Chapter 17 - The London Bird

Chapter 17 - The London Bird. Capital loss.









Out of the blue I picked her up in my taxi about 8 years ago, her and a female friend. Dressed in black, a cheeky flirty brunette with big jugs from the Hammersmith area. West London but she wasn't posh and had the dirtiest laugh you ever heard, not as pretty as my wife but not as fat either. She was striking and we'll call her Jilly. Jilly got in the front with me and said Hello are you married upfront and mouthy. She didn't recognize me at first but I knew we'd met before and I couldn't believe our paths had crossed again.




This story really begins way back in 1999 I got the invite but I didn't party like it was, which would be to my lasting regret. I was involved with a lady who had 2 young kids and was living on and off at her place, she fell out with me endlessly so I'd move in and move out again all the time. We'll refer to this lady as my wife, it was long term and we'd marry a few years later. She was a big beautiful nutcase, pretty and kind and volatile. Probly like a lot of blokes I've got mostly the same mates I've had for a long time but she'd have a new best girlfriend every couple of months. She'd fall in love with them and bang on about them all the time, then she'd fall out with them and hate them forever.




So we both met Jilly who was at the time working at the local supermarket. I'd been served by her at the cigarette counter and she looked hot but hadn't been friendly with me at all. But she'd obviously been more so with my wife and suddenly she was the best thing since sliced bread. Jilly had just had her hair cut short and looked fit as feck and my wife was very taken with her. We'd spend evenings at her place with her fella (Dan? Why not) or they'd be round at ours. I fancied the arse off my wife's new best buddy to be honest. I'd been with a fat girl for years, Jilly seemed such fun and round our way a London accent sounds exotic.




To most of you townies I live in a northern backwater, we don't see many big city folk around here. At that time I was in my late twenties and I'd nearly been close to a couple of ladies from the south but it had never worked out, totally down to my art of being crap with girls. After dating everyone on Coronation Street I was fascinated by a girl who couldn't pronounce bath properly. Jilly was a London girl but not a cockney yeah makes loads of difference in Lancashire. I wanted her but I just admired, the wife would've had my balls and when it comes to big boobs brunette and bonkers let's deal with one a time.




So Jilly became my wife's best buddy for a spell but then they fell out over something that could've been resolved with a bit of mutual grownupness and she was persona non grata, never to be mentioned again just like all her other best friends. Around that time I called round at Jilly's to pick up a CD or summat and was invited in for a beer(s) and some reggae music. I didn't need much persuading as her fella was out and we chilled and chatted for a couple of hours, me thinking hey she seems to like me this is great. We ended up sitting pretty close and then she said she was going to kiss me. I'd fantasised about just that moment but when it came to it I couldn't do it to my wife to be, thinking about it and doing it are completely different. So I turned her down and left, having discovered I was a lawman and not a gunslinger after all.




It turned out that Jilly and Dan were splitting up, Dan figured his lady had lo-fidelity and I was his number one suspect. He'd quizzed Jilly about me and her answers had not been satisfactory. And then he'd phoned my wife to tell her that he'd looked at all the evidence and it was Stella in the lounge with the big chopper hacking away at his missus. Except that it wasn't, I'd kept the big chopper in me pants although I'd dreamed about offing the whole rainforest. My wife believed him and naturally it became her life's work to give me tons of sht about it for ages.




All I could do was state my innocence, yeah I'd toyed with the idea but wasn't guitly of the crime, not that that made any difference at all in the eyes of my wife. She gave me so much grief I ended up wishing I'd done the deed since I was being punished for it anyway. I thought about how dirty Jilly seemed (not that my wife wasn't at times) and how I'd missed out, what a loser. How stupid of me not to have got stuck right in when the opportunity presented itself but I didn't. My wife let it go in the end, we married and raised the kids together and did a pretty good job. But I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think about Jilly on occasion.




Right all that happened in 1999. Now it's 2014 and The London Bird is nothing but a distant memory of something nice that I had let pass me by. I didn't see her or hear of her for fifteen years but I remembered her. Then when me and the wife had called time on our relationship, selling the house and about to go our separate ways I suddenly picked her up in my taxi, spooky or what. Destiny. Having had the chance to get close to her years before and turned it down she wasn't getting away this time. I drive a taxi locally, I knew where she lived and I kept my eyes and ears open. Chances were I'd pick her up again, I duly did and I let her know I was interested.



More than interested, I'd taken all the sht when I hadn't even shgged her and now I was old free and single. She wasn't looking for a boyfriend but she'd found one. I put on a nice guy act and charmed her in a way I'd never managed to do with anyone before. I did some painting for her (not art) and we started to spend time together as friends at first, I was pleasant and patient and ended up being invited round loads. I kipped on her couch a number of times after we'd had a session on the beer, I respected her privacy and behaved myself although my thoughts were dirty.




It turned out we really got along, she liked a laugh and that's what I do. I took her out for an Italian on her birthday and we became an item. But then I had to tell my wife because neither of us had played elsewhere since we split. I wouldn't have her hear about it from someone else so I phoned her to tell her. I heard the disbelief in her voice as she suddenly thought How long has this been going on? She knew in her heart that I hadn't been messing around behind her back, I'm far too lazy and there's porn if I need a wnk. She took the news as well as could be hoped and wished us the best god bless her.




Nobody's perfect are they? I'm a short skinny guy with a spiky personality. God had gifted Jilly a slim body with big teats and an OK face with no sense of responsibility and a kind of goofy optimism. Her eyes were full of stars but she'd never work for NASA, in fact she'd never work for anyone if she could help it. She didn't work anymore, for various reasons that we don't have time for now.




Jilly was the first girlfriend I had who could actually play pool. They all like to have a go but she played like a man, her dad had taught her. The first time we played she beat me 3-1 and I took the last frame on the black. She was better than me back then but she isn't anymore, we hammered it and I got better. I had to raise my game to avoid the stigma of being beaten by a girl. We had some great Sundays, pool and pints at the club up the road with the joint or chicken cooking away merrily whilst we played, then in the kitchen afterwards dancing and singing to the radio whilst we did the veg and gravy and made usselves a fecking ace dinner which we'd eat on trays on our laps with summat good on the telly. Afterwards we'd play dominoes and poker too, she taught me how to play.




Funny with the poker, me and Jilly used to play rummy and knockout whist, games I'd learned as a kid. And she said a few times I'll show you poker but I wasn't arsed it sounded complicated, silly Stella always scared of new things. Then when I finally relented and let her teach me, I was hooked and wanted to play all the time. What a great game, playing not just the cards but the people. Now I play in a league.




Wouldn't say the sex was great, though it should have been with her being tidy and never having to get up for work. Bad things had happened to her in the past, years ago some men had been nasty to her and she'd gone to court and they'd gone to jail, which I think had pretty much spoiled it for her. I'm not sure she really got much out of it, don't think she ever had a proper orgasm or knew what one was, certainly not the thermonuclear variety regularly enjoyed by my wife. She wasn't that bothered, not to say that she didn't try to please me in the early days after I'd pretended to be Mr Charm and she'd decided to keep me. She understood men and sex, Shall I assume the position she'd say under no duress and I'd bang away. Home from work for a lunchtime bacon butty and a doggystyler over the sink is not a memory I'm about to let go of but overall we spent far too long sitting around woking smeed and not shgging. But she wasn't really into it in the way my wife had been in the early days, absolutely not. She looked and sounded dirty but sadly she wasn't really.




Jilly and I were together about 5 years on and off but I couldn't love her and I never said the words. No, I was still in love with my wife and trying not to be. Do you still love your wife she'd say, and I'd say how do I know when I don't? And she'd say You do and I'd say I still care about her how could I not after 18 years? The marriage was over but I still loved my wife and we both knew it. I don't wanna be Mr Hindsight-Smartypants but looking back Jilly should have said love me or leave me, she never did. She waited for me to stop loving my wife but that didn't happen till later read on.




I still had my own place, was staying on and off at Jilly's. At the time I was flirting with alcoholism depression and absenteeism from work and I didn't fancy my chances of escaping these things on my own. So I sold my place and moved in with Jilly full time. Maybe I didn't love her but I liked her and we got along and I wanted it to work. But not long after I moved in something totally unexpected happened.




At that time my wife and I were still friends, we'd have the odd coffee and discuss our new dysfunctional relationships. Then one day she got in touch and said she needed to talk to me. So we met up and had a nice walk by the river and then she said I'm on my own in this new place, we could try a houseshare, maybe we're meant to be together, we could give it another go. She'd clearly tired of her latest array of loser boyfriends and realised she wasn't going to do better after all. She wasn't after an answer right then but she said think about it and she gave me a nice kiss on the lips to help me make up my mind.




This was really bad timing, after some deep thought I'd just decided that being with Jilly would be the best thing for me and then the wife dropped that bombshell. I told the wife I would think about it and I did, I mused and pontificated and the alcoholism and depression got worse. 6 months later I took time off work, I couldn't face going in anymore and began counselling treatment for both ailments. I only attended sessions for a few weeks, at the alcohol support group everyone was in such a massively worse state than me that I realised I just needed to pull my socks up and develop a bit of moderation and maturity. I used my depression counselling to tell a female stranger all about my women problems, bet she thought I was a right dick. After a few weeks I felt a bit better, pronounced myself cured and went back to work.







I remained living with Jilly but we grew further apart and I was told to move into the spare room which was fine with me. In my new bedroom I played endless games of speedball2 and lotus turbo challenge on my megadrive, I like old stuff. After a month or so of that I knew I had to get out and Jilly felt the same way. We were deep in the grip of lockdown at the time, finding a new place to live wasn't going to be that easy so I thought about it and thought about it and then I phoned my wife and asked her if the houseshare was still available.






It had been a year since our nice river walk and she wasn't expecting it but she said yeah OK. A few days later Jilly went shopping and returned to find me and most of my stuff gone, and a few months rent money left on the worktop. She knew I was leaving, just not right then. Never done a runner before and I don't feel great about it but it was miles easier than trying to explain it first. Sorry Babe I'm going back to live with my wife thanks for everything X






So about 6 years after we'd split up, sold the family home and gone our separate ways I moved back with my ex-wife into a cottage she was renting. I was given the spare bedroom and I tried to be a good boy. I gave up porn (temporarily), did some gardening, chopped wood for the log burner, was nice to her dog and tried to show my wife that she still loved me. And I put my ring back on, I wanted it to be a reconciliation which was it had sounded like when we'd had that talk by the river. I knew I still loved her and would have stuck with her forever if we'd got back. But in the year since she'd made me the offer things had changed.






I didn't know it until after I moved in but she'd found herself a boyfriend who lived fifty miles away and was always going over there to see him. I didn't like that understandably, this most definitely wasn't what I'd read on the tin. But I'd fannyed about and the magic stuff in the tin had gone sour like the ground in the pet sematary. Mr Boyfriend kept his distance from me, in fact I told the wife not to have him call at the door and he didn't. I'm not a hardcase but we were still married at the time and things may've got ugly, so I never met him.






But I met the other big love in her new life, her dog. I'm not a dog person but to my surprise we really got along. In that little house we were both subject to my wife's rule and we knew it and we bonded. They're generally not four-legged friends of mine but I'll make an exception for that faithful sheepdog. Don't take this wrong but if I ever saw that animal again we'd be all over each other. But I was getting nowhere with the other female of the house.






This couldn't go on so I found another house to rent locally. I told my wife and she had a fit when she found out that she wouldn't be having her cake and eating it anymore. Perhaps she was still making up her mind but I'd seen no sign of her dumping the new guy for the old one and it was all too weird for me. Besides, she's changed so much from the woman I used to know and mostly not in a great way. We had a few shouting matches towards the end of the houseshare, I think she was a bit surprised to find I was no longer prepared to take any sht off her in the way I had when we'd been properly married. I don't think so love, not with you banging someone else.






So I moved into my own rented place and she moved away to be with her fella. I've not seen her since the day I moved out, 2 years ago now. But whilst that houseshare wasn't the most pleasant experience it did me a massive favour, I am no longer in love with my wife. I'm in love with someone else and it isn't me for a change, I'm in love with another man.






I'm Mr Never Seize The Moment, I didn't jump Jilly when I really wanted her and I didn't jump at my wife's proposal when she made it. No, let's dally and let it all pass you by. There were times when I lay in my marital bed and thought about Jilly, and times when I lay in Jilly's bed and thought about my wife. Talk about never making the most of what you have, I'm such a dreamer.





Haven't seen owt of Jilly for months now. Even after I ran out on her we remained friends but in the end she was always wanting stuff off me and I didn't really want anything back, not that she was offering it. Like with The Woker guy she didn't make it into my new phone book, I just let go. She was the last woman I was intimate with, about 3 years ago. I couldn't give her what she wanted. Saw her this weekend at work funny hadn't for yonks and I let her off the the fare. After all she wasn't looking for a relationship and she ended up with some dick who couldn't let go of his wife. Poor Jilly, she just wanted someone to love her. I'm not proud of myself but I shall remember her fondly now I'm into blokes, maybe it's because she was a Londoner.




Love, Stella X

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