Readership #2

Welcome Australia, Canada and Denmark to the readership stats, I hope you enjoy and stick around :-)
Love
SG
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Holidays are coming, holiday are coming

I read something shockingly ridiculous yesterday. Over the Christmas period many relationships will end and 1 in 20 will break up over a bad gift. Now I can understand why people break up over Christmas with its stresses and strains but to break up over a gift is, to me, a little over the top.

My last blog mentioned why I am looking forward to having a single Christmas and this statistic (however made up it might have been) made me reflect on my ghosts of Christmas past, for your enjoyment here are some of my worst boyfriend Christmas stories….

Gold, Frankincense and kink

 I suggested to my boyfriend at the time that it might be fun, instead of getting our gifts before Christmas that we go to the sales afterward, split up and meet up a couple of hours later with our gifts for each other. Now this was mainly owing to the fact that we didn’t have great pay-packets and I thought it was practical. There were several things that I wanted to get him which were only affordable in the sales. That evening he unwrapped all of his gifts, things that I knew he wanted, things that he would never have bought for himself sales or not. Then I unwrapped mine…

He must have spent the whole afternoon in Primark, a basque, hold ups, a secretarial style jacket and some high heels were all wrapped up in the package he gave me. I resisted the temptation to tell him that he hadn’t so much bought a present for me but a present for his dick. He must have had some sexy secretary fantasy going on. The jacket didn’t even fit.

I tried to appear grateful but that is very difficult when you know full well that the perfume and lip-gloss set you wanted and dropped hints about was 70% off and would have been well within the budget.

Eat DRINK and be merry

When I moved in with my boyfriend (not the one above) I was very excited about our first Christmas, I decorated, loving wrapped presents and was very much looking forward to waking up together, our first Christmas in our first home. I decided that a champagne breakfast was in order before we went to my aunt’s house for dinner and his grandma’s in the evening.

The day went well and by the time we left my aunts I had been drinking diet coke for a while, having started drinking early I didn’t want to show up at his nans shit faced. He however had no such reservation, once we left my aunts and he was out in the fresh air I was increasingly concerned about how unstable he seemed. On arrival at his nans, he carried on drinking and hit the buffet, always a bad idea to tuck into half a prawn ring when you have drunk your body weight.

When he dropped a spring roll on the floor I told him he should probably pick it up, his response of “don’t worry the dog will get it” didn’t go down well with his nan as the dog had died six months earlier. After that he went upstairs to chunder and came back declaring himself “better” I then had to point out that he had a regurgitated prawn tail in his hair.

If that wasn’t bad enough his mother announced that this was all my fault. Why was this my fault? Because I had the audacity to make a champagne breakfast for her son. Her son of such little self-control, her son who was now picking prawn out of his hair. Yes, that was my fault all right.

Hr drunkenly bickered with me all the way home and left me sitting alone at the end of the evening watching Christmas films while he snored, fully clothed and smelling slightly of sick in the bedroom.

Hail Mary

 This is the same boyfriend as the crappy gift, who had a very odd family. We drove up to see them on Christmas Eve, all the way from Essex to Leeds which is no mean feat when you have worked a full day. On arrival, having only one foot out of the car his mother demanded to know what the news was since he had told her we had something to tell her.

Now his mother hated me and I did not like her much either. My boyfriend announced our engagement and his mother’s response was “Oh my god why?”

The following day his mother kept bursting into tears, over the turkey, over the soup, over the fact that she could find her Christmas apron. When his mother’s sister Mary came over she was in relatively good spirits, produced an engagement card and gave me a kiss. I always liked Mary. This only made his mother’s tears flow harder and brought great cackles of laughter from Mary, who was an alcoholic but no one spoke about it.

Mary would normally get pissed before she arrived and keep up the pretence that she was not alcohol dependant but she declared this a celebration and tucked into another half  bottle of sherry. Every time his mother steered the conversation away from weddings or engagements Mary took great pleasure in bringing it back up, more tears, more of Mary laughing like a drain.

I had to endure three days of his mother’s play acting, she had always mothered my ex but she upped her game now. I genuinely walked into the living room to find her cutting her sons toenails, he was 24. By the end of the weekend I could not wait to get back to the safety of Essex. My family were not exactly thrilled about this engagement either but at least had the good grace to be civil to him.

So you can see why this year I am looking forward to some quality family time with my nearest and dearest, who are probably just as odd as all of the above, but they are mine, spregan, pickle, mummy, goony, dadio and flora I love you all xxx

Love

SG

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Last Christmas I gave you my heart…

I have a confession, I am a Christmas fanatic, I bought a Christmas countdown chalkboard which hangs proudly in the accounts office and encourage those I work with to count the days till the festive season down from January onward.

Last Christmas was difficult for me. I broke up with my ex on the 4^th December. I had booked to go away with him the following weekend, which incidentally clashed with my office party. In light of the breakup a colleague, the same one who encouraged me to try internet dating, gave me a pep talk. He insisted that I keep my day off booked, get my hair and nails done, buy myself a new dress and attend the office party in light of my change in circumstance.

I could have still gone on the weekend away that I had booked and paid for however I knew that even with a friend in tow I would spend the weekend constantly thinking about who I should have been there with, my ex, and that would not have made for a fun weekend for anyone I chose to bring.

So I took my uber tanned colleague’s advice and went to the staff party, alone. This in itself was fine, most people don’t bring other halves and only a handful of people asked where my boyfriend was. Touchingly, when our senior partner enquired after “my chap” and I had explained he was no longer of that title he said “pitch yourself higher next time”

I danced and smiled and generally had a good time, I even treated myself to a hotel room for the night so that I didn’t have to worry about missing a train home. But once alone, tipsy and in a hotel room when I should have been on a weekend away with the man I loved I felt so empty. I cried my eyes out until I fell asleep.

The rest of Christmas was much the same, I was supposed to be in Ireland with his family, the plane had taken off with my seat unoccupied, I wondered at the time if he had sat on the plane and the emptiness had struck him in the same way it did me. I’ll never know, in my more dramatic moments I like to think it wrenched his gut a little bit.

 So this Christmas I am looking forward to the delights of a single girls festive season. Most people find being alone at Christmas difficult but it seems like years (in fact it is years) since I had the luxury of a selfish Christmas.

I never go out on Christmas eve but this year I really fancy it, I won’t be partying hard as I have never had a hungover Christmas day and I don’t intend to start now but I do fancy a night of dancing to Christmas songs and drinking eggnog with some friends.

On the day itself I will be cooking for my grandparents with my mum and siblings in tow. I’m looking forward to it so much. Then boxing day I am going to Dick and Dom’s, having dinner at a restaurant and will probably watch the rest of the queer as folk box set with them. To me it couldn’t be a better plan and I am actually glad I don’t have another half to contend with.

I’m not back to work until the 2^nd Jan and whilst I don’t have every detail of New year’s eve worked out I’m sure it will be a good one, now just have to start thinking of new year’s resolutions…

Until next time

SG

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