COPYRIGHT@GERRY ROSE

  After the book club, which was held at Marsha’s rather wonderful home overlooking Hove Park, Jenny returned to her house which was close by, but not as nice as Marsha’s. Her husband Tim was already fast asleep when she got in at 10.15pm. Marsha was quite strict about the book club and insisted that everyone kept to its tight time schedule. Jenny could hear Tim snoring and farting as usual. He had perfected the art of expelling air at two ends simultaneously.

 It was a relatively small book club consisting of 4 women now. Herself, Marsha, Ying and Terry. The latest member Terry was very bossy. Jenny saw Ying’s hackles rise on a few occasions. Ying liked to be top dog and did not like Terry who was obviously very bright and well read. She was even more opinionated than Ying. Jenny had only joined the group as a means of getting an evening away from Tim. She needed to feel that she had her own interests and it was always something to talk about to give the illusion that she was having some sort of social life. Jenny thought it made her sound more interesting than she was, if she was asked what she did in her spare time.

 Jenny poured herself a large glass of Chardonnay and sat on the sofa and thought about the evening and her life. Jenny was going to be 66 in a couple of weeks. This milestone did not fill her with joy. She would get her bus pass, but what else would there be to look forward to. Since her son and daughter had left home to lead their own lives Jenny had begun wondering about hers. Tim had grown into one of those men who was grumpy and terminally dull. He was 70 and had even started smelling like an old man. It is hard to describe the smell, but it has something to do with a sort of head grease which bald men exude. The thought of divorcing Tim had become something which she thought about quite frequently.

 Jenny sipped her wine and wondered why she had retired from her admin job at Hove Polyclinic. It had not been very taxing and at least she had got out of the house and felt useful. Since she had stopped earning, Tim had become even more critical about what she spent money on and seemed to take pleasure in lecturing her in a sort of Alvin Hall way, about how much money she wasted. Also now she no longer had the routine of going to work she seemed to do very little and all she seemed to have gained from retirement was excess weight. Marsha had commented on her new found cuddliness tonight. Marsha and Bob had a state-of-the-art home gym, of course they would. Ying suggested that Jenny should follow her example and do daily yoga, Pilates and go to the gym at least 3 times a week.

 The more she thought about the women in the book club the more they got on her nerves. Her book club women were in Jenny’s opinion a bunch of C****. Marsha whilst she was very attractive for a woman of 60, was vacuous. All she was good at was bagging a very dull wealthy man and was very adept at spending his money. Bob was even duller than Tim. When Marsha met her for an occasional coffee she would complain that she actually didn’t want to go home to Bob. Marsha also complained about Bob’s excessive libido.  This was never going to be something that Jenny would have any experience of, either with Bob or Tim. Tim’s libido went off to the Antarctic she suspected, after the very difficult birth of their daughter. Her mother had warned her, never to allow a man to view a baby emerging from your vagina assisted by forceps. However, she suspected it was the fact that sex following her daughter’s birth was like a chipolata entering the Dartford tunnel. No pelvic floor exercises would rectify that.

 Ying was the wild card. Single but obviously in pursuit of a man, sexy and dangerous. Jenny knew that she was someone that men regarded as a fantasy woman. She came from Laos and had a past. Ying would never really be accepted by the Hove Park married set, she was far too threatening. She would be invited to a woman only book club, but she would never be invited to parties or dinner. Jenny admired Ying never the less. She was ploughing her own furrow in Hove. She had an active social life, a good job and her own house. She did not know much about Ying’s past but what she had gathered from comments she made was that life had not been easy for her. Jenny envied Ying’s freedom and she didn’t really understand what Ying felt she would gain by finding a man.

 Terry was not the most typical member of the Hove Park Book Worms (Marsha’s idea). Marsha had decided that they needed to embrace diversity a few years ago. Hence Ying and now Terry. Terry was gay and was married to Cherry and lived not far from Ying in Poet’s Corner, which for some reason had become Hove’s lesbian enclave recently. Terry and Cherry had a son called Berry. Of course! Jenny wondered how the son of Terry would fare. She also didn’t really care.

 Jenny was a woman who had lots of notebooks. She found one in the kitchen and even though she knew she had probably had far too much to drink, she started a pro and cons list of leaving Tim.

 Pros-Never having to….

• Experience boring nights in with a man who liked to sit in his boxers and Blue Oyster Cult T Shirts and watch snooker
• Put up with old man head grease stains on the back of her sofa
• Find Tim’s toe nail clippings embedded in the sitting room carpet as he insisted on cutting his toe nails whilst sitting on the sofa
• Put up with Tim belching and farting whenever he felt like it
• Hear Tim drone on about her wasting money in Waitrose when there was a perfectly good Sainsburys close by
• Find the toilet seat was wet with his pee
• Pick up his dirty clothes which were always thrown on the floor next to the laundry basket and never in it
• Pre-soak his boxer shorts to remove the skid marks
• Hear Tim’s fake laugh at social events
• Sleep next to a snoring farting man who needed to get up to pee every two hours
• Listen to Tim coughing up phlegm in the morning (he was an ex-smoker)
• Remind him to use the lavatory brush after doing number 2s
• Listen to him chewing breakfast cereal very loudly
• Hear his pre-fix ‘when in all honesty I think’ when giving his opinion on anything

 Cons-

• We would have to divide our assets and I would have to accept that I would have a very small amount of money to live on

 That was the clincher for Jenny. It all came down to money. ‘In all honesty’ she did not have a clue how much she would have to live on and how much she needed. However, her mind was made up, she was going to ask for her old job back or apply for something similar. She would secretly get the house valued and start thinking about how much money she would need. She didn’t want to leave Hove, but she was aware that Hove was a very desirable place to live and she probably couldn’t afford to stay. She could do with some financial advice. She would have to be discreet as many of Tim’s friends were financial advisors.