EMERGENCY! HELP ME!

Today it's just me and Skippy on the pod, as Ermentrude is at a meeting, and Anna is on holiday. God help me, but Skippy has just announced that it's 'so tricky to remember the difference between staples and paper clips'. Seriously, if that's the hardest issue in your life, you're just not trying hard enough...

TMI

Skippy has basically just announced (though not in so many words) that she's going for a poo, and could we tell the person who will be appearing any moment for a meeting with her that she won't be too long. Nice.

Who ate all the pies?

Skippy, why do you ALWAYS ask your husband 'Are you going to have a pasty?' when you're talking to him on the phone? What is it with pasties? I don't get it.

 

PS. I know you're pregnant and huge and LAZY, but when you're having a rambly personal call on your mobile, GET OUT OF THE OFFICE. WE DON'T NEED TO HEAR IT.

Vocabumalary nonsense

Skippy, since when did 'pleasure trip' replace the term 'holiday'?

Geographobia

Skippy, not having Geography GCSE is not an excuse for not knowing that Iceland is part of Scandinavia. It makes you sound so uninformed you could be a Republican Vice-Presidential candidate.

Is plastic lucky?

Dave, if you say 'touch wood' and then touch plastic (Not even plastic that looks like wood. Just plastic.), I don't think it works. Sorry...

Discretion is sometimes the better part of being a colleague

Skippy, when you hear that a co-worker's little brother has just been hospitalized, maybe don't tell her that the condition he is being tested for is exceedingly painful and it will take at least 6 months for him to recover. That may well be true, but you don't need to beat her over the head with it...

Skippy, pull your shirt back down

Just because you're pregnant doesn't mean that it's appropriate to show your belly in the workplace.

I am not a resource centre

Skippy and Ermentrude - while I think that it's lovely that you respect my superior knowledge and skills so much, but please, if there's something you don't know, why not try to find out for yourself before asking me? When the answer is going to on either Wikipedia or on a Windows Help Menu, why not use them, instead of me? Exactly how unhelpful do I have to be before you stop asking me STUPID QUESTIONS?!

Not really, no.

Skippy: You know when you're writing something, and you just think 'God, this is so...'

 

Unfortunately Skip, if you don't finish your sentences, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Party of the century

Skippy, I think it's great that you enjoyed your birthday (and that I got out of going to your party), but please could you now SHUT UP ABOUT IT. I am really busy, and I think you are too. Come on girl, it's business time not gossip time. GET ON WITH IT!

Angel eyes

I sang this about 10 years ago, and have never come across a recording quite this haunting (not that I've been looking that hard, to be honest...).

Snob Alert!

Ermentrude, the cleaner (who is lovely) is NOT going to go through your bag while you nip to the loo.

Insecurity broadcast

Skippy, are you so insecure in your relationship that you have to call your husband 'my darling', 'gorgeous' or 'babe' EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE?!

Note to Skippy

Sticking out your bottom lip and looking perturbed is not, repeat NOT, endearing.

 

When at work, you're supposed to at least try to act like an adult.

 

UPDATE: tuneless humming is also rather irritating and could get you slapped! Or at least glared at.

The OCD in me

For some reason I find it intensely satisfying when I finish pads of Post-Its or cartridges of staples. Indeed, rather oddly, it's much more satisfying than finishing pieces of work.

Coworkers - please think before you speak...

Skippy: I can't lie on my belly anymore, and I've only got 4 weeks left until I'm too pregnant to lie on my back.

Ermentrude: Can you lie on your side?

In my head: No, she has to hang upside down on the back of a door. *roll eyes*

Psychic iPod Strikes Again

I've often thought my iPod is psychic, but I've just experienced another example of its powers. This morning while brushing my teeth, I was musing on how Counting Crows and Barenaked Ladies reside in the same box in my head, and generally if I'm in the mood for one, I'm also in the mood for the other.

 

I just put on my iPod to help me concentrate while reading a piece of work through, and selected 'American Girls' by Counting Crows as the first song of my random playlist. The second song? Obviously, Barenaked Ladies 'I'll Be That Girl'.

 

Out of 2235 possible tracks. Spooky.

Katie the Creepy

I'm a fairly rational person, but one colleague never fails to give me the heeby-jeebies. Katie is nearly 60 (she's retiring next year), and about can't be much more than 5 foot tall. Maybe it's her short stature, but she seems to glide silently round the office, and always tends to appear behind you when you least expect it. When my desk faced away from the door, I would often turn around after working intently and find her standing just out of sight, waiting. She will never try to attract your attention, she just stands. Staring at you. Where you can't see her.

 

Katie is admin support on an account I used to work on, and my first contact with her was during team meetings, where she would take the minutes by hand. She has small, very neat writing, and she writes with deliberation. Always. We would often have to repeat things 3 or 4 times so that she could write them down, slowly and in full (abbreviations are the Devil's Work according to Katie, Super-Christian Lady that she is...).

 

Katie never moderates her pace. Everything is slow and ponderous, but I think this is just so that she can always creep up behind people, waiting for them to turn away from the printer and walk away at a normal pace, but jump out of their skins because Katie is standing there. And then she smiles at them, creepily and silently. And then she will carry on at the same pace, never quite moving out of the way in time if someone is rushing past, so that people often bounce off the wall rather than bump into her. I'm not sure whether this is because they're too polite to bump into her, or because they're scared of the consequences if they did...

Weirdness of pigeon

I'm watching a pigeon that is sitting on a rooftop and nodding sporadically, but always in time with the music on my iPod. It is much paler than it's companions.

 

And apparently has better hearing.

Exciting new technique!

To avoid logging into this blog at work, I'm experimenting with posting by email. This will allow me to vent more fully about the woes of sitting with Skippy and Ermentrude, while not having to worry about IT becoming aware of the blog's existence, which would be rather awkward.

3 weeks

Over the past 3 weeks, Tom and I have been trying to be less dependent on each other, and more focused on doing what we want. This is part of his attempt to work out what will make him happy (which makes me suspect he isn't entirely realistic about what 'happiness' means). It's a really strange situation to be in, because I'm not sure most of the time whether I should include him in my plans or not, and he doesn't seem to know what he wants or expects either.

The biggest effect of this new regime is that we don't plan to eat together during the week. This is hardly ground-breaking, considering that during a normal week I'm out on Mondays and Tuesdays (Italian and knitting), and he's often out with work at least one other evening. Also, he's really getting into the way we ask each other questions (or rather the way I ask him things - he's as tactless and, quite frankly, patronising as ever). Apparently, 'Would you like to see this film with me?' is hurtful, as it makes a refusal sound as though he doesn't want to spend time with me, when actually he just doesn't fancy seeing 'Burn After Reading'. Er, really? If someone says 'No thanks, I don't really want to see that.' to me, I just assume they don't want to see the film, not that the concept of 3 hours in my company is abhorrent to them.

The other major problem I'm having is that he seems to be projecting emotions and reactions onto me. We did some housework, including a trip to our storage unit, earlier today. This is never my favourite pastime, but I got on with it, didn't bitch and even made some jokes about the runner we passed sans socks. From Tom's perspective though, reluctance was 'radiating off me' and he sniped and snarked at me until I left him to it when we got home. Fast-forward 40 minutes to a big, blazing row which cleared the air a little, but left me totally drained. He's at work now. I just wish that he would talk to me if he thinks I have a problem with something. I'll tell him if I do, but if I don't know that he thinks I do, that makes everything really complicated.

Book of the Month

Leviathan - Paul Auster

Prose so silky you don't notice you've read 200 pages for a story intricately woven into a tightly-crafted bundle. It seems so simple, until you start thinking back through all the connections and coincidences, and you get a little bit dizzy.

Alanis Morissette should have used this in 'Ironic'

When your husband is struggling with his sexuality and you decide to watch 'Angels in America' without knowing what it's about...

...isn't it ironic, don't you think.

Tea - it's not rocket science

Whenever Skippy or Ermentrude make each other a cup of tea, they always have a long discussion about the strength of the brew, and whether it measures up to the recipient's expectations. I could understand this if they were variable in their tastes in any way, but they're not. The tea is always determined to be 'Fiiiiiine' (with the most nasal of long, drawn-out Northern vowels it is possible to produce).

Crisis

I created this blog partly as a way to let off steam about my inescapable and infuriating colleagues, but mainly as an outlet for the other things I can't say in real life. My marriage has never been simple, and I figured that writing about things as they came up would help me work through them better. It turns out, when things are coming up, it's all I can do to keep my head above water, hence the 5 week hiatus.

Things seem to go in a familiar cycle:

• we have a few weeks of just 'normal'
• Tom gradually begins to withdraw, staying out late, not turning up when he says he will, picking fights where there is no fight to be picked, insisting nothing is the matter when asked (frequently, though not to the point of nagging. I am very careful about this)
  
• me trying to stay calm and not make a fuss because he has a lot on his plate. His plate is always fucking overflowing
• me slightly losing it and making him explain what is going on
• we have a really intense few days, going through whatever it is that's wrong
• we feel incredibly close
  
• we have a few weeks of just 'normal'

...rinse and repeat as necessary.

The last few weeks have been particularly bad, with the added bonus of his mum's ropey health rearing its ugly head. Tom is trying to deal with not having dealt with things in the past, mainly his sexuality. It's a little easier for me because I've been expecting this forever - I never thought that his bisexuality would just go away (which he, apparently, did), so I always assumed he would need to work through what that meant for him. He claims that when we got married, he made a decision to 'bury' that part of him, but he didn't tell me. If he had, I would have told him that that probably wasn't going to work.

It's now 5 years since he had an affair, and 4.5 since I confronted him about it. I never thought it would take this long for him to realise that he needs to work out the implications, but at least he's got there now. We've had a lot of late nights talking about the whys, whats, whens, but nothing is resolved yet. I don't want to push him, because I know that under pressure he panics and lashes out. I also know that it's not fair on me for him to keep me dangling.

Fancy that...

Strangely, my stress levels are increasing today. Ermentrude has been on holiday for two weeks, and before that was working in another department for a month, limiting that inane chatter with Skippy. She's been back for just over 2 hours, and already I want to throw things.

Pet Poo - suitable topic for discussion in the workplace?

Skippy and Ermentrude have, for the last 10 minutes, been discussing the toilet habits of their pets. Loudly.

Nice.

Why do I have share oxygen with these morons?

Confession

I have never been met at an airport.

Across the universe

From one of my favourite movies ever.

How to...

...doom your offspring.

Skippy's parents already have their eye on a pony for the 4 month foetus she is currently carrying. Knowing it's mother as I do, and anticipating the grandparental spoiling that the pony appears to signify, I am prepared to state now, that there is No Hope for the child.

It will be Awful.

Hills

Walking through the fog on top of a hill, knowing there is a cliff yards from my feet felt strangely familiar. I could feel the space, but not see it.

Muffled in drops of water that were not quite falling from the clouds I watched silent birds emerge, first as shadows, then solid and flapping.

Catching up with the wind

Work hit me around the head with a shovel and dragged me into the barn, not letting me out until I had sheared all the sheep and dealt with a crazy yokel or twelve. I might be taking this slightly bizarre metaphor a bit too far...

Anyway, a week on holiday followed by a trip abroad with work, followed by a trip to visit friends, followed by a bank holiday leads to not enough time for the really important things in life, like sleeping and blogging. On the other hand, it does feed the soul. Or the nasty corners of the mind with fodder that can be used for the blogging. I have a lot I want to talk about, but the secret nature of this venture means I can only do it at home (I don't want work to be able to trace this - I'm not exactly complimentary about some of my colleagues), and I don't want anyone I know to find out about it. Tom has to be out before I will log in. And recently, he has been here. A lot. Which is lovely. It just means I don't get an awful lot done.

Nosy cow, but not very good at it

Skippy: Ooh, what's in your bag?!

Anna: My lunchbox... Why?

Skippy: It looked really exciting.

Anna: ???

Please note, the bag in question was open, and the lunchbox was CLEARLY visible.

Sensory overload

Ermentrude, for the love of God and the good of humanity TONE DOWN THE LAVENDER. The smell is making me nauseous, and I'm not even pregnant.

How to...

...make me want to elbow you in the kidneys with as much force as I can muster:

Wriggle every 10 seconds in increasingly outlandish ways when I'm trying to get to sleep. If you're that uncomfortable, GET UP!

Ambitions

1. Live in Italy, preferably Siena or Firenze
2. Write a novel
   
3. Have children
4. Own a big red squishy sofa
5. Explore Egypt
6. Knit a jumper for everyone in my family
   

Book of the month

The Post-Birthday World - Lionel Shriver

Bittersweet view of both outcomes from a tricky situation. The claustrophobic atmosphere of a stale relationship is captured adeptly, and it makes you wonder about all the choices you didn't make.

Biological clock

Two opposing reactions to the same natural phenomenon.

Poppy: Yes, I can hear you. Yup, tick tock, tick tock. Why are you so loud? I'm not even 30! Getting the message, loud and clear! Come on, isn't there a fucking snooze button on this thing?! PLEASE SHUT UP!

Tom: Biological clock, you say? An evolutionary mechanism innate in all living organisms to prompt reproduction so as to ensure the future of the species? I'm sorry, I'm just not familiar with the concept!

Love

Today is a day to celebrate love, especially the love that binds my family together.

Happy wedding anniversary, Mum and Dad.

So true...

April Fresh Apocalypse

Following a 40 minute conversation about washing and ironing with the female members of Tom's family, it turns out that they are trying to bring about the utter collapse of the environment purely through the medium of laundry. How can a 3 person household generate 3 loads of washing a day?!

Tom's family

Mother: black belt in the little-known martial art of 'Hospitality'. Will never knowingly allow you to have an empty plate or glass on her watch! Even if you don't want anything! Does not believe in depression, thinks they shouldn't let gay people on the TV (though quite frankly the amount of time she spends watching it you'd think she'd welcome any excuse to turn it off for a while. Or even just 5 minutes).

Father: permanently absent, even though he still lives with Tom's mother. Incapable of showing affection. Always in one of four places - bed, watching TV by himself, pub, work.

Older sister: thinks being a parent means letting her mother bring up her children.

Younger sister: quiet, usually. Sweet, but spoilt, as her family can only show affection through the application of fat wads of cash.

Nephews: no concentration span due to aforementioned part-time parenting.

Grandfather: interesting jewellery (as in, big, gold and brash).

Grandmother: repeats the last word you say when in conversation. Most off-putting.

If you're into it

Summer of love

We didn't get married immediately, it took us another 6 years before we ended up in front of the altar, but we did move in together. When exams finished, I cranked up the hours in my part-time job so that I could afford to stay in London, and rented a room in halls over the summer. Double rooms were easier to come by, as fewer people wanted to share, so I suggested to Tom that he could also get a job in the same office as me, and we could share the room to halve the rent. He readily agreed, though before we could happily shack up, he had to lose the girlfriend back home.

This was easier said than done. She was still in the middle of her A levels, and he didn't want to be responsible for messing up her future by dumping her before they were over. Unfortunately, the day after they were finished, he was due to go on holiday with her, her family, and worst of all his family too. There was no way he could dump her before the holiday, it would be unbearable. I understood where he was coming from, and decided to let him just get on with it. If he came back and decided he wanted to be with her, fair enough, if he came back and jumped straight on a train back to me to tell me how awful it had been, so much the better.

It didn't work out quite like this though. First of all, he got really bad food poisoning, so really wasn't up to travelling so soon after getting back. Then, her grandma died. This all seemed rather farcical, but I had made up my mind not to get too worried. In my heart, I had already decided that we were always going to be together. But, just in case I was wrong, I protected myself by kissing someone else. This might seem like an interesting strategy to keep the man I had fallen in love with, but firstly, I was 19 and not entirely logical, and secondly, he was on holiday with someone else. I wasn't going to have sex with anyone, but some kissing, to keep me from getting lonely didn't seem too wrong. Especially as it was very good kissing.

In those rather strange days, disconnected from everything I was used to, becoming increasingly nocturnal (I only worked 20 hours a week, and not at fixed times), it seemed perfectly normal to know that the man I was kissing at night was not the one I had chosen as my forever. I knew that if it went further than kissing, things would become very complicated in my head, and it would be really unfair for my kissing partner, who was completely informed about the situation. And while, I'm very glad that Tom did eventually arrive (having dispatched his newly bereaved girlfriend - oh the guilt!), on sultry nights like tonight I do remember the illicit kissing, and wonder about what might have been...

Hot = fast?

I came out of a meeting in a sweltering room fanning myself with my notebook, and sat back at my desk.

Poppy: That was the hottest meeting ever!

Ermentrude (with puzzlement in her bovine eyes): Do you mean it went quickly? You were in there half an hour!

Poppy: ?????! No, I mean it was very warm.

First...

• Memory - running down a hill with my mum, having to reach up to hold her hand
• Pet - guinea pig. It died.
• Crush - James somebody from class 10. I don't remember anything about him other than he had dark hair.
• Best friend - Catherine, from play group. She came to my wedding, but that was the first time I had seen her in years.
• Film - Bambi.
• Kiss - a surprise that I hadn't seen coming. Not entirely pleasant or welcome.
  
• Flight - to Finland. Lots of lakes.
  
• Car - VW Polo
  
• Sex - in a tent. It needed practice.
• Flat - (post-uni) ex-council in South London.
• Plant - African violet.
• Love - boy from school. I treated him badly, but only right at the end. I didn't have the maturity or experience to handle it differently.
• Ambition - to be a teacher, like Ma and Pa.
  

How to...

...make me scream silently:

Even though I mention the title of the document I'm talking about 4 or 5 times, still think I'm talking about something totally different. How did you manage to get a PhD? Or finish primary school, for that matter...

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.