A Woman Alone

England Scotland
England Germany
Flower of Scotland über alles.
Wonder what time he'll be back.
Nothing on the telly but bloody football.
What's in the paper?
Overtime has been cancelled in all women's refuges & out-patients' clinics as a precautionary measure in case England lose tonight.
God, don't want to read that.
Yes, wonder what time he'll be in.
Wonder what state he'll be in.
God, it's the waiting I can't stand.
Football bloody football.
Men in short trousers.
Big boys playing a little boys' game.
Discipline. Uniforms.
They just love it.
Only bloody discipline he knows.
Ah, God, I never wanted this.
I DON'T DESERVE this.
This is not what I was put onto God's good earth to do.
You raise kids and they go.
You get married and they turn into this - this THING - all stubble and vest, all darts, beer and football.
And nothing else.
No damn thing else.
NO LOVE.
No way is this the way I wanted it to be.
No way is this the way things were meant to turn out.
It's always the same.
They get you where they want you.
They call the shots, rule the roost, stand there strutting on their fucking pedestals, while you have to grovel below.
A one-woman crowd and the crowd's going mad.
Well, this one is, that's for sure.
Look at me.
Occupation - housewife.
Job description: married to the home, handmaiden to the sink, kitchen-whore.
Although, that's not true - the dirty dishes don't need a fantasy figure. They don't need a nurse or a schoolteacher or a policewoman - they just want someone to get organised and get something done.
Just like nurses, schoolteachers and policewomen, I suppose.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, men.
Even in their dreams, even in their fantasies, men want someone to organise them, to boss them around, to tell them what to do.
Till they break, that is.
Till they fight back.
But not with the same weapons. Not with orders, no sir, not with instructions, not with organisation or rules and regulations, no sirree, but with big knuckle-ended lumps of raw meat.
Five years it took; give him his due - five years before he started.
Settled down.
The kid just at school.
What happened?
Something in him just broke, I suppose.
Left him less of a man.
Left me less of a woman, that's for sure: bits of me hanging off, bits of me turned to bruise-flesh, bits of me driven by shock to nothing inside.
Huh, that was the only success he had as a striker.
What was that he said once - women were like another country.
Huh. Forgotten country, more like. With all the things I've lost, all the things that have been taken from me, to another country, the big powerful country called man, I'm just a one-woman slave-trade I feel like everything's been forced deep inside me, pressed down so far the seeds won't germinate, I'm nothing. Aborted. A dead rock
No matter.
It's not worth the pain.
Not worth the pain of thinking what might have been in the land of might-have-been.
I wonder what that no-good daughter of mine's doing now.
Best not to think.
Ah, Lord. How much longer?
Suppose we're into extra time now - or, what's it called? - the golden goal.
We lost our golden goal, I suppose. And no-one's scored for a while, that's for certain.
Men. Footballers. Testosterone-bladder-chasers.
Just like Court jesters.
Jesters in the bleeding bedchamber, that's for sure.
However I tried to sort it out, I'd always end up losing on penalties.
Ah, God, my gums are bleeding again - in sympathy, I suppose.
Oh, give me a gumshield, give me a box, give me a pair of shinguards, give me a helmet.
Ah, give me refuge, give me release, give me peace.
Give me a refuge.
Where's that refuge?
Where's that phone number?