Sunday, September 24, 2006

Ex-iquette

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there were pretty straight forward rules for ex's and ex-iquette. If you jilted a man, you returned all his personal presents, letters and, of course, the engagement ring. If a man jilted you, he returned all personal presents - including books with inscriptions, letters and the like. Any man who refused to do so was a cad and a bounder.

Nowadays, with the confusions of email and text messages, it's harder to do this kind of thing gracefully. Ex-iquette requires a little thought and consideration but it's not rocket science.
Ex-iquette Point One

If an ex doesn't approach you in a medium sized crowd of people when it would not have required any fantastic physical stunts to appear at your side with a glad smile and a plate of cheese and biccies, take it from Aunty Catty that they don't want to make contact. They are, infact, doing their best to ignore your existence at this function. That you turned up to it is not ruining their enjoyment - otherwise they would have turned on their heel (lovely German heels, Myer sale) - but they would prefer to keep five people (at least) between them and you. The fact that they turned their back to you to avoid even eye contact should be a clue.

Given the above, it is probably wise to take your cue from their behaviour and don't push it. But if you do and get snubbed for your efforts don't go crying to your mummy substitute. You deserved it. In fact, take it from Aunty Catty, you probably deserved ground glass on your brekkie cereal.

Have we all got that? Good, let's move on.

I have decided to give up on the Flower Basket shawl. I can't do those little markers. But I want to make a beautiful lace weight shawl because, when I have no money for wool and my stash has all been used up (the Accountant looks incredulous in the background) I want to be able to buy one hank of 2 ply and have a year of frustration, oops, I mean knitting, ahead of me. I am going to try Icarus. Or maybe I will google for a genuinely easy first lace shawl. Is there such a thing?

There are some beautiful laceweight colourways available here. Tempted? I reach for my credit card every time I see them.

Thank heavens there is another week of school hols. I really need to work on some a) short stories, b) spend time with the kids, c) knit and do some d) quality gardening and e) cooking. It will all fall out in a different order. b) will become a) until they link up with other friends. a) will become e) because e) will become a necessity and d) will depend on the weather. c) will be influenced by how easily I master Icarus. c) might, under certain adverse circumstances (insert image of woman tearing her hair out, stitch markers flying around her) drop back to z). Oops, no, that's my accounts.

5 comments:

Gregory Brett Hardy said...

I love it when you are full of anger/hysteria/insanity, Catherine, it leads to brilliant writing. Is that the secret, then?

Anonymous said...

Is there any way you can email the above to every man in the world, just to make sure they get it? Maybe you could also suggest that asking your ex-wife to babysit so that the girl you left her for can go shopping for her wedding dress is just a tad distasteful.

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