ALLOTMENTAL

On our way back from the plant swap on Stapleton Road station - ‘They weren’t very welcoming,’ Furst said when I called round later that evening, I agreed saying, ‘I was “that man” with her,’ - we met, coming in the opposite direction down High Street, one of her neighbours, the academic one doing a Ph.D.
I pointed out, when we said we were on the way to the allotment, my appropriate clothing.
‘Last time you looked like a businessman,’ said Acadame who’d suggested, while sitting on a bench on the cycle path when I’d passed carrying garden tools, that what I wore was, "not fit for purpose," a phrase used in a report commissioned by Dr. John Reid when Home Secretary to describe the Home Office systems for assessing asylum seekers and refugees.
Today she, Acadame, was with her son and a woman who’d owned the house my second wife’d moved into after coming to her senses and leaving me just over a decade ago.
‘Hello,’ I said, nodding.
Those closest to me and who know me best, which might not be that well at all, have often said when in my company, ‘I need a drink.’ So I’ve decided to fence off areas of obsessive interest to myself, that is things affecting my day to day life and long term future, and not talk to anyone about them thus keeping my paranoid scenarios as comfort through those sleepless nights of present.
There is something to be said for solitude, how it allows use of others as objects in an unchallenged construction of a reality that justifies whatever schizoid position one adopts as an alternative to relating to people as people which at times can seem overrated with all those demands for respect and consideration. Which leads conveniently on to...
I’m due to meet my mother for a late lunch this afternoon and wondering why. I don’t like her and feel either pity or frustration listening to her go on and on about herself and her loveless life excusing her total lack of empathy and compassion...
...sound familiar?
...I learned from her while sitting at her knee, the one she slammed our heads against telling my father, if he noticed when he got home from work, the bumps and occasional black eye, that we’d tripped and fell. But mostly they were too busy fighting about the latest secretary he was shagging.

LUNCH

Lunch was okay...eventually.
She was going on and on about my brother and his children until I said, 'You abandoned me.'
'I did what i thought was best,' she said.
'It wasn't.'
'Grow up.'
'I was a child.'
'You're an adult.'
'You had a choice.'
'Take some responsibility.'
When we said goodbye at the station after walking through the Old Town she said, 'Well I enjoyed it.'
So did I,' I said. 'See you next time.'