A Grown Man Crying

It was the fact that she’d bought a telly that really brought it home. They’d agreed months ago that they spent too much time gazing at one of these and, now that they were splitting up, one was back, and, not only that, was now sharing the bedroom with her whereas he was palpably not. He was consigned to the front-room couch until he could – it was hoped, speedily – find alternative accommodation. He could hear it up there with her, slightly blaring ‘Good Morning Britain’ or some such.

He had been replaced by a noisy box.

He ended up in a room above a restaurant run by a Dutch couple. Kind people, he (and she, the estranged, strangely) was a witness at their wedding in Rock Ferry. Quite often they’d pass up to him a lemon merengue pie (no idea why it was always a lemon merengue pie). There was a communal living room where he’d sometimes chat with a bloke that worked in a margarine factory. Somehow he thought he’d never eat margarine again, but he did.

She got a job way down on the south coast, on her own admission ‘to be as far away from you so that we don’t keep getting back together’.

I think also it was because she couldn’t stand to see a grown man, crying….

He bought a TV of his own.