Yes, yes, yes. Of course I feel sorry for Tini Owens, for who could not be sympathetic to her plight?
She is the 68-year-old wife who is so desperate to divorce her husband Hugh, 80, that she has taken her fight to the Supreme Court.
This week, she learned justices have once more refused to grant her a quickie divorce.
They ruled on the not unreasonable grounds that her husband refused to accept he had behaved unreasonably — and she had failed to prove their 40-year marriage had irretrievably broken down.
Tini’s complaints about her husband include her distress that he speaks too loudly in public, that he once moaned about having to have dinner in a pub rather than at home, that they had a row about her incorrect stacking of the recycling cardboard and once had a meltdown argument in an airport over the selection of a gift for their housekeeper.
Of course I feel sorry for Tini Owens, for who could not be sympathetic to her plight?
She also cited the fact that he sometimes said to her: ‘Can I say something without you flying off the handle?’
Holy non-hullabaloo. It all sounds so terrifyingly familiar, I feel I could be married to Hugh myself, give or take the housekeeper.
And if Tini’s chief beefs were really all that it required to get a divorce, there wouldn’t be a marriage left between here and the dark side of the Moon.
I know couples for whom such humdrum travails would constitute an average weekend, with further disputes over emptying the dishwasher, control of the TV remote, venturing the opinion that, yes, bum does look big in said garment, plus an additional fiesta of: ‘I’m not calling her, she’s your bloody mother.’ Then they get over it, have a laugh about it, accept it as just the rough-and-tumble of married life, fall in love with each other again and move on. Together.
Yet this case has become a huge legal talking point, raising questions for Parliament to answer on whether the law for fault-based divorce, which has been part of our legal system for half-a-century, really does remain satisfactory.
Some want reform and the introduction of ‘no-fault’ divorces, which would make it easier for couples to untie the knot — perhaps even easier than untying the gift wrap knot on their wedding presents.
Yet surely, marriage is an institution, a solemn legal commitment, something precious that should not be so devalued?
She is the 68-year-old wife who is so desperate to divorce her husband Hugh Owens (pictured) that she has taken her fight to the Supreme Court
If a spouse can make a unilateral decision that it’s over simply because they are a bit fed up when their other half TALKS TOO LOUDLY, where is the merit, where is the value, in marriage?
The rules have to be strong, for marriage is something that has to be taken seriously at the beginning, in the middle and at the sad end, should that come. Otherwise, why marry in the first place?
Much of the religious significance has already been eroded.
If a marriage can be ended like cancelling a gym membership or ditching a coffee shop loyalty card, what is the point?
Of course, Tini Owens is now seen as a feminist heroine. How exhausting and tedious. Any public issue these days in which A Woman Does Not Get Her Own Way or is somehow thwarted by law or circumstance or Pesky Menfolk is immediately swept into the great gulch of feminist grievance, there to flourish unchecked, like Japanese knotweed.
Some have even described Mrs Owens’s position as the ‘forced continuation of marriage’ and compared Britain’s divorce laws to slavery. What epic nonsense.
After building their mushroom-growing business together, Mr and Mrs Owens are an extremely wealthy couple. They have two adult children and perhaps had a reasonably happy marriage until she had an affair. After this, she said her husband made her feel ‘unloved, isolated and alone’. They have been living separately, in handsome neighbouring homes in Worcestershire, since 2015.
A year later, a family court judge rejected her initial divorce petition, describing her complaints as ‘flimsy and exaggerated’.
Some marriages end in violence, in temper, beached by money problems or unable to survive trauma. And some just slowly boil down until only a bitter residue is left.
Two adults who once loved each other, now calcified in their petty hatreds, are each determined to exert power and have the last word, no matter what. That is how I think of the Owenses, now forced to remain legally shackled for the next two years.
How horrific, how medieval, how downright torturous, particularly for Tini Owens to be stuck in a loveless marriage. To try to escape, but find all exits blocked. To have her husband clinging on, perhaps only to punish her — surely if he loved her, he would let her go?
And then to turn to the highest court in the land, only to be told that you must remain legally affixed to the man you cannot stand for the next two years.
It’s like something that might happen in the Stone Age. Yet it happened here this week.
It is awful, but it is also right. In a throwaway society, some things must remain sacred.
What fresh hell is this? Street performers at this year’s Edinburgh Festival have been furnished with gadgets so they can take contactless tips from credit or debit cards.
The artistes have been moaning that their earnings are down because fewer people carry cash.
Now, instead of passing around the hat, they will pass around the high-tech gizmo after showing off their juggling/miming/standing still like a statue skills. ‘It offers audiences an additional method of payment when showing their appreciation,’ they say. Aren’t we the lucky ones?
Not sure I’d stick my Visa card anywhere near someone doing handstands and funny faces. But readers, you are surely more trusting and kind than evil moi.
Stuff the staycation – I’d rather be in St Tropez!
I know, I know. Last week, I was cock-a-hoop about my staycation and not facing the hell of summer travel.
This week, after more scorching heat in London, I am capsized with lust and envy at the latest barrage of beachy and breezy celebrity-on-holiday snaps. Why do they torture us so?
Actress Sienna Miller in a palm-print Dolce & Gabbana two-piece, alighting from a tender to lunch in St Tropez
In-love Kylie Minogue looking damn glam in a water-taxi in Venice. Actress Sienna Miller in a palm-print Dolce & Gabbana two-piece, alighting from a tender to lunch in St Tropez. Model Karlie Kloss on a jet ski at the Faraglioni rocks in Capri. Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster in Italy.
You can practically feel the salty breeze and luxuriate in the whiff of privilege blowing around their tanned calves.
And special celebrity plus-points for Beyonce’s six-year-old daughter Blue Ivy, who was pictured in the pool of her parents’ rented yacht in the Med, clutching a mocktail. Go for it, tiny girlfriend!
Millennial Snowflake Restaurant Tip of the Week.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw passed on his gourmet tricks. They tell you everything you need to know about him and his glam pals, who include Harry Styles, Pixie Geldof and Kate Moss.
‘If you’re ordering a McDonald’s from Deliveroo or Uber Eats,’ he said earnestly, ‘you need to order two apple pies as well, because they’re so hot they keep your burger and chips warm.’ Genius.
Men’s hobbies are a mystery at the best of times.
Coarse fishing, making little Spitfires out of plastic and glue, that whole cricket thing — what the heck is that about?
With the recent rescue of the boy footballers in Thailand, the extraordinary pastime of cave-diving was dragged into the spotlight — where grown men secrete themselves for hours in muddy puddles and tunnels deep underground, like giant termites or bats.
Now we can add panning for gold to that remarkable list. A prospector who wants to remain anonymous found the UK’s biggest gold nugget this week. It was in a Scottish river that must remain a closely-guarded secret, in case it sparks a mini-McKlondike.
He found the £50,000 beauty while indulging in his favourite hobby: donning a wetsuit and snorkel and lying face-down in a freezing stream for hours — known as ‘sniping’.
What a guy. He deserves every penny of his wondrous treasure!
Leave the soul to the soloist, sing-alongers
Tina: The Tina Turner Musical has been running at the Aldwych Theatre in London since March. I didn’t wholly love it, except for one thing: the central performance by Adrienne Warren.
Somehow, this tiny, 31-year-old Broadway star captures the singing style and soulful essence of Tina Turner without ever flipping over into parody or imitation.
Tina: The Tina Turner Musical has been running at the Aldwych Theatre since March. I didn’t wholly love it, except for one thing: the central performance by Adrienne Warren (pictured)
Barely off stage for the duration of the show, she thunders through all the hits, from Nutbush City Limits to River Deep, Mountain High and beyond. Marvellous.
Yet, this week, the second act was delayed because security had to deal with a fight over audience members singing along — despite a pre-show announcement asking people not to sing along.
This is a difficult area. Jukebox musicals are meant to be fun, but no one is paying to hear their seat neighbour drone tunelessly through We Don’t Need Another Hero. We’re there to hear Adrienne! Give her some respect.
Sarah was right about sex gangs
May I take a quiet moment to champion Sarah Champion? She is the Labour MP for Rotherham who claimed British Pakistani men were ‘raping and exploiting white girls’.
Last summer, she had to resign from the Shadow Cabinet after commenting on the ‘common ethnic heritage’ of the men involved in the town’s sex abuse scandal and the fact that the UK has a problem with this situation, hidden for years as everyone was afraid to tell the truth.
‘There. I said it,’ she wrote in The Sun newspaper last year. ‘Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?’
For bravely speaking out, she was accused by activists of ‘industrial-scale racism’ and forced to make an apology.
Despite this, we learned this week that Ms Champion is now being guarded by counter-terrorism police and Scotland Yard has fears for her safety as ‘hard-Left and Muslim opponents are trying to force her from office’. Is this really what this country is becoming? We all know she spoke the truth.
Muslim communities in Rotherham and elsewhere must also know she spoke the truth. Wouldn’t it be better if they acknowledged the inconvertible fact, which is that there is a very big problem with some men within their community, instead of trying to silence an honest and frank voice?
How many more teenage girls have to suffer to assuage their hurt feelings?