Last night I had one of those dreams about being in love.
When I was younger I used to have them about piles of pound coins, huge mountains of them that I would discover behind the sofa and run my hands through greedily. Now I have them about men.
The man in question is normally someone I have never met before, never seen before (although it was recently Peter Jones from Dragons Den), but I always just KNOW. He is The One.
I was coming home from visiting a friend in Cambridge over the summer holidays, and as I drove down the slip road onto the motorway I was faced with a giant billboard, offering me the chance to meet the man of my dreams through the website sugardaddie.com.
As the name almost suggests, the site offers the opportunity for both men and women to meet people who are “classy, attractive and affluent” at the same time as “eradicating the issues of financial stress that modern living can bring”.
Sounds good doesn’t it?
I’ve never had Money. As a child we never had money, which is why at 16 I became pregnant in a bid to get my own council house and sponge off the state for life. (Joke.) The pregnancy part isn’t a joke of course, but I have never lived in a council house…
This is me.
My name is Jo. I am a single mother to two daughters, aged seven and 14, and I work at home in a variety of different hats – mostly at the moment a wooly one, as I am too tight environmentally aware to put the heating on during the day for just me.
My life is a weird combination of hectic and dull, complicated yet often boring. It’s a hard mix to bear sometimes and without another adult in the house to sound off at, I often find by bedtime that my mind is a swirling swamp of concerns, tasks for the next day and random thoughts about life, parenthood and the plot details of Flash Forward.
This blog is going to be my silent partner, the husband I have never had, the substitute for the man who would undoubtedly be subject to my daily musings and rantings, were he here to listen to them. This will also be the place I go to ask myself for advice. As a single parent, you have no one to consult – no one to share the responsibilities of decision-making. I am only young, I haven’t had any training for this, and sometimes I’m not sure of the right thing to do. When is it ok for a girl to have her ears pierced? I randomly settled on nine as a suitable age, based on absolutely nothing at all, but it would have been nice to have a second opinion. At what age is it ok for my teenager to have boys at her sleepovers? I really didn’t know the answer to this one and it feels wrong that I am expected to come up with sensible solutions to these kind of things all by myself.
I find the act a writing a cathartic one – it helps to clear my mind and work through problems. Perhaps by sharing any questions with my blog I will become the wise and sensible mother I have always wanted to be, rather than stumbling blindly from one issue to another.
Entwined with the day-to-day tedium that is parenting, I am searching for The One. My rational side knows he doesn’t exist, which does make the search frustrating and disappointing sometimes, but my supressed romantic side won’t let it go. Not surprisingly, as a work at home single mum my opportunities for meeting eligible bachelors are limited. It could be a long search…