"The Rage"

“The Rage”

I am very much a believer in justice and fairness; it was the way I was brought up by my parents and through my schooling. I like to believe that there is a balance in life, even my star sign is the scales, not that I put any trust whatsoever in the daily paper horoscopes, can you imagine all the people born in the same month are going to come into money or meet the love of their life all on the same day...no me neither. I want to believe that good will always triumph over bad, and that right will always be justified…what a load of tosh!

I am heading rapidly, far too rapidly for my liking, towards my sixtieth year and I am only just beginning to realise that justice and fairness only exist in the fairy-tales and Marvel Comics of my childhood. It seems to have taken a bit of a dislike to me of late so let me tell you about one or two things that have knocked my faith in justice or fairness, and I think I will start with the great British Justice system itself, or to be more precise the divorce court. Already I can hear moans of "Not that old chestnut, everyone thinks they are hard done by in a divorce settlement." Equally, I can hear sympathetic agreement of those who have had first-hand experience of the unfairness and outright bias of the divorce court. Let me tell you about my experience so that you can all ‘judge' for yourselves.

“The Dragon”

During this tale, I will often have to refer to my now, thankfully, ex-wife, and for the need of certain anonymity, I will call her by the name that she is always referred to in any conversation where her name would ordinarily be used, The Dragon! Or to give her full title, Dragon Breath. The reason behind this name will become apparent later on during this narrative. Don't worry I will not bore you with too much detail, or try not to at least, about why we got divorced, but I will have to give you a bit of an insight to enable you to understand what I consider to be the unfairness of the 'unbiased' judge.

Most people enter into marriage for what I’m sure are the very best of reasons; it is, therefore, absurd that the marriage contract can become such a devastating legal weapon. The marriage contract is a licence to kill, a licence for complete exploitation. The law needs to change drastically to protect the assets of the innocent and offer a realistic means of redress for those who have been mistreated in the past. Not automatically side with the women in just about every case. In this country women almost always get to keep the main residency of any children, and as a result are financially heavily protected, even as in my case when there are no children involved. Also, there is still a default feeling within our antiquated judicial system that all women are unfairly seen as the more vulnerable party in any divorce. Vulnerable? You have never encountered The Dragon, have you? Or have you? You may well have your own dragons, masquerading under a different name, but dragons all the same. I knew someone once who would refer to his ex by the abbreviation DSF, standing for Dog Shit Face, a different name but still a dragon underneath the surface. Even now the very name sends shivers down my spine and brings me out in a cold sweat. Every time I say the word Dragon I recall the flames roaring from her soured mouth as the remnants of her constantly devoured food fly and splatter in every direction. I still feel the intense heat blasting towards my face; I smell every blackened word as they fly in my direction scratching the very air they pass through, like fingernails down a blackboard, to eventually scrape the worn and battered flesh of my eardrums, and chip away another part of my ever diminishing soul. The only shield I could call upon from my corroded armour to protect myself against this primeval creature was the words uttered miserably by all true fighters of good against evil…."Yes, dear, whatever you say, dear."

“Here be dragons”

To this day I still never really know why I was taken to court or why I was the ‘bad’ person. The Dragon banished me from her den, which was once our home, with a torrent of fire and the blood-curdling screeches of a deranged hell beast.

Now call me innocent or naïve or whatever you want, and I will agree with you entirely. I foolishly went into court armed only with the knowledge that I was right and justice would be on my side and everything in the world would be perfect. What an idiot I could not have been more wrong. Today was the day that I discovered that all the dragons of the world are universally united, a network of dragons. What is the collective for dragons? A weyr, a thunder of dragons perhaps, or the word I think I will use, a rage, a rage of dragons that sounds the most fitting under the circumstances. The judge was a woman. Now I have absolutely nothing against women whatsoever, far from it, and in a divorce court, the judge has to be one gender or another I guess, I can’t see any other way it would work really. But this woman was not like any woman I had ever encountered before in my life. I might even go so far as to say she surpassed The Dragon, just. This woman was a scary, man-hating, hard-faced spawn of the she-devil herself. I swear as I walked into the courtroom I saw a serpent like tail flick quickly under the desk. “SIT!!!” the word cut across the room with the same conflagration that I have been a victim to a million times over, hitting me full on and knocking me into the nearest seat. “Here be dragons” suddenly I was alone and defenceless, my shield was useless, it may just have well been made of chocolate for all the use it would do me now.

Unreasonable behaviour, what is that supposed to mean? This was what I was being divorced for, but I still don’t know what bit of my behaviour was supposed to be unreasonable, the ‘rage’ had decided what it meant, but I was still very much in the dark. Was I violent or abusive? No. Did I drink to excess? Was I financially irresponsible? No. I was being divorced over the whim of a mad woman who had subjected me to many years of unreasonable behaviour before finally kicking me out, for no apparent reason, leaving me homeless and moneyless with no access to any of our bank accounts. I was now sitting in court being robbed of more money to give to the woman who got 100% of everything we ever had when we were together. What on earth has happened to impartial judges? They don’t reside in divorce courts anymore, well at least not the one I was in.

“I need more money to go clothes shopping, it’s my therapy. Some people turn to drink, I go shopping, my therapist told me to do it.” Was the Dragons response to the question why was she now so much in debt.

WHAT??? What therapist in the world would tell a woman to get into financial difficulty for therapy? No doubt another fully paid up member of the ever expanding ‘rage’.

“That’s completely understandable.” Said Judge Dragon.

“Eh? Then I have a gambling addiction so I have no money to pay for her shopping therapy.”

"No you haven't, you just made that up." Screeched Judge Dragon spitting out fiery venom in my direction.

“So did she, but you accepted that didn’t you?” probably not a good thing to say under the circumstances, feeling the heat rise by several more degrees.

“No chance of survival”

The Dragon also had this irritating knack of giving misleading information or sitting on things to use to her advantage at a later date. Probably should say it was a gift rather than a knack as it worked every bloody time. Take an old pension of mine as a particularly good example of how that worked.

I didn’t know that this pension was still active, but the Dragon did alright. She ‘accidentally’ opened a letter addressed to me from the pension provider, she then ‘accidently’ photocopied it, and then finally sent it to me several months later having already asked the court to let her have the pension. This was all done to take advantage of the fact that you could now cash in pensions early after reaching a certain age, I had just reached that certain age when she eventually posted the letter to me, wow what a coincidence…I don’t think.

“Of course you can have his entire pension. I’m sure you have no objections to this do you, you horrid piece of insignificance?” Said Judge Dragon whipping her prehistoric creature-like head around with a gut-wrenching crack to face me for the first time since entering her wretched den…I mean the court, her eyes ablaze exposing the vestiges of all the tormented souls of every man that had ever stepped foot in her courtroom. "DO YOU?!"

“No.” I shakily whimpered like a scalded puppy knowing I had no chance of survival, feeling my soul being sucked from my quivering body to join all the past victims for eternity. I was not getting out of here in one piece. I was being shredded alive by the rage of dragons.

“What about the cash-in-hand jobs The Dragon has under an assumed name o

nline?" I asked in a last ditch attempt to get Judge Dragon to see some of the truth that was staring her so blatantly in the face.

"Do you do things online Mrs Dragon?"

“No I do not know anything about computers; I just pressed some buttons not knowing what I was doing.” ‘Innocently’ replied The Dragon.

WHAT??? Over twenty years in administration using computers, using on-line banking, social media, and her all-time favourite, on-line shopping is hardly someone who is computer illiterate is it? Well, it looks like it is in the world of biased, prejudiced and unfair Dragon Judges.

“The marriage licence to kill”

The marriage licence to kill came at me with all guns blazing and my chocolate armour was nothing but a brown sticky mess on the courtroom floor, well I hope it was chocolate as I felt at that point, I had just had my life dragged through my backside and hung up as a trophy for all ragedom to see. I came away having handed over everything I had when I was married to The Dragon, and now also having to pay ‘spousal maintenance’ for the rest of my life, or hers depending on which one ends first. Don’t Dragons live forever?

Reading this you may well be thinking “what an exaggeration”, but believe me it isn’t, well maybe some of the words Judge Dragon said were how I heard them in my court battered brain, but the whole sorry tale is completely and utterly true. The blatant one-sidedness of our judicial system showed itself to the full that day and this was only a part of what went on. As I said at the beginning I didn’t want to bore you with all the details, but to give you just enough to show, in my opinion, and from my experience, what unfairness there is out there going under the name of Law of the United Kingdom. So all you men reading this who are about to be heading into the divorce court in the foreseeable future, be aware, it is already a foregone conclusion that you are not going to come out of it fully intact. As you start your long walk down the corridor towards the courtroom, and you get that smell of rancid burning wafting up your nostrils and hitting the back of your throat already squeezing you for everything you have, beware, you are about to enter the realm of The Rage….“Here be Dragons my friend, here be Dragons.”

#dragon #court #divorce