The early years

I was a virgin when I met George. I thought he was. It turned out to be just incompetence. But I have to say he improved dramatically during our years together, came on by leaps and bounds, you might say. Of course he got in a bit of extra practice here and there.

He had his own view of marriage: he once said to me ‘The chains of matrimony are so heavy they require two to carry them – sometimes three’ I did not realise, at the time, that is was a quote he had picked up somewhere – as was so many of his pronouncements. But to give him his due, he did come up with some original stuff as well. And in the early years he made me laugh too. I can’t remember just when the laughing stopped.

He’d been married before, although only for three months. He described it as ‘a marriage of inconvenience’. But it had ‘spawned a sprog’ as George put it: the redoubtable Sydney; Syd was brought up by his mother, a crane-driver from Newcastle, with little or no help from his absentee father - although George always referred to him as ‘my boy’ (with the hint of a tear).

Of course I knew none of this, that Monday morning. Indeed it was quite a while before the story came out, in dribs and drabs, as our relationship blossomed. (I am not sure the word ‘blossomed’ is entirely appropriate in the context of George and me – let’s just say ‘grew’).

I mentioned how the staff at the medical centre had labelled George as a hypochondriac. He was, but he really did suffer from depression – as I was to find out, to my cost. I just didn’t know what to do when one of these bouts ‘descended’ (his word). I used to get the Hoover out. I find vacuuming so therapeutic in times of stress.

He said I never understood him, never understood his depression. And looking back, perhaps he was right. But it wasn’t my fault was it? He said he couldn’t help being depressed. Well, I couldn’t help not understanding depression.

Still, we jogged along. But jogging is not enough – is it? You need the occasional sprint. And sprinting was definitely lacking in our relationship.

I know I said I would not read this stuff I am throwing out, but I just turned over that sheet of A4 and found this written on the back:

My God’s bigger than your God

If the so-called ‘Holy Books’ (The Bible, The Koran, The Upanishads etc.) were just accepted as a distillation of human wisdom, gathered over the ages and in different parts of the world. And if we could drop the ‘Holy’ bit and empathise the human element we would be far more tolerant and receptive to change. We could also weed out the more dangerous precepts contained in these writings which arise out of fear – fear of a (non existent) supernatural deity.

We could disregard the commands of competing deities to go to war in their various names, to fight to prove which God is the most powerful, the more ‘right’.

And instead of ossifying these writings at a certain point in time, they could be continually updated in the light of new evidence, of increased wisdom. We might even make them available on the Internet, in interactive form.

Well, how’s that for another dollop of nonsense! There is no date on this piece of paper, so it could have been written any time. It might even have been written during the months he was shagging the Swede! So how can you attach any credibility to this high-flown philosophical stuff, when it is written by a man whose morals are so loose they are falling apart? “By their deeds, so shall ye know them.” – says the Good Book. And you can’t say fairer than that, can you?