LIZ JONES’S DIARY: In which I try to get our glow back

Would you like to hear about my Christmas?

I’d invited David 1.0. I told him it would all be low key, that on Christmas Day we’re going out for lunch with friends, then playing poker. He said he would bring all his gluten-free ingredients.

I spent three days cleaning the cottage. I put on my new bedlinen and my cherry red Atkinson blanket. I put down my new Zara rug, giving P***y Missy a death stare. I took delivery of a Waitrose order: awful man-things like butter and milk. I ordered a big bottle of Tanqueray gin, an unwaxed lemon, Fever-Tree. I defrosted my freezer. I tinted my eyebrows, twice. I bought a tank top from Zara. Church candles. I ordered him a cardi from N Peal. I resisted, with every fibre of my being, sending an email saying, ‘Could your hair be less Mary Beard, a tad more Marcus Wareing?’ It was a bit odd as, the week before Christmas, I’d planned to attend two work parties. In advance of me staying with him, David bought a new loo. But I couldn’t attend as my sister had just died. Yet not a single text to ask where I was, or how I was doing, enmired in double grief*.

We used to have sex every time we saw each other. Now we’re like pen pals 

On 23 December I got this: ‘Hi, I’ve had a frantic few days, I’ll tell you when I see you**, if it’s still OK? I plan to leave early. X’

Oh, s**t. On Christmas Eve, I tried to put him off by telling him there was a dreadful storm. No chance: ‘On my way!’ When he did turn up, I carefully introduced him to Teddy. Of course, Teddy promptly gave him a paw and put his enormous head in David’s lap. I made curry while David unloaded his dreadful gluten-free food. He looked miserable. Sciatica, and he thinks his hips ‘are going’. Where?

On Christmas morning, I was up at 8am to get the horses in (I only have one now; the other two are Nic’s). I told David, who was sitting in the garden smoking, that I was going to poo-pick the fields. ‘Can’t you leave it, just for one day?’

‘No! What else am I to do?’

‘You can stay and talk to me.’

‘But you never say anything.’

‘I will.’

I felt sad, then.

We went to my friend’s for Christmas lunch: there were lots of beautiful young couples, and a male model, whom David later accused me of talking to all evening. There were 15 of us around a table straight out of World of Interiors. We got home, and I opened his gifts: squeaky toys for the dogs and a box of aromatherapy products including something for ‘people who live inside their own heads’.

‘I thought as you’re deaf, you must have always lived with your own thoughts,’ he said. You see, he was trying. His cardi hadn’t arrived, so instead I’d ordered him a Piglet in Bed mattress topper, which he seemed thrilled about.

At one point, I asked him to check if Mini was upstairs. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m having difficulty breathing.’ He lit another fag. 

Boxing Day. I’ve booked lunch at a nearby hotel and spa. When we get back, he goes to bed. It’s 5pm. I’m currently watching The Great Escape thinking… He hasn’t seen me more than three or four times this year. He loves me. But he’s asleep. What sort of company is that? It’s like being married again.

When we first re-met, we had sex every time we saw each other. Now? We’re like pen pals, minus any communication.

Anyway, the final test? I get out my stepladders. If we don’t have sex, you can at least be helpful. ‘Can you replace the spotlight in the kitchen?’

‘Why isn’t that bulb in a box?’

‘It was a pack of three.’

He has a fag first, indoors. It’s the centuries-long male/female transaction: ‘I will do this, but in return I can behave badly.’ I find him slumped in a chair. ‘You OK?’

‘I will be. Reaching up isn’t good for me. I’ll make breakfast. Are you OK with butter?’

‘No!’

Why does being with a man mean having to play policeman, ALL THE TIME?!

*Benji died.

**His washing machine leaked. 

 Jones moans…what Liz loathes this week

Contact liz at lizjonesgoddess.com and stalk her @lizjonesgoddess