Sun 15th July 2012

I am in Kirsty's house, looking out onto a vista ten feet deep, of a hoovered and litter-free red shagpile carpet. A pile of barely acceptably ironed shirts and trousers is on the settee. "M&S Girls No-Iron", it said on the labels, despite them being lined with a pattern like a geodesic dome; I'd left them in the washing machine too long. There's another pile, plucked from the washing line, the majority of which consists of teenage girls' underwear (oh dear--the search terms) and a smaller set of slinky adult underwear of which we cannot speak. In the kitchen, there are two sets of little buns, chocolate and plain.

It's always like this in the hours before she comes back, trying to look like a decent Dad. Although I did manage a sociable pint of Gwent y Draig cider while I was "nipping out to get some butter."

My friends texted me on Friday, saying that they'd got married and were in Edinburgh. I liked how they played it. They told no-one, and avoided a reception. No girls in ill-fitting strapless dresses, no cacophony of family, no ruched curtains in suburban pubs, no bad dancing on the grave of sexual desire as part of a public announcement of resignation. Marriage in my mind is an Institutional State Apparatus in the service of capitalist heteronormative patriarchy; like religion, I am bemused as to why intelligent people get involved in it.

Obviously I kept all that quiet when me, the newly-weds, and a couple of mutual friends went out for a drink yesterday.

Ironing is so boring that I decided to play, despite the girls, some of my music--disco, jazz-funk, Modern soul--for a change. I never play music when they're around. It's a Dad-failure that I've never introduced them to things like Madagascar's Rainbow. But for some time after my children were born I was so bitterly regretful that I had had them, that music was my refuge, something for me, not something I wanted to share with them.

Madagascar - Rainbow (1981)

I would say that one of the cards holding up my fragile house of finances has fallen away, and has made me toss, not in the right way, at 3am, but following the implication of the above song, I'd rather only co-opt liberally its metaphor of a rainbow, and say I'm looking forward to meeting Trina at Euston station at 10.30 tomorrow.

7 comments

Comment from: Homer [Visitor]

Each to their own, but you’ve got an incredibly negative view of marriage for someone who (I think) hasn’t had a horrible experience of it? I don’t think I’m unintelligent, but I really wanted to marry J, for the catharsis of having an entire day of telling him how much I loved him.

Mon 16th July 2012 @ 07:42

Comment from: Homer [Visitor]

I do like how your friends did it though. We only had 22 guests and that was eight too many. Large weddings fill me with horror and dread.

Mon 16th July 2012 @ 07:45

Comment from: furtheron [Visitor]

Don’t think I agree with you on the marriage point of view… says the man who had to plan Saturday around buying Mrs F a present worthy or 27 years shackled to me - apparently it isn’t enough for a Nobel Prize, maybe when we get to 30 they’ll relent

Damn - read this too late - oh hangon which Euston - my office literally is on top of Euston station I look out over the entrance!

Mon 16th July 2012 @ 13:13

Comment from: [Member]

i like marriage - when it’s a choice and not a societal expectation. like any institution, i’ve seen lovely ones, and those that have been doomed from the start. to each his/her own…

enjoy the rainbow…

Mon 16th July 2012 @ 14:13

Comment from: [Member]

Well, I don’t get it. I think the idea that you say you publicly declare that you only want ever to go out with one person, from the age, (when most people do it), of about 20odd, is laughable optimism, and its failure rate betokens this. I accept it in way that good friends should of each others’ choices whilst just agreeing not uselessly to talk about it.

H: Why do you need a special day to tell someone you love him?

F: Only one Euston surely? Unless you mean Euston Square?

D: I think the boundaries between choice and societal expectation are far too blurred ever to give anyone justifiable confidence in ascribing an action to one or the other.

Rainbow was great… a description of its colours (groan!) will follow shortly.

Mon 16th July 2012 @ 22:18

Comment from: Homer [Visitor]

I suppose I feel the same about drugs the way you do about marriage, and neither of us would ever convince the other.

To answer your question though, it’s more that on your wedding day you get so say it ad infinitum in front of everyone who means something to you, and the UK legal system. And I didn’t go down the church route, so I don’t recall choosing to say anything about “til death us do part".

To be fair I didn’t believe in marriage either until I met J, the way it’s going with Trina maybe I’ll be hurtling up the M6 in a years time to your nuptials!

Wed 18th July 2012 @ 06:35

Comment from: [Member]

Well if we do I’ll make sure I save a little bit of amphetamine for you to try :)

Wed 18th July 2012 @ 09:39

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Everybody wants the rainbow

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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

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