How the other half lives: Lucy Cavendish decides she needs another life - My husband says the reason he didn’t tell me about the visit to the nightclub (the one Nancy managed to mention to me) was that he knew I’d be cross about it.
‘I can’t win here,’ he says when I tell him that of course I’d have been upset with him going to a nightclub renowned for its high sleaze factor but that I am infinitely more angry because I had to hear about it from someone else.
‘I wanted to tell you,’ he says, ‘but it was over a year ago and you were in a bad mood.’
‘A bad mood!’ I say. ‘How can you possibly remember that?’
He hangs his head. ‘Sorry,’ he says. He does, it has to be said, look very sorrowful.
But this admission of covert nightclub-going just won’t disappear. It makes me think about what any of us really knows about anyone. We all think we know each other so very well, especially when we live together.
For example, I am convinced I know everything about my children, and they probably think they know everything about me. But, of course, they don’t.
I remember once how my husband and I made a video recording for Raymond. We entitled it What We Do When You’ve Gone to Bed and on it we drank wine and laughed and then went outside and danced madly to music.
Raymond was stunned when he saw it. ‘But I thought you went to bed when I did,’ he said. In those days, in his eyes, the world stopped with Raymond. That was what he knew. He had no idea that we had lives that didn’t involve him.
So I decide it’s time I had another life. I can’t keep on sitting here complaining about everyone else’s lives yet not doing anything about mine. It’s at this point that a friend I have met just recently rings me.
‘I’m managing a band,’ she says. ‘They’re called Vices and they’re very cool and sexy and half our age and they are doing a gig at a dive in Reading. Do you want to come?’
Usually I’d say no and run terrified upstairs to my room and tremble over my cup of fennel tea. But now I am back in a world that shouldn’t stop with the children.
‘I’d love to come,’ I say. ‘Bring it on.’ ( telegraph.co.uk )
‘I can’t win here,’ he says when I tell him that of course I’d have been upset with him going to a nightclub renowned for its high sleaze factor but that I am infinitely more angry because I had to hear about it from someone else.
‘I wanted to tell you,’ he says, ‘but it was over a year ago and you were in a bad mood.’
‘A bad mood!’ I say. ‘How can you possibly remember that?’
He hangs his head. ‘Sorry,’ he says. He does, it has to be said, look very sorrowful.
But this admission of covert nightclub-going just won’t disappear. It makes me think about what any of us really knows about anyone. We all think we know each other so very well, especially when we live together.
For example, I am convinced I know everything about my children, and they probably think they know everything about me. But, of course, they don’t.
I remember once how my husband and I made a video recording for Raymond. We entitled it What We Do When You’ve Gone to Bed and on it we drank wine and laughed and then went outside and danced madly to music.
Raymond was stunned when he saw it. ‘But I thought you went to bed when I did,’ he said. In those days, in his eyes, the world stopped with Raymond. That was what he knew. He had no idea that we had lives that didn’t involve him.
So I decide it’s time I had another life. I can’t keep on sitting here complaining about everyone else’s lives yet not doing anything about mine. It’s at this point that a friend I have met just recently rings me.
‘I’m managing a band,’ she says. ‘They’re called Vices and they’re very cool and sexy and half our age and they are doing a gig at a dive in Reading. Do you want to come?’
Usually I’d say no and run terrified upstairs to my room and tremble over my cup of fennel tea. But now I am back in a world that shouldn’t stop with the children.
‘I’d love to come,’ I say. ‘Bring it on.’ ( telegraph.co.uk )
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