Liz Jones's Diary: In which I need to let someone go
I was going to text David 1.0 and say the state of his kitchen is appalling, but what’s the point? He will never change. Instead, I sent him the video of the new Beatles single. His response? ‘It just didn’t move me. I’m not convinced that’s how John would have produced it. It’s a bit Paul.’
I think not owning a teaspoon negates your right to comment on anything. Your girlfriend comes to stay and you don’t buy bread or good coffee. He hadn’t even trimmed his eyebrows. Whereas I had tried, in vain, to get an emergency Hollywood wax that very day!
I know you are thinking, well, if she still has Dirty Kitchen Man hanging around, she is never going to find someone else. Thing is, I do want David, just a better, fitter David. With a clean home, teeth, conversation. The ‘edge’ I fell in love with in 1983 – the smoking and the drinking, the womanising, the danger, the drug taking – doesn’t, like David, age well. OK, he did give me a lift to the station, but he needed to use satnav. How can you live in London from the age of 20 and need satnav?
Dating him is exactly like the new Beatles video. Paul, 81, has the ghost of himself from 60 years ago endlessly parading his dewy beauty. David aged 31 is who I’m in love with. I kept thinking, the long night I stayed in his flat, that, well, the brain inside his head is still the same. It’s just the outside bits that get on my nerves. His house next door to mine in 1983 was a tip, which is why he kept coming into my home unannounced to roast a chicken as he didn’t own an oven. I think he only got married so he would have someone on hand to wash up.
I feel like Tracey Emin (with less fame and money, obvs), who told me she could, at the drop of a hat, go on holiday to the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls, but what’s the point when she has no one to share it with, to ‘Ooh’ and ‘Aah’ alongside? I am trying to get my solicitor to hurry up by manifesting being in my new house, but in my daydreams I am always showing someone round, saying it is Paint & Paper Library Pure Flat Capuchin on the walls, Thames Mud on the ceiling and Charbone on the shutters and window frames. Trouble is, without David I have no one to share it with*.
just a better, fitter version from 1983
I only got married to bestow my lovely life of chauffeured town cars, Jamaican spas and seats front row at Calvin Klein in New York. Then, of course, eternally chippy as all men are when faced with a high-achieving, beautiful, funny and talented woman, they never appreciate what you have to offer, and say, when your £350 Waitrose shop arrives, ‘Did they not have any white pepper?’. Or guess your size as being ‘I dunno, a 12?’, your favourite designer as ‘Next?’, or, at Lime Wood hotel and spa for a birthday treat, ‘I wouldn’t really want to spend a week here.’ Or, at Yves Saint Laurent’s garden in Marrakech, ‘It’s all a bit spiky.’ Or, being treated at The River Cafe, turning a nose up at the heritage rhubarb and saying, ‘Panna cotta should always be vanilla.’ Why do men not feel the need for a filter? So you become angry and throw them out.
You know I can’t stand self-help books, but a friend sent me a leaflet, by Katherine Woodward Thomas, that seemed to ‘get’ me exactly: I stay too long in relationships that are not healthy. I struggle with low-grade depression. I give away my power. I cut people off. I work from home. She says others see me as prickly, not needing anything as I seem so together. I am hard to support and judgmental. And, crucially, I need to let someone go who is no longer an appropriate person to invest in.
*My only friend up here, Mercedes Lady, is still not speaking to me
JONES MOANS... WHAT LIZ LOATHES THIS WEEK
- An ill-conceived (!) piece in The Times about how the writer wants to breed from her whippet, Pim. She isn’t even put off by what happened to a friend who bred from their golden retriever and spent ‘three months bottle-feeding in a sea of p**s… Their dog has since had two abortions.’ The ignorance is breathtaking.
- WH Smith.
- My printer.
