How to...

...give me a sad face:

Forget to kiss me goodbye in the morning before you leave.

After our first night together, both Tom and I acted as though nothing had happened. This was fine on paper - he had a girlfriend back home, I had no desire for a boyfriend and a crush on someone else. But...

Things kept happening. We spent time together without noticing, and we'd wake up naked the next morning and be totally surprised that it had happened again! The number of times we would decide that we should just stay friends, chat for an hour, then realign the boundaries somewhat, but DEFINITELY for the last time, only to do the same thing the next night. It was ridiculous. After about 3 weeks of this, we were sitting on his bed talking about nothing and everything. I honestly can't remember who said it, but one of us said, 'Wouldn't it be amazing if we were married? We could just do this all the time. And do loads of cool stuff together!' And we looked at each other as though we had just invented the concept of falling in love, and needed to really test all aspects before we released it onto the market.

It took a few more weeks, and a rather drunken weekend at my parents' house, before we succumbed to the inevitable, and became a Proper Couple. We thought nobody knew, but had maybe over-estimated our talent for subtlety somewhat. Everybody knew. So we thought, OK we didn't surprise you with our announcement, well that's fine, we just weren't trying hard enough. So how about this one? 'We're getting married!'

That sure attracted some attention.

James

We became friends during a school play in Year 10, and never looked back. I was the first person he came out to, and it was a long and tortuous process, taking up most of an afternoon before he actually managed to use the word 'gay'. This is possibly because he is one of the most verbose people I've ever met, but as an English graduate, I think it's probably to be expected.

I love him dearly, but know his limits (will count rounds to make sure he has received more drinks than he has paid for), as he knows mine (at school was slightly slutty and would kiss boys while going out with other boys. He disapproved until he discovered his own sex life while at uni, and now I am the moralistic one). He once came to stay for a weekend when Tom and I lived in Paris, and we bickered the entire time, which was fun for Tom. He's like a brother, maybe a twin. He calls me when he's having trouble with reality (like being convinced that he had failed all his exams and he ended up with a First), and I talk him through it. I've been doing this since we were at school. At that point, he did a lot of listening to me talk about boys. I've cut down on that recently, so we don't talk quite as often. When we do talk though, 80% of the conversation is laughter.

5 things

1. I have never seen my father's chin in the flesh
2. I have fallen asleep within 10 metres of the previous Pope (but I'm not Catholic, so it didn't worry me too much)
3. I am afraid of putting my head under water, especially in the sea
4. I have a secret crush on Neil Gaiman
5. I do not like chocolate biscuits, though I like both separately
   

Tom is...

• sweet
• kind
• conflicted
• forgetful
• handsome
  
• a workaholic
• talented
• secretly shy
• warm
• perfect to spoon
• funny
• unhappy
• distracted
• busy
• mine
  

What's a girl to do?

Really?

Ermentrude: Is there an icon you can use to delete 1000 rows in Excel all at once?

Poppy: I don't think so.

*Ermentrude spends the next few moments looking puzzled that Poppy hasn't immediately leapt to her feet to solve this conundrum!*

Questionable hygiene

There is a woman who works on my floor, I don't know who, with curious lavatory behaviour. She pees, then neither uses toilet paper nor flushes.

I find this odd, though environmentally laudable. Apart from the stale pee, which is not all that pleasant in a work environment.

Payday

Skippy: I hate paying tax!

Really? Most of us think that it's super-fun!

In the beginning

I'm not sure when I first met Tom, probably due to the hard-drinking world that is one's first term at university. He lived on the floor above me in halls, and had befriended one of my troop of Jessicas (for the record, 6th form Jess, who I knew from 6th form). Tom lived on a corridor of boys, which was rather bizarre as the rest of the building was resolutely mixed. In search of female companionship from the beginning, even the gay guys, the routinely ended up in the kitchen Jess' corridor. Jess and I regularly cooked and ate together, taking it in turns between our kitchens, so I got to know the boys from X (our corridors were alphabetized, Jess was on V, I was on Q). For the first few weeks, Tom was just one of the quiet boys who looked intimidated by my incessant bouncing and cheeriness (I was hyperactive for most of my first year at uni), but we sang in the same choir, so I got to know him a little better when he actually bothered to turn up to rehearsals.

By the end of term, we were kind of friends. He had a girlfriend back home, and I had been having a fling with another guy from choir, resolutely not falling in love with him, as I was newly single and DID NOT want a boyfriend. I then moved on to a guy from my corridor for a few snogs, but was in a flirty, flighty mode. Nothing serious for me! When the Christmas holiday started, halls were abandoned apart from a couple of people, including me, Tom and my GBF James who had come to stay for the night. We spent the evening before going home for Christmas in my kitchen, drinking and being generally silly. Before leaving, Tom and I swapped numbers. Over the Christmas holiday, we both thought about calling the other, just because we had got on so well on that last night, but had decided not to, thinking that it would be weird, or silly, or misinterpreted.

At the beginning of February, there was a choir night out, involving Chinese food, much drinking and a very dodgy club. It was an exciting evening for me, because I had a message to say that the results from my Grade 8 singing had arrived at my parents' house. While we were in the pub, Tom offered to go to the phone box with me to call home (I hadn't got a mobile by then, though those days were numbered). He gave me a huge hug when I found out that I had got distinction, and we carried on to the restaurant with the other guys from choir to celebrate. It was a really fun evening, with lots of drunken silliness, and at least one girl had to be carried home. After dinner, we went to truly dreadful club just off Oxford Street, and it was there, while trying to avoid a rather scary male stripper with whipped cream, we had our first kiss, photographed by the guy who would turn out to be one of Tom's best men. The kissing continued, and we managed to kiss in every bus-stop between Oxford Street and Camden, conscientiously missing buses all along the way.

This does not an interesting anecdote make...

Skippy: Oooh my friend is pregnant and she sent me a lovely email!!!

*Thought bubble above the heads of all those around*: And?!

Please, Skippy, do yourself (and the rest of us) a favour - edit yourself! It is OK to have the odd thought that isn't shared with the group. They're not like sweets...

How to...

...make me grit my teeth:

Following a burp (yet another 'endearing' pregnancy side effect) say 'Shoos me!' in baby-talk, instead of 'Excuse me' like the 29-year-old you really are.

Yes, Skippy, I do mean you. Nobody outside of your warped little love-bombing family thinks you're cute.

The Pod from Hell

I work in an open-plan office, laid out in 'pods' of four desks. On my pod are:

Anna: normal. Fun. Sense of humour, including a full compliment of cynicism, sarcasm and irony. Good pod-buddy.

Skippy: unbelievably up-beat and hyper. No personal boundaries. Believes everything is 'nice!' and 'luvly!*', and if you don't answer a personal question, she'll just keep asking until she has extracted all the information she wants. Listens to loud music on her iPod. Annoying and loud laugh (rather like the rest of her personality). Treats me like her personal IT fixer (my job is nothing to do IT - I just use my initiative). Recently knocked up, and sharing all the joyous symptoms! Bad pod-buddy.

Ermentrude: rather bovine. Agrees with Skippy about the niceness of everything. Talent for asking long-winded questions just after one says 'I must go now!' or 'I'm in such a rush!'. Quieter than Skippy, but also thinks I'm in IT. Needs everything to be explained slowly, and 20 or 30 times. Mediocre pod-buddy.

The other purpose of this blog is to work out my frustrations with Skippy and Ermentrude anonymously, so that I can be pleasant and unfrustrated in person. This is very difficult to achieve, so I need all the help I can get.

*Should be pronounced with simpering Northern accent

Non sequitur

Poppy overhears colleagues talking

Anna: The man from the council told us where the squirrels are getting in so we have to go to Homebase to get some cement to block up the hole.

Skippy: I love going to Homebase at Christmas to get decorations!

Anna: ???

Sometimes an eyeroll just doesn't cut it.

So...

...the big deal.

I graduated from university 5 years ago. Within 6 months, my significant other, Tom, had an affair with a man.

I found out.

We talked it through, and (for a variety of reasons, upon which I will elaborate at a later date) we stayed together. Two years ago we got married. This is, generally speaking, a good thing. We love each other, we get on well, we make each other laugh, we tidy up after each other (me - emotionally; him - with cleaning products and elbow grease). We complement each other.

But, he is still fairly screwed up emotionally. His family deserves a goodly number of posts, filled with awe at the dysfunctionality, and this is a major part of it. He is currently in therapy, instigated by me, which he agrees he needs and after a couple of months, is now telling me when I'm not being 'therapeutic' (I have a weakness for bitchy one-liners when upset or angry, and I know they don't help, but sometimes they pop out before I think. But I do feel bad).

Now that he's in therapy he has someone other than me to talk to about all this. I could talk to James (GBF*, my best man [yes, I am a girl - the wedding was slightly unconventional] and person in whom I originally confided when faced with Tom's infidelity), but he lives far, far away, and this just isn't something I want to do over the phone. There is also the fact that I've never really forgiven him for listening to me cry, then not getting back to me for 2 months, despite the massive emotional support I've given him over the years, which has really led to me mentally labeling him 'Friend for Fun not Support'. I could also talk to the other person I talked to at the time, Hat Jessica (for some reason, I know many Jessicas, Jessies and Jesses, so they will all have a descriptor. Hat Jessica wore a beret when she met my mum, and the name stuck), but she is also far, far away. And is really also an FfFnS, having done a similar disappearing act after my outpouring. I don't think they were the right people to have talked to at the time, and I think it even less now. So they are off my list.

I could (and possibly will) talk to Caitlin, knitting buddy extraordinaire and resident of the same city as me, but she is also a good friend of Tom's. I find it difficult telling people, especially if they have any kind of relationship with Tom, as I really feel deep down that this is 'his problem', and any effects on me are actually peripheral. I 'know' this isn't the case - the effects on me are actually massive, and may get bigger as he delves through his subconscious in therapy, sorting out who he really is, and what he really wants - but I still find it's a stumbling block when I try to talk about it.

There are other candidates, but none of them seem particularly suitable, I guess mainly because most of my really close friends are 200+ miles away, like Hat Jess and James.

So I've taken the anonymous option, and started a blog. Writing about all of this will help me sort out what I think and feel, just like talking about it would (I can make my own sympathetic noises and nod in the right place if necessary). If people read this and give me advice, that's a bonus. If people read this and give me abuse, I'll ignore them (I'm hard to shake).

*GBF - gay best friend

How to...

...annoy me even more:

• hum, tunelessly and frequently
• try to join in every conversation within earshot, no matter how inappropriate this is
• offer me 'a nice cup of tea' when you know I only drink coffee, and always make it myself

Congratulations! You really are an expert!

Poppy by numbers

It doesn't take that much to make me happy, here are some of the things that will make a happy Poppy:

• a good book
• a comfy sofa
• a bag of prawn crackers
• a good DVD (current favourites - House, Grey's Anatomy, Bones, West Wing, Spooks)
• some fun people, each with a healthy dose of cynicism and wit

Things that make Poppy growl:

• the people I sit with at work.

It is not acceptable to be that fucking cheerful all the time. Everything is not 'luvly' (must be said with simpering Northern accent, dripping with saccharine). Sometimes when people don't detail every single evening/weekend/thought to their colleagues, it's actually because they prefer to keep things private.

And it is never OK to ask a colleague (who is not your friend just because they have to sit next to you 5 days a week) if they are pregnant if you haven't witnessed them drinking coffee for a couple of days. This is especially the case if you're going to pretend you're not actually asking if they're pregnant by claiming 'I had a dream that you were pregnant, so are you?' - transparent just isn't the word. And pathetic. Grow some fucking boundaries.

In the beginning...

I have a lot to think about.

I'm hoping that this will help.

My long story will become less confused and twisted.

I will become less angry.