Looking in the mirror

I apologise for the delay between this post and the last. I have had real difficulty putting into words the events of the week and what I wanted to say about them.

The week started well enough. I returned to London for work and, more importantly, to see my wife. We had a lovely evening out on Monday and discovered, ironically, a perfectly charming little French Bistro just down the road from our North London apartment. It has been there for 20 years and we've never been before - how ridiculous is that. Our dinner was as classic a bistro dinner as you could imagine - fish soup with croutons, rouille and gruyere cheese followed by fillet steak, lyonnaise potatoes and green salad and a chocolate fondant with pistacchio ice cream shared for dessert - all washed down by a fruity red made no more than 30kms from our French home in the Languedoc. As my wife pointed out, "It would be great to have a little bistro like this in Carcassonne". Strangely, it seems that good little classic bistros are quite rare outside of the big cities in France.

From Tuesday evening onwards the week went downhill and it was entirely of my doing, which makes me feel particularly rubbish about it.

You see I have this problem - the reason for my mid-life crisis - an issue that I am trying to deal with and rectify - the reason I spend more time in France than I do in London. There are no problem demons in France. There are a lot of problem demons in London. There are a lot of problem demons in my head which I am trying to remove and to be honest I thought I was winning the battle but now I am less sure. For 6 months I went back and forward to London and coped, at first quite easily but oddly it became harder the longer I managed - I still don't understand that.

Then I fell down. A moment of weakness. It made me feel just awful and very ashamed but it had the effect of re-focusing my energy, my determination. I came back to France with renewed vigour and launched myself back into the renovation. You see I didn't fall down this week in London but on my last visit a couple of weeks ago. No, what I did this week was in fact worse. What I did this week was deeply hurt, again, the person who has stood by me through all of this, my wife. I hurt her because I lied to her - I denied my moment of weakness when, of course, I should have told her. She would have understood. She would have helped me but when, naturally, she found out from others that I had lied to her the sense of betrayal, of lack of trust was overwhelming.

I still can't explain why I didn't come clean. Yes, I was ashamed of myself. Yes, I felt guilty after doing so well for so long. But none of those things explain my deceit. I have deeply upset the one person who means more to me than anyone else and I feel totally crap about it.

I am also determined that it will never, ever happen again - but then I've said that before.