I’ve been reading the messageboard, and I have concluded that losing a partner really isn’t any fun at all. It sucks. Sucks. SUCKS. But my little trawl through the mire of misery has given me a very good idea about what to do with the left-over mortar that’s sitting in my barn There is a current vogue for fancy Wellington boots, and I think I might have come up with the perfect Christmas gift for unwanted/annoying/malevolent/ relatives. I’m going to supply traditional lime mortar wellies for long walks in lakes. Just write to me, specifying a size, and I’ll be happy to knock up some orthopaedic footwear that will be sure to straighten out even the most difficult family dispute. Give something really useful for Christmas, and let all your troubles sink without a trace…

And now we’ve got problem rellies out of the way, I can move on to talking about the aptness of certain words. The word I have been thinking about is ‘nice’. It can be short and sweet when applied to certain things, or patronising and trite when applied to others. There are certain acts that cry out for the ‘nice’ preface. A hot bath is made more bubbly and relaxing by inserting ‘nice’ before it. The urge to linger is overwhelming when you hear the phrase, ‘nice, hot bath.’ ‘Nice’ elongates the pleasure, it conjures up a steamy, somnolent fug in your mind, and I defy anybody to refuse the invitation when it’s phrased in such a comforting and alluring way. The same applies to a ‘nice cup of tea’. When I hear that phrase, I am already sitting in a comfy armchair, with a hob-nob in my hand and a smile on my face. My body relaxes, and the cogs of my mind start to freewheel. I can taste the refreshing, warming tea, and feel myself being perked up.

‘Nice’ is the only preface that suits a cup of tea; they go together like Darjeeling and bone china, but try using nice as the adjective to describe a potential suitor and you get a very different picture. He’s a nice man - so what is he? Well, if my best friend were to say that to me, I’d immediately assume that she was trying to tell me that the man I’m getting all excited about is going to be about as useful as a stick of celery in a knife fight. ‘Nice’ says baggy y-fronts, cartoon socks and dandruff on the lapel. The vicar is a nice man, but you don’t want your lover to be nice, you want him to be bad and brave, sharp and suave, sexy and seductive, anything really, except nice. Tell any woman that the new man in your life is ‘nice’, and you’ve already told her that your first romantic liaison left you with half the bill to pay, half a hangover, and half a mind to send Mr. Lovalova the dry cleaning bill, after his half-arsed attempts at foreplay ended somewhat prematurely at half-time. No oranges. No substitute for experience…

Nice, is also a bit of an emotional Exocet when used in bed. There’s no such thing as a ‘nice’ orgasm, except perhaps, if you’re over 60, and have just achieved an unintentional and quite surprising slipper curl, whilst leaning on the washing machine and reading an article in Saga magazine about Alan Titchmarsh. Orgasms are mind-blowing, incredible, awesome, amazing, earth-shattering, but never, every do you turn to your lover and tell him that the thing he did that made your body convulse and your head turn inside out was ‘nice’. Not unless he was doing it with the help of a washing machine and Alan Titchmarsh, in which case it wasn’t nice, it was very, very wrong.

The subject of Christmas has once again reared its tinselly head, and it’s clear that nobody on the message board is looking forward to it. And why should you? There’s no reason to feel that you need to have the festive spirit, and no reason that you should feel duty-bound to entertain people. But still the guilt remains, and still you try to please everybody except yourself. If you were Victorians in mourning, the you wouldn’t be expected to go anywhere or do anything, because you’d have to spend at least the first year in ‘deep mourning’(which basically means you get to live in the attic). Christmas is fraught with pain, and I think in the early years it’s about as much fun as thrashing yourself with a bunch of holly and then tipping brandy over your head and setting yourself alight. You feel obliged to please everybody and end up pleasing everybody except yourself. We are so scared of offending our relatives that we do things that we know are wrong. Why do we do this? Well, it’s all to do with self-confidence and ‘the excuse’. When you have a partner, you have a perfect excuse to get out of all kinds of social nightmares. You can always blame the other person, and you never feel guilty about it. Losing your partner takes away the ability to say ‘no’. You are alone and you have nobody to hide behind, and people will take advantage of you, no matter how much they pretend to be acting in your interests. It takes time to build up the confidence to decline invitations, and in the meantime you are pushed into situations that are bound to cause you pain. You shouldn’t even think about entertaining at Christmas in the first couple of years of mourning, and should think very hard about social obligation. Why should you feel guilty about staying at home? Home is where you feel safe, and home is where you need to be at Christmas. The happiest times my girls and I have had at Christmas since Charlie’s death, have been when there’s been just the three of us at home. It may be odd to some that we could actually enjoy shutting ourselves away at that time of year, but it suits us just fine. It helps to re enforce our family bond, and it makes a happy time out of an occasion that used to be miserable for us all. If other people don’t understand, it is only because they choose not to. Anyone who loves you will know that you should do only what makes you feel least unhappy at a miserable time of year. And if they choose not to take your feelings into account and try instead, to coerce you into spending Christmas in a place which feels cold, unfriendly and unfamiliar, then you know what to take them as a present, now don’t you?

Mortar Wellies – you know they make sense…