Suddenly Single - It's As Easy As A, B, What Comes Next?

Well as anyone who can count on their fingers will have noticed I have been gone for a number of months while I cope with various life changing events such as turning 40 and separating from HTB.

It has been a long and painful process, but Suddenly Single makes for a much better title, and the upshot is I now find myself chez Boo pour une.

I am left with the dilemma of how to refer to HTB now that he is no longer Husband To Be and consider Husband That Might Have Been as a bit to long, and frankly with my personal history not exactly helpful in pinpointing one particular male, Former Fiance is also discarded for similar reasons, Previous Romantic Attachment Terminated is considered too unkind and The Ex too boring. Suggested answers on a postcard gratefully received.

So I find myself single and 40 in East Anglia of all places, in the vintage and burlesque desert of Norfolk, where I don't really fit in as the only wellingtons I like have boeuf in them.

My false eyelashes keep getting tangled in the 15 polo necked jumpers I am forced to wear to keep warm, and one can only buy garter belts in sheep sizes ... sigh! I am loath to say that the area I live in is chavvy, but the wine section of my local co-op is devoted entirely to babycham and cherry b! And not in an ironic retro chic way either. (Shudders).

However not all is dark and bleak as I have an adorable little house and an office all to myself from which to resurrect the ashes of my online shop.

Obviously I still require a job to pay for the above and as sadly a girl can no longer rely on $50 for the powder room, I have to report that I am still working for the same luxury car manufacturer as down south. Except this is the Naaarferk version and I am job sharing with someone known by her colleagues as Princess Brandname – which I take to mean meant that she knows all about the brand standards, but actually just means she is a Princess.

So we are engaged in a peculiar and entirely unnecessary (from my point of view) power struggle in which she spends all her time checking and changing what ever work I do, which leaves her no time to do her own work, which means she passes it to me and then spends all her time checking and changing and so on and so on. . . .

My favourite instance of her preciousness occurs when I take it upon myself to free up more filing space by amalgamating the 3 seperate stationery drawers, with duplicate scissors, tape, staples etc in them. (So we don't have to touch her specials scissors, tape staples etc.) Then I take all the filing folders and sort them out. I am greeted the next day at handover by a frosty complaint that she can't find anything and doesn't understand my filing system. I admit my response could have been more tactful, but I honestly didn't know how else to explain that It's Called the Alphabet!

Things finally come to a head and I can bear no longer the complete bitchfest that is a day at work (and those of you who know me know how I usually love a bitchfest) and I leave my notice with a colleague to pop on my bosses desk after his day off.

Two days later I have still not had a response and am now unclear as to whether my colleague forgot or my boss doesn't care. No doubt all will be revealed on my return to work on Thursday. Who can wait?