* The Welsh are happier than the Scots.
* You can sometimes judge a book by its cover.
* Uncle Gethyn found happiness in Guildford.
ANSWER TO WEDDING DAY QUIZ: I don’t know! I’ve got absolutely no idea, none whatsoever. I got the pictures off the Internet. It’s a mystery, an absolute mystery but that’s my point! The Mystery of Marriage… there is NO WAY ON EARTH of predicting who will stay together and who will split up.
[1] I should point out that I’m not what you’d call a theatregoer. “What do I mean by that?” I mean that I don’t go to the theatre. I’m not a culture vulture and I would never claim to be one. Apart from Sinderella, one of the last things I saw at the theatre was a wonderful production of Babes in the Wood, the pantomime, in Cardiff. I took my two little smashers Rhys and Alyn along and we had a whale of a time. The show starred Lesley Grantham and Vicki Michelle, a top notch cast, and was in the days before Lesley’s internet pornography shame when the only shadow on his character was the business with the taxi driver. I always remember the show because I was wearing a ski jacket of all things! I’m not a skier, I would never say I was, but I’d bought this one second hand in a Sue Ryder shop. It was what I call a “puffer” style jacket in a very vivid purple, there was a tear on one arm, just below a sewn-on fabric patch that read, “VALMOREL ‘95”. I was never sure whether it had come from a skier who was disillusioned with skiing after an accident (hence the tear) or whether he was just fashion conscious and deemed it to be a bit “last year”. I never got to the bottom of it and to this day am none the wiser. Anyway, the point is I forgot to take the jacket off before the show started and was very hot indeed as basically I was dressed for Alpine conditions. We were sitting in “the Gods”, the highest part of the theatre, and I was sweating cobs; I wish you could have seen it, it was unbelievable. At one point Vicki Michelle came out and started to throw chocolates to the kids, a lovely gesture though not quite as generous as it first seems when you consider that the show was sponsored by Cadburys. Rhys and Alyn were egging me on to try and catch some confectionery so I stood up to get a better chance when I was hit in the eye by an Animal Bar. It was quite painful and gave me what doctors call temporary blindness. Nonetheless I did manage to drive home with no damage to flesh or bone, though we did lose a nearside wing mirror.
[2] Gethyn, an avid Beatles fan, worked for Cardiff City Council and organized a trip to Hamburg, birthplace of The Beatles (but surprisingly, not the hamburger!) on council business. He was thrilled that he would finally walk in the footsteps of his heroes, having already visited Liverpool and had his photograph taken by the “Penny Lane” road sign and walked past the Dakota Building in New York during a Fly Drive in America. The trip itself was a great success and Gethyn received all the plaudits; we’d never seen him happier. Three months later he was charged and found guilty of misappropriation of council funds and sentenced to eighteen months in prison, although he only served nine of those on account of his good behaviour. (He is credited with implementing the Dewey Decimal System in the Prison Library and introducing the Governor to Gilbert and Sullivan.) On his release his marriage crumbled and he lost his job. Five years later he has remarried, lives in Guildford, and drives an Audi. It never rains …
Step 2 It’s a Family Affair And We’re All Family Now
“We are family”
SISTER SLEDGE – WE ARE FAMILY
“Don’t cry Daddy”
ELVIS PRESLEY – DON’T CRY DADDY
“He’s the greatest dancer”
SISTER SLEDGE – HE’S THE GREATEST DANCER
Divorce has never been so popular! The statistics prove a remarkable fact – that children of divorced parents are more likely to then go on to experience divorce themselves.
In that sense divorce can be like an heirloom – a vase, a painting or in my case a rifle, handed down from generation to generation.
Proud Mary
Approaching the subject from this viewpoint we can see divorce as something to be very proud of, particularly for the already divorced parent of the divorcing child as they see their offspring carrying on the family tradition. In a society that moves faster and faster and seems so impersonal, parents are searching for something to pass on to their children. In the past, one of the most significant things would have been their trade and this would have been reflected in their name.
For example we would know that Tommy Cooper’s ancestors were barrel makers, and this skill would have been passed down from father to son. In the television series Porridge, Norman Stanley Fletcher’s ancestors would have made arrows, and the man who played him, Ronnie Barker, would have come from a long line of dog handlers. We Barrets have prided ourselves in the manufacture of low-cost, high-quality starter homes. Not really.
It’s a bit of fun!
The point is that the name was a source of pride to the family because it told the world so much about them. Nowadays it is the same but different. We can still learn a lot about a person from their name, e.g. we know when a person has four or five children with different surnames then it’s highly likely that family has experienced divorce, or at the very least, separation. This is not the whole of the story though. A person can choose to buck the trend and change the course of the family tradition; it is with no small amount of pride that I, Keith Barret, am the first in my family to sip from the golden goblet of divorce! (Immediate family I’m not including Gethyn.) Just because your parents are happy contented and facing their twilight years bathed in the rosy glow of companionship, that’s no reason for you not to embark on the safari of separation that is divorce.
That Pioneer Spirit
There are some who see my situation (and others like me, people like you) as a failure. Fine, as Bobby Brown would say “that’s their prerogative”,[1] I prefer to see us as pioneers, charting a brave new world of happiness and opportunity. Particularly in my case as I come from parents who didn’t divorce, they stayed devoted to each other right to the end. It was much harder for me therefore to make that break with tradition and begin walking down a different path. How much easier it would have been if I’d come from a broken home, to then go and break one myself. If this is ringing bells with you, then take heart. Just because divorce was beyond your parents doesn’t mean that it’s beyond you. It won’t be easy; you’ll have to dig deep inside your heart for inspiration as you take your family tree in a new direction.
Speaking of family trees, divorcing can be a wonderful way of adding colour and variety to the tree, as it struggles to cope with the new sprouting offshoots that point outwards with new names and faces. Keen gardeners will get a kick out of this and a sense of genetic topiary as they prune and trim their own trees, letting their creative instincts run riot amongst the heartbreak and emotional chaos.
Why Not Me?
In an age when so many marriages end in divorce, we find ourselves with the odd situation of the normal becoming the unusual and what once was the unusual now becoming the normal. What I mean by that is that whereas it was once normal