The wanderer has returned
10.08.07, 5:40 pm

The wanderer has returned! Yay! My God, and haven�t you all been busy with your updating. I�m getting there slowly, but thought I�d take a break and do an update of my own, seeing as it�s been so long since my last entry. Not because you�re all boring, obviously. Oh, I hope you�re all ready for this. Normal upbeat services will return with the next entry (and probably photos), but I have to get all this angst crap out of the way first.

So, how has the two weeks been in the middle of French nowhere with my dad and his fianc�e? Well, it started off okay when my sister was here (for 5 days), but then once she left it rapidly turned into a character-building experience. Which as everyone knows, translates as �pretty bloody crap, but helped you hone certain personal qualities�. And my personal honed qualities were tolerance, self-sufficiency and indifference. First of all, I�ll do the round up:

France itself was lovely � we were literally in the middle of nowhere, so the stars were amazing and you could see the Milky Way really clearly. My French is pretty poor through lack of practise, though it came back eventually. I looked around approximately 900 churches, 550 tiny towns, 1 aquarium, 1 butterfly house; ate 56 crepes, 72 baguettes; 14 varieties of cheese; sat on 2 beaches; sent 1 postcard (shameful); was perved on by 45 horrible French men and wished 24 times that I was back in Sheffield.

As I said, it was great when my sister was here, as I don�t get to see her very often, particularly for extended periods of time, and I felt quite sad when she got on the bus back to Paris again. The weather was pretty ace, although I have the most random tan pattern ever seen to man, the food was good and I�m pretty well rested.

The bad happened when my sister went home, and it was just me, my dad and Amanda. I have to assure you all now that the following is honestly just straightforwardly true, and not biased or over-exaggerated. I was pretty much playing gooseberry for the remainder of the holiday, got incredibly bored (especially in the evenings), and whilst my dad definitely did want me around, Amanda definitely did not.

Oh, I have big problems with Amanda, which stem from the fact that she doesn�t like me and feels threatened by me. Let�s just say that I accidentally overheard one side of a conversation that I shouldn�t have. And whilst she didn�t actually say those things, I�m a reasonably clever girl and can put two and two together. She thought that I kept purposely excluding her by spending time with my dad, which I definitely, definitely wasn�t. Because I'm not 7 and I don't try to hurt people's feelings on purpose. Whenever I walked with my dad in her place, she got a very strange look on her face. She seemed to hate me playing guitar and talking about guitar stuff with my dad. She constantly bitched about me over tiny things.

The thing is, I�m not actually annoyed or worried that she doesn�t like me. I actually feel quite pleased, because I knew that there was something wrong, and that there was something weird about her, and that the whole relationship we had felt strained and off-kilter. And now I have the proof. I don�t really like her either � I think my dad could do a lot better, and although it�s a stupid and pointless thing to think, and ultimately just causes heartache, I still think she�s nowhere near as fantastic as Bernie. But he is marrying her, which I�m now less happy about because she�s being so petty and ridiculous. How can she be jealous of her future husband�s 22 year-old daughter? What is there to be threatened by? I don�t care that she doesn�t like me � I can�t expect the entire world to like me � but I don�t understand what I�ve done to make her think that I�m trying to exclude her. I�ve been nothing but nice to her; I�ve tried constantly to get along with her, to figure out how she works. And I gave them loads of space to spend time together, but it was blatantly obviously that she just wanted me to piss off. And frankly, I would have done if I could have gotten home. She just wants my dad all to herself, and not to share him with anyone. Man, and I hate the fact that my dad�s obviously told her all about me, and that she therefore knows a lot of things about me that I�d rather she didn�t.

So I spent a lot of the last week wishing I were back in Sheffield. Wednesday morning we left, travelled 5 hours north, and then realised that Amanda had forgot to pack the fucking passports, despite her assuring us that she had as we left. So we had to turn right back round, travel 5 hours back to the cottage, pick them up, grab three hours sleep at half one in the morning, then travel from half four to half eleven to get our channel crossing. At this point, my body decided that what would really improve matters was a nice period, and so conjured one miraculously from thin air. We then drove solidly from Dover up to New Mills. And I was really good about it and didn�t get annoyed.

Also, my dad has a serious drinking problem (and so does Amanda). He was told about 6 months ago that he�s now borderline diabetic, and instead of looking after himself has decided to smoke shit loads of Marlboro Lights and drink shit loads of red wine and brandy. In one five-day stretch they managed to get through four bottles of wine and two bottles of brandy. They pretty much drank a bottle of wine a night, plus brandy. I mean, for fuck�s sake. What the hell are you doing, seriously? With your blood pressure problems and all that� are you trying to kill yourself? And I got so sick of the smoking � I was just breathing in passive smoke continually. Yes, I am one of those smug ex-smokers, but you know, I quit for a reason, and it was just beyond endurance.

I finally got on a train back to Sheffield last night, and arrived back about 8pm. The touching reunion with James didn�t go quite to plan, as he was waiting for me on the wrong platform, and I just clomped straight past him and was stood by the taxi rank when he finally found me again, but it was still fantastically lovely to see him. As you (hopefully) know, I�m not one of those crappy saps who misses her boyfriend after a day and a half apart, but I have to admit that I did miss him a LOT. The touching reunion was also hampered by aforementioned Miraculous Period, by ways of the obvious and also because it gave me very big stabby pains of badness, which made me very grumpy. And my grumpiness plus all the Amanda crap that I refused to talk about last night as I couldn�t be arsed to get into the sheer ridculousness of it all, meant that I was probably rubbish company. But he still said that he�d missed me a massive amount, and that I wasn�t go away on holiday again, and that he loved me so very much. And he made me feel happy again.

Sorry, this is entry is really long and one-sided. And no matter what, they are getting married, and she is going to become Stepmummy Dearest. It�s just aren�t we all a bit too old to be playing these games?

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