auntiegwensdiary on the drop down bar.

So he went home to his house and google searched it.

And he found it.

And he was very upset by some of the things I have said about him and some of the family dynamics I have reported from my perspective.

He says that he has only skim read it and he is not interested in my blog. He feels that if it is on the Internet then it is in the public domain and he has a right to read it.

He was also extremely upset to find out I have kept in touch with a mutual friend of ours and that he didn't know about this. This is bothering him muchly because this friend is male.

I don't feel that I have badmouthed him in any serious way and I'm sure that if in time, the children read it that they would not feel that I had misrepresented any of the facts. I have at no time showed this blog to my parents or family or with the exception of the mutual friend, anyone who knows him. I have at no time mentioned our real name or our location.

I probably cannot articulate how I feel, he wanders around my house and invades my physical space whilst visiting our children but the thought of him invading my mental space is deeply disconcerting to me.

He assures me he'll never read it again but do I want to censor every word that I write?

Confession Time

I know I have been very scathing in the past but I will fess up and admit I've joined facebook. So all you regular facebook users will have to keep me right, there are lots of things I still don't quite get and I have a fear I'll be bored with it very shortly.

Resist the urge to throw back your head and laugh like a muskateer as I have been mocked heartily by Edge for it already and I am still slightly confused by it all, especially by the wee thingy that pops up and someone is trying to talk to me, but I have managed to put a wee comment up or reply to my real friends.

I'm not sure of the etiquette of it all yet, I can't seem to refuse to be someone's friend even if I don't know them and in consequence have found myself never short of a wee bible verse or a life coaching kind of a homily.

I have some new friends already, I am very popular with American men. Even more popular with American men who run and also with American Pastor men and as for American Pastor men who run, they just love your auntie!

I am also quite popular with my daughter's friends, I don't accept them as friends though, just too weird, I always get slightly freaked when I read her friends (very middle aged) dad trying to be funny.

So I have it now and I have the American men but what do I do with it? The people I really know on it, I kinda know what they're up to, well as much as I need to know, I already like one of my friends less. I live with one of them and I definitely know enough about her life, I like it better in mummy denial land, so what am I doing with it? I already have the blog to spout off my rubbish.

So I'm thinking about lying on a grand scale with it, make myself look uber windswept and interesting (yes I know that's German, I thought maybe you were getting a bit bored with badly spelled French words and NB's practising his for his holiday to Precisionwithnohumourland.)

So can I say I've come into money ? off on a world trip and post pictures of where I'd like to go ? Can I post pictures of supermodels and say I've had surgery ? Say I'm shagging all the celebrities on my celebrity shag list all at the same time?

I am wondering though if it's okay to say I'm in a relationship with David Tennant one week and then David Ginola the next ?

Where's the harm ?

Decisions Decisions

For the record I know I'm the world's most indecisive woman, I do know that. But sometimes life gives me awful dilemmas. Really awful, I apologize now if someone is having real troubles in their life and have popped in here to hear me wittering on, I know I'm being shallow.

I have some money, this is an unusual event in my life, this is due to me being the hardest person in the world to buy a birthday present for, apparently. Can you feel my eyebrow being raised at that?

I have a choice, I can buy

SHOE PORN ALERT

Christian Louboutains that are the sexiest shoes I have ever seen.

Black as sin.

Beautiful supple strokable leather.

Soft as skin.

Studded as everyone needs a bit of edge in their life.

They have the mighty red soles.

They are less than half price.

I have the money.


Again, the beauty of the red soles, appreciate the shoes some more, don't drool on your keyboard though.

or I can buy a sat nav.

Thought so, me too.

Another year older

How can I be another year older? Fortyfeckinthree now ! Jesus, Mary and Holy St Joseph, I must now officially be half way to being dead.

So what precisely did I achieve from last birthday to this one?

Didn't kill any of the beautiful children - for which I should be due a medal at the very least.

I visited Dublin, Belfast, Prague and went to Turkey 3 times. I also had a few trips back to Glasgow and some to London.

I saw Russell Kane at the Y and I pretended to be gay with my friend C, Russell Kane didn't believe us, he was very good though. I went to the Leicester Comedy Festival preview show and that was tres amusent, I particularly liked Jared Christmas and John Richardson.

Gig wise this was a streemly good year, streemly. I saw The Killers twice in Dublin and Belfast, Bloc Party suppoted them in Dublin, Glasvegas twice in Wolverhampton and Sheffield, White Lies supported them in Wolverhampton, I saw Primal Scream's encore in Nottingham, Doves at Brixton Academy and the Manic Street Preachers at the Camden Roundhouse.

I also taught a gazillion lessons including my last one.

I started a new job with office perks.

And I still found time to blog 137 posts just to keep you in the loop. Selfless to the core, that's me.

When I write it down, my life is not nearly as boring as I make out !

Things that have rendered me momentarily speechless

I know that according to the google searches that I am the queen of the comeback and I have been known to lob out an occasional smart arse remark. I, am however, sometimes completely lost for words. In this last week this has happened more than once, I am recovering nicely now though.

Male friend commenting on an old photo of me as a 15 year old
"I'd have shagged you."

ag - hoping he meant as a teenager himself and not now as a man of middle years. I am trying to be tactful here, in case he gets offended I originally wrote nearly 50.

John, friend of my parents we went to visit on Friday night
"Grace, I thought you said she'd lost a lot of weight? " "No, you did, you told me she was like a stick insect, she is not" "Ah, well, compared to her sister she is I suppose"

ag - I don't know who was more mortified, my mother or me, probably my mother, I thought she might have another stroke there and then. He did however pop round on Saturday to apologize, bringing me some roses as he knew he'd been tactless.

Text from my Beautiful Baby Daughter who is staying up in Scotland for a week with my parents (so is The Beautiful Son)
Jack said I touched his bum but I didn't and Nana called me a pervert, that was not nice

ag - I didn't think that would be a word my mum would use in general conversation never mind conversation with my children.

Gadget Mad Dad on return from a car boot sale on Sunday morning
"Picked myself up a wee laptop for £25, not got a charger but I've got a few out in the shed"

ag - this is a man who has an all singing all dancing computer that he replaces annually and still hardly uses it, what does he need a laptop for? This is a man who has just spent £15,000 yep that's right fifteen thousand pounds on premium bonds, he's not short of a bob or two, what is he buying an ancient old laptop at a car boot for ? and why in the name of all that's holy did he buy one that had no feckin charger?

Incidentally, he spent all of Sunday trying every charger in the house (yep, that included phone, electric shavers, all his power tools and even their wee black and decker dustbuster wee hoovery thing to pick up crumbs trying to fit into his bargain, no matter how many times I told him they wouldn't work, he would not admit defeat.

auntie goes away

Just a little note to let you know I'm off to The Mother Country at feckit'searly o'clock in the morning. In case you pop in to look for me and I'm not here.

If you're a bitty bored and your feck count is down or your would you give yourself peace level is dropping or you just miss me, you can

a) text or ring me

b) sulk for a bit at my outrageous selfishness (you know who you are)...

c) go read what I wrote here (no comments on how I am becoming a right old bloggy tart, being unfaithful to agd and putting it about a bit post wise !)

I'm going home to have my fix and will return fully Glasmentalled up with quaint tales of the natives of the little fishing village on The Clyde.

I heart Google searches

I love my stats on the google searches of what bring people to my blog. Hours and hours of entertainment !

The pick of this week's bunch is this one, from Tamil Madhu in India, I've left the original spelling.

mifs and aunties hot

Walk right this way...

Apple of my eye

When I was a little girl I lived with my maternal grandparents.

My Grampa was the person in the world I loved the most, he was my world.

He was a very ordinary man, he married my Gran and they had 2 daughters, the youngest of whom is my mother. His family came over from Ireland at the turn of the century and my Grampa was the oldest. He had a brother called Richard and a sister called Sarah.

My great Uncle Ricky was an engineer in John Brown's shipyards. He had masses of hobbies and was very well travelled. He was very healthy, cycling and hillwalking, he was a very talented painter, my mother still has lots of his work and also the painting he taught me to do when I was 5. He was a violinist, he made all his own instruments and I am lucky enough to still have one. He played the fiddle for The Caledonian and Strathspey Fiddle Society. He was a conscientious objector during the Second World War but didn't go to jail as he was in a reserved occupation. He died 11 years ago of Mesothelioma which is a lung tumour which is caused by exposure to asbestos, of which there was plenty in the Glasgow shipyards of the time.


My great Aunt Sarah had very bad spinal damage and was very hunchbacked, she became a hugely talented dressmaker to make her own clothes and she made many of mine as a child, I remember with great fondness a long green checked taffeta party dress and to match it, a floor length bottle green velvet hooded cloak ala Scottish Widows. I still have her Singers treadle sewing machine from 1929 and it still works. I remember being allowed to open the drawers and play with all the reels, lots of beautiful colours. It was my ambition when I was a wee girl to be taller than my auntie Sarah, I think I did it about age 8. She did a degree in Russian and was a translator for the Russian Embassy. Neither she or my Uncle Ricky ever married and they lived together and travelled all through Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czechoslovakia. This was quite unusual in the 1950's and 1960's most Glaswegians went "doon the water" to Rothsay or Gourock at the Fair fortnight Glasgow holidays. As I say, the 2 of them lived together until she died after a short illness just before I got married.

Every Saturday, my Gran and Grampa would take me on the bus in Glasgow and to John Smith's bookshop and every week I was allowed to choose a book, they must have bought me hundreds. We then went next door to the health food shop where we'd pick up whatever Auntie Sarah and Uncle Ricky wanted, they ate stuff like natural yoghurt, cottage cheese and malt extract (which I got a spoonful every day in the winter and I loved) again not your usual Glasgow fare. Then we got the bus to Drumoyne and to visit Auntie Sarah and Uncle Ricky, I was always given a cup of tea and that was the only tea I ever drank. They always had unusual things at their house, I loved the Babouchkas and the ukelele. I liked the Russian childrens books with their colourful pictures and the strange writing. Sometimes I'd be taken to Elder Park on the way home.

My grandpa was a joiner and worked in Fairfields shipyards in Govan. He had a huge pride in his work and to him the highest praise was to say something was "Clyde built". He took a tin can into work to drink his tea out of and my Gran used to make his "pieces" (sandwiches) every day wrapped in the wax paper that the Mother's Pride plain loaf came in. He worked in that shipyard all his life and when he was made redundant early in 1975 he lived off his savings, never dreaming of signing on and claiming the unemployment benefit he was entitled to. It was a matter of his pride and self respect. He had a quiet dignity that I think so many of that generation of working class people had.

He made the bed I slept in, my beloved dolls house and a wee garden bench for me to sit on. He loved his garden and he had 2 beautiful lilac trees, one white and one lilac, a golden privet hedge and his pride and joy were his roses. He loved photography and there are a million photos of me and my gran but hardly any of him. He put them onto slides and we often had an evening where he'd put up his white screen and rig up the projector and we'd have a show.

I was the first grandchild and it would be fair to say that I was doted upon. He used to call me the apple of his eye, he carried my picture in his wallet alongside a St Christopher to keep me safe. He would talk endlessly of me and thrust my photo on anyone he met. Nobody was more loved than me.

I always remember him wearing trousers, a jumper my gran had knitted him, a tweed overcoat and always a flat cap.

When I was 9, he and my gran went on holiday to Ireland with my aunt and her family. Whilst he was there he suffered a mild stroke, he sent me a postcard and the writing on it was hardly legible, my gran had to finish it and address it. By the time it arrived he was dead. He went to bed that night and never woke up.


I wasn't allowed to go to his funeral but he was buried with the dark red rose I had cut from his garden.

My life was never the same.

Francis McTominie
20.05.13 - 30.07.75
RIP

An ordinary man to the world, an extraordinary man to me.