BUILDER BLOKE IS COMING TO THE BALL

"All seeing is relative, and so is all knowing. We invent what we experience. And what we have invented, we can destroy".

Nietzsche.

I believe the above statement to be true. That we all tend to see in life what we want to see and formulate our theories accordingly.

On that basis, there could not be four more polarised views of the world than that of mine, my ex husbands, Builder Bloke's and his ex wife (which if you haven't been keeping up or have forgotten all about the drama, in amongst all the recent diversionary reviews and travels I've been doing - there's a weird wife swappy thing going on).

So bearing all of the above in mind, I have decided to break my silence on what is going on with Builder Bloke. Because he is having a really, really shit time and I have suddenly realised that now is not the time to abandon him to the wolves.

Like lots of people at the moment he is struggling to find work in the current climate. This means that he has been unable to pay his ex-wife any maintenance in the last few months. Understandably this has caused an additional stress in an already inflamed scenario. Because I hadn't been able to cope with the swirling mass of accusations and counter accusations I had been blissfully unaware of what had been going on. When I rather unreasonably invited him (a teeny bit late) to a party last weekend, we caught up on all the news.

His ex wife continues to be furious with him about seemingly everything. When I stopped writing about the situation a little while ago, it was because she had told him she had reported his unacceptable reaction (to the news that she had started seeing my ex husband), to the police AND to social services. I completely freaked out. I felt I was out of my depth and didn't want to be involved. My ex husband told me that BB's unacceptable anger was due to the fact that he was still in love with his ex wife and I think I started to believe that might have been true.

It is unclear whether she did actually involve the police. Nothing has come of it and since then he has calmed down and re-found his sense of humour. However, instead of being pleased that all is calm and accepting that he was always going to lose the plot for a minute, his ex wife seems to be even more angry. Two weeks ago he had an official complaint lodged against him at his cricket club whilst he was umpiring his son's cricket match - he has his suspicions about who complained (not just to the club but to the overall authorities) and he was subsequently banned for a week from the club whilst the authorities investigated the accusation. He had no idea what he had done wrong. The woman that investigated the complaint rang him a week later and apologised. She said that it was such a shame that fathers like him offered their time voluntarily to help umpire matches only to find themselves exposed and vulnerable to criticism. Needless to say he was cleared of whatever charges had been made against him.

Last weekend his ex wife hand delivered letters to his parents and to one of his sister's outlining her list of complaints regarding him AND her views on them. This has hugely upset his mother at a time when both of his parents are dealing with ill health.

This weekend she has told him that he cannot see his children.

I believe that his ex wife should never lose sight of the fact that he is a fantastic father and has a brilliant relationship with his children. Why is she involving their children and his family? We could all go round writing letters to family members to tell them what an arse their child/brother/mother is.....but, it's just not acceptable behaviour. What is she hoping to achieve? Family is family and that's it. These are the grandparents of their children. Surely none of this mess should involve them.

Tomorrow night is the party of the year. My gorgeous friend is having her 40Th birthday party and it has been the talk of the town for months and will be great. She is one of my closest friends. Her husband is friend's with my ex husband. Therefore we have both been invited. We have been in this situation before - for the New Year's Eve party, when I agonised about whether to invite BB or not. He didn't come. That was the right decision for my youngest child, but the wrong decision for me.

Until last weekend, I was going on my own to the party. It's easier all round that way. But having heard about everything that is going on and knowing how keen he is to go and knowing that my ex husband isn't going I sent him a text saying "as you are not allowed to have your children this weekend, I assume you are free to come to the party".

This is my public display of support for a man who does not deserve all this. Yes he can be loud and opinionated and he drinks too much and burps and he falls out with people and can be rubbish because he wears his heart on his sleeve and he says what he thinks, but he is not a bully and his children are not scared of him and he is not a total fantasist and in the two years since I've know him he has has done nothing but love me from the moment I met him (well and put Ikea furniture together, mow my lawn and mend my roof/taps/boiler and buy me Tiffany jewelery and take me to The Ivy for dinner).

I cannot at the moment allow myself to be back in the relationship that we had, even if I choose to remind myself about how well we were getting on before all this happened and about how happy we were, because the whole thing still completely freaks me out and I dread to think where it is all going BUT as Walter Winchell said (whoever he is):-

"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out".

This is not the time to listen to everybody else's views. This is a time to trust my own instincts and to stand up for what I believe in...and I believe in him.