Before the end with Sue, there was Julia. my relationship with her lasted 2 years, much of which was conducted over the phone, with her living in Brighton. I felt a moving on, and after the summer camps, I wanted something before Autumn came and at the last minute booked on a weekend in Roeburndale called Despair and Empowerment. I took my drum and a sleeping bag and the weekend was amazing. It was about how we can do our bit for the environment without getting bogged down in our despair because of the state it is in. BUT there was this lovely tall blonde lady, who was obviously quite keen on me too. We did some of the exercises together and agreed to meet after the weekend. We met for a pint a couple of times and I invited her for a meal at my house. Jacqui came ready to stop over. She did! We had clicked. We started seeing each other regularly. She had a daughter who was a little older than Ant, and although he was accommodating of our new relationship the daughter wasn’t.
She rapidly made it clear she already had 2 dad’s and didn’t want another. Her natural father lived in France and didn’t see much of her, and Jackie’s ex had fill a father role for the intervening years since Jackie came back from France where she had lived for a while.
Generally we had a nice time, but the daughter occasionally kicked off and took a good deal of settling down. She defined her own bed times and food choices. We had a couple of trips to France without Ant, and went to some camps without daughter. Daughter got more and more difficult and I got to a point of not enjoying it all so after nearly 4 years called it a day. It was a big event as many of our friends didn’t see it coming and thought we were a big thing. I don’t think I saw it coming either really. The night it ended as I got in the car to go to her house, I had the thought that I’ll either ask her to marry me or I’ll dump her.
There followed a period of one nighters and random meetings from phone dating to fill the gap and one of those was Julie who lived in Hebden Bridge. I saw her for about 6 months until I realised that she was drinking a lot more than me and some of that in secret. We had a planned holiday in Ireland for a week in a cottage and ended up sleeping in different rooms because she stayed up very late getting drunk. When we got back I said we couldn’t go on like that and dumped her.
I had already me Sandra at DCN that year but nothing had happened. She wrote to me and I wrote back and after a while , with Christmas and letters going astray, we met up and the rest is history.
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