The Steam Train of My Mind

Why is it some days we wake up and our minds are racing, sprinting, much more than the normal chugging, positively buzzing and breezy? It's only 10am and I've potted my hanging baskets, 'phoned catalogue companies, dealt with all correspondance, read my inbox, tidied the house, done two lots of washing. Am I running or am I hiding?

This year two men have told me they'd love to have sex with me - please note, I used the word sex. When I spoke to one of them about this fact, and asked if love entered into the equation, I was told it didn't. Men are men and sex is sex and women are vehicles for men's needs (so I was told). So I am, in fact, a vehicle. Steam train? No, I believe trains are more locomotives than vehicles. A car maybe, a swish dashing red ferrari? Well no. In fact I am not loved. So I am more a Robin Reliant - I am not loved but I am great to have sex with. If it was just one man who told me this I could accept it - his problem, not mine. But it is two men and as I have only really loved 3 men in my entire life and 2 of them have told me this I am wondering: is it me? Am I hard to love? I must stress that both these 'loves' of my life and I had relationships in the past and both were trying to resurrect them. Or rather I was (one of them - not both), not knowing that it was rumpy pumpy in the sack he wanted rather than love in the mist. The other one wanted to set me up as his mistress in the south east - I could take my adorable daughter and live the lifestyle I had formerly been accustomed to before my change in circumstances. Mistress. It has connotations of 'wife in the background' so I declined - graciously of course. He was very pissed off and that's when 'it' started. I walked away. Yet the other relationship is harder to walk away from as our lives are 'entwined' as it were. So I've worked on it since that fateful night when I learned I was an old car. And it's just as well - a week after hearing the incredible news I went to stay with a friend in London to clear my head and it was there, in Kingston upon Thames, in Barclays Bank, on the third floor, that I burst into tears. The poor girl had only told me I couldn't extend my overdraft and there I was, flooding over her desk. All the other bankers were looking at me pityingly. She must have felt like Scrooge for it was a few nights before Christmas - she gave me many options, hoping to cheer me up. But I sat there thinking of old cars, rusting away, bangers on the scrap heap, all scratched and scraped. Was I old scrap? At the time I thought I was. Yet I made myself a promise. I was going to win him back - yeah, that was it. I'd get him. I'd show him what I was made of, why he fell in love with me. (When will I learn?). I'd lose weight, earn great money - anything that pays loads whilst letting me do the school run, keep house, shop, and chauffeur my 7 year old around to as many after school clubs as you can stuff into any one week if you please.

That was almost 6 months ago now. Sadly I haven't lost 2 stone (yet). But something is going down and I don't know exactly what it is but it feels fab. By showing him I was sexy as hell and interesting to boot and really worth the effort I now feel - I'm obviously having a l'Oreal moment - worth it. I am WORTH IT. Has anyone out there seen 'Under The Tuscan Sun' (I'm sure she ran off with my life, the life I should be leading if only I were brave enough: I speak Italian, I like Poles and I love the sun - is she my sister? my double?). Anyway. If you have seen the film (my daughter and I have watched it 10 times in the past 6 months) you have to remember the moment when Frances gets back from Positano (fab place - love it - always buy jumpers) and hangs on to the bed posts doing an 'oh yeah' kind of dance, celebrating the fact that she still has it. Well I feel like that. In trying to show someone else that who I was is still who I am I got the chance to dust myself off, polish myself up and shine. I mean shine. No-one may have noticed but I am glistening. And the more I glisten the more I want to eat apples, big juicy shiny red ones, instead of chocolate. So look out world 'cos soon I will be both glistening and toned. And you know what? Sometime soon I am going to ask the question again, the one where I say, is it just sex or do you love me? And I know my answer. If he says he doesn't love me then he is out the door. If last time taught me anything it's that this time I will cling on to my dignity by my fingernails if I need to, until they are jagged and torn but at least I will be standing tall (which would be fab as I'm only 5'4"). I would not prove myself again to any man. I am woman and I am worth it and I am worthy of love (as well as sex). For now though, funnily enough I am enjoying the sex, because it is on my terms (deservedly so after being called an old rust bucket). Sex with him has always been good and it means I don't have to even daydream about escorts/agencies/asking out an old school friend, or whatever else I may contemplate doing (on-line dating maybe??). No. I am fine on that score and also it keeps me fit and so much more fun than conventional exercise: he may think he's getting the last laugh but he is so not.

As for today, it's back to the garden for me. I've bought myself some pink gardening gloves and secateurs as an early birthday present. Last Sunday I saw a pink plastic wheelbarrow. Now I've never considered a wheelbarrow before but having trotted around the garden today back and forth and up and down I now see the benefit of them. And if it's pink well so much the better. I don't give a toss if he's cynical about it. You see he says I talk too much (perhaps I do but I don't like the silence he inhabits). He says my friends and family don't like me. Well perhpas they don't but till they tell me I'm reserving judgement on that one - could it be that as he chooses not to socialise with family or friends he could be jealous that I do? He says I'm not interesting 'cos he isn't interested in what sparks my imagination. Well maybe he isn't but I'm not going to stop being interested in education, psychology, relationships, people, languages, food and wine and travelling overnight. So it may annoy him and piss him off but I'm buying a pink wheelbarrow. Not only will it be useful I will push it up and down the garden when he's looking, shouting 'look at me! i'm here, i'm staying and i like who i am'. It will be a real moment. Whose moment? My moment. And it will be for all those moments and times he rejected me and I wore black so as not to draw attention to myself in the hope he wouldn't call me 'lardy' (yes, really). It will be a Diana Ross moment, an 'I'm coming out, I want the world to know, gotta let it show.....There's a new me coming out and I've just gotta live, and I just gotta give, I'm completely positive'.

Just off to the garden centre. It's going down and it feels great.