wendy house

I don’t think it was about sex. There wasn’t any sex.

It started when I noticed her in my local pub. She’d turn-up next to me at the bar when I went to buy a round. We’d exchange greetings and niceties. Or, I’d pass her when returning from the toilets and we’d exchange friendly smiles. I don’t know why she picked me.

She became an increasingly familiar stranger. During one conversation at the bar I invited her to join us.  She perched next to me, not mixing with my friends. She focussed on engaging me in conversation. The more I talked with her the further away I seemed to drift from my friends. I could see them floating away in mind and space. Leaving me,  with her, wrapped in an unpleasant isolation.

I stopped going to that pub. I enjoy feeling free. Even if I can’t go places to maintain the illusion of freedom. Then I started seeing her in the shopping centre, when roller-blading along the seafront, and worst of all – when I was walking home from work.  I started varying the time I left work and the route I took home. She started waiting outside the one door to the building. I knew I was being stalked. Did she know she was a stalker?

A game started when she walked up to me as I left work -  I’d ask her where she was going then turn to go the other way, when she changed her mind, I’d change my mind. The ridiculousness of the situation helped me just say

“I don’t want to walk with you or spend any time with you, I’d rather be alone, please leave me alone”

“what are you scared of?”

“I don’t want to walk with you, talk with you or be with you, accept it, goodbye”

She walked next to me, talking  as if I were a betraying lover that owed her an explanation. I looked straight ahead and walked on, pretending she wasn’t there, living what I wanted as if behaving like she wasn’t there would make her go away. I was extremely scared and equally determined to walk to Darren’s nearby home. She stopped at Darren’s beech hedge. I walked his garden path in the new silence feeling as-if her eyes were pawing my back.  Darren welcomed me with a outsized smile and hug, fed me pots of tea, listened to my burbling mess of a story before more delicious hugs and walking me home.

Alas, these things never end quite that easily

Today an international professional magazine printed an article I submitted under my professional pen-name

Writing the blog has helped improve my professional writing. As you may have guessed, essentially I’m a geeky heavily qualified (PhD) academic working in the business world.  Blogging has helped me learn to express myself in a different voice, less constructed to fit into conceptions of ‘expert’. It was tough trying to write a magazine article engaging an intelligent, novice, audience.  Odd that it should still be so tough, but it was

I’ve had my name on academic and magazine articles before, but other people wrote and coordinated the publication.  Contributing original thought and effort meant that I was one name on a list of authors. I wrote this article myself and dealt directly with the managing editor and sub-editor. They were extremely helpful. Professional editors provide such high quality constructive feedback.  The sub-editor said he generally found the articles he reviewed rather dull but he enjoyed reading my piece. That praise alone made my day!

In the same week an old friend, an academic, explained why he didn’t use his Facebook account:

… one of my nightmare students (had really serious issues) wanted to friend me.  I didn’t feel I could say no (she really had problems) but from that moment on I realised I could never use my account…

Reminiscent of times in my work-life where I’d consulted Personnel, Human Resources, services to advise on dealing with challenging situations, why I use an unprofessional pen-name for my blog

Personnel and Editorial professionals ROCK!

the snow is cold and fresh, lets go out on the downs and make love, I really want to make love outdoors, please…

I knew the pull of making love in freshly fallen snow.

But not with him. We weren’t even friends, let alone lovers. Once I would have considered that all part of the fun.  I’d learned the hard way that strangers with a sense of vitality, of living life to the full, seemed to come in a package that perversely included a need to possess, control.  To own you in a way that breaks legal and moral boundaries, that breaks skin, bone, hearts and noses.  I’m more cautious now.

Masturbate or find another partner, I’m not interested

lady at stable door: I live in that house there, we’ve just had a wasp nest treated and those left alive are a bit cranky, probably best to keep the cats in and the doors and windows shut

wendy: there’s a lot of them about this year

When I returned to my desk,

after a rejuvinating knob twisting with a fresh mug of tea ,

a helpful paper sign written in the style of Yoda had appeared on the window

Do not window open

The girl opposite asked whether these were the wasps from my garden, had they followed me to work?

Sampo has been on a diet for nearly 2 months.  Since starting her diet I’ve noticed the following changes:

1) Sampo is losing weight.  Yes, she was a lot fatter than this.

2) Sampo is much more determined to successfully establish alternative food-sources.  The rather stupid, local, wood pidgeons have presented this opportunity.  Sampo stalks at dusk and dawn.  She has managed to get a few loose feathers but not yet got a meal out of it.

3) Sampo shows much more public affection to me within an hour of scheduled feeding times.

young boy: but I love you, please.. …if you wont even give me a chance to prove how good a boyfriend I’d be for you, I might as well kill myself now

young girl: OH  P’Lease, grow up, I dont negotiate with emotional terrorists

Within 3 hours he had  written-off £4K of boy-racer Suzuki motorcycle to keep his threat promise.  He gave her name and address as hss next of kin.    She hadn’t had the chance to enjoy freedom from his persistent lobbying for access rights  when the police notified her of the accident.  They certainly added dramatic effect. Raised the terror levels.   How long before his capacity for violence, obsession with her, will put her in hospital?

This  girl called Carol was hanging around at the club.   When she found out that I lived with you she started getting really really nosey about what you were doing, who you hung out with, what it was like living with you.   She was creepy, I didn’t tell her anything.     After the club  she came back to Glen’s house with us and  sat on the electric cooker like she was holding court or something while we made tea.    She just kept on being such  a bitch about you.

So Glen turned the hob on

ruined her skirt

crouching in the back of a black cab,  I’d volunteered to hide from the cab dirver  so that all  6 of us could  travel together and share the cost.  

Kaff:   I don’t like wendy’s hair, its thick with hairspray, stiff and sticky

Kaff leant forward and grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head toward her sharp knees and pushing tears from my eyes.   I watched my tears splash on her expensive Italian buckskin suede shoes then  silently added a good dose of flemmy gob to the mix.

Glen: wendy’s hair is  soft and fluffy, nice to touch, I like it

Glen leant forward and stroked my hair,   pulling my head away from kaff’s threatening knees to rest on his tear-drying warm thigh.

The men they couldn’t hand sang rain, steam, speed

As his confidence grew he followed me into my favourite local pubs.   I first noticed him when I left the ladies room.   He was leaning against the wall.   As I walked passed I heard him quietly sing.   Like you hear leaves rustling, just there and natural.   I thought he was a gentle natured  giant singing a sweet song. Nothing ominous,  as our eyes met, smiled,  he stopped singing as I blushed.  

Soon after I started noticing him everywhere I went.    I’d catch his eye across a crowed room,  hear him singing as I left the ladies room, bump into him at the bar ordering drinks.  We barely spoke. My friends told me he was a prop on the high-school first rugby team, not a man of many words.    He used a few of those words to  prop-position me,  a few more to  tell my friends and the  rugby team,  we were dating.  

As if saying it would make it so

I politely turned down his prop-positions, told my friends that I had not dated him,  had no intenion of dating him. I didn’t think that neanderthal was your type… …normally it’s the hookers you have to look out for,   you can see the props coming…     close friends didn’t buy his story.  Persisiting,  he started turning up at my home, writing letters,  song lyrics transcribed followed by some of his own  mechanistically pornographic explanations of why I should  date him.  

He didn’t understand a polite assertive no, I’m not interested

He didn’t understand a screaming, swearing, spitting  version of **** off and leave me alone    

I moved home, moved cities,, moved home several more times  before I  finally got away from him. ‘Where do you go to my lovely is probably a beautiful song,    unfortunately I’ll never really be able to hear it as beautiful.  

Peter Sarstedt sang Where Do You Go To My Lovely