A Real Life Story of Heartache...Norma Stits

I met Duane when we were both working at the pig gutting factory in Macclesfield. Our eyes met across the carcass-strewn workshop floor and as he wiped the blood and pig spleen from his glasses and cheeks, I knew that those dimples could make my knees go to jelly.

He came over to me and wiped a tendril of intestine from my lips and asked me softly, "Ey up, gorgeous. Fancy a pie an a pint ternight and I'll show yer me black puddin collection after the City match?"

Being a United fan, I was initially put off, but I knew the blood stains would be difficult for him to scrub off so he'd get beaten to a pulp at City, turning up in red.

He was a perfect gentleman. He turned up for me in his City strip astride his Vespa and chucked me his spare helmet. "That's not the only helmet of mine you'll be handlin' ternight darlin'" he husked to me over the pop-pop of the back-firing exhaust. I belly-laughed delicately, while trying to hoik up my white denim mini skirt and balance on the finely honed steel of my orange stilettoes. He noticed that I was a bit cold and remarked on the corned beef like appearance of my size 18 things. "Them's reet blue trunks, them, lass. Watch yer don't squash me 'ead to a pulp wi 'em later, won't yer?"

The date was perfect apart from the fact the pub had run out of mushy peas and I was on a diet so stuck to five pints of Carling rather than my normal ten. I wanted to look good for Duane and I knew he'd appreciate it. "Yer could do wi shedding a few of those pounds, couldn't yer, pet?" he remarked.

At this point, I knew I would do anything for this man...utterly anything and I set about transforming myself into the woman of his dreams.

By the time he proposed, six months later, when we were expecting our first set of twins, I knew it would be love forever. He was a caring soul who didn't complain when I burnt his Dairylea on crackerbread, or cut myself opening a tin of oxtail for his supper. And he didn't even mind that I could only make love to him three days after giving birth to the twins, Keanu and Kylie. He told me he'd rather I tightened up a bit first.

But things didn't get back to normal as I hoped they would. I found bottle-feeding the twins and breast-feeding Duane a terrible personal strain and I noticed that Duane was starting to come home later and later from his pig-gutting. He had also been given a promotion and was now starting to slaughter bulls, too, so I think this might have made him a bit more confident and arrogant.

When I found lipstick on his boiler suit collar, he swore blind that it was a bull's ball sac, but I knew a ball sac when I saw one, and this might have been from cattle, but it was from a cow, not a bull.

As I walked up to the Coop for some cans of stout one night, I heard the tell-tale sound of his back-firing scooter round the back of the offie and found him in a knee-trembler with Fat Cow Gladys from the knicker factory. Weird thing about her was that she never wore knickers.

I saw red, shook the cans of stout up really hard and opened them, spraying them with brown sticky goo. Duane went ballistic and tried to hit me, but I had thought of this already and ground an empty tin can of beans a passing Pub Man gave me into his hateful face. Fat Cow Gladys was screaming like a stuck pig, so I thumped her in the knockers and kicked her shins, hard.

I ran back to my house, crying at how Duane had hurt me, going with Fat Cow Gladys behind my back. So, I got the twins, chucked a load of petrol all over the house and set fire to it, burning with it all his Man City memorabilia, which was worth about £27.

Next day, I went down the social and claimed for a council house. I am now living in Alderley Edge in a five-bed detached, next to Wayne Rooney and his bird, Colleen (who's dead nice and gives me all her George at Asda cast-offs - she also nicks outfits for the kids, too!). The social give me £1000/week beer and fags money and I have offered to adopt lots of Cambodian babies 'cos that's what all these skinny WAGs want to do round here. One of them asked me if I'd surrogate for her cos her insides are all wrong, so I'm up the pipe again, what with the kids only being 10 months old!

Duane broke my heart, but I am getting over him every day...