Seeing as I’m still having trouble thinking of what to write because nothing happens to me because I CAN’T GO OUT, and seeing as little Emily is still recovering from the Sickness so she hasn’t been able to come and see me, and seeing as Branwell talks a load of shite when he does stay to talk to me, and seeing as Lottie is too busy, busy, busy to talk to me in the first place, and seeing as THE BERSERKERS have been told to stop ringing me up for bedtime stories because Lottie’s been whingeing about the phone bill, and seeing as there’s only SO many times I can stick a poem up and pretend to myself I’ve written a proper post, I thought that today I’ll write about something I’ve been avoiding writing about – my dead husband, ex-Simon.

I’ll apologise in advance for how BORING this post will be – it can’t be anything BUT boring because ex-Simon was boring, he was VERY VERY boring, he was the most boringest bastard ever to have been boring, he could have made every boring bastard in every boring chapter of THE BORING CLUB OF BORING BASTARDS die of boredom.

He didn’t SEEM boring for the first couple of years of knowing him. Yes, he liked CLEANING but any woman with any sense in her head would skip down the aisle to marry a man who liked cleaning, wouldn’t they – I didn’t have to lift a finger, he cleaned ALL THE HOUSE, everything, he kept the place LOVELY and SPARKLY and HYGIENIC which was brilliant for the most part except when he tried to ban me from smoking in the house because he said I was turning the ceiling and walls beige and making all my books yellow and why didn’t I GET RID OF SOME OF MY BOOKS?

You can imagine what I said to that. See, another problem with ex-Simon was he decided, after 2 years of marriage, to become a MINIMALIST – actually, being a MINIMALIST isn’t another problem, it’s the SAME problem as being a BORING BASTARD because who in their right mind wants to live in NOTHING? I’ve never understood MINIMALISM – human beings are ANIMALS not MINIMALS and how do animals live? They live in cosy little nests and burrows and dens and holes and hollows and other snug places, don’t they? Except fish (and other water creatures) who don’t have the bricks or the fingers to build themselves a proper home so they only have vast amounts of open water to live in – BUT THEY DON’T ONLY HAVE VAST AMOUNTS OF OPEN WATER TO LIVE IN, they have the BOTTOM OF THE WATER to live in and that’s what they do, they sleep in a bed of cosy grit and silt and pebbles with little (or BIG) rocks for walls to keep the BIG FISH and other BIG WATER CREATURES away from them because if they went to sleep in their vast amounts of open water they’d soon be EATEN by the BIG FISH and the other BIG WATER CREATURES. And it’s the same for human beings, we need THINGS AROUND US for protection because if you’re a MINIMAL and your house has fuck all in it, WHERE DO YOU HIDE WHEN THE PSYCHO COMES TO GET YOU? 

Wanting to become a MINIMALIST was the first real indication of how much of a boring bastard ex-Simon would become before I finally sent him to sleep with the fishes (SLEEP WITH THE FISHES!! HA HA HA HA – get it?) I did try to compromise with him (I told him he could keep the little downstairs toilet collection-free) because I still loved him then (though, on reflection, him telling me to get rid of my books is what started the slow swing from love to HATE). I couldn’t understand why he wanted me to get rid of my books when he had a COLLECTION OF STAMPS that he was meticulous about. Yes, stamps are the boringest item to collect but the fact that he was a COLLECTOR wasn’t boring even though the thing he collected was. But (again, on reflection) maybe at the beginning I shouldn’t have been blinded by him BEING A COLLECTOR, I should have focused more on the boringness of WHAT he collected. Ah, Hindsight, you fucker, why are you never there when I need you?

I’ll tell you a bit more about ex-Simon later, the thought of having to get rid of my books is bringing on a panic attack and I need my beta-blockers and a little swig of  laudanum.