Curiosity killed the cat: Part 2

In the first part of this humiliating tale, I set out my stall and tried to explain when I became a stalker (having since had a sip of tea, I think I am beginning to prefer the term ‘busybody’ actually), and to some extent why.

My latest focus has been going on for over 3 years: It’s my husband’s ex girlfriend.

As you do, in the 21st century, you have a flick through your new beau’s facebook photos to see how you measure up. No problem, I thought, she’s a complete minger.

That should have been enough. That, right there, should have been enough for me to sweep it to one side and think no more about it. But not nosey old me, no. Here’s where it went next…

These were in the halcyon days of facebook when silly people didn’t think much about keeping their profiles private, and facebook weren’t inclined to automatically do it for them. This enabled me to see beyond what my new boyfriend had on his profile; I could see everything on hers. She seemed to have been a prolific snapper during their university years (snapper, not slapper – but more on that later) and I was able to scroll through album after album of them holding hands, drinking, holidaying, drinking, dressing up, drinking. ‘So what?’ you might ask. And you’d be right. So bloody what. I wasn’t jealous after all. She may have gone to a posher university than me, but I was a working class hero who’d held down a full time job and did my course in the evenings. She was just playing at being a student who did sociology whereas I’d studied law, a proper subject. Plus, as we’ve already established, she was a minger.

Looking at each picture, I felt increasing emotions bubbling up: scorn, disgust, something that felt like jealousy but couldn’t be… Eventually, clutching at straws, I made up a white lie and told my boyfriend that a friend of a friend had told me that his ex-girlfriend has semi naked pictures of him “in nothing but a bedsheet” on facebook and because of his profession, I think he should tell her to remove them. He wasn’t impressed. He wanted to know why my friends were reporting this back to me. I hadn’t accounted for this; I thought it’d sound better than “I’ve spent months trawling through your ex’s photographs and have found something I feel I can legitimately protest about even though it’s clearly based in irrational jealousy/hatred”. Seemingly not. He said it was up to her what she kept on facebook. I appealed to his professionalim and natural inclination to be a private person – I said that her irresponsible use of facebook (hark at me!) meant that anyone could see these pictures of him in the all together. He said he didn’t even know what pictures I was talking about. Nor was he interested enough to find out, by looking at her facebook profile himself.

I ought to point out – although I do think I still have a good point about the privacy settings – that my carefully chosen words about the pictures hid the real story: that they were at a fancy dress party and the bedsheets were their ‘toga’ costumes. He didn’t know this though, and I railroaded him into sending her a message asking her to remove the pictures. This, I thought, would be a way of me flexing my muscles. I have yet to establish why I felt the need to do this.

To my anger, she replied that she wouldn’t – that they were part of many happy memories and he didn’t want to take them down. I was insensed. Then, to add insult to injury, my boyfriend said that he was inclined to agree with her and wish that I’d never made him ask her in the first place! I was defeated. Reeling from her disobedience and his disloyalty, we had the mother of all rows, fuelled by Bajan rum and years worth of baggage on my part. Surely it was the preceeding Wilderness Years that had made me like this? On the other hand, I could see reason in my demands, and was outraged that he didn’t back me up. He’d taken her side.

This tied in with an unfortunate incident with a big fat cow at work who was a bully and was making my life a living hell. Immediately after Photogate, which was an unhelpful and stinging catalyst for an episode of mental ill health, I went off sick. For 5 months. Looking back, I often think I could have or should have used that time more wisely. What I really did, was potter around, cook, hardly go out, sleep, watch nice films, go to counselling. The counsellor told me not to watch too much Jeremy Kyle. Whilst most people might say this should be NHS advice anyway, I enjoyed watching it to see what mindboggling issues the British underclass have to deal with in their intricately interwoven lives (it’s amazing what trouble you can get into when you and all your friends and family are career doleites!). I wondered what the counsellor would have made of my secret pastime: stalking my boyfriend’s ex girlfriend.

Yes I could still view her facebook profile. I checked to see if she’d made any public references to the disagreement with my boyfriend; she hadn’t. I fathomed out who her closest friends and family were, I discovered her myspace and abandoned bebo profiles, I found an old university blog with pictures of my boyfriend on. I was cross that she’d left pictures of him littered across cyberspace for anyone to stumble across. As far as I was concerned, she could do that with her own information, with pictures of herself, but she shouldn’t do it with other people’s privacy. Like the rum-based row, I thought I was championing the protection of his identity.

I joined the Weight Watchers online community. My boyfriend was delighted, noticing that I’d put on a bit of timber over Christmas and through languishing at home. He paid the monthly subscription for over a year, while my weight hardly fluctuated and I used the online resource merely to track her posts, some of which, in a largely female discussion environment, were quite personal. I began to build up quite a picture of someone I’d never met. I knew her. I hated her. I hated her for being able to click her fingers and make my boyfriend switch allegiance between me and her. For gaily skipping on with her life, blissfully unaware (or not caring) that her refusal to delete the pictures had caused a massive rift between me and my boyfriend.

Fast forward a couple of years, to now. I should explain that we have a normal functioning relationship, my husband and I. I’ve never checked his phone for signs of ‘other women’, I never wonder where he is if he comes home late, I don’t worry about him going to work outings with his female colleagues without me. I am not insecure. He asked me to marry him, I didn’t force him into it (in case you were wondering), and life it completely normal – although we are a bit skint after the wedding. I’d like to say that since my time off work that I hadn’t bothered keeping tabs on this girl. I’d like to say that, but it wouldn’t be true. I’m as much up in her business as ever before.

Last year, after visiting a friend in the town where this girl lives, I drove to her place of work to see if her car was in the car park. I knew the make and model from partial facebook photos, and now I wanted to find out the registration so that I could spot it if I ever saw her driving anywhere. Why???? To prove to myself that I can find these things out? What exactly do I need this information for?

I found out where she lived by using Google earth. No, I don’t mean I entered her address and had a quick look on google earth to see what the house was like. No, that’s far too simple. What I mean is, I saw a photograph on fb from which I learned what the house opposite her house looked like, and together with some prior information from my boyfriend of which estate she lived on, I google earthed my way round 64 residential streets until I found the house that matched the photograph. Why? I’m never going to go there. I’m not going to sit outside and assassinate her.

My original reasons for ‘research’, namely finding out whether a partner was cheating or whether an enemy posed a physical threat, are no longer valid. I’m just a nosey, sad bitch. I enjoy winning secret competitions against her; I’m prettier, I’m cleverer, I’m funnier, and I have real friends on facebook, people I care about and am interested in, not 600+ people that you can’t all really be real friends with, like someone I saw once a week 10 years ago when we both did the same Saturday job, or someone I met at a house party but didn’t talk to because I was busy snogging someone and they were busy puking in the kitchen sink. Even last week in the pub with my husband and his old uni friend (who shared a student house with this girl) I felt triumphant when the friend described the girl as ‘fickle’ and ‘cared too much what people thought’ during an innocent stroll down memory lane. I meanwhile had successfully hidden my enthusiastic interest in the subject by stuffing some chips into my mouth, so as to physically stop myself from crying “More! More! Tell me more!”.

I felt surges of pride when my boyfriend might idly mention something throughout the course of our relationship which in my mind scored points against her – that I was a better cook, that my mum was a better cook, that our family teapot was cleaner. Seriously, although he rarely made any mention of her, when he did give away a titbit I clung onto it and relished it. My parents’ house was bigger, my parents were married, anything would do. Although quite obviously our marriage and lovely wedding was not orchestrated to score points, I enjoyed making my “engaged” and then “married” status public on facebook. Take that, it said, he married me in less time than he was with you!

After digging around in the dirt enough, my suspicions of her being a cow despite her happy-go-lucky, friend-to-everyone exterior, were confirmed. I was able to relay to my husband, that she’d slagged him off to a third party. She had told someone that she paid for all his living expenses throughout university and described him as a “sponging bastard”. I knew straight away that this was untrue, my husband coming from a generous two parent family and she coming from a struggling one parent family in a not-so-nice area. He also said it was untrue, and my husband never lies. There were other things that I wasn’t expecting to find out, which I delighted in relaying to him. She’d sent naked photographs of herself to someone that she’d met on an online dating site, had a one night stand with him, got pregnant and had an abortion. On a night out “celebrating the abortion” (my source’s words, not mine) she met her current boyfriend. I felt superior when my boyfriend sarcastically labelled her actions as “classy”.

I finally felt vindicated. Years of hard work and research had paid off. No wonder she wanted to keep photographs of my boyfriend on facebook, they were virtual notches on a bedpost. She was a ‘slag’ and I had finally defeated her.

Yesterday I found out that she and her partner are expecting a baby. This time, I felt real jealousy, not imagined jealousy that filled my idle internet time. By way of background, I have a medical condition that can ‘get in the way’ of getting pregnant. It’s not entirely discounted yet, but the same day that she announced to the world that she was pregnant (and 600+ fake friends sent encouraging messages in response) I had been in the hospital having the latest in a series of tests to see if I can have children or not. I am not one of those people who lets their marriage break down if they can’t have kids; we’ve even joked that if we can’t then we will be able to afford some bloody good holidays instead, But I have never successfully removed the thorn from the Wilderness Years when the hitherto unknown interloper who had a baby with the bouncer that I’d been fighting for for 6 years taunted me, saying “How do you feel? I’m having his baby and you can’t have kids”.  He’d insensitively told someone I didn’t know something very personal about me – even if her diagnosis of the situation wasn’t strictly speaking confirmed.

When my friends announce their pregnancies, I am nothing but genuine delight. Real, 100%, warm happiness. I am not jealous of pregnancy. I have a work colleague who sadly miscarried a pregnancy and developed a very bitter resentment for anyone at work (whether she knew them or not) who announced that they were expecting. It’s not like that. I do get cross though when someone announces a pregnancy that they didn’t particularly invite (case in point: my husband’s sister, who has a difficult eating disorder, ridiculously poor sense of financial responsibility, and a violent boyfriend) and who I don’t think should get pregnant before me (generally younger people – case in point again: my sister in law, and my husband’s ex).

I know I shouldn’t pry. I don’t know why I do. After finding out, I put my head on my husband’s shoulder and asked for a cuddle. He naturally obliged and asked what was wrong. How could I even begin to tell him?

Curiosity killed the cat

This is a confession of sorts. I am choosing to do it here so that I don’t have to see the surprised and disappointed (or in my husband’s case: cross) faces of my friends. Whether it’s a confession for the true reason of making a confession (genuine contrition) I am not so sure. Well I am sure: it’s not. I just feel sorry for myself and I want someone to feel sorry for me too.

I am something of a stalker.

There, I said it. Clearly I have shoehorned in the words “something of” to cushion myself from the horrid s word. Because let’s face it, stalking is serious business. It wrecks lives, jobs, relationships, confidence.

So how can I so brazenly say that this is what I do? Well, I suppose it’s because I think mine is harmless. I don’t see it as stalking (what hateful people do to people who don’t deserve it). I also think that the people I ‘research’ do deserve it. “Research” is also a key word. You know the phrase that goes ‘keep you friends close and your enemies closer’? Well that’s what I do. Let me explain…

This started at the very beginning of the Wilderness Years, when I embarked on a tempestuous and ill-advised relationship with a bouncer 15 years my senior. It was all fun and games until one night his live-in girlfriend turned up just as the pub was closing, and tried to drag me out of my car. This was all very new to me; I’d gone to a hippy lefty secondary school where you didn’t have to wear a uniform and did have to call the teachers by their first names, I’d never had a fight, and never felt endangered when I went out for the evening in the local pubs. Then this girl – and she was a girl, because I later found out she was the same age as me – had swooped in from a big city, and found me. I realised that she had done her research. Whether she had just had a gut feeling that her ‘man’ was carrying on with someone else, or whether she’d found text messages or something, I’ll never know. But what was clear was that she’d parked up the street for some considerable time, waited in the shadows to see which girl kissed him goodbye and which car I got into.

This was some next-level espionage. I’d only been driving for a few years, and my use of the car hadn’t extended beyond trips to the out-of-town cineplex or the occasional run out to a shopping village. I didn’t realise that my little runaround could be used as a vehicle of war. I hadn’t contemplated sneaking a glance at who was ringing his phone when the display started flashing. Now I did. It didn’t take long until I was able to note down her phone number, ring it anonymously, like she did to me. Why was I doing it? I don’t know. I think the unwritten rule of being ‘the other woman’ is that you don’t do things like this, you don’t make the silent phone calls, you don’t check up, you just keep your head below the parapet.

It was too late. I was fully engaged in a tug of war. He had nothing to do with it. It had only started off as a laugh but now I was commited to outwitting her, keeping one step ahead of her, to winning.

Six long years then ensued of car chases, phone calls, scratched cars, and her turning up at my flat and sending me to A&E with concussion (don’t worry readers – I managed to pull her hairpiece off and lob a tin of matte magnolia paint at her).

Of course in the end, neither of us won. She eventually left him and I thought I was the victor. Soon afterwards, I got a phone call from a friend who was waiting to see her midwife. She told me that my ‘rightfully won’ man was sitting in the waiting room with another, unknown girl. They were waiting for a scan. Game over. I wasn’t about to compete with a baby.

But over those six years, I’d developed amazing skills to research people and places with whatever resources I had. Without a computer in my pokey flat, I’d used yellow pages, word of mouth, snatching phone bills from his kitchen table when he wasn’t looking. When I did have access to the internet, the stuff I could find out was beyond belief. I would spend hours trawling forums to see what she may have posted. I got into her Tesco shopping account. I got into her email. I hated her and I wanted to know more about my enemy.

That kind of determination doesn’t disappear easily, I’ve found to my dismay. Several boyfriends followed, and I exercised the same rigourous background checks on their ex-girlfriends. All they needed to do was innocently give me their name in that “so what happened to your last relationship?” chat, and I was off. In some cases, my nosing paid off. I uncovered cheating, secret children, and in the case of Bryan the Bastard, that he was going out every day in a suit but didn’t even have a job!

Some years later, in my last relationship, I experienced what it felt to be on the receiving end of this kind of ‘tracking’. I didn’t like it. Stalky Paul (previously just Paul) had taken the demise of our 4-month, long-distance relationship very badly. He pestered me, monitored my facebook updates, sent me angry emails to my work account. How ironic that after just a few weeks of this kind of behaviour (which, if you’re interested, I put a stop to by telling him that I would get my dad to ring his dad!) that he got the moniker “Stalky” whereas I, with years of MI5esque tactics, was the victim. Like I said though, my ‘research’ didn’t harm anyone. It just armed me with enough knowledge to know whether a partner was up to no good, or whether an ‘enemy’ posed a threat.

I need to go and have a cup of tea and get my thoughts together about what I’m going to tell you next. I’m afraid it’s nothing sensational or gory, there’s no Eastenders style catfights or car chases. But as it’s a lot more recent, I have to be careful about what I say and also, I am feeling a bit low about it all.

Guerilla Gardening

Have you tried it? Have you heard of it?

I first learned of this jolly social phenomenomenom a couple of years ago. It’s where people with far too much time on their hands transform empty or otherwise neglected space with a touch of the old Percy Throwers.

I don’t much like the title; I like a bit of alliteration but I think the word ‘guerilla’ makes it sound like it’s an activity for smug ex-students with shit-locks and smelly peruvian hoodies with all icky bits of tobacco stuck in the lining of their pockets…. I’m sure they’re not all like that but I have a lazy imagination at times and am sure they’re only a small step away from Swampy, living in his tree, and protesting about this that and the other.

Accomplished guerilla gardeners arm themselves with secateurs and bamboo canes, bulbs and cuttings, for their war on the drab urban landscape. They do something called “pimping pavements”. I’m not sure if this overt approach is quite my cup of tea.

We all know I haven’t got the time nor the inclination for this kind of commitment. Added to that, it’s not the kind of thing I’d like to do alone but neither would I want to join in with any hippies. I have, however, in my own little way made an effort to see if I can transform a patch of mud at my railway station into something a bit nicer. I went to Poundland, got some packets of mixed perrenial seeds, and broadcast them into the earth on my way from the car park to the platform. I tried to look as inconspicuous as I could, mindful of the fact that I probably looked a bit shifty and that there were Network Rail CCTV cameras hither and thither.

I hope to report back on any stuff that grows in the miserable patches. It would be nice to see a little splash of colour and know that it was my idea.

Family loyalties and Social Services

No ’tis not me who is ‘known’ to social services. I am too old to be a problem child anymore, and tend to keep most of my antisocial thoughts to myself.

My brother is ‘assisted’ by a social work team, mental health team, and other ‘cross agency professionals’. Or, as I like to call them: lazy arseholes.

That’s not fair actually. His main contact on his outreach team is a social worker who’s worked with my brother for over 10 years, and coming from a mental health nursing background is very knowledgable about his condition (schizophrenia).

The issue I’ve got at the moment is this: my brother lives in a shit tip. I mean a real state. The kind of environment where the RSPCA would whisk dogs away into care if they found any living with him. He lives independently, my brother, apart from the fact that he cannot work, is in receipt of full benefits, and my mum has to co-ordinate his bills, utilities, etc.

I have offered to help him by cleaning his flat. Before you nominate me for beatification or an OBE, I ought to add it will cost him £8 per hour for this help. Or £10 if he only lets me come for one hour at a time.

This sounds harsh but I’ve done this before. I’ve been his ‘cleaner’ twice in the past. And on both occasions he sacked me! I was too thorough, he said, or his usual paranoia of losing control of his money kicked in and he reverted to his untrusting hermit lifestyle.

So after some persuading, he recently agreed to let me come back. I’d feel better, knowing that I can hopefully keep some of the germs at bay and plus I am saving up for some things for the new house. This could pay for a new fridge freezer, this gig.

This progress has suddenly been thwarted however by our very own parents. As pensioners, they are increasingly finding themselves less able to run around after my brother, believe that his common sense and ability is declining (I am inclined to agree – perhaps it’s a result of the powerful anti-psychotic medication he’s been on for years) and that the social work team assume that our parents will fill in the gaps that they can’t be bothered to take care of. They assume that we will clean for him, that we will take him to medical appointments, that we will make household repairs to his council flat and provide the level of care that my parents aren’t able to sustain at their age, and that my sister and I aren’t able to provide because of our own family and work commitments. The team telephone my brother and remind him when he has medical appointments, and remind him to ring Dad – who lives in a different town – to take him there.

The strategy that Mum & Dad have recently agreed upon then, is to withdraw. Not from seeing my brother, because it’s not him that they’re frustrated with, but the presumptious ‘professionals’ who patronise my parents even though they were both professionals in their own field in their day.

As part of this strategy, they’ve asked me not to provide my brother with any practical help. They’re asking me not to go to his flat to clean for him at the same time that my brother has finally come round to accepting my help.

I don’t know what to do!

Remember me? I’m your Life List

I finally got round to looking at my Life List. Although to tell the truth, I had to begin looking for my Life List. I got one or two natty little striped notebooks down from my busy skinny bookshelf, which is stuffed with jewellery boxes, money jars, notelets, a statue of the Virgin Mary, and various CDs and DVDs. That’s right; it’s not much of a bookshelf.

Anyway, I flicked through these couple of books: no Life List. Just abandoned to-do lists.

I rummaged round and picked off some more; black moleskines and a nice pink soft leather one. Nothing.

I have to say I began to panic. For various reasons, too: where was my Life List? Exactly how much rummaging and flicking will I have to do to find it? Have I left it somewhere where other people can read it? Is it lost forever and I’ll have to start it again?

All totally unnecessary, but I’m just a flapper and a worrier.

I found it needless to say, and was happy to see that I’d ticked some of them off since I last checked. Now I keep it in a handier place, and when I get chance I’ll update my Life List blog on some of the little things that I’ve done that I said I wanted to do.

Thank you Mel for reminding me today of where my idea for my Life List came. I saw a dog today on its way to Crufts (it was with its owner, I’m guessing it needed her to pay for the tickets). It made me think of Alice and wanting to enter her family pet Mabel (I am sure that was her dog’s name) into a local dog show.

Sylvia Moonboots

I must tell you about Sylvia Moonboots. I must do this, because increasingly, I find myself having days where I feel more than ever that I am turning into her.

Sylvia Moonboots works for the same employer as me. She has worked for the organisation since she was a teenager, and/but has not risen very far through the ranks. I think she’s always done the same thing.

Sylvia lives in her parents house. I understand they have both passed away now, and she lives there alone. I have just found out – through unprofessional means – that she is 52. I don’t know why I’m suprised by this, but I am. She has one of those faces that one way or the other belies her actual age. She has probably looked frumpy since childhood, yet has the wrinkle-free face of a single, childless person who isn’t weathered and weary by the stresses of running a family.

I don’t know much about her because she doesn’t talk to me. She ignores me, as a matter of fact, which I think is odd because (a) we go on the same train (b) often at the same time (c) we worked in the same office for a few years (b) we moved to another – same office – at the same time. Yet she pretends not to see/recognise/know me in the first place.

We’ll talk more about Sylvia Moonboots another time…

Being on the receiving end of an intervention

My Mum has put me on WeightWatchers. She joined a few weeks ago, and has lost half a stone. I told her about it. Now she has decided that I need saving, and that she is going to be my healthy eating saviour.

Thing is, I know how to lose weight. I was in WW too once, and got all the books and learned all about it. I just couldn’t be arsed. I like cake and I like cheese. Now she has taken all of that joy away from me and is going to take all of the credit for any weight I lose.

I have just eaten my ‘packed lunch’ at work. It was mostly salad. Now, I ought to explain how much I don’t enjoy packed lunches. I like hot dinners. Where I come from, it goes: Breakfast, Dinner, Tea not Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and I think that kind of illustrates that my Dinner, in the middle of the day, is a substantial meal. Preferably hot.

I am getting fat, it’s true. And whilst I’m not particularly hung up on size, I suppose shape irks me a bit. I don’t like my pelican-like beard of fat, or my belly which has ballooned from a post-wedding bumbag to a Eurohike backpack worn in reverse. On getting into the bath recently, I paused with one foot in the water and the other on the bathroom floor, while I grabbed a book that I wanted to read as I soaked [Room with a View, since you ask]. I caught a glimpse of myself in profile in the mirror that hadn’t yet steamed up. Let’s just say: pregnant Demi Moore covershoot, minus the MAC face and body makeup, clever lighting, airbrushing and hollywood face. I looked ready to be rushed into the labour ward.

My tummy was so big and firm, so full. While my arms and legs don’t give me too much hassle, this belly was more than a little squidgy podge. This was a beast of compacted fat, sitting smug and taught under my other pendulous ample bits. It looked lovely, seeing myself very pregnant.

At this point, for the unfamiliar, I ought to point out: I’m not pregnant. I’m just getting urgently fat.

I joke with my colleagues how I can get a seat on the train by walking with my legs slightly akimbo, and putting a protective hand on the top of my ‘bump’. So being a piglet does have its perks, but on a serious note the health powers that be do say that fat around your middle is especially dangerous.

I’m clearly not going to get fit or eat healthily myself. It’s another item on the very long list of Things That Make Me Useless. I’m just a bit cross that Mum is the one to make it better. Story of my life.