Mine, My

I guessed correctly. Dee bought a t-shirt. A simple Comme de Garcon,nicely shaped, nicely fitting t-shirt. £95. Not my choice, but he likes it. I like it too. It’s alright. It’s just what it is. A t-shirt,but he was happy and that’s what I was hoping for. He found it and purchased it in 27 minutes flat, so that left him with 3 minutes to cool down after the frantic search.

After shopping we ate at the same Thai restaurant that we’ve been to before near Selfridges; where to my shame we ate the same as we did last time we were there.

I remember when I was small my father always making out that people repeatedly going to the same restaurants and eating the same food, or people that go to the same holiday destination again and again are not using their imagination. He frowned upon it. My dad is quirky and opinionated. Not always right, but he thinks a lot about things. Dad’s quirkiness is not outward, it’s within his thinking. Maybe it has something to do with him being an art historian. He’s always thought in an abstract manner. Or maybe he’s just odd.

Well, you can count me in with both of the above, and the oddness if you like.When I go for Thai food in that particular restaurant I always eat the same. Of course my accompaniments will vary, depending on who I’m dining with, because undoubtedly I’ll have some of theirs too. And Dee, he’s most definitely a creature of habit. He takes it to an extreme. At first it baffled and frustrated me, but now I find it quite endearing. Well, I do when it doesn’t disturb something new I might want to try.
Some other details that my father used to frown upon was people ‘claiming’ things as their own, even when it is actually theirs.

Take a seat... You’re at home and you sit down thoughtlessly, minding your own business. If you constantly sit in the same seat daddy would find this annoying... Or, God forbid you have a personal mug which you use every time you have a cuppa. That type of ownership used to, and still does bug the life out of him. I was discouraged to do these thing - ‘bad habits’ as Daddy Gee described them. I admit, at home, I do tend to sit in the same part of the sofa but as for the mug, I don’t know which mug I use since all mine are the same; white. (Same as all my towels, and bedding.)

‘Claiming ownership’ is something that daddy used to tell me was undesirable, and his attitude to this is one of many traits that I have adopted.

For example, whenever I talk about the literary agent I am with, I will never refer to her as ‘ my’ agent. She will always be ‘ the agent’. At my office job I will never give someone ‘my’ stapler, ‘my’ pen or whatever. It is ‘the’ blah, blah... It’s not mine and whats more I don’t care about saying that it is. It really grates on me when people claim things to be their own and they’re actually not. This type of office baloney tells me a lot about the person that uses it.

Despite Hooked being something that is my creation, I’m even wary and uncomfortable of referring to it as ‘ my book’. I feel it sounds smarmy and cocky. Some might say I should claim it as mine – after all , it is. But it’s not me to do something like that; except when it comes to anything which is my responsibility - such as my emotional health, my sobriety, my life and people. Strangely when referring to people I will claim them as my own; MY dad, MY boyfriend, MY friend...

Does this all mean that I feel that I ‘own’ people, huh? Nah, I like to think it means I place importance on people rather than things.