Summer Sales and Gagging Tales

In the summer, before I got pregnant, I was self employed working as a garden furniture sales person. Unsuccessfully you could say, as within six months of both companies employing me, they both folded, Oops! Not the sales genius I thought I was after all. I didn't like the job, it wasn't really for me, it was boring, but I did like the pay check. It's a little bit like selling snow to eskimo's, apart from snow is, at least, useful. You can melt it, drink it, turn it yellow by peeing on it and make houses out of it, you can't do any of that with garden furniture when its torrential rain outside, or the chairs are blowing half way across your garden and the parasol has done a dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

People didn't want it and the people that did want it I didn't like. In the shop I was working at for three months, which had an average of two customers per 7.5 hours of being open, I used to get very bored. I watched the whole of Gordan Ramsay's Hell's kitchen, series one to eight and not to mention many other documentaries etc. I also frequented the local cake shop and had my favourite indulgence of the moment which was a prawn and avocado sandwich on granary followed by a massive apple and fresh cream turnover. Needless to say, my arse grew fast, and my body decided one bottom wasn't enough to house my new look and grew me another one, along with some bingo wings and some thunder thighs. Those two customers always, without fail, interrupted my precious cake time! Kevin was a feeder, and most days he cooked me a full english and tried to make me eat vast amounts of other unhealthy crap, but one thing about him, he was very good at cooking (not tarts, but that's another story) and I love eating, so we were suited in that capacity. 

The major problems started when I didn't want to eat anything anymore, he took it personally. For the first four months of my pregnancy, I could only stomach toast and fruit and soup. Anything other than that made me want to vomit. I wasn't someone who did a lot of spewing unless I had drunk my own body weight in vodka, so it came as no surprise to me that I would only feel on the brink of vomiting instead of actually being sick. I am sure it's not any better being sick, but I just wanted a moments relief. It was horrible, and this was where Kevin taunted me the most. I hated the smell of smoke and he refused to smoke outside. I began to really despise him. I think for some people there is a natural rejection of your partner once you have conceived, you don't need them anymore and they appear a bit disgusting. Or, they actually ARE disgusting and you DO actually hate them. Then, you are doomed.

I digress. So after leaving Kevin, having been recently made redundant from the shop with no customers, I am forced to sign on. Yes, I have just left uni, with a first class degree in Art, but can I get a job? No. I was over qualified for most things and under qualified for everything else, there seemed to be nothing in between that would suit a gagging, pregnant, single woman, with a low lying placenta.

To cut a long story short, I gagged my way to the job centre every two weeks to be pretty much laughed at (except by the odd jobs worth, who thought it was necessary to interrogate me as to why I had not been accepted to full time jobs with a belly the same size as a prize winning giant water melon) until I was 28 weeks pregnant, by which time I was HUGE. Just to prove a point once more, I couldn't even sell myself, let alone a bistro set for your courtyard garden

As miserable as the whole experience was, I was still warmed by the fact that I was going to have a lovely little baby. I certainly wasn't warmed by the heating in my flat, there wasn't any. Not that I could have afforded it anyway. For anyone out there who thinks its easy to live off the state, I have only this advice, try it. 

'Rocky on the Wallet'

I went to Bristol later that day, slightly in shock, but also weirdly elated. I knew I was going to have this baby and the fact that I wouldn't entertain any other outcome gave me reason to relax a little. The bit that scared the shit out of me was that I was going to have a baby with a man I recently decided I didn't really like, let alone love! I kept thinking this isn't the way my future is supposed to unfold, I am supposed to fall in love, with someone who isn't, well, a chav.

The amazingly magical part about this day was when I told him we were expecting. As a father of three, I didn't expect him to have the uncontainable excitement of a first time dad but I did expect a bit more than (and I quote) "It's going to be rocky on the wallet". I mean, Jesus, don't bowl me over with your enthusiasm will you!?! He didn't just say it once, he said it about five times, and just incase you aren't quite fluent in 'chav' it roughly translates to, 'this is going to be expensive darling'.

So, I had a little word with myself and decided to try my hardest to make our relationship work. Kevin, on the other hand quit his job, blew smoke in my face, crashed his car and wrote it off, wouldn't visit his children, mocked me constantly and ripped me off financially. He also decided it would be a great idea to take loads of co-codamol on an empty stomach and pretend he was dead, when the ambulance I had rung turned up, he sat up in bed and said, 'why did you call them'? I know what you are thinking... what a twat and you're right. 

All this I managed to take, but when he had purposely used every scrap of anything absorbent for the fourth time that week and failed to replace it and not flushed his latest bowel movement away, I was broken. Sitting on the toilet, dripping dry, I called him to tell him how disgusting he was and that I would be staying with my sister for a week. He didn't like that and told me that if I left he would change the locks. My sisters gathered like the forces of Mordor around me and I was moved out within three hours, two and a half months pregnant. That was the last time I saw him, apart from on t.v., when he burnt a tart, but that's another story!