Tick Tock

Wow. Time flies when you are having fun!

The Protector

I watch her like a hawk.

Not to attack her.

But to save her.

She sits in the office window, mobile pressed to her ear, offering more than she needs to to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Yes there is a work opportunity for him, just like she told him many moons ago there could be. But she knows the time has been and gone when he might have deserved that opportunity. There’s no need to seek his approval now.

They finish talking about the opportunity. She changes the subject. “Did you like my invite” she says.

The hawk swoops lower. She’s on dangerous ground.

“I don’t expect you can come” she says.

The hawk is still.

“Yes nice invite” he says, “I can’t come, but I wish I could”. He offers no reason like people normally would.

The hawk swoops and gathers her in its beak.

“No problem.” She says. She asks for no reason. She’s not hurt. “Anyway, I must be getting back to work now. Bye.”

The predator soars away over the cliff tops, swallowing its weak prey.

She doesn’t need to persuade him of her worth. She doesn’t need him to come back.

She doesn’t need a replacement for the One she was separated from all that time ago, because she never really lost him. She was just too little to understand then.

But she’s a big girl now.

And she’s explained to the child.

“You never really lost him”.

Thou wall , O wall! O sweet and lovely wall!

I lean against the sink spooning Ambrosia rice pudding out of the carton. My gaze wonders absentmindedly outside whereupon it spies Pyramus and Thisbe whispering ten o’ clock sweet nothings to eachother over the garden wall. I smile. This amusing scenario started a few weeks back. My friend (who I shall simply call Sister as this best explains our relationship) had been staying with me and although we are used to sleeping in the same bed having known eachother since Cabbage Patch Kids were all the rage, we have in our old age, come to value our space. Sister had therefore appreciatively accepted the offer of her own bed for the night as one of my flatmates was away. Unfortunately, this perchanced to be the night that Pyramus would attempt to woo his Thisbe. My Irish flatmate (Pyramus) managed to talk my blonde neighbour (Thisbe) into a few jars at Ninny’s Tomb (The Local Boozer) over our garden wall. Unlike Quince's lovers…they did actually manage to meet at Ninny’s…but Pyramus didn’t quite manage to seal the deal …and hence brought Thisbe back to our kitchen (which happens to be directly below where Sister had settled down for a long night’s rest). Here, they proceeded to tuck into a large bottle of Vodka to settle the ‘pre-snog’ nerves…and with each glass, their flirtations crescendoed until eventually there came a knock upon my door in the early hours. “Can I sleep in with you” came the weary voice…"I keep thinking any minute now they’ll snog and shut up…but it’s been HOURS!”

The next morning, I see Thisbe ungainly clambering over the garden wall back to her house. Clearly Pyramus eventually managed to seal the deal.

Time Warp

Sometimes, usually in the dead of night, a cold clammy fear comes over me. A shock wave, jolting me out of my near slumber, sending my eyelids shooting into their sockets and my heart into a clenched fist punching against my breastbone. A time warp. Two years of healing gone in a millisecond and I'm back there. Sometimes, these have felt like the longest years of my life and other times I imagine I've just been dreaming. That I could wake up, pad downstairs, push open the frosted glass door to the kitchen, using my free hand to gently manoeuvre Robbie and Dillon out of the way, help myself to soda bread and stare sleepily out of the french windows at the dewy morning whilst the kettle whistles. If I was dropped back into that life now, I would know exactly what to do. But another girl now pads down those stairs, opens the frosty door and stares sleepily out at the dewy morning. And two years ago, this great big hand reached down from the sky and plucked me out of that life bubble, piercing it's protective film as it pulled me miles into the sky and then released me, crashing down to earth, sticky and wet and broken. But I've been learning to blow life bubbles of my own since then and I can nearly make one big enough just for me to live in comfortably. But every now and then time warps and I fear the cold, clammy hand reaching for me in the dead of night.

Weightless Wonderland

Staring out of the window as the plane leaves Copenhagen, I am surprised to see a lone house, strong and sturdy on a remote island, surrounded by nothing more than miles of swampy marsh. Carved around it in a crescent moon shape, appears a man made moat, ensuring perhaps that should any would-be-visitor actually manage to reach this house far from harbour or road, the moat would prove one challenge too far. Who would want to live in a place like this, I wonder? The plane moves higher and breaks the mists of cotton, I look down and envision myself bouncing from cloud to cloud, under the gaze of the pink, half moon. A child's "weightless wonderland"... the Care Bears lived in the clouds didn't they? In a place called Care-a-Lot. And if you climbed up the Faraway Tree, you reached wondrous lands like this didn't you?

I rather like looking down from this surreal, fairytale land upon my real life below. Seeing it from this perspective, I realise that I am but a tiny speck in a great,vast, Universe. And everywhere, people are going about their lives as best they can. People have been born and died today, married and divorced, eaten too much or starved and all manner of things that I couldn't even begin to describe because I have no comprehension of their lives and the World that they live in. Tomorrow, I'll go back to my small existence as a black speck in a corner of an office in London, England. But I hope that the bigger perspective stays with me for a while longer.

2030 Vision

Hello people. Have been frantically scribbling in notebooks, on bits of paper and on old filofax calendars whenever the mood has taken me, but have had no time to transfer thoughts blog... so in the meantime, I came across this on a new support website for people in their 20s and 30s. This article rang a few bells for me and judging by our predominant topic of the search for true love it will for a lot of you too. Take a look! In the meantime, we'll be back soon!

http://ezine.2030vision.org.uk/home.php?page_id=51

The Love Plague

As I turn the handle quietly and pop my head round to mouth goodbye, a finger shoots to his lips to warn me against speaking. There was a time when this gesture would have bothered me, the presumption that I'm a) not sensitive enough to know when speech maybe inappropriate and b) his shameless prioritisation of the woman at the end of the phone line. But it doesn't rile me. I wave goodbye, shut the door and descend the familiar cream carpeted stairs with its worn-in grey smudges. I am relieved and a little sad. Relieved that I play no part in his complicated triangles with girls who are engaged or cohabiting with another. Sad because this type of liaison is rife... spreading through the streets of London as quickly as the great plague of 1665; leaving in its wake bubonic hearts piled on top of each other, feebly beating their blood into the gutters and drains - seeping into our ecosystem, spreading, spreading... Love, if you can call it that, has become another victim of our careless, throw-away society. People are quick to fall into it, quick to fall out of it and think nothing of running a few different variants of it together... why? Do we think that keeping our options open will allow us to find as near to perfection as we can? Or do we do it simply because we live in an era where we can? A time where having your cake and eating it is a rite of passage? I don't know. But I want no part of it anymore. I do not want to be a variant of love for someone; I want to be their love. And I'm quietly confident that somewhere on this planet, there is a soul that thinks like me. That wants a simple yet complex love, exclusive, hardy - that will weather the test of time. A deep love which each party knows is worth fighting for even when surface love is temporarily sleeping because of strife or over-familiarity. I still believe that somewhere there is a man that wants that too.

New Project for Sister Zaria

I felt it was time to write again as poor Sister Louise seems to be keeping the site up single-handedly! Sadly, as I cast my mind around for something to write I found myself totally devoid of subjects. For the first time, for a long time, I am properly single. Normally when I have been single I have had someone to keep my interest up, so to speak, but this time I can genuinely not think of anyone I even fancy. So, short of going out with a couple of boys of my acquaintance who I could go out with but don’t really fancy, I am on my own.

Walking home tonight, in the first bit of sun we have had in ages, I got to thinking that I can’t go on thinking that the man I want to meet is just going to turn up at my door (especially as I am 3 floors up and the security to my flats is like Fort Knox)!
So, I have come up with the following plan in order to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. In order to help me both find a man and get some content for the blog I solemnly promise that I will try to do one activity a week to actively try and meet someone!

I have thought about ways in which I can meet a new man and have come up with only one idea so far. The idea does however have drawbacks. The idea is to join the squash league at my local gym. The drawbacks are three fold- 1) I have never played squash before, 2) I have absolutely no hand eye co-ordination, 3) If I do succeed in getting a racquet and enough skill to get a game with a man, I will be meeting him as a sweating heap!

So there we have it. Tomorrow I will go to my gym and enquire about joining the squash league. That will be week 1’s activity. I will, of course, report back next week about how I have done but in return I would like you guys to suggest the next thing! I am completely devoid of ideas apart from this one, so far, so all suggestions will be gratefully received.

Oh – just one little thing on the suggestions – please don’t suggest internet dating, I simply cannot get my head around that one just yet!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

After nine days in Devon/Cornwall/Worcs/Lakes = Heaven, I am truly cheesed off this week. London is one of those places that you become conditioned to. This week my conditioning has become unconditioned and I have no patience. Usually I reply to my boss in a polite manner despite his curtness, this week I'm responding in his tone of voice, despite his obvious superiority. As I left the office ON TIME (6pm) for once, he called after me "Yes... bye Louise"... simultaneously making a point about my lack of pleasantries and also pointing out the fact that I've left before 9pm...for once.

And you know those people... sorry guys...it's always guys... those people that can see that the tube is full to bursting and yet just as the doors are about to close, they launch themselves into the carriage, getting stuck in the doors in the process? Well this evening, one of them smacked their elbow into my head as he launched his 6ft frame through the doors at the last minute and then stood pressed with his crotch into me for three whole stops as I tried to refrain from hyperventilating. I'm sorry I do NOT pay £4 a day for this madness. Why do we put up with it? Just because we're British?! I disown my Britishness, my Huguenot blood is running hot - Viva La Revolution! But I put up with the madness, because I love the theatres, the South Bank, Gordon's Bar at Embankment and the unusual opportunities that come my way. But one day in the not too distant future, I am so outta here!

Re-wired

"Listen" I say, pausing mid-conversation. "My flatmate is playing really beautiful music". I stumble off my bed and into the lounge next door, raising the receiver into the air to catch the notes. I bring him back to my ear, "It's Chopin he says, we used to listen to it when we went to sleep, don't you remember?" And in a dark, distant cavern in my head a switch is flicked. A light has lit up a corner of darkness. The wiring to this switch is old and uncertain, it sparks and sputters all the way down the tunnel of my throat and comes to rest in one panging, electrical surge in the mains box in my chest. Yes, I remember.

Life Training

We spent a ridiculously good three days in Devon with everything on our side. No traffic going down, pouring rain at the most appropriate times and beautiful sunshine just as we arrived at Bude beach on Tuesday and Fingle Bridge on Wednesday. Three of my oldest friends and three children (how times change) had a blast. We ate, drank, sunbathed and journeyed home with sunburnt shoulders and sand in our hair. So when the awful call came, it was juxtaposed against a happy three days with best friends and beautiful children and was thus ever more poignant. There are seven of us that have been friends since school days and it was one of the seven that rang to tell two of us (from the seven) journeying back from Devon, that another of us had had her 12 week scan and the baby had died. I was taken off guard; I thought the call was to find out how our Devon mini break had gone and thus all the words that I could muster were “oh my god – no” repeatedly, until it sunk in. And as my friend in the driver’s seat took the news in, I saw her brush away a tear as she put two and two together from half a story and understood the enormity of the call I was taking. And an innocent voice from the back called out for sweeties or a wee wee and mummy silenced her with a “not now darling, Auntie S isn’t very well” and the innocent voice knowing Auntie S replied “I like Auntie S mummy…what’s wrong with Auntie S?” Auntie S has been trying for years for a child of her own and this is quite possibly what all of us dreaded and all of us prayed wouldn’t happen. And I remember the first day we started senior school in all our youthful innocence and I want to throw my arms around her and make it better but I can’t. And she has a husband who is her rock, as she is his and they’ll get through this, I just wish they didn’t have to. And the thing that’s struck me lately, is that for all life’s beauty – of which there is plenty, there is equally some terribly, sad and difficult times and recently I’ve watched my friends pick their way through troubles and realised that this is life. I think until now, I’ve always felt that we’re in training for life… We go to school, and then maybe Uni and we look for a job and we work out how to get a promotion and we get a boyfriend and we learn to look out for the nice guys and leave the bad ones alone and eventually we might get married. And I’m sure that we’ll always be in training to a certain extent, but it feels like this is it now. Life. We’ve done years of training and this is what we trained for. And life will bring magical Devon mini breaks and it will bring terribly sad times. And that poem that says “With all its shams and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world” is so true. And Auntie S probably won’t believe it’s a beautiful world right now. But the six of us and her rock will do our utmost to get her to a place again where she can possibly believe that it might be.

Happiness

How many people can say that they are truly happy on their own? And truly is the operative word here, because “I’m truly happy on my own” is different to “Just f*ck off, I’m not a sad singleton, I don’t need anyone, I’m happy on my own” said in an ever so slightly defensive manner. For those of you in long term relationships, “happy on my own” can not be qualified with “well I was single for a year when I was 19 and yes I was happy” because the difference between who you are at 19 and who you are at 29 is huge. I’m not saying relationships are a cop out…or suggesting we should leave Mr Right, in pursuit of single-minded happiness. No I’m not saying that at all, because even in a relationship you can still lay claim to “I am truly happy on my own” for despite being one half of a pair, you are still ultimately alone. Nothing is guaranteed in this life, except that you have yourself until death do thee part from thyself. So if you are truly happy within yourself and your partner is an added bonus, congratulations! I think you may well have cracked it!

But everyone who feels happy should examine that feeling carefully; does it truly come from within you? Or is it reliant on someone or something?

Recently I received an email from a close friend who had been to see a mutual friend of ours who has just given birth. My emailing friend announced that baby was big and bouncy and ‘mummy’ looked…truly happy. I pondered this announcement for a moment, it jarred with me but I didn’t know why. Then it struck me. ‘Mummy’ has not been happy for years. She has struggled desperately with depression and feelings of self-doubt. She has been on anti-depressants, drunk too much at times, struggled with direction in finding a job and about two and half years ago, suddenly met and married a man within six months who, it would seem, is as complicated and unhappy as she is. Am I to believe that now she has a baby, she is suddenly truly happy? Or, is it more likely that now she has a baby, she no longer needs to concentrate on her own happiness and the relief has allowed her a tentative joy? OK, so the counter argument here is that maybe, it doesn’t matter that it took having a baby to make her happy? But babies grow up and go to school and mummies get their time back, time to ponder their happiness and well being and deep rooted anxieties rarely disappear on their own… Furthermore, how do we make our kids happy, if we never learnt the secret of happiness ourselves? Do we just tell them to go and procreate because that’s how we found it?

It’s not just babies. We might pour our life energy into our careers, our hobbies, our friends, our family, making money, our boyfriends… or our pursuit of a boyfriend. But it’s never quite enough… ever. We’re so busy in our pursuit of happiness that we forget to actually be happy. A few years ago, if someone said I’d be working on a global advertising account on the money that I’m earning now, I’d have said, wow that’d be great! What do I think of my job now? I don’t think I earn enough and I don’t think that I’m high enough up the career ladder for my age… that’s what I think. I have persecuted myself over my inability to get over KP and hold down a relationship since him. If someone tells me I’m pretty, I’ll reply “but I’m so spotty”. I’ll work myself into the ground to try and prove myself to my superiors and I’ll bend over backwards to make a man happy… because if I get recognition from my boss or my man…then I’ll be good enough won’t I? Then I’ll be happy… won’t I?

No. I won’t. Because I could wait forever for that recognition and it may never come. It’s a fact of life that you can move mountains for people and they’ll let you do it, but they won’t necessarily give you the recognition you want or the love you crave, just because you busted a gut moving that f*cking great big mountain. Furthermore, life can be tough at times. It can knock you sideways and you can’t always rely on the thing that makes you happy to pick up the pieces… especially if it’s the thing that makes you happy that has exited your life. The only way to deal with the crises, is to know even in your weakest moment that you are strong enough to be happy again and that you can achieve that mostly on your own (with a bit of help from your friends), if needs be.

So here’s the deal. I’m single and I need to be right now, because the minute a man I like comes into the equation, my pursuit suddenly becomes all about making him happy in the deluded sense that he'll love me for it and then I’ll be truly happy. So for a week I am resolutely single. The reason I am not suggesting six months, is because that would be putting undue pressure on myself and if I failed, I would then persecute myself for being useless at being single. Plus a week is a long time when you can’t remember the last time that you didn’t have at least one date in the week or at the very least a flirtatious phone call!! So, I am properly single for one week and I’m going to be alone with this person who's been with me consistently during these last 29 years. And maybe, I'll finally give myself some recognition and as a result, some happiness. And this is a small stepping stone, but one day, when I have a child of my own, hopefully, I’ll be able to set her/him on the right path to finding their own true happiness.

To Click or Not to Click?

I feel immensely privileged to have been asked to write a blog following my recent experience, so I hope I can do you proud, although the pressure of the occasion has caused me some angst!

As you might have read on Sister Zarias’ recent blog comments I have been somewhat stuck in a dilemma over a man that can only be described as genuinely decent and lovely. So you must ask why have I chosen the difficult option of calling it off?

Well, it’s experience that has guided me this time. Last year, having split from Mr Love-of-My-Life I decided to start internet dating (like Sister Louise before me), partly to prove to Mr L-O-M-L that if he can move on then so can I.

My first date was nothing less than a disaster and from there on in there were some valuable lessons to be learnt on my cyber-journey!

Lesson one…always, always make sure you speak to the person you are about to meet. The words received on a text message do not always give an accurate reflection of the person. Once a voice is added, the picture can change significantly! I lovingly refer to date number one as Gollum!

The second date, arranged for the day after Gollum (my theory to things like this and job interviews is “it’s a numbers game”!) was OK, but when his name mysteriously went from Tim to Colin overnight, I think there was another big lesson to be learnt here.

Lesson two… crap name, crap everything else! Bit harsh but mark my words.

The third date didn’t happen, thank god, as having learnt from Lesson One, I decided to call him before meeting him - Neil turned out to be a Norman, not by de-poll, but by character…which, in my mind qualified him to be assorted into the ‘Lesson Two’ male category and I decided thenceforth to give him a wide birth!

Lesson three… well; at this point, I decided internet dating just wasn’t making me happy.

So there my internet dating was postponed. Until just recently, when I decided it was time to shake up my life a little – I must be a glutton for punishment. So I joined a different dating site, for fear and shame of bumping into the other half-wits again.

Within a very short space of time I had a couple of hopefuls hooked on my broadband line, including Mr Genuine. Very quickly I discovered that I was completely drawn to him and wanted to know more. Then it all started to go wrong.

Mr Genuine sent me some more pictures of himself in exchange for a few of me…it turns out I definitely have a “type”, the same type that Mr L-O-M-L also fits into. Hmmm not the best start, but I convince myself that he will be different, so onwards, I must.
Emails turn to texts, texts turn to phone calls, phone calls turn into dates. This man is really kind, caring, funny and best of all he really, really, likes me.

Now, I’m not saying I’m high maintenance, but it is fair to say I have expectations of what I want to find in my other half. A tough lesson I learnt from Mr L-O-M-L is that love isn’t always enough.

You see the thing is I could have seen myself falling in love with Mr Genuine, but I know it just wouldn’t have been enough. You see he doesn’t tick some of my fundamental check boxes in life, in fact it’s those very same check boxes that Mr L-O-M-L failed to find the ink to complete and I could just see history repeating itself. Furthermore, the uncanny resemblance these two men shared with each other was never going to be a positive thing – even down to the same birthday month and dislike of cheese and tomatoes! Were they in fact one and the same?

Saying farewell to Mr Genuine was not easy and not a decision I have taken lightly, but when a relationship is young and still your gut instinct is causing you restless nights, you do end up questioning whether your head knows better than your heart.

So I’m left wondering if all these lessons add up to one greater teaching… can the internet really help you find that person in life that you really click with or should you just click the off button and start living?

Written by Soul Sister for Sisters In The City.

Blue Moon

Am highly entertained by life’s little coincidences. My colleague just handed me a card (she is not familiar with the blog). It’s a promotional leaflet from a film company. She was taken with this fact inside…

It says on the front “Happy Blue Moon” and inside it says “A Blue Moon occurs when there are 2 full moons within one calendar month. Only 41 months per century has a double full moon – June is one of those rare months, so this Saturday (it was actually this weekend June 30th) make sure you are doing something you would only do once in a blue moon!”

I’m not making it up, I swear. So I saw Blue Moon on the Saturday when there was a Blue Moon… on the weekend that I met his friends and family... which, in itself was a happy weekend but sadly, I believe, will be a once in a blue moon event!

My Choice

I sit on the tube eating cockles individually from a cockle jar full of vinegary water. This has to be the most impractical choice of a tube snack and I'm bemused as to why I chose it. Cockles remind me of my stepfather and I don’t think my purchase is a pure coincidence. I don’t want to be eating them either. It feels like I’m offering a tribute to him and right now, I don’t much feel like saluting him.

I make this journey every Wednesday to see her, past the Halal butchers, fast food joints and staring teenagers along the Uxbridge Rd. It’s become a ritual, a comfort blanket that I throw around my shoulders weekly. An opening, a quiet moment, sitting opposite her in my chair, the presumptuous box of tissues on the table by my side. I won’t take one of these tissues on principle. I don’t like them assuming I’m going to cry.

In the beginning, I fought with her. Despised her cool, blue gaze. Felt she was judging me. Asked her as many questions about her own life as she did about mine. Wanted her to prove her worth. Wanted to know that if we were going to drag up shit that I’ve never talked about, that it wouldn’t do me more harm than it would do me good.

I almost didn’t notice the questions when they came. Clever questions that made me think differently, that hit nerve endings and scattered hot salty tears of recognition into my lap.

I tell her about the dream, the document and my stepfather. She doesn’t need to encourage me to understand what it means. I already know. We’ve discussed it. We’ve discussed the fact that back then; I didn’t really get a choice in what happened to me and my family, about who came into my life and who exited it. We’ve discussed too that now, as an adult, I do get a choice. I get to make lots of choices about who I want to let into my life and who I don’t. And slowly, tentatively, things are changing. I’m becoming more demanding. But I assumed that if I asked for more from people, I would lose them. That they would turn around and walk away. And maybe some will, but if they do, then they were never really worth having in my life to start with were they? I’m not saying I’m a dab hand at it yet. But I’m better at it. And things happen when you make choices. Blue Moon hasn’t walked away. He hasn’t said that he’ll stay either. His head is as full as mine. But he’s offered more. He’s let me out of my ‘dinner date’ box. We’re going to the beach tomorrow, out of London. We’re staying at his mum’s. We’re both a little scared I think. But it will be OK. We both love the sea. Tomorrow we’re going to see the sea together. That's worth smiling about. And out of principle, I won't be eating cockles.

Funny How...

Now how does that old song go? Funny how the girls you fall in love with never fancy you, funny how the ones you don’t do? Which also works vice versa - with boys.

Sorry for it all coming down to boys again but the only thing of note that has happened to me recently is a re-enforcement of Sister Bridget’s treat ‘em mean adage.

For once I am really rather happy being single but that doesn’t mean to say that I’m not on the look out! A couple of weeks ago my friend tried to set me up with a work friend of hers. The boy in question was not drop dead gorgeous but seemed sweet enough, if a little quiet. I keep saying to myself that I will control my drunken behaviour now that I am a grown up but it never quite works, so as three drinks turned into four, quiet turned into mysterious in my drink addled mind and I set about making him mine for the evening.

The next morning I awoke bleary headed with only a number of digital photos and some misspelt texts to tell me how my evening had gone. It seemed that I had invited him down to London the following weekend. I wasn’t too sure about him coming to see me at all seeing as he lives a while outside London and he’d have to stay at mine. I ignored several phone calls and texts the next week but as the week rolled on, I relented, and against my better judgement, replied to his increasingly sweet texts and arranged for him to come down to see me.
He arrived the following weekend and I quickly realised that he wasnt' going to be 'the one'. He was terribly nice but just not what I need.

The really sad thing is that under other circumstances I would love to meet a man who barrages me with lovely calls and texts and is willing to wait five weeks until he sees me next (I told him I was busy for the next five weekends), but it’s the same old thing. I don’t like him so he is keen on me and the more I distance myself the more he seems to like me. This has happened to me several times before and whilst it seems like a rather nice problem to have it always leaves me feeling down. I begin to wonder if he’d like me as much if I liked him and if this isn’t why when I do like people things have ended up going wrong. I also wonder if (as my friend who set us up suggested) I only dislike him because he likes me. That is an even more frightening thought. My friends words to me were ‘you’re always saying that you’d like to get married but if you did meet someone who wanted to marry you, you’d run a mile’. What if she has a point……?

Corners

I had a visit last night from an old friend. He padded up to me, a robust lump of fat, fur and whiskers, squawking in unrefined manner. If he had been human, he would have existed much in the vein of the Dad, Jim in The Royle Family, sitting dribbling in an armchair, wanting only for the bare necessities in life - food, love and sleep... in that order. I'm delighted to see him. It has been a while. I pour him some milk, a delicacy reserved only for his later years, Persians aren't allowed it usually. He finishes lapping it up and looks at me expectantly, his bib tangled and wet from his treat. I gather him up in my arms, his reassuring weight pressing heavily against my chest and we turn a corner in my mind together.

The Stepfather sits at the long kitchen table with my mother, the table divides us. There is a document needing three signatures on the table. They are waiting for me to sign. I pause uncertainly, the cat's weight roots me to this spot on the safe side of the table. But they are waiting. I stumble forward and picking up a red pen, I sign... all the while knowing in my gut that I shouldn't... despite the encouraging smile on my mother's face.

Self Help or Self Hinder

Inspired by some discussions which have emerged from previous blogs, I have lately been thinking about Self Help books and how helpful they really are. Working for a large publishing house, I am surrounded by books of this nature, such as ‘Why Mr Right Can’t Find You’ ‘How to Mend a Broken Heart’ and ‘Simply Irresistible’ each one full of advice on how to catch your perfect partner and hold on to him so he doesn’t disappear, or if this doesn’t work then how to cope and move on if he does! I must also ashamedly admit to going through a phase about this time last year, of avidly following The Rule Book. If you’ve never heard of this husband catching bible, I suggest you take a look, even if just to cast it aside and decide never to indulge in such manipulative behaviour. The Rule Book taught me never to accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday, never to be on the phone for longer than 10 minutes with a new love interest (in fact you’re even supposed to have an egg timer by the phone to prevent this terrible behaviour from occurring!) never to leave anything of yours at his house until you have a ring on your finger, and basically to never show any signs of liking him until you’re married – and even then you must still keep him on his toes by playing by the rules!!

I would never advocate following these rules to the T, but we all know that treating them mean, does to an extent certainly make them keener, just as it does when the situation is reversed. By some miscommunication between Mr Bridget and myself before we got together, I got the wrong end of the stick, leading me to believe he was gay. This in mind, I gave up any hope of trying to impress him by my cool sexy breeziness and spent all day emailing back and forth never waiting the allocated 1 hour between emails, or giving any false impressions of being the most up-beat, secure fun girl he would ever be likely to meet. By the time I realised he was actaully as hetro-sexual as they come; it was too late to start taking my cards back off the table, and we began an honest, pretence-free relationship.

I look back on previous dating disasters, however, and wish I had been a little more clued up. Drunkenly calling my university crush at 2 in the morning and screeching ‘Why don’t you like me?’ probably wasn’t the best way to win him over. I learnt the hard way that they can tell you on Saturday night that you’re the most amazing, sexy, witty and intelligent girl they’ve ever met, but a day later, not care if they never lay eyes on you again! Reading a couple of self-help books may have prevented me from committing these desperate acts at 18, but doing that has certainly ensured I’ll never do it now I’m in my 20s!! Learning the hard way can be fun, and I don’t completely regret yelling at the oh so gorgeous and popular cricket captain at university for ignoring my calls because quite honestly he damn-well deserved it! Acting all coy and disinterested, sort of allows these players to get away with it, without letting us show them that we care. Sometimes I think they deserve to have their bunnies boiled – at least they won’t be so keen to jump into bed with the next girl they meet, just in case she is also a psycho!

Plus Who?

I have just crawled home from work to find an exciting looking hand written, cream, envelope. Inside I found a sky blue and vanilla invite to "Sister Louise plus one" for a family wedding on 18th August. I find the "plus one" extremely polite... after all I'm sure most of my close friends secretly rejoice in my single status when it comes to a wedding... it's one head less to pay for... but I also find it hilarious! I mean WHO would I take?! This decision is further complicated by the fact that my Pops is also attending said wedding. I have mentally run through the possibilities in my head... Mr Comfort... great for company, but romance died a decade ago... Undercover Cop? Well, you see, he has to look the part in his job... he has to fit in with the scallywags of society... so perhaps best not to cause a stir by turning up on his arm at a family wedding? And Blue Moon. Well, of course, this is the one that sets my mind racing... and the butterflies dancing in my stomach... what if?? It seems impossible... to pin him down for a date three months in advance where he would certainly meet one set of parents... impossible... but the possibilty is enough. Of course I'll probably go on my own, get drunk and snog the best man, who as it's a young wedding is likely to be 21. BUT... that possibility.... hmmmmmm.

Rubbish

We're all officially being rubbish aren't we. I don't know what my excuse is, an addiction to facebook... not enough angst in my life with my new 'look on the bright side' approach... knowing that too many people who know me know about the blog... I don't know. I've plenty of stories, dates with an under cover crack house busting copper (no not literally undercover, far too well behaved for that - ahem!)... the return of Blue Moon.... a brief dalliance with Chatterbox... why does it always come down to men ey... I have a new job, but that's just too dull to write about!! So I'm officially flexing my creative jucies and will be back soon... who do you want to hear about? Copper? Blue Moon or Chatterbox... (in fact not Chatterbox, that's a very predictable story!! Exes meet for coffee.... 'nuff said).