When faced with a relationship journey that has frolicked through the fields of frivolous romance, taken steps down the dark path of lust and passion, turned the corner past casual and headed onto the long and windy Long-term Road, and when the two people concerned both live in one-bedroom bachelor/spinster pads…..
I need to interrupt myself at this point because when I synonym-searched for a substitute to the word spinster, the alternatives offered included: old maid, virgin, bachelor girl, fuddy-duddy, goody-goody, prig, prude, cat lady, bachelorette, hag. The definition of a spinster came up as ‘An old unmarried lady’ or ‘One who spins’, assuming that the latter definition was, in days gone by, usually taken up by the former then it was, at some point, an appropriate term. My experience of spinning nowadays however, includes a brief foray into the hideousness that is exercise bike classes for the physically daft! And whilst taking part, I probably did resemble ‘a hag’, it’s hardly fair to base my whole marital identity on that unfortunate 30 minutes! I’m suggesting that either there needs to be an international campaign to rebrand the ‘s’ word with some cool connotations, or we need to take the task seriously to find an alternative? Urban slang dictionaries are, by their own definition, subjective, inconsistent and liminal however one possibility struck me as a great possibility: “Lily; A Lily is a success at life”
Let’s try it out and see if it catches on maybe?
…When the two people concerned both live in one-bedroom bachelor/lily pads, some necessary, yet potentially difficult conversations need to take place.
Many of the necessary, yet potentially difficult conversations that need to take place in our house take the form of a tennis match: One serves what they hope will be an ace of a suggestion for something they want to happen; occasionally the other person doesn’t listen carefully enough or doesn’t care enough to attempt a return shot and so the thing happens and any later complaints are over-ruled by the fact of the earlier ace play. Due to early-relationship-allowances for aces needing to be trickily back-tracked upon now, we live in a state of perpetual readiness for these shots; alert enough to give the immediate repost which will result in that particular ball being smashed out of play permanently. However, mostly these are not forthcoming and so a series of verbal volleys ensues, sometimes with accompanying grunting, groaning and physical exertions. Very rarely do we both meet at the net to bat the idea about from one to the other in a negotiable playful way as if we were at a creative-thinking meeting where a solution to the issue is in the best interests of us all. However, we all must accept the different facets of our lives as equally valid – right?
So, in one of our less combative game/match/conversations we ended up moving from Birmingham and buying a warehouse in Blackpool to convert and live in….
Melanie Whitehead 