Contains strong language


Back from the hen party - twelve of us in a room with a bar overlooking the harbour, nothing fancy or wild, just a gathering of the women with lots of chat and laughter and my mate MG drinking two bottles of wine by herself and currently snoring on the sofa, still fully dressed.

YD enjoyed it right up until about midnight when her fucking father phoned (he who hasn't answered his phone to her or returned messages for several weeks), suddenly announcing that unless he was giving her away he wouldn't come to the wedding. I don't know what she said to him, but she came back crying with her friend LP saying over and over again, "You handled it perfectly - you said everything that needed to be said," but YD wasn't consoled. It was all just as we were leaving, so I told her that it was her wedding and she was to make whatever choice she wanted to and I hope she does. Well, I hope that when I text Son about it he will speak to his father and shame him into not being such a selfish cunt for once in his life and to think about his daughter, who, despite only seeing him at less than yearly intervals for the past three decades, never a remembered birthday or contact at Christmas (he lives only 3 or 4 miles from her) still actually wants him at her wedding, for which he should be amazed and grateful. Then turn up, not get paralytic to the extent of picking a fight, just blend in, play nice then fuck off back to Camden. Twat. YD had been coming home but decided to stay in the bar a bit longer then go back and stay at LP's so I don't really know where she is with it all.

It felt like the last straw.

I'd negotiated my way through an afternoon with MG, seen for the first time since she left that festival in the summer - quietly packed up and went home early in the morning while the rest of us were sleeping and wrote me a shitty email telling me what a crap friend I was, particularly in regard to the fact that I've never liked her elder son and she's always known that. Well, we go back a very long way and she's right about her son, I cannot abide the boy though I have always tried to rub along, and a fair amount of water has flowed under the bridge, including her husband leaving her a few weeks ago, and I just don't care enough any more. In the light of what's happening to ED, I really can't be bothered with hashing any of it over, I don't have the energy to spare - this is where I am now, I have very little to offer, but I'm not chasing her away. So there was that - I don't like her when she's pissed, but she's asleep now, so that's OK.

Then there was my brother's wife, who I thought was my friend as well as my SIL, until I had that bust-up with Bro and I haven't heard a word from her since - I didn't know how I was going to handle seeing her, but that went OK - she's really easy-going and I like her a lot, so I'm going to email her tomorrow and tell her I'd like to see her more often. But it was hard, being in a small group (which should have included ED but didn't, couldn't), with these two women and these bloody problematic issues. I don't have happy available to me at the moment. I will at the wedding because I love my new son-in-law and I know how good he and ED are together, but making merry at this party was never going to happen. Part of that is that I'm old school - women (or ladies as we were called then, even me, though not often), didn't have hen parties, so I don't have that sense of it as an integral part of the wedding deal. ED didn't have one, sixteen years ago. But I comported myself well, I think - I chatted and listened and laughed quite a lot, told a few stories that made other people laugh, danced a bit and didn't get arrested for smoking a spliff or two. I only cried twice, briefly, and YD wasn't aware. Job done.

Then the dickhead father phones and throws another hurdle in our path. I would like to walk her down the aisle. We're not calling it 'giving her away' but I do like the symbolism when it's me - I've been her best friend (she says and I agree) and now her husband will be and there's a part of me that needs that walk to fix in my brain that her first loyalty is now to him. Though I hope that she'll not be having to choose, obviously.

I am grateful for: MG falling asleep so quickly so I haven't been alone with her in her drunken repetitive bullshit mode; my bed to myself tonight - shared with YD the last two; feeling able to accept my mood rather than berate myself for being a miserable cow and thereby make a bad situation worse - I am a grieving mother, I'm allowed to be sad; YD having a mostly lovely evening; my big comfy bed

sweet dreams xx