BLUE CHRISTMAS💗 [01-12-23]
'Think Twice' Before Reading This...🤍x
If you like your newsletters without politics or preconceptions or seeking a break from the norm you may have just found your new hangout.x
1 December 2023
Dear Chasers💗
Winter nights are drawing in… and I am convinced that we’re going to have snow this Christmas. The last time I actually enjoyed a ‘white Christmas’ was in 1995, I would have been 13 years old (according to my calculator!). It’s NOT that I remember anything in particular. I just felt something hit me in the heart when I overheard the TV mention that the heaviest snowfall around this time of year was back in 1995. That was the year Oasis’s Wonderwall topped the charts. Meanwhile, I was holed up in a women’s refuge hostel on Ducie Court in Manchester City Centre not far from the hospital where I was born. I was an excited kid coming from a loving home with my grandparents walking into the thick of it with my unstable mother who was escaping from a violent and volatile ten year relationship with an alcoholic. I hated him because she chose him over me but it could have been anybody. Now, she was back for good. I felt like I was picked. This would be a very special Christmas circa ‘95 I was convinced.
Mum has finally come back to where she grew up in Burnage. Here’s a little tid-bit of information, my mother played with the Gallagher brothers from the band Oasis when they were just young little kids. I often wondered what might have happened if she had fell in love with Noel and stayed in touch. I had a very active imagination. I often had this obsession with love and relationships that were far above my station in terms of understanding. I think I might start digging into this topic as, already, I have cornered myself on a tightrope, hanging in there on a tangent. Feel free to quit reading here. Scroll down for the blue Christmas as promised. Otherwise, let’s just delve into this.
My favourite game to play with Barbie doll’s was to dress them up really nice. Put them all to bed and then Ken (mine had real hair!) would sneak out of Barbies bed and go and cheat on her with Cindy (who I always thought wasn’t as attractive so the underdog!). It’s mad how life turned out. I am always the ugly one. I try to figure out why my mind would go to those kind of places as a young girl. Regardless of this happening, I made my own way in life without guidance or standards. I had very little boundaries and made my own morals. The SINGLE MORAL I have always stood by, of my own accord, it wasn’t passed down to me. Quite the opposite.
I recoiled at the thought of what was happening around me. Women I knew, girl friends, aunties, friend’s mother’s and mine - all flaunting themselves around and reenacting my Barbie game - that’s after the fact but it might have been the seed planted in my head years earlier. Everyone was cheating on someone’s girlfriend. I didn’t experience the male role models doing bad things like cheating on their girlfriends. I just seen and heard of all the girl’s dating someone else’s boyfriend - and it knocked me sick.
I swear, I felt more upset with the world and less disillusioned than I had ever felt finding out that the Tooth Fairies at the bottom of the garden, Father Christmas and the Easter fucking Bunny didn’t exist. I’d lost my innocence long before the realisation set in that all these female role models, minus my Nana, didn’t give an ounce of concern for themselves or the parties involved. All I could ever think about was why!?. My one and only moral fibre I called My Rule: Never sleep with another’s woman’s man.
I won’t hurt another girl or put her through the pain that I would feel if my man (I didn’t have a man) but I had all this empathy for those unknown women this was happening to. My heart was breaking for them. I’d never inflict that emotion of betrayal and sexual jealousy, and damage a person’s self esteem the way I imagined would happen to me (and eventually it did!).
I wouldn’t trust a man who would want to do things with another woman (me) when they had a girlfriend who loved them, a life mapped out with someone else, memories of love, and life and sex that the paint was still fresh and wet on. To sum it up I’d think no thanks ‘What a wanker!’. A guy like that is an instant turn off a deal breaker and a no brainer. Without a thought or consideration, if any guy had a girlfriend, wife or even a recent ex on the scene; I’d tell him to fuck off in a heartbeat.
I’ve always stood by that one rule. At 16 there was an incident. I attempted to tell the story in my JUSTCLINGINGON posts. It was coming up in Part 3. I will try and break it down to you a bit quicker than I would have in that autobiographical -war&peace- lengthy beginnings! It probably needs you to read at least part 2 to catch up but I wouldn’t actually recommend that read...it’s written worse than this now. I was just starting out on Substack and very self conscious which reflects in the style of writing. Here’s the catch up sample.
What’s that thing I said about destroying a friendship and then making my bed and lying in it?
“....What happened after the sex cafe is we all went our separate ways. Jess had given the guy her phone number and came back home with me. We were sitting on my bed the next evening smoking a lot of weed and listening to music on a pirate radio station called Buzz88. I was using my phone to text into the show and get them to play our song Brandy - Best Friend and was excited for the lads running the station to give us both a big shoutout. All our mates would be tuned in to listening and we were regular callers. We had our own nicknames at that age, for the life of me I can’t remember mine at the time, Jessica’s was JUMBO - I hated it - but she picked it and used it to her best advantage. The kids in school used to greet her when walking down the corridors shouting Juuuuumbooooo! in the same tone used to shout Timber for a falling tree. Jessica was grumbling that she hadn’t heard from the guy who she met the other night. We were both very stoned so it didn’t seem to matter too much. Then the phone call came through. Jess immediately shit herself and threw the phone at me to answer….”
The conclusion of that story was that my friend who had previously had the one night stand with this guy and so we all, just the three of us, met up again for drinks at his place. All night he tried getting into both of us. I said no. I wanted to go home. She wouldn’t let me. She wanted to get into him but he was showing signs of not being interested enough, unless it was a threesome. We got twisted on Malibu (hahha! Malibu! Honestly, it's pathetic) and a shit tonne of amphetamine. We were only sixteen. She wouldn’t let me go home. We were there awake for three fucking days. When we were all getting tired and coming down we fell asleep. I woke up with his cock in me pushing hard from the side.
I ended up consenting, cooperating and enjoying the sexy thing. My mate woke up and it all kicked off. I took her home and she made it clear we weren’t friends anymore because I put a shag over our friendship. I came up with a ridiculous plan that this guy and what we did had actually meant something to me. That I had fallen in love. It was dishonest at the time but I wanted my friendship to survive. So, making my bed had been riding him back.
That was the worst decision of my life back then. Lying in it was that for the next two years I put myself through an entire fucking relationship with the dick! He left to work on a cruise ship when I was 18 so that sort of saved me. By then I was head over heels involved. I thought it was what love is. It wasn’t.
I’ll talk more about this one day when I cover the topic of love vs sexual jealousy because all I remember from thinking that I was in love, was because one day I couldn’t handle him and I watching porn together. Haha!
I got soooo jealous all of a sudden and it was a disk in the laptop at the time that we had seen so, so many times before. I thought. This is it! I must love him. Doh! So… all that sounds quite hypocritical to what I was saying about my morals but it only cemented those moral fibres into my being even more.
Back to the hostel in 1995, it must have been snowing! That’s a fact. I had been living with my Nana all these years and mum came back asking if she had me so that she could get some council housing quickly. I was a pawn ticket to free accommodation. I just remember being so excited to have my mum back. We bought a big bag of cheap Peach Tea granules and whatever food items. Spent our days sitting in the one room bedsit type place within a huge building. It's still there today but there are apartments called Ducie Court now.
I heard on facebook people saying they’ve served time in Ducie Court. I felt that too. I was 13 listening to a mum’s Celin Dion cassette tape - belting out lyrics in the hairbrushes (as per usual) “look back before you close that door, baby think twice”. I was glad to close the door on that section of my life but it’s also nice to keep looking back to see how far I have come now.
"Beginnings are usually scary, and endings are usually sad, but it's everything in between that makes it all worth living."
- Bob Marley
The last Irish white Christmas was in 2010, with a spectacular 27cm of snow. Meanwhile in the UK (Manchester, where we are) 2021 was the most recent snow at Christmas with 6% of stations recording snow falling, but less than 1& of stations reported any snow sticking to, or lying on the ground - according the Google, the last widespread snowfall where I live was in December 2010. That’s the year I met my soulmate. Who cares about a white Christmas anyway?! If I hadn’t have been through all these things I might never have become the person I am today. My path might have not led me down this road where I am happy to say that without my lover who is my life.. everything would be blue.
I can’t wait for your to hear our title’s namesake EXIT SONG! - John Holt <3
Thank you for reading JustClingingOn💗! BIG soft Warm HUGS Lots of Love from Me..xxx
Thank you so much for reading and restacking my post. I'm hoping you enjoyed it, I mean, I get so shy about accepting it as a compliment but I'm learning to do so! Take it easy…💗