Everything was going great. David bought me a new vacuum cleaner. Great. Bonus points. He started working on window repairs. He disappeared to buy lumber, a saw, everything I needed. He took out the master bedroom windows, put in new wiring. Beautiful. Progress.
The next day the weights got stuck behind the panelling. He lost his temper when I jumped up while dragging my dead mother’s recently restored bergère chair across the floor looking for something to cut wood with and he said, ‘Oh, shut up.’ He admitted defeat and said, ‘You’ll have to get someone to come in.’
Now I have a big hole where the window used to be.
I called someone, who told me they wouldn’t be able to start work until October at the earliest. (I later received a quote: not much less than ten thousand dollars to renew all the windows.)
But when David admitted defeat, I didn’t complain. I just said, “Well, at least you tried.” Then he disappeared with my broken Miele vacuum cleaner to be fixed. Hours later, pale, he returned. “She was miles away and then they shut her down.”
I said, ‘What a waste of time, you should have asked me where I was.’ I called them first.
Him: ‘It’s my time to waste.’
Me: “I can’t stand chaos.”
I decided that on Sunday we would sit in the garden and have lunch. I got up at 6am to get the horses out of the sun as Nic was in Scarborough for the weekend. I arrived home at 11 in the morning. He was still asleep and his iPad was blaring Radio 4 in his ear. He hadn’t gotten his John McEnroe headphones to work. Lunch was good, at a local pub.
I kept him informed about the items I would be bidding on eBay (a cast-iron bathtub, an antique French dining table), but he didn’t offer to help me. He did say, though, “How about I bring my refrigerator?” when I already have my new pink Smeg. He told me he had ordered a $2,000 electric bike: “It’ll be my mobility scooter.”
“Try to make yourself even more attractive, why not?” I said half-jokingly.
I started to notice that every time I made a comment, he would say the opposite.
Me: ‘Why do they destroy hedges and wildflowers when birds nest and bees pollinate?’
Him: No, no, it looks neater, it’s just a strip.
‘Do you think you can at least get the bathroom window to open?’
Him: ‘No, no, I prefer a warm bath.’
‘Can you look after Mini and her dinner, as Teddy will steal it and must not eat her tablet?’
Him: No, no, it won’t.
We stayed to watch a quiz show in a pub. Every time he answered a question correctly, he seemed triumphant. In the car, he couldn’t breathe, he had to inhale; he had been smoking a vape all day. We got home, we watched the final Britain Got talent. I commented that the pyrotechnics behind the winning singer seemed distracting, too much. ‘No, no, it wasn’t, I was focused on her.’ I’m sorry, but that was it.
Do you know that you have a habit of disagreeing with everything I say?
‘No, no, I don’t.’ Gaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!
He started yelling in front of my collies. I added: “And you have a very strong temper, you get very angry. You’re telling me to shut up!”
I had gotten into a shouting match with a woman who was passing by the new house the day I moved in. ‘She started!’
Couldn’t you have just ignored her? You knew how important moving day was, how much I’d planned and organized it, and you ruined it for me. I won’t be yelled at in my own home.
“Oh, I was wondering when you’d start saying that. It’s just that I sometimes swear and throw things, but then it’s over, it’s over.”
Me: ‘I think your anger comes from feeling inadequate. You are embarrassed. And why don’t you cut your toenails? Honestly. Surely a sign of respect towards your partner is to take care of your own body.
“I don’t think I can reach it.”
I went up to bed and he started packing his bags. “You won’t return to London after several gluten-free pints.” (He still has his cat and the floor of it.)
“I will not join you,
I won’t live with you. I’m sleeping downstairs.
The next day I woke up and he was gone.
Jones’ moaning… what Liz hates this week
Oh. There is more. I made him return my house keys during our argument. That time I only lost your keys because you took me to a sleazy club. He was referring to the time I interviewed Peter Stringfellow for a job.
Ah, so now that I lost my keys it’s my fault.
Contact Liz at lizjonesgoddess.com and find her @lizjonesgoddess