Dear Diary...

On houses, pooling resources (or not), being back on the jabs and fan girling

Dear Diary,

I have always been financially responsible. That’s not very exciting is it? That’s not the tale of a stunning, crazed animal, a woman worth knowing. That’s Great Auntie behaviour, the one who smells a bit of mashed potato and custard creams, who dies alone amongst her cats with a million pounds sewn into her mattress.

Why am I telling you this? Well, some of you have been with me for a while, way back to the recipe blogging days when I’d muse about my baby boys and my husband and what to bake for their packed lunches. And then some of you were here for when that whole little dream of a lie went pop and I left my ex husband and for a short while I felt a little wild, well, wild for me. I mean, I bought a velvet choker and fancied myself 15 again. I even drank shots on more than one occasion. That never ended well. There’s a reason I don’t drink anymore. (“The only person having fun when you drink is you Holly” said the long suffering boyfriend as far back as 2017).

What I’m meandering around the woods to say is that after the initial euphoria of quoting Mary Oliver and buying new knickers, things went very wrong. Look, there’s no big gossip here, just that after what was initially a very amicable break up things took a turn. I ended up spending years in court over houses and assets and kids and then kids again and again and again and again. I’d like to try and explain what it was like to you, but I don’t think I can, because I’m pretty sure it’s worse than I remember. I’ve blocked a lot of it out. I still can’t walk down certain streets, they’re too evocative. I can’t even really tell you the proper tea on what happened, because it’d be like ripping off a scab too soon. Just that I had to pay a large sum of money out and that it left me feeling really buggered over. I swore I would never marry again. Love and money and the law should never be intertwined according to me.

Then slowly over the years I softened a tiny bit. I decided that I would marry again but only if the other person had the same assets as me. They needed to have the same to lose. That seemed fair. But I’m not sure I meant it. I wanted to keep my boys future inheritance safe and secure from any would-be suitor. I still do. I haven’t been this sensible, not buying the fancy orange juice with bits, for my widower to fritter my pennies away on fancy girls and louche cars. That’s for my sons to do.

Then last weekend me and The Boyfriend had The Chat. The one about whether we should join forces and buy a house together, whether he should buy into this house, the so called ‘marital home’ referenced in all the divorce papers. It was me that brought it up, just to be clear, after another evening of listening to the folks next door partying and pondering what it might be like to not share a wall with another family. Me and The Boyfriend are wholly committed to becoming less and less sociable as we age. If our lives were a graph with one axis the passing years and another our frequency of evenings out, then the number of pets would be plotted across it to demonstrate increase in pets = rejection of societal norms. And of course after The Chat, that night I dreamt he stole my money, my home, my children’s future. Ugh. Old wounds not healed yet then.

If I weren’t freelance and if I weren’t tied into a mortgage and if… I wouldn’t live in this house. It was the marital home for less than two years, but it has so very many memories that I’d like to put to pasture. I’ve always been sensitive to geography. (Now I hate Austen but I reckon that must be a line from some Northanger Park & Prejudice type tome). Places hold feelings for me. You know that saying ‘wherever you go, there you are’, well I beg to differ. I can turn my back on some of my less fun times by simply changing bricks and mortar.

But all this detracts from the issue at hand; do I mix love and finances again? Or should I just accept that my judgement hasn’t been historically great and leave well alone? What would you do? We’ve been together almost 8 years. British courts would laughably deem our relationship a long marriage (if we’d actually bothered to get married). I don’t know about you, but I’d say 8 years is a short marriage. Now 20 years or more, now we’re talking.

So there you go, I’m all at sixes and sevens. I’m also back on Mounjaro - currently on 5mg. It’s suppressing my appetite a little, but I need more. (God, what an addict!) I also need to be tracking protein again, tracking calories. I am so much happier when I’m lighter. I wish that weren’t the case, but it is. For anyone new around these parts all my MJ info can be found here.

Oh and I was interviewed by Polly Vernon, who I have been reading since I was a young whippersnapper. I was most definitely star struck when she said she’d like to talk to me about my Mounjaro experience. (Disclaimer: I initiated the conversation, I can’t pretend like she was knocking down my door, demanding my personal inside scoop). Anyway, I want to sound all nonchalant and cool but I’m not that woman. It was an honour I tell you! One minute you’re a 23 year old London girl about town, sipping neat gin over ice reading Polly’s Guardian column whilst deciding which awful man to text back first, the next you’re sitting on the sofa in Leicester, alcohol free beer in hand, answering her emailed questions about injecting yourself with weight loss jabs, a randy Golden Retriever pup at your feet. Funny old life, huh?

Over and out. x

This little diary update was free but to be honest with you, most of the juicy stuff is behind a paywall because a girl’s got to eat/pay for weight loss jabs. You can subscribe below for free or the price of a coffee each month. Bargain!