Beloved and Bonk: Diary of a divorce

I am in remission, temporarily I realise, but I am enjoying it. No dreams about Beloved hacking me to pieces with a machete. No palpitations when I see his name on a fax cover sheet. If this carries on I might be able to hear his voice on the phone without having hysterics.

This is all because I have taken to bed a beautiful man who told me I had the body of an 18 year old. Which just shows how pissed he was and how gullible I am.

It all happened at a wedding. Well not actually at the wedding: I didn't drag him behind the pews whilst they were signing the register, or tempt him into the vestry whilst we waited for the bride to arrive. (Although with hindsight those do seem rather attractive options.) I saw his eyes at the other end of the pew and wondered where my knees had suddenly gone to. For the first time in two months Beloved went clean out of my head and I started counting the minutes until the reception.

Then the ceremony caught me off my guard. Instead of concentrating on keeping a stiff upper lip I'd started fantasising about those eyes and all the other bits that went with them. I suddenly came to during the vows in a very sloppy and susceptible state of mind.

Seeing two people of whom I am very fond making all those outrageously romantic promises made me think with boring inevitability of the day I married Beloved. One of those registry office production line jobs where the couples are stacked up like jets at Heathrow ... if you trip on your frock the timing goes to hell and you could end up with someone else's wedding guests or even someone else's groom. (Of course in my case that might not have been an entirely bad thing.) All you get time to say is " I give you this ring as a token of my love and faithfulness". Hearing my friends do the full monty with the worldly goods and body worship I found myself feeling that I'd been rather short changed. Damn it, it had all gone down the tubes and I never even got to march up an isle in a big frock and say "I take thee Beloved to be my old fart".

So I began to cry. Very demurely at first then with rather more enthusiasm. The tears weren't the problem. (I'd left the mascara off my bottom lashes as a special precautionary measure.) No it was the snot. This was real crying, the sort you usually do at funerals not weddings. Honking snorts of nose-blowing are almost a mark of respect in the quiet bits of a funeral service but not during a wedding. So I just had to kind of mop it up as it appeared and wait for some loud bits in the hymns.

They got down the aisle and out just in time as my last tissue gave up the unequal struggle, and I tottered out into the sun along with everyone else. I thought my demonstration of mucus production for Europe had completely ruined my chances with Mr Blue Eyes, and arrived at the reception feeling my only course of action was to drown my sorrows in a sea of Pimms.

And it was at some point during this process that Mr Blue Eyes swam out of the alcoholic haze and I discovered that the person behind the eyes was a paragon of virtue and talent with a range of obsessions absolutely compatible my own. This guy makes furniture and elderflower champagne. Beloved can't even mix a G and T without a recipe.

So one thing led to another.

What can I tell you that won't sound like adolescent drivel or pornography? All I can say is that Beloved did me a favour by rendering me too shocked to eat for a month ... being size 10 has completely removed all the little inhibitions that still clung to the larger me. By 3am I was scrabbling around the floor of a tent (no, not the Marquee where the reception was held ... what do you think I am?) trying to remember at what point my posh silk frock (the very same that had failed to work it's magic on Beloved) had been rolled into a ball and shoved under the ground sheet.

So now I'm in another unfamiliar state. That condition when you could run an Olympic time from the bottom of the garden when the phone rings and you catch the letters as the postman puts them through the door. It's borrowed time and in a fortnight when it's all over I'll be getting a double whammy ... the return of the machete dreams and the loss of Blue Eyes. Is it worth it? Yep : Cos I've remembered exactly how the silk dress ended up how it did. And I could never forget.

Stevie Morgan