Yesterday was directed like a Robert Altman film. One continuous shot as the trippy dippy lead character (me) went about her daily grind. Maybe you can picture it-panning from the warehouse where the scene dressings are stored, as I walk along a path dodging golf carts. Script boys run between sets and in the background is someone dressed like Big Bird.

Instead, my daily grind yesterday was set in London, and quite a few things happened yesterday in the typical non-descript way that my life seems to happen.

I took the train in to London, hopped an overcrowded tube, and headed to my therapist. The tube was heaving with morning rush hour traffic, which is always a scenario I don't like because I just don't like crowds. I sigh heavily and sway from hand to hand as I stand in the aisle. I wonder if I pick my feet up if I'll remain standing, so packed is the train.

Then? The Robert Altman camera pans to a middle-aged man who is reading his paper as he sits on a seat nearby. He looks at me. He takes in my protruding gut. He kindly offers me his seat. I wearily accept with enormous gratitude. It's a first for me, a man giving me his seat. It's also a first for me, a woman accepting the seat. As I keep growing, hopefully it won't be the last.

My therapist meeting was good. The walk down the tree-lined residential avenue is always calming. The weather wasn't brilliant, but the intrepid me was not getting rained on and that's all that matters. More unusually my session had a unique point to it - we have spent so long trying to get me to connect to my feelings that now we're trying to get me to disidentify with them in order to strip the negative out. He had me do an exercise which I was cynical about at first but in the end, it worked.

Score one for the home team.

I like my therapist but lately I've had a hard time. Not because I am dealing with difficult emotional stuff, but because by the time I reach his place my coffee has kicked in. Big time. And for the past few weeks, I've found as soon as I enter his loft space (the house he lives in accommodates all kind of hippy granola types - massseuses, acupuncturists, therapists) I have to go the toilet. Like, big go. As in what Angus calls a "spidoosh". I'm not trying to overshare or anything here, but I absolutely cannot do big business in my therapists' toilet. That's just wrong. What if he heard? I'd need more therapy. GOD.

So every week I suffer because every week I forget about the trauma and order a coffee on the way to meet him.

I have only myself to blame.

Robert Altman films my twitchiness with aplomb.

I made my way to a work building, where I had a meeting. Then another meeting. Then another building for another meeting. I get an email from Angus which is the draft email he's going to send to his ex to break the news about the babies, and could he have my comments? We do this often-send sensitive personal emails to each other to review, to see if one of us can see a potentially bad wording of something in order to make things more delicately handled. I have a few comments, which I send back.

We're getting ready to tell her next week.

Let the nightmare begin.

On my way to another tube station to go to another meeting (keep up here, Robert Altman is still working the one take angle here) I see a sale at Space NK. I do massive busines as I buy a load of Christmas presents for people. I know it's only July
, but my Christmas season is going to be pretty busy and - I can imagine - not very mobile.

I feel really homesick for Melissa then. I send her a text message. She replies. Then we talk on the phone for a long while. Our talk is about her horse camp, how she's doing, what she misses, and about Harry Potter. I had to duck off the call to go to a meeting, but I was on a high from talking to her all afternoon.

The camera pans over to me in another meeting room. We sit there and discuss technical architecture, using so many acronyms it sounds like we're speaking code. We work. We develop. Then, we plan ahead for a larger technical meeting we're having on Thursday.

One of the guys in the room, a vendor who works for us whom I know extremely well, mentions they have a new systems designer. Said systems designer is very good. Said systems designer works for Company X, the Swedish company I lost my job from years ago.

"Really?" I ask, chewing my Granny Smith apple. My feet are propped up on a chair. The guys don't mind, they offer gentle teasing about my state but do things like hand me the rubbish bin to throw my goods away in so I don't have to get up. "Anyone I know?"

"It's a guy named...." my colleague starts, flipping through his notebook to get the name. "Ah! Here it is. His name is Zane."

I stop chewing. The apple feels like a heavy mush in my stomach and a hot wash has just lurched over me. "Zane?" I ask, swallowing heavily. "What's his last name?"

"Zane...Michaelson. That's it. Zane Michaelson."

And since I'm such an excellent poker player and can totally keep my emotions to myself, this is followed with: "Oh, so I see you know him, Helen?"

I nod and smile.

I do indeed know him.

He's my ex-husband's best friend.

"I used to work with him," I explain. Which I did. We never got on, really, we kind of tolerated each other for my ex's benefit. It seems like high school it was so long ago, but there you have it. In certain lines of business, it all comes back again.

Robert Altman busily films the scene, which he titles in his head "Crash", unaware that the title has already been taken.

I get to meet up with Zane tomorrow then. I haven't seen him in 4 years, not since I got let go from Company X, not since my ex and I divorced and I took up with Angus. And now I'll be across the table from him, the customer, the pariah, the cuckolder...and the pregnant one. I don't know how much my ex - who is still living and working in China - knows. I did send him an email telling him of Mumin's death and he sent a reply that was actually nice and polite. We don't talk because we don't need to, but that doesn't mean I'd want him to get hurt. If he would. Maybe I'm being presumptuous there, too, maybe he's so over me I'm not even a memory. I can't imagine he doesn't know I'm with Angus, as telecoms is more gossip-y than Sweet Valley High.

Angus had to meet and work with people who knew both him and his ex. He never had any really uncomfortable conversations about it, as the people he worked with were pretty conservative and very English about the handling (tiptoe, be delicate, don't mention the war!). Zane, on the other hand, is about as subtle as acid reflux. It will be uncomfortable. I'm looking forward to it like I'm looking forward to childbirth. Scratch that - I'm more looking forward to childbirth than I am meeting Zane.

Angus hugs me later that evening. "It had to happen," he tells me sympathetically.

Robert Altman circles us, standing in the kitchen with his camera.

"I know," I reply. "It did." And it did have to happen. Telecom is incestuous. It was inevitable that I run into this situation, I had to bust my Facing People From the Divorce cherry at some point. In some ways, I can even imagine I may even be in the same space as my ex again (although while he's in China, this is pretty unlikely seeing as he was never a fan of the UK and I'm unlikely to find myself in Guangzhou anytime soon).

Everything is always so complicated.

Even Robert Altman agrees and he should know, he's been following me all fucking day.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 11:58 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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