Sweatpants to Freeze the Blood

In the ongoing struggles of Amoris Laetitia, the blood-freezing spectre of your spouse's personality changing in a radical way was introduced by a priest telling the sad story of a Catholic woman whose Catholic husband was badly hurt in a traffic accident. The accident left him miserable, and he became addicted to painkillers, as people in pain frequently do. He became abusive and got involved in crime and eventually ended up in prison. His young wife, the mother of his children, divorced him, hooked up with a new chap, and sat with the new chap in church weeping while her children received their First Communion. They were weeping because they couldn't receive the Blessed Sacrament.

The priest wrote the story in a manner to make us feel really sorry for the irregularly remarried wife and not at all sorry for her awful, abusive, cop-killer husband languishing in prison. It is the first time in my life I have read an article by a Catholic priest tailored to make a human being seem like disposable rubbish--yet another reason to approach Amoris Laetitia with caution.   However skilfully the priest wrote the story  (and however sympathetic the marriage tribunal) there was no getting around the fact that all the misfortunes and personality changes that befell this young Catholic man happened AFTER the wedding. It was a terrible, TERRIBLE situation, but let's face it, it was worse on him, and he was--and is--somebody's husband.

In case you are wondering, Benedict Ambrose has not become addicted to painkillers. Au contraire. I can't get him to take a paracetamol because he thinks it will make him nauseous. But he is having a terrible struggle with his temper, which is a lot more painful for him than for me, poor chap.  I don't know how one makes peace with chronic pain; if a saint has written about it, I will buy the book.

Since moving hurts him, it is a struggle to get him up, washed, dressed, down the stairs and out the door for some exercise. Yesterday after Mass I ran like mad through Edinburgh's Waverley Station to catch the train back home, cutting in front of some youths who shouted "EXCUSE ME!" at my back. Friends were coming to visit B.A., and I had a lot to do beforehand.

I didn't notice what the youths were wearing as I popped in front of them because I was beyond caring. Normally part of social life in Edinburgh is judging books by the covers, which is to stay, looking out for potentially dangerous members of the Socially Excluded class. The Socially Excluded of Edinburgh are probably exclusively white-and-Scottish, so this is not an inter-racial concern unless of course you are a minority person which--come to think of it--I instantly become when a Scot hears my accent. When B.A. and I are confronted by a Socially Excluded person, I keep my mouth shut and B.A. delves into the patois of his working-class roots.

Incidentally "Socially Excluded" is the polite term for chav. The British class system is by no means gone; in fact, in some ways it is worse. Drunkenness and violence among the urban poor (who now have money instead of religion) are as much of a feature as they were in Queen Victoria's day. One learns to spot a chav at 100 yards, and one of the signs is that the chav wears sweatpants in public.

The one and only British person I know socially who wears sweatpants in public is the neighbourhood grump, a former enfant terrible of English letters, who instead of growing into an eminence grise remains an enfant terrible at 70. I assume he wears sweatpants because he can't be bothered not to. Being cornered by him at a party is a horror; when he found out I had no idea what his career had been, he was nastily sarcastic.

I gave B.A. his first pair of sweatpants in 25 years when he started Pilates class. Unfortunately, Pilates class is now completely impractical and the sweatpants have been downgraded to pyjama bottoms. Normally when B.A. goes out in public, I get out his jeans. Since he has lost about 40 lbs since  March, none of his trousers fit, so the jeans stay on only thanks to braces (suspenders). Yesterday, thanks to time constraints, I made a snap decision and reached for his newly washed sweatpants. To make up for them, I added a hand knitted green cable pullover to the ensemble.

Mistake.

I was not around the whole time our guests were talking to B.A.--for awhile I was flying about getting tea, coffee, biscuits--but apparently he was "crotchety." And when I heard this my heart sank to my feet because my formerly good-natured husband never ever ever exhibited irritation  in front of guests. He was truly the most easy-going, most amiable and cheerful chap alive. His company manners were perfection. He would never even describe the Socially Excluded as I have above for fear of hurting someone's feelings. Being judged as "crotchety" was new.

And then the coup-de-grace.

"Maybe he'll turn into [the Neighbourhood Grump]," said a guest cheerfully.

Dear God, let that not be so. Something new to worry about, and how I wish those words had remained unsaid. How my poor B.A. could be likened at all to the Neighbourhood Grump, quite apart from completely understandable pain-induced crotchetiness, can be down to only one thing: those terrible sweatpants.

Update in Defence of Scottish Chavs: Whenever I write about Socially Excluded Scots, I always try to remember that as scary as they can be, the chavs/neds are the victims of history. Not only did the post-war collapse in heavy industry hit Scotland particularly hard, the two hope-filled ideologies of working-class Scots--communism and Christianity--also largely disappeared by 2000. Thanks to the Sexual Revolution, the traditional family was terribly weakened. Then there was the heroin and AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, so accurately depicted in Trainspotting. My Scottish great-grandparents missed all that.  Meanwhile, public drunkenness happens throughout British society. This isn't new. What is new (that is, post-1963) is that British women also get falling down drunk.