I think I may be in need of a relationship holiday. 

You know that feeling when you’re in a job that you hate? You started off loving it, and then something turned,  and it just got worse and worse. Then you plan a holiday and you cross the days off your calendar, willing the clock to tick that bit quicker so that you can get out of this miserable situation for a break in the sunshine.

That’s exactly how I feel about relationships right now. I start one off, it looks promising, I think “hey, this might be the one” and then …. nothing. He wasn’t the one and I’m hurled right back to the starting line. I sit back on the starting line awhile, lacking the energy to run another race I’m seemingly ill-prepared for, thinking “maybe he was the one and I didn’t give him chance”. But it always turns out that he wasn’t the one and that I gave him more than ample chance.

I’m back on the starting line again right now, but this time I think I may need to bow out of a few races. The mere fact that I’m likening relationships to running races tells me something has to give here …

I could make a start on my book, the one where I disclose the details of every man I’ve been involved with. The book that will finally give me closure on each sorry episode as I laugh like a drain setting it all to print. The book that will describe how I got to be in my forty-sixth year, single and yet still sure deep down that I will one day meet “The One”.  The book that will become a little repetitive in telling of how each relationship showed new and vital signs that this time he really could be “The One”.

Another good reason for taking a break is the number of books, teleseminars and courses that are surrounding me, each one  pointing out that I must in some way be giving off the wrong vibration to be attracting such inappropriate men. Apparently, until I feel I deserve a good relationship, I won’t get one. I could buy into that theory, but usually it’s delivered by someone with a voice so condescending that it makes me just want to carry on being single to spite her (sorry, but it usually is a ’she’)

The last podcast I listened to on the subject talked of how a woman “opened up her heart”, logged onto her computer one day and then, bingo, her true love was staring back at her onscreen (I missed the name of the site … you can see how my stinking attitude is not helping here, can’t you?) They immediately called each other, broke down into tears and are continuing to live happily ever after. Apparently that is a true story, so almost certainly I should examine my need to scoff at it, given my lack of happy counter story.

My little tale to lean upon when the nights get cold, the wind is a-whistling and I’m beating myself up for not being wrapped up in the lurve blanket is ….  Mr Perfect.

I met Mr Perfect back in 2006; my marriage was going very horribly wrong and I was at that point of having a list of our incompatibilities that was so long it would have made War and Peace look like a light read before bedtime.

I had elected to have some surgery and duly went off to meet my surgeon for a discussion. As I sat in his consulting room in a state of anticipation tinged with excited expectation, any concerns I had fell away as my idea of the perfect man walked in and shook my hand. Handsome, suave, intelligent, charming … this much I gleaned within the first five seconds.

As the appointment progressed I sensed he had that touch of arrogance that is a surgeon’s birthright, and yet there was a definite overlay of someone perhaps slightly unsure of himself in a personal arena. Quite an addictive cocktail.

Needless to say I had the surgery, he earned himself the title Mr Perfect in every which way and I disappeared home to imagine us living a life infused with passionate love-making and wonderment at his brilliant career. I forgot of course that there was a huge mountainous obstacle to our enduring happiness called the “ethical code”.

Let me tell you, I went to some pretty lengthy extremes to get Mr Perfect into my immediate space, and each time he performed a backwards manoeuvre that was never a direct “no thanks”. What kept me going back to try again the next time was the glint in his eye that I am sure was there …

Defeat was declared some months later, and I vowed that it would all make great material for a novel based around love that is unconsummated because of some ridiculous professional ruling. In the end of course, there would have been some fairly graphic passages that detailed what happened when the couple eventually did get it together (which obviously would have been requisite).

Why, I hear you ask, am I recounting a non-affair with a man that was clearly out of my reach? Because he was and still is Mr Perfect.

Since that day when any relationship has failed for whatever reason, I’ve always comforted myself with the knowledge that he would never have done that to me because he was Perfect. That’s the great thing about never having explored a relationship with someone you’ve admired from afar; you can inflate their attributes and there are no known flaws to counteract them. 

I’m sure we would in practice have had our challenges, but the passionate and consuming love we had for one another would have endured any storm we found ourselves caught up in. He was Perfect, after all.

It’ll all be in my book one day, unless he decides to come and claim me, begging me to put down my quill in the process. One can but live in hope.

Age has mellowed me, there can be no doubt about that.

I was an angry teenager, enraged at the very thought that we should even contemplate spending billions on nuclear weapons to then strategically point them at our foes as a deterrent. When Margaret Thatcher single-handedly destroyed our mining industry I was pretty much incandescent with fury. The mere notion that people could ridicule a brilliant man like Tony Benn was enough to tip me over the edge.

Oh yes. I was a restless and principled young woman. 

Today those principles are still intact, but an air of resignation has come to pass. I don’t feel the need to argue a point to the bitter end with whoever is up for it any longer. These days I prefer to keep my own counsel, unless the wine is flowing; then the years just fall away and I’m flinging my arms in the air like some crazed revolutionary.

So it came as no surprise to me that the recent news of MPs fiddling everything and anything in the name of “the job” has left me, in the main, shrugging my shoulders and saying “well, what do you expect?” When you reach a certain age you will most probably have witnessed, read about and been told of numerous cases of power being abused. It’s commonplace.

It’s wrong, of course it is, but I’m not surprised any longer, and that saddens me more. My loss of faith.

Over the years I’ve come to realise that man is essentially a greedy, selfish and dishonest animal. Granted there are some exceptions to this sweeping generalisation, but not enough for the supposedly evolved species that we like to think we are.

Until the day arrives when …. I witness an abuse of power at a local level that I cannot ignore (again by an individual who is technically a government employee … local government, but that still counts, right?)

Picture the scene: I have to fill in an order form on a three-weekly basis and enclose a cheque for my boy’s school for his hot school lunches. This is an abiding wrangle for me as Ben (my boy) pleads on a disturblingly regular basis to take sandwiches so that he can sit with his pint-sized mates instead of being made to eat the well-cooked meal I’ve lined up for him. I’m told that the school try and encourage as many parents as possible to support the service in order to ensure that children get a good meal in the middle of the day. I understood that and I parted with approaching £50 per month in support of the service.

Until last week when I was less than twenty four hours late getting said form and cheque in. I slunk into the school office and in my best conciliatory voice asked if they could perhaps accept my order a little late on this one occasion … 

Absolutely not. The rules are, by all accounts, there for a reason.

I was beside myself with a rage that, though contained to an extent, was enough to almost take the door off it’s hinges as I slammed it on my departure from the den of bureaucrats.

Ben is now to feast on a lunch of inappropriate fayre until the end of term as I take my plight to the European High Commission (after the head teacher, obviously). Sometimes people exercise their power to the wrong person at the wrong time.

Perspective, I have come to learn, is best kept on an even keel, but when it tips and a once-angry young woman is fired up ….. Well, then there’s just no saying where it will all end.

I suspect I am like most singletons of a “certain age” who have all been in and out of more relationships than we would have liked. 

Looking back to when I was a little girl I would see my parent’s seemingly rock-solid marriage and believe that was what life had in store for me too. A white wedding in my twenties to a man my father approved of, two children (a girl and a boy, naturally) and a job that took second place to my husband’s successful and blossoming career. 

We would holiday twice a year (once in Europe, and then further afield), live in a large detached house in a desirable English suburb and the biggest problem I encountered would be how I managed to fit in three visits to the health club every week.

It hardly seems necessary to state that life rarely gives you what you think you’re going to get.  I suspect in my case that my staunch refusal to accept the status quo and to constantly be seeking my version of fulfilment is what initiated a very different journey for me. 

Writing it all down (whatever “it” happened to be at the time ..) has always been therapeutic for me. My last blog tended to centre on my then relationship with a man that refused to yield to my charms. Well, he did yield as I recall … quite a lot actually …  just not as completely as I hoped.

He maintained we would have never worked out as we were entirely different, which was certainly true. In my fanciful little head I convinced myself that our differences didn’t matter; to think I could have believed Miss Incurable Romantic and Mr Distant Cynic would ever have been an item for longer than three minutes seems ridiculous now, but it kept me entertained and it fed my blog (which is still live at http://www.gettingbackontop.blogspot.com/ )

So, when it comes to relationships, a measure of realism is needed methinks.

I always thought realism to be overrated.