Autumn 1997

Alan moving in was a positive event on two counts. Firstly the financial pressure was removed and some normality could be gained. Secondly it meant that I could go out in the evenings when he was around at weekends. Jemima would not be left alone in the house and I could get some respite from the situation. After a couple of evenings out, and some initial attempts at finding another girl, I realized that ultimately I would need to find someone who would take Jemima on as part of the ‘package’. It was a scary thought as I suddenly felt perhaps not too dissimilar to a single parent looking for a new partner. How many women out there would see themselves in a long term relationship with a man who already had a dog? Not too confident a start for someone who a year or more earlier epitomized the image of ruthless womaniser. The truth though was that I never was that person – just someone who had never learnt how to say ‘No’ and to be strong enough to stand by the decision.

The search began in the most logical places, those that I frequented regularly, which in my case was the office. I felt like, and probably came across as, desperate. My own preference was always that something felt natural, free and easy anyway so forcing myself into a positive search was unnatural. In the short time that this lasted I looked at every single girl in the office, who were not too numerous, and tried to figure out if I fancied them or not. Then I tried to work out whether I could see myself being with them for a long time. In all cases I found zero matches. This made me very downhearted for a time as I could not see a way out of the impasse. My next move felt like a comedown for me at first. I phoned Ed.

Ed had been a good friend from my old days in Peterborough Youth Theatre. He had joined after the successful showings of Grease and West Side Story that we had put on and was one of the ‘new’ people that had come along as a result of the positive fallout of those productions. He was different from other kids my age and I got along very well with him. He had a similar view of the world as I did although his capacity for procrastination would infuriate me at times. He also had a number of odd habits and insecurities that were both annoying and insufferable so over time I had purposefully stopped seeing him. He did like to go out though and was more in the zone of looking for women than Alan. So I called him up and we made plans to get out and enjoy London. At this point I had also decided that perhaps looking for ‘the one’ as it’s called seemed a bit pointless. So one Saturday night Ed and I went out for a drink and unbeknown to me he had arranged to meet up with a group of girls through another girl he knew from work. Ed worked at the BBC so I was very interested in these high flying media girl types although when talking to them they seemed normal, if more intelligent than most. The girl that Ed knew from work however was something else. She was an Irish redhead who could talk, was ever so slightly strange, and was completely uninterested in me. Me being me I just forgot the thought and tried to impress myself on another tall girl from the group. Later in the evening we found ourselves in a nightclub at an 80′s night. I really let my hair down as the expression goes. This was my music! After a short while both myself and Ed plus the redhead and another irish girl hit the dance floor and pretty much stayed there. This did it really. My moves must have impressed the redhead as we soon started seeing each other after that night.

Anne Marie was a very cultured and well connected girl in the TV industry and we got on well but it soon became apparent that she was avoiding coming out of London to darkest West Ewell. She knew I had a Dog and I assumed that was the issue although she did not say anything about it. It was paranoia on my part I guess but I set about finding out by driving over one day with Jemima in tow. When I opened the car door Jemima careered out into the street and set about meeting everyone she could see. Everyone except the girl I had brought her to see. The deal was sealed – Anne Marie had no idea about Dogs and perhaps Jemima knew straight up. Things fell apart a short while after that and had nothing to do with the brief meeting with Jemima but more perhaps my intransigence.

The search for a new mummy went on and I explained this to Jemima on numerous occasions. Quite often she would talk back and I took this to mean agreement and compliance with what I needed to do and that it meant that if I found a potential candidate I may not be back till the next morning. This had only happened a couple of times with Anne Marie but I assumed it would be the case on numerous occasions in the future. Strangely enough it only happened again one time until after I met Christine.