Why Diary of a Man Without Qualities?

Six months ago I had, together with my wife as a partner, a restaurant. I think I'm correct in saying that I had because she was at best ambivalent about the place and sometimes openly hostile about it.

It failed for many reasons but mostly because of weariness.

We became insolvent and are still in the process of trying to put together a voluntary creditor arrangement. I am lucky enough to have some irregular consultancy work which means that we are getting by with the help of S's part time wage.

The key stages of my life have been dogged by partly missed opportunity. I am reasonably bright but I have never really worked hard at anything that is cerebral or intellectual. As a result at school I did well compared to my brother and one of my sisters but less well than the other. I went to an average university and dropped out after a year. I play guitar reasonably well, I played in bands but never really worked hard enough at it to succeed and ultimately I dropped it other than as a private hobby. Occasionally I will bore friends with some strumming when drunk but in common with many people of my age, my wife included, we have few friends and we all tend to indulge in reciprocal dullery.

After dropping out of university and a job or two I had solid, easy, well paid work as a train driver. I married, started to progress through the ranks, had two daughters now teenagers, became quite a senior manager and then blew it. I had screwed around throughout my marriage and fallen in love only once with an au pair fourteen years my junior. My first wife 'A' - 'found' an email that I had written and confronted me. I have a suspicion that she had known for some time but because in this email I said that I was thinking of leaving her I was unsettling the core of her world: the financial stability that we had. 'A' asked me to stay, I could continue to screw around but I couldn't do it. I couldn't continue to be dishonest, except to myself no doubt.

Now nine years or so later I've been married a year to a woman I've known for seven years. She left me once for a rich older guy who she'd had a relationship with years before. This was when the restaurant's financial and operational difficulties became too much to bear for her. We got back together, I'm not so sure if we love each other any more. I care for her but my life seems devoid of meaning and hers too. We still fall in and out of love from time to time but it's not easy.

So this blog is part of a strategy to put some meaning back into me. And if I have meaning then I'll have qualities. I think that's how it works.

First, I am going to post a poem. I wrote it a few years ago but only found it again a couple of days ago. Comments, feedback and plain old insults are welcome as long as they're not lazy. I've got to stop being lazy and so have you. Poem in next post.

TTFN, Nigel