My Life Doesn’t Make Sense
My life doesn’t make sense to many people. I am separated from my husband but he stays at my house every weekend. We don’t argue all the time and fight in public. We act and behave like normal people and folk can’t work out if we are a couple or not. We are not a couple – we are separated but we are also not divorced. We are in no-man’s land. A place where we can’t go back but we haven’t quite worked out which way is forward.
As a family, we have had a shocking two years – Hagar’s arrest, the year waiting for it to come to trial with Hagar doing a three month Afghan deployment where a Chinook was shot down (Hagar is a Chinook pilot obviously he wasn’t shot down but losing a cab in theatre when your husband is doing the same gig at the same time makes you a little greyer), having our story blazoned across the front pages of the national press, completely ostracised by our former friends, being told I set the PR up, which I didn’t (This is in itself is weirdly flattering because clearly they think I am a PR impresario, with the contacts of Alistair Campbell, to be able to whip up four front pages. Interestingly, I would normally write Max Clifford but it’s sex scandal galore at the moment so it didn’t seem appropriate to herald him as the master of PR) and ‘people’ saying to me that they were surprised to find out we were swingers (which we are not – for the record. Not that I have any objections to people swinging. It’s about choices.)
When it became abundantly clear that it was going to be a full on Crown Court trial with a jury we knew the outcome was unpredictable so, therefore, we had to assume that Hagar was going to prison. For me, it was a year with the sword of Damacles hanging over my head too. We decided that we needed our son, who had already been to 5 schools and had special education needs, (he is hyperflexible, which is modern parlance for disjointed and a bit wriggly which is my parlance for hyperactive, we did think at one point he was dyspraxic but this has been ruled out) it was essential, and while we could still manage it, he must stay at the boarding school he attended, as it was in his best interests. It was also of paramount importance that Hagar had a relationship with his son. Military life is so fragmented that this critical parent bonding and essential male guidance was being lost due to Hagar’s prolonged absences. Hagar’s relationship with The Grenade was no exception. I made a very difficult decision and agreed that Hagar would become the primary carer for The Grenade. In order to do this I had to pay a solicitor £400 to draft a completely worthless piece of papers swearing that this was the case. In order to adhere to the rules laid down by the military I was only entitled to 56 days a year of unattended access to my son and I was not allowed to care for him in the school holidays, or take him to and from school unless Hagar was deployed or on exercise and then, of course, I was entitled to full parental access. I was also allowed no input into his education and all the decisions had to be made by Hagar. However, I was allowed to see my son if he was with Hagar and so that is when we decided that rather than swapping children at the weekends that Hagar would come to my house and at weekends we would be all together. Over the years this has worked very well. We follow the rules to the letter. There is no breach.
I have heard that the mutterings in the patch are that we are in fact doing this as a boarding school scam and that we are in fact back together. But this is not the case. We are in no man’s land. We are separated. In January, this year the military changed the rules and now you can take your children out of CEA (continuity of education allowance) without penalty. Previously, if a decision to withdraw a child before the end of the schooling period was made then the serving member drawing the allowance would have to repay the entire sum paid.
A year after Hagar was acquitted really our future is still being unravelled. We have decided to withdraw the Grenade out of boarding school and he will in the summer come and live with me as we are now committed to the area in which I live and I will not be moving. Hagar will move back into the Officer’s Mess, which will be dormitory living. For a 43 year old senior officer, it’s a tough pill to swallow. We have to do this as we try and juggle the financial implications of the aftermath of the last two years. But, of course, our weekend arrangement will not change. An Army officer’s mess would welcome two children staying with daddy on a weekend like a pint of cold sick. But in addition it is working for us right now. We both need that space apart in the week. Hagar’s job is no less stressful – he is the Brigade Air Liaion Officer (BALO) for 12 Mech Brigade – due to manning issues the BALO team which should be three is now only him. This is a common tale in the modern military as too few dedicated serving personnel carry the workload of too many. The stress and pressure is high as the thumbscrews tighten. It’s going to get even worse as the military returns from Germany and they withdraw from Afghanistan. The conflict in Afghanistan is funded, not by the Defence budget, but instead by the war purse in the Treasury. Once we are at peace again all of the equipment procured will have to be serviced and maintained by a rapidly shrinking defence budget which is barely sufficient to manage the military without the current support of the Treasury coffers. This is a problem forseeable to many already but will be pushed under the rug until it becomes a crisis and then there will be a huge amount of firefighting and shouting. Watch this space.
There you have it. My life makes no sense to people and it makes no sense to me either but it is what it is. For me it’s about pushing forward and working out how can we grow from this. We cannot go back. I have a new weekly column in the Salisbury Journal and I have a bi-monthly column in Wiltshire Life magazine. I have just written a book and now I am looking into creating a social enterprise. I began my networking journey at Salisbury Big Business last week and it’s been a fascinating insight into starting a business. I am so lucky because everywhere I turn I am finding strong, amazing, inspiring women who believe in me, maybe more than I believe in myself. I feel like I walk the tightrope of the tipping point and there a few that watch me, willing me to fall and willing me to fail; but then there are more, who are cheering me on, wanting me to win, not just for me, but for them too. There is, of course, my beautiful, demanding children that require raising, guiding and feeding three times a day (at least) and finding the work, life, balance which, from what I can see, really should be called the work, work, breathe, work balance and as well as paying the bills. This is all part of the unravelling. I don’t live this way to wind people up on purpose, I live this way because a life filled with laughter and love for me is the one I prefer. I don’t want to invest any energy, which is a valuable resource when you get to my age, 41, on the treadmill of life, with anger and hate. It’s much more fun to have fun. Life is way too short.
I have sold 200 copies of the book so far and the response has been unequivocally more, more, more – of course, there is more. It’s already written it just needs compiling and editing but I need to sell at least 10,000 copies of book 1. I have such a long way to go. Book 1 is naughty, rude, funny and it resonates with many women not just military wives because really it’s about how men are annoying and think of us as their slaves. Women are maid of man.
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My life doesn’t make sense. So what! Get over it.
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