Notting Hill

Before my I met my husband, I had a relationship with a man that ultimately and simply didn't work
It didn't work intermittently, so lasted in total for several years
Yesterday, I was reminded of the exact moment I knew that relationship was almost over for me
It was a moment that involved Julia Roberts.

My boyfriend, Philip, was a closeted gay man and when I first knew him had been so for many years.
I was a gauche and relatively inexperienced gay  who had just come out to his family and friends so we made for an extremely odd fit from the get go.
I had a big need for acceptance and heteronormality in our relationship
He wanted a romantic relationship but had two lives as well as two properties, one in the city and the other in the Lake District
He shared his left between Sheffield and countryside, and straight and gay lifestyles were interwoven between houses
It was a relationship doomed from the start.

But I was mostly desperately hopeful it would work.

I remember meeting him on one Friday afternoon to go to the cinema
I had wanted to see Notting Hill for a while and had  a weekend off
He finished work early so we could go and see it near MeadowHall a famous shopping centre and cinema complex
I was looking forward to a weekend together but before we even sat down in the cinema he informed me that he wanted to drive to his second home after the film for some " time out"

A love story was perhaps a wrong choice for a film that day.
But when I look back, it proved to be somewhat cathartic, for me , more than Philip
The film, as we all know,  is a light comedy in which Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts are sympathetically charming as gauche bookshop owner and needy Hollywoid star and the wonderfully
Schmaltzy ending had me weeping buckets even then,

Romantic films have a power all of their own, and this is especially true when the audience identifies with the story and invests in it , and by the last scene of the pregnant Anna Scott sharing a bench with her husband in a blissful study of coupledom, I was almost overwhelmed by the insatiable need to have my own  Notting Hill moment.

I remember walking out of the movie with our hands touching.
We were quiet and emotional and filled with the romance of the moment
" I feel as though I shouldn't go back to the Lake District !" Philip said quietly as we approached  his car
" Well don't ...stay here!" I remember saying , trying very hard to play down that moment so close I was to tears.
He dove back to the Lake District moments later
And I stood at a tram stop for home
And I knew then that the relationship would never work,
and at a moment in the near future ,would be over