Potted Life History of a PotHead

Observant readers might notice that I've stopped slagging off my ex. I can't be arsed with it any more.

One thing I know is that he did his best to be my loving boyfriend but in the end his past pulled him down. To keep him by my side was like swimming while carrying a giant cannonball. And I can only do the doggy-paddle myself.

Pause for everyone to sneer and say yeah, we can't go blaming our youth, we've all had a hard time.

Well your experience probably wasn't as bad as his.

When he was 18 he became a postman. The Post Office gave him 50p a week to wear his own clothes because they didn't make uniforms small enough for his 4ft 10 figure. During his year with them he grew one foot. It was only when he started earning his own money that he got fed, before that nobody remembered to do it.

How the hell he passed the letter-sorting test when he couldn't read or write is a mystery. It was the kind of thing he could do just by pure native intelligence, an intelligence that coupled with his extreme ignorance and lack of education came across as weaselly cunning.

He is a second child. The first (the favoured) grew up to make a complete dogs dinner of his life and now drinks away his life raging about his sunken narrowboat. He is locally famous for abusing passers by when pissed, and once drew a big crowd in the town centre by publicly masturbating. However, catch him before he starts on the beer and he is a sweet fella.

Little brother is the one that got all the survival skills.

His mum worked for the Military, doing something really clever like cracking codes. She was getting on by the time she had her boys, and developed Alzheimers in the 90s, before dying in about 1996. Both brothers claim they are the only one that looked after her during this time. She would only eat carrots, corned beef and Cornettos in her last years.

I think they loved her, but she worked night shifts and the boys ran wild.

On the other hand, their dad was one of nature's vilest creations. This was his second marriage, the first being to someone really posh. There were some children of this first marriage but they were never seen by their half-brothers.

He was for sure an alcoholic and preferred his pub mates to anything at home. There is a horrible story in which he let one of his friends abuse the little boys (I am not allowed to tell this story, it is a secret) and took his friend's side against his children. Dad was long-dead when I heard about this and I hope he's rotting in hell.

Every Christmas, dad would go to prison for his debts so as to avoid the stress of the festive season. Presents are an alien concept to my ex and he was never able to accept anything from me nicely though I tried and tried to give him stuff. Gifts make him nervous and he never learnt to say the words "Thank you"

Mum and dad got together for their shared love of dogs, and they bred dogs in the family home, there were always a couple of dozen living there. There were various breeds and obviously they would often mate with the wrong type and produce unsaleable puppies which had to drowned in
a bucket in the back yard. Dad would starve the dogs for one day every week, the reasons for this are not understood.

My ex went on to forge some kind of life. He went to night school to learn to read and write. He got a skilled job and held it down by the skin of his teeth for years. He is fiercely loyal to his friends, many of whom have done nothing to deserve this loyalty, because he cannot tell a genuine friend from a friendly user.

Its not all been great though. He drinks too much and when he is drunk his only mission is to show his mates how cool and tough and big he is. Just like his dad did.

He had smoked a lot of dope since he was 14 and by the time he was 40 it had made him paranoid, blurred and stupid. He gave it up for me, but the minute we fell out he took it up again, just a bit, to relax. He also used to sell it to his friends but didn't make any money because they would wheedle it out of him for nothing. Imagine his surprise when he stopped dealing and his friends disappeared.

His heart was broken when he was 20 or so, when his beloved girlfriend had a baby. After a few months they split and he never saw the baby again. Ex tells it that the girl's parents split them up by calling him a useless pikey but I am sure the fact that he cannot handle families at all must have come into it. The boy is now all grown up and working in the butcher's, so ex can't ever go there.

I loved him and I guess I still do. Who can resist an underdog and when he was with me he struggled so hard to be a better man. In the end the pressure was too much and now he is hurtling back to the gutter from whence he came. He might have enough about him to get a grip pretty soon.

He loved me and I guess he still does. But what was he doing with a posh bird with 3 kids and impossibly high demands? A lot of the time we didn't understand each other at all. It was like a union between an elephant and a hyena. Imagine how unsaleable our puppies would have been.

So ... goodbye and good luck my Weaselly Ex xxxx