In my last post, Christmas and the divorced man, I wrote about a male client of mine:

“My client intends to ignore Christmas this year. He is convinced that if men had their way, it wouldn’t exist at all. He asks, “Why do we have Father Christmas? It should be Mother Christmas”.

“Is he right? Is Christmas “a woman thing” and if so, why haven’t all we clever women spotted that we are being “had” before now?”

Here is my answer: we know full well that we are being “had”!

Yes, Christmas is very hard work – and tensions within a relationship can be exacerbated by the pressures of Christmas. At the same time, however, we love spending time with our children, friends and families, giving and receiving all those beautifully wrapped presents. Perhaps we just adore the excitement of buying (and eating) fabulous food and drinking glorious wine. For example: how many different boxes of chocolates have you spotted in store right now? And bought?! Not to mention those luxury puddings and cakes and mince pies! Continue reading »

Yesterday morning my husband was reading the papers over a breakfast cup of coffee. He looked out into the garden. Our two giant Briard dogs were frolicking together, getting completely covered in snow. A little red robin was hopping about on the branch of a snow covered fir tree. Two wood pigeons landed together on an almost frozen bird bath for a drink. With the snow covering the garden, the trees and the bushes, the scene couldn’t have been any more Christmassy.

“Better do all my jobs today if the weather is going to get even worse”, my husband sighed. And I started to laugh.

My husband wasn’t thinking about Winter Wonderland. He was thinking about practical matters, like how to get to the supermarket on icy roads, so that we don’t starve watching TV this weekend.

And he’s definitely not alone.

One of my clients, a well known company lawyer, has his own theory about Christmas. He believes it is two unnecessary weeks off work, spent living “out of synch” with normality. He believes that Christmas is a “woman thing”

Last year I wrote at length about how the tensions created at Christmas can lead to divorce, after our family law firm experienced a surge in enquiries from overworked women in the weeks leading up to the festivities:

“They described the tidying that had to be fitted around entertaining, the exhaustion and the never-ending rounds of relations and friends for at least a week afterwards. More than one said that she had do all this work herself – and dreaded it. None of them would put themselves through it at all if their children were older.

“Listening to these tales of drudgery I wonder, have women really attained equality?  I doubt it. It seems to me that for women, Christmas continues to be an exhausting, miserable slog for women who take on the chores year in, year out because they feel that they must. It appears to be a matter of tradition, rather than choice.

“I can’t help concluding that it isn’t Christmas that causes a divorce. It’s the thought of it.”  (Christmas and Divorce: What Women Want)

However my male client has a different take on this situation. He argues that if there is pressure placed on a marriage as a result of Christmas, he says, it is because women do it to themselves! Continue reading »

How many of us take our loved ones for granted? It is easy to forget that in a split second, lives can be transformed forever.

Last week I had finished writing my post about John Ruskin, had exercised flat out on my Wattbike and was looking forward to a calorie-filled Sunday lunch with my sister Suzy and our husbands. We were going to try out a restaurant in Harrogate and then do some Xmas shopping.

Then the telephone rang – and everything changed.

My sister was crying on the phone. Our mum had fallen and was in hospital. Dad had called Suzy in a dreadful state and asked her for help. My parents rely very much on her because she is a wonderful nurse with them.

The accident had happened in Netanya, Israel, where my parents spend part of the year. Mum had been admitted to hospital and my sister needed to travel out as quickly as possible. We were told that it wasn’t serious: my mum was in shock, but ok.

Unlike Suzy, I know I’m not a good nurse – but I do have my uses. Within 20 minutes I had my sister and her London-based daughter, Abby, booked on the next flight out from Heathrow and a car had arrived to take Suzy straight to London’s Heathrow Airport. With Suzy on her way, I spent most of the day on the phone to my dad, trying to keep him calm. He sounded increasingly desperate as he described my mum’s condition. Very worried about them both, I telephoned some of their friends and asked them to see if they could help until my sister arrived. When the friends called back, they made some comments about my mum’s condition that worried me more. My sister arrived, phoned from the hospital and said that although my mum was suffering from superficial head injuries, her condition was stable and there was no need for my brother or me to travel out.

The next day the world changed again. Suzy asked me to get there as fast as I could. Continue reading »

There can be little doubt that Blanche Hunt, played by actress Maggie Jones who sadly died yesterday aged 75, was one of the most entertaining characters on British TV.

Who was she? Fans of ITV’s Coronation Street knew her as the acerbic, brilliantly witty mother of Deidre Barlow -and mother-in-law of long suffering Ken who drew most of her witheringly accurate wit. Ken is the likeable intellectual snob who met his match in his mother-in-law. He was able to cope with her, because he wasn’t resentful of her. He accepted her as a fixture in his life and even when he could have run away with the highly improbable Martha the actress, who lived on a barge, he chose to stay with his wife – and his shocking mother-in-law.

I will miss Blanche! I found a list of some of her most famous “put downs”. Probably one of her best performances was aired only a few weeks ago. She was entertaining George, the newly discovered maternal grandfather of Peter Barlow’s step son (it makes sense if you follow the story line!) – and with the encouragement of a little too much alcohol, she had something terrible to say about every single member of her family, who were trying desperately to make a good impression on George. In their typically English way, the whole family just took it, said nothing and sat squirming with embarrassment. No-one escaped the attentions of Blanche. It was the funniest TV and a brilliant performance by Maggie Jones, even though she clearly didn’t look well.

But on a wider note, as we are approaching the festive season, I thought I would add a word of caution, because in real life these types of relatives can be far from funny and too much plain speaking can have a devastating impact on a marriage.

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I am always bemused when newspapers claim that the start of the New Year is the busiest time of year for divorce lawyers. Sitting at my desk today, utterly exhausted, I would beg to disagree. In last week’s run up to the holidays, a client flew in from the Channel Isles to see me, I was in London then on to Exeter in Devon, I had a 300 mile car journey back to Leeds, then to Hale in Cheshire for an entire day and back to Leeds for a 6.30am start appearing on the radio. Of the other lawyers in the office, Chris McVay was in court in Newcastle, Julian Hawkhead in the High Court in London, Frank Arndt was in court in Leeds, Judith Routledge was in court in York, Stephen Hopwood in court in Harrogate. Everyone I see who is still left in the office, is breathlessly rushing around, and has hardly any time to count down the hours to a well-earned break.

So do I think New Year will bring an immediate divorce for couples whose relationship is going through a bad patch?

I don’t think so.

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