Sunday 12th January 2025
Just trotting in to wish you all a Happy New Year. I’m not a huge fan of New Year with all its over-hyped new year-new me bollocks. It’s too much pressure, and you inevitably set yourself up for a fall. There is no new me, just the old me and though I can strive to be better, I’m pretty much the me I’ll ever be. That said - I sincerely hope the year is kind to you and brings you good health.
If I were going to stick anything on my New Year wish list, it would be calmness. I don’t really do calm. Must be nice to approach life with cool, calm reason, instead of launching off like a steel ball down a steep hill.
2025 is still wet behind the ears, and I’ve already had a major ball down hill (BDH) episode. It launched last weekend, and not entirely without reason. Relationships like ours inevitably throw up various complications. Things aren’t always straightforward, and often not even fair. As a sub, you have to accept that the balance of power doesn’t always tilt in your favour, something I continually struggle with.
The weather is partly to blame for the current BDH, in a roundabout, obscure kind of way. It’s been Baltic here in Old Blighty this last week or so, and why not, it is winter after all and thus far the weather has been mild verging on warm, especially over Christmas.
Anyway, I woke up last Sunday morning to find snow had fallen during the night. I spent a pleasurable half an hour cradling a cup of Earl Grey tea while sitting by the lounge window admiring the sparkling garden. My two are snow grinches, and I knew when they got up and eyeballed the white stuff, there’d be a chorus of moans and groans.
What I didn’t expect was to have a row with Dick over it. There was no intent, it just kind of happened ‘organically.’ It was triggered by one of those innocuous remarks that turn out to be anything but, like picking up a pinecone and finding it’s actually a hand grenade.
We were all sitting at the kitchen table, eating bacon sandwiches and drinking coffee, engaging in casual conversation, as you do, when Dick said he hoped the snow would be a flash in the pan and gone by the next morning. I responded by saying I hoped it would stick around for a day or two, as it was so pretty and made it feel like a proper winter season.
Dick said, and I quote: ‘it’s fortunate you can’t drive then, isn’t it.’
Whoosh! The pinecone exploded and launched the steel ball. I was off.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Is that some kind of dig?’
Whoa, even as I said it, I was thinking where the hell did that come from.
Dick, looking taken aback, said, ‘I just meant you wouldn’t think snow was so pretty if you had to drive in it.’
‘Oh, wouldn’t I. I run in it, and you don’t hear me moaning.' (Fact check - I moan constantly and at length when there’s ice underfoot.)
I continued. 'And, for your information, Dick, I can actually drive. I’m just not allowed to.’
Shane chipped in with a small smile, and a wry, ‘you didn’t exactly pass your test, Gilli, and there was no snow around when you crashed my car.’
It was meant to be a teasing way of defusing me, but had the opposite effect. No one was shoving the pin back into my grenade, ta very much.
‘Been dining out on that one for years, haven’t you both, making me out to be a prize fool to anyone who’ll listen.’
The smile was replaced with a frown and a warning finger was pointed. ‘That’s enough, where are you going with this?’
‘Nowhere, isn’t that the point, not unless I get a lift or go on the fucking bus.’
‘Christ, Gilli, you know how to ruin a mood and bring down a day.’
‘You started it with your snide dig about me not driving.’
Dick threw his hands up in a gesture of despair. ‘There was no damn dig.’
‘You go on about driving like it's some kind of Holy Grail. I can’t even say I like snow without you twisting it and making it all about you and your precious car. I have a right to like things too, and without you belittling me for it.’
‘Belittling you? Because I want the snow to melt?’
‘You did the same at Christmas, mocking me when your knob of a cousin was bragging about his new car, rolling your eyes and saying ‘he doesn’t get it because he doesn’t drive.’
‘I did not mock you, Gilli. I was trying to defuse a situation you’d created.’
‘Yeah, by putting me down in front of people who think I’m scum to begin with.’
‘No one thinks you’re scum, Gilli, no one, a pain in the arse perhaps, but not scum. Where has all this childish nonsense come from?’
‘There you go again, putting me down.’
Shane’s hand made sharp contact with the tabletop. ‘Time out, Gilli, and by that I mean shut it. Dick, go for a shower.’
Shoving back his chair, Dick got up and strode out of the room, clearly flummoxed and upset.
‘Happy now?’
Avoiding Shane’s critical gaze, I rubbed at an imaginary stain on the front of my top.
Shane being Shane, he wasn’t going to let anything drop.
‘Let’s get one thing straight, young man, neither Dick nor I have ever ‘dined out’ on what happened to my car, and neither have we made you out to be a fool to all and sundry, and for you to suggest otherwise is totally unacceptable, unfair, and frankly bloody cheeky.’
When I didn’t respond, he shook his head. ‘What’s got into you this morning? And no, Dick didn’t start anything. You were down his throat like you’d been waiting for the opportunity.’
He was bang on the button. I think, subconsciously, I had indeed been waiting for an opportunity to have a go at Dick, and I wasn’t ready to stop. BDH.
‘It gets on my nerves how he goes on about driving, like it's more important than anything. Peter already thinks I’m a wimp because I don’t drive, there was no need for him to say what he said, embarrassing me.’
'You’ve kept that grudge under your hat, and if anyone had a right to be embarrassed on Christmas Eve, it was Dick. The moment Peter invited us to view his car, you started making wanking gestures behind his back, it was rude and uncalled-for, to say the least.’
‘He’s always fucking bragging, and I didn’t know he could see me in the mirror, did I.’
‘That isn’t the point. It was bad behaviour then, and
certainly no excuse for your attitude this morning. What’s the real problem
here, because when you get shitty like this, there’s something going on? What is
it?’
‘Nothing.’ I folded my arms in a defensive motion, perilously close to tears. The morning had soured big time, and I knew I was at fault. I’d turned a pleasant breakfast into a fallout zone for harboured bad feelings.
‘Dick was within his rights to discipline you for your attitude. I would have if you’d spoken to me like that, you snippy little sod. It isn’t good enough. Why did you feel a need to stick the boot in?’
‘I can’t even like the snow without him taking it as a personal slur against his stupid bloody car. He’ll be happy enough when he’s skiing on the fucking stuff at that fancy French resort. It’s only shite when I like it.’
And there it was, the little green kernel at the centre of the steel ball. Jealousy. Shane was on it straight away.
‘That’s what’s this is about. I might have guessed.’
I could have denied it, but that was the problem in the first place. I’d been trying to deny it ever since Shane had told me that his Christmas gift for Dick was to be a skiing holiday in the French Alps, just the two of them. Dead right I was jealous.
I continued bitterly. ‘Funny how Dick likes snow when it's posh alpine snow. The snow around here must be too common for him.’
‘Cull the rudeness, right now. We discussed all this, Gilli. You said you were fine with it.’
‘No, you told me I had to be fine with it. There’s a difference.’
‘Dick needs this holiday, and so do I. I won’t apologise for it. You can accept it’s happening, and find some grace about it, or you can whinge and shit stir and take the consequences. Your choice.’
‘Just shut up and put up like a good little sub is what you mean.’
‘Not quite the grace I was hoping for, but if it works for you, then yes.’
I opened my mouth to retaliate, but he shook a warning finger.
‘There’s no argument to be had here. Take that sulky face upstairs and don’t bring it down again until there’s a smile on it.’
‘We’d better say goodbye now then, because that’ll be never.’
Shane didn’t appreciate my response, and neither did my arse, because it paid the price for my brio.
For the record, my face and me spent a lot of that day upstairs, as even superglue couldn’t have fixed a smile to it. The day ended in a kind of uneasy truce of formal politeness, and that’s where we remain.
Listen, it’s not like I don’t get their need to do couple time, and Dick’s need to have boy time, because I do, and I’ve said as much many times. Getting it doesn’t stop me feeling jealous, and hurt. And there’s a bit more to it this time, but I haven’t got time to elaborate now. I’ve already spent too much time whinging away here. I’ve got jobs to do, so ciao for now.