I shall write about something more pleasurable tonight. Wine. Let’s talk about wine.One of my favourite things to enjoy in life. I don’t have a wine cellar obviously as I live in a bungalow but I do have a wine cupboard. It’s crammed with my toolbox and bags of knitting wool and a big box of tealights, spare dog lead, table lamp, sewing machine and the back door curtain that fell down bringing half the wall with it. There’s more but you get the gist and at the front are several bottles of red.
The other week I was reaching for something at the back, a bottle got knocked and the rest dominoed. One fell over and broke at the neck. How the fuck? and turned everything including the hall carpet a murderous red. As any decent wine drinker knows the bottle never contains enough until it’s contents get spilled and then there is enough to fill the bath.
Anyway so the wine cupboard. The last bloke was deaf in one ear which is why he talked loudly and sang badly to Stone Roses at 5:30 in the morning. He also didn’t know that when I was in bed I could hear him rummaging about in my wine cupboard in case there was anything stronger at the back. Christmas whiskey and a vile violet liqueur went pretty quickly so I removed my boots from their large shoebox in the bottom of my bedroom cupboard and started hiding wine in there.
He’d fill my wine glass up to the top like I was drinking Dandelion & Burdock and then say I drank too much later when I was pissed and happy just to crash into bed and he wasn’t getting his playtime. One evening he made the mistake of actually telling me I wasn’t drinking wine when we got in. He might as well have tarred and feathered himself and as it was I went home and drank tea. He knew about it the next day though. Big time.
After 6 years I’d forgotten about the tedium of a ‘relationship’, especially one at this stage in life. All the little twisty bits and counterbalancing, the double standards and faux compromise. The game playing, the passive aggression, the figuring out of thinking and behaviour and for what exactly? My toilet seat constantly left up, my wine stores drained and my peace and happiness sucked out of me in a daily energy drain.
All the poetry from women that the algorithms provide me on my social media make it very clear that many of us feel the same. We love peace and quiet and a life that is not eaten up with catering to men children. For me that means no tv, no youtube background noise, no wittering on complete inanities and a well stocked wine cupboard.
Years and years ago my dad who very obviously was a man said to me when I walked away from a relationship that was not working ‘but you will be on your own!’.
I’m just going to leave that there…
