Activity

I chal­lenged a po­lit­i­cal view of Andy’s, which led to an ar­gu­ment, and he said: ‘I would love you no mat­ter what your opin­ions were.’

And I know he was telling the truth. He would have loved me un­ques­tion­ingly and stub­bornly for­ever. And I don’t know if I want to be loved like that.

Andy gave my mum a pair of karaoke mics for her birth­day.

He knows she’s never done karaoke in her life and in fact the most mod­ern song she’s ever sung is Han­del’s ‘Mes­siah’ in the church choir. And as I saw her open the gift, try­ing to think of some­thing po­lite to say, I thought about h…

I soon re­al­ized that in­evitabil­ity of ev­ery re­la­tion­ship: the things which ini­tially draw you to each other be­come the ex­act things that ir­ri­tate you the most. I’d loved Andy’s non­con­for­mity, which be­came ir­ri­ta­tion at the lack of struc­ture in his life. He’d loved my in­de­pen­…

‘This is too hard,’ she says, wav­ing her hands in a way that sug­gests she’s given up. ‘We can’t talk with­out hurt­ing each other. It doesn’t work.’

‘We can agree on that,’ I say. ‘Good­bye, Jen.’ I walk away and, af­ter a few paces, turn back. ‘I can’t even look at the sea any more be­cause i…

I have, in my slightly perkier mo­ments in the wake of my and Jen’s break-up, let my­self believe that chatting women up might be fun; that, with age, I might have got bet­ter at it. For some rea­son, this as­sump­tion gets stronger with ev­ery break-up, de­spite not hav­ing done it for the years I…