D-Day casualties in war of attrition
LISSOM Shirley Ballas laments the fact she hasn’t yet been stricken by the Strictly curse. She has been single for four years. Frankly it’s astounding that feisty Shirley remains unattached.
I spent an evening at her table at a function and she was gorgeous to behold, slim as a whippet, funny, feisty and
Give our Shirl a whirl, gents
surrounded by good and loyal girlfriends. I even admired her attempt to coin a catchphrase: “It’s never too early for a 10 from Shirley!” She says: “I’m looking for someone to share my life with and I’m truly ready to find that person now”.
Step up gentlemen, the lady is a catch. She achieved the impossible and slipped into legendary Len Goodman’s shoes so seamlessly he’s barely missed. She knows her onions, wears her heart on her stylish sleeve and deserves a partner who can whirl her around the dance floor and kitchen alike.
YOU’RE reading this the morning after Divorce Day. You know, that chastening date in the calendar when overexposure to your other half during the festive period has been less “comfort and joy” and more internecine warfare. You contrast the wretchedness of your own rotten marriage with the contented couples wearing co-ordinating pyjamas and blissfully carving turkeys in every twinkling Yuletide telly advert.
You gaze enviously at younger relatives waltzing arm in arm through the honeymoon period, locked in eternal embrace beneath the mistletoe, still burning with the belief that they will live happily ever after. You watch in awe the older relatives who have managed to sustain compassionate, loving marriages, seeing them exchange affectionate smiles and beaming at each other’s cracker jokes and wonder how on earth they’ve managed such an impossible feat.
With every merry moment you feel more hard done by, more aggrieved and more entrenched in the desire to bring your substandard marriage to an end and explore pastures new.
Before you take the plunge, gentle reader, let me implore you to count to 10 and think again. As the veteran of a bitter divorce, let me give you the heads-up about the repercussions.
1. Your heart will break. Whether you think you want a divorce or whether it is thrust upon you, the sheer shock of seeing your dreams implode, dividing up your albums and employing forensic accountants to sleuth through his finances for “lack of transparency” will send waves of sorrow echoing through your very soul.
2. Children, despite assertions to the contrary, are not made of Teflon.
THEY are as fragile and vulnerable as adults. However exemplary you both try to be, your offspring will suffer. Shared parenting is all very well in theory. In practice it means your adored infant morphs into Jacqueline Wilson’s “Suitcase Kid”. Three nights a week sharing a bedroom with your ex-husband’s new squeeze’s truculent 13-year-old is no one’s idea of a picnic. Your child is dazed and confused and nothing you do or say helps.
3. You end up poorer than you thought you would. Divided assets are half as big as before and selling up is hell. Separating possessions into his and hers is agony. Leaving a home you love because your spouse no longer loves you is soul destroying.
4. The legacy of divorce lasts for ever. It’s horrible at funerals yet somehow worse at celebrations. Try picturing turning up separately to visit your newborn grandchild, arranging a seating plan separating you both at your children’s weddings and occupying opposite rows at their graduations. Is that really the future of your dreams?
5. Don’t forget “old cow, new cow” syndrome. It is inevitable the shiny frisky new cow you have been desperate to acquire turns into an old cow once you’ve been in possession for a while.
On the subject of greener grass, I’ll quote my esteemed broadcasting colleague Robert Elms. “Have you seen the state of the grass out there?”
TIME FOR MENFOLK TO BREAK THROUGH THE CRASS CEILING
the breach while the dad continues on his career path.
Even though the law entitles men and women to equal leave when they become parents there is very little take-up from fathers.
She says: “We bring our daughters up to be more like men. When will we bring up our sons to be more like women?”
She has a point. We want for our daughters what we crave for our sons – respect, fulfilment, the chance to expand their potential. We’re much less zealous about instilling in our boys what we expect BY now the Beckhams should be well aware of the perils of the public kiss. Locking lips in the glare of the paparazzi’s gaze is a potential minefield. If you miss, as the couple did at David’s London Fashion Week show, you’re branded insincere. If one has eyes closed and the other has eyes wide open, you’re showing that one doesn’t give a damn about the other. If you go in for a French-style snog you put people off their breakfasts.
Truly, there’s no such thing as a perfectly elegant public pucker and there’s only one way to avoid a PR nightmare. The gentleman gently clasps the lady’s hand and places upon it a tender peck, Disney style.
Hit and kiss for Posh and pecks
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WE are divided into “generation soap” and “generation gel”. Soap advocates are of a certain age. We remember when “the world’s most beautiful women used Lux” and relish the aroma of coal tar. What’s more we were raised on the mantra “waste not, want not” and can’t abide the sight of litres of unused gel cascading down the plughole.
We admire Her Majesty for mashing all her soap remnants together to make a new bar. Therefore the news that soap is in the throes of a renaissance as consumers wise up to the profligate gel squandering is music to our ears. As everyone worth their salt knows, solid soap means solid family values.
If the bar hardens and cracks that indicates you’re simply not washing enough. from our girls – empathy, the ability to soothe and support.
It’s not entirely our fault. We were raised by attentive mothers and distant fathers. We married hands-off dads. It’s almost impossible for us to believe boys make as effective mothers as girls.