A pattern emerges

“Here I go down that wrong road again” Do you know that song? I don’t know who sings it but every time I hear it I think - that’s the story of my life.

Have you ever looked back over your life and detected a pattern? Or patterns? Patterns of behaviour, I mean. You know, you find yourself doing something, and you think – this is familiar. I’ve been here before.

Like, you find yourself making the same choices; even though it turned out bad last time, you’re doing it again. It’s a pattern, a habit, and you don’t know how to get out of it.

Well, I’ve been looking back. Not in anger – more in sorrow. I can’t blame George for everything – although I’d like to. No, I was ‘set up’ long before I met old Georgie boy.

Part of it is in my genes of course, but a lot is due to my childhood: the old ‘nature/nurture’ debate.

By the way, I am not really a lesbian. It is just that I tend to see everyone’s point of view. Well, isn’t that a good thing? You may ask. Up to a point, I suppose it is, but I end up not knowing who I truly am. Perhaps I am not truly anyone. I keep thinking of that man who said ‘We are that which others allow us to be’. I think that’s so true. Well it is for me, anyway.

I asked if I could do my ‘community service’ as a crossing patrol officer (lollipop lady). Like George did – for a bit. But they said it’s the school holidays just now. So I said – well can’t I practice until they go back to school? They said that I could, but it wouldn’t count as ‘hours’.
Stuff that. I’m not doing unpaid training – which is what it amounts to.

So they are going to put me working with the Parks and Gardens team. I protested that such work would wreak havoc with my nails. But they said I would be provided with gloves! Also a stout pair of boots, and waterproofs (they work outside in all weathers). Can you imagine me in boots and waterproofs! The indignity of it!

But if I don’t do it I go to jail. And as I said, I am not a lesbian – so pass me my spade.