Link to the beginning of the story
I'm nearly up to date. I said many weeks back that I'd tell something about myself and that it wouldn't be pretty. Clearly I haven't tried to paint myself in a particularly favourable light but I have summed up the significant events of the last 15 years of my life which is what I'd set out to do. When I started writing the posts I needed a bit of focus. I've no great life lessons for anybody nor have I come to any surprising conclusions through the process. The only thing I do know is that I always made what I thought was the best decision at the time, not necessarily for me. Maybe I should be a bit more selfish in the future. Sometimes I've sided with logic, sometimes I've sided with the heart. The third element in my decision making is gut instinct. My gut instinct favours one or the other and it's usually proved right looking back though I haven't always listened to it. I think I'll trust that more going forward and see where that takes me.
It's Late December 2010. The last few weeks have been a bit shitty. Mini-me has been spoken to about living in 2 separate houses the bonus being she'll have 2 bedrooms. It'll take months to sort out the physical and financial separation and we haven't even discussed how Mini-me will be shared. I want 50/50, I could have been a Saturday dad years ago, didn't want that route. Christmas will be the usual extended break for me and I hope that some effort is made to make it a happy house over the holidays though that hasn't materialised in the past as mentioned in previous entries.
I don't even want to think about what next Christmas will be like, what the arrangements will be. I've had that thought every year for the last few, dodged it.
Some friends are making their way home from here and there for Christmas and I hope to see most of them at some point though most have had flight cancellations and are already on to plan B or C.
Life goes on. Get the head down, keep busy, make plans, I know the drill. I plan to live forever. So far I've been right.
Thanks for reading/commenting in the past.
Thursday, 23 December 2010
Friday, 10 December 2010
2010, 2nd half
Link to the beginning of the story
I'd no romantic intentions regards M. In fact we both established that well ahead of the meeting. I was staying at a friend's place and had a couple of drinks that afternoon, got cleaned up and made my way to where we'd agreed to meet and had a few drinks while I waited, she was running slightly late due to being busy at work. We talked for a few hours, actually I talked for most of that, a combination of nerves, alcohol and procrastination of what I'd come to do.
I'd found the meeting awkward, M less so but that was down to me knowing why I'd wanted to meet in the first place, her not. We just talked about nothing in particular or bollocks would be more accurate in my case. I thought she hadn't enjoyed the evening and annoyed her by saying so when we each left to go. I hadn't said any of what I'd intended to. I'd bottled out and was angry that I'd messed this simple admission up. I went back to my friend's house and sat up with him for a few hours obliterating brain cells.
The next morning I started to type an email explaining my circumstances then and now, the bits I hadn't told her back then or when we met and sent it to her when I got back home a few days later. A few emails were exchanged over the next few weeks. It seemed I had hurt her a bit back then and though a distant and insignificant memory now I wanted to make sure she didn't lay any blame on herself for it. At that time I got the feeling she felt she'd got a bit bashed by life over the years and things like this affect how we feel about ourselves and that in turn potentially affects everything going forward. I didn't feel good about my part in that.
In July I went on holiday, as I normally do, me, mini-me and J. Normally I have plenty of time with mini-me to wile away but this year she found other mini friends within 10 minutes of arriving. I didn't enjoy the holiday, I knew I wouldn't long before I stood in the departure lounge in the airport. There was no sense of excitement. Holiday = more time to argue, always does. It's the only time of year I'll read books. I felt overwhelmingly lonely but it wasn't just because of now, it had been something growing over the years, sneaking up on me. Years of being in a non-relationship, no companionship. I'm too selective when it comes to friends and the small core of really good friends I had mostly now lived half-way round the world in various time zones, hence I'd been living a relatively solitary life, obviously me and J don't go out anywhere together. I don't fully trust many people and I like to think I choose wisely and after a lot of consideration but that wasn't much consolation as I sat alone late in the evening each night watching the world pass by. I felt an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and felt pathetic for feeling it and for being in this position. I found myself saying again that I wouldn't spend another summer like this.
After I got back home communication continued with M. She told me about some problems she was having relating to someone she'd been seeing and I offered my advice. We spoke on the phone several times, exchanged emails and texts and it seemed like she agreed with my thoughts on things. I'd nothing to gain from the situation myself, nor any desire to, and in any event I felt I owed her one so made myself pretty available to discuss things. She resolved to end her relationship with him. I said that I wouldn't fall out with her whatever she decided to do and that it would be good to keep in touch if she wanted to. She agreed she did.
I'd enjoyed having the company of the conversations and our contact hadn't been without humour at times despite the serious subject matter, she does have a turn of phrase and sense of humour that amuses me.
I'm not sure what happened next but within a couple of weeks responses from her to the occasional email or text stopped. I did explicitly spell out that I wanted a friendship with her and nothing more so she should have been reassured. As she was quite down on herself I also said overtly complimentary things about her, perhaps too much, and as her communication was drying up I undoubtedly sounded and became more desperate to maintain contact. I wasn't very interesting, I didn't burden her with my shit as I didn't think it would be appropriate, I went out of my way not to flirt in any way. I just needed to talk to a real person, someone I trusted (from our connection in the past) and unfortunately my closest friend and his partner had decided to take themselves off half-way round the world in August for some extended travelling. I was a washed out, pale imitation of myself for most of the summer, very down, glass empty, mostly on the back of my unhappy domestic situation and how it was making me feel.
From M's Facebook postings it was clear she'd got back into her relationship after a couple of weeks. The timing of my bout of loneliness was clearly not ideal, even less so for M than me, I bet she never envisaged this from that summer meeting. Nor did I come to think of it. Approximately a month after the last response from M I sent a short email saying that I was glad things were working out for her after all and that I hoped she didn't feel she needed to avoid me because of it and she responded curtly that she didn't feel she needed to avoid me. That was the last I heard from her and I suffered the 21st century indignity of being locked out on Facebook (the shame!!) that weekend which prompted a snappy email from me. I don't know what it was that started her retreat from me, probably something that I've already mentioned. Then again perhaps it was nothing I did and was simply that she was happy to keep in touch with me while I was useful to her and less so when that time had passed. I don't know. You can't have a dialogue with silence.
So M came back into my life and just as quickly back out again. My running and dieting bit hard and I lost 2 stone in all though had to ease back on my running pace late in the summer as I found I was getting shortness of breath and about to tip into hyperventilation every time I ran. I also started to get numbness and tingling in my fingers and hands. I was looking drawn and gaunt. I stopped smoking...again.
Studies resumed for yet another exam and I started writing this series of posts, the final one coming next.
I'd no romantic intentions regards M. In fact we both established that well ahead of the meeting. I was staying at a friend's place and had a couple of drinks that afternoon, got cleaned up and made my way to where we'd agreed to meet and had a few drinks while I waited, she was running slightly late due to being busy at work. We talked for a few hours, actually I talked for most of that, a combination of nerves, alcohol and procrastination of what I'd come to do.
I'd found the meeting awkward, M less so but that was down to me knowing why I'd wanted to meet in the first place, her not. We just talked about nothing in particular or bollocks would be more accurate in my case. I thought she hadn't enjoyed the evening and annoyed her by saying so when we each left to go. I hadn't said any of what I'd intended to. I'd bottled out and was angry that I'd messed this simple admission up. I went back to my friend's house and sat up with him for a few hours obliterating brain cells.
The next morning I started to type an email explaining my circumstances then and now, the bits I hadn't told her back then or when we met and sent it to her when I got back home a few days later. A few emails were exchanged over the next few weeks. It seemed I had hurt her a bit back then and though a distant and insignificant memory now I wanted to make sure she didn't lay any blame on herself for it. At that time I got the feeling she felt she'd got a bit bashed by life over the years and things like this affect how we feel about ourselves and that in turn potentially affects everything going forward. I didn't feel good about my part in that.
In July I went on holiday, as I normally do, me, mini-me and J. Normally I have plenty of time with mini-me to wile away but this year she found other mini friends within 10 minutes of arriving. I didn't enjoy the holiday, I knew I wouldn't long before I stood in the departure lounge in the airport. There was no sense of excitement. Holiday = more time to argue, always does. It's the only time of year I'll read books. I felt overwhelmingly lonely but it wasn't just because of now, it had been something growing over the years, sneaking up on me. Years of being in a non-relationship, no companionship. I'm too selective when it comes to friends and the small core of really good friends I had mostly now lived half-way round the world in various time zones, hence I'd been living a relatively solitary life, obviously me and J don't go out anywhere together. I don't fully trust many people and I like to think I choose wisely and after a lot of consideration but that wasn't much consolation as I sat alone late in the evening each night watching the world pass by. I felt an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and felt pathetic for feeling it and for being in this position. I found myself saying again that I wouldn't spend another summer like this.
After I got back home communication continued with M. She told me about some problems she was having relating to someone she'd been seeing and I offered my advice. We spoke on the phone several times, exchanged emails and texts and it seemed like she agreed with my thoughts on things. I'd nothing to gain from the situation myself, nor any desire to, and in any event I felt I owed her one so made myself pretty available to discuss things. She resolved to end her relationship with him. I said that I wouldn't fall out with her whatever she decided to do and that it would be good to keep in touch if she wanted to. She agreed she did.
I'd enjoyed having the company of the conversations and our contact hadn't been without humour at times despite the serious subject matter, she does have a turn of phrase and sense of humour that amuses me.
I'm not sure what happened next but within a couple of weeks responses from her to the occasional email or text stopped. I did explicitly spell out that I wanted a friendship with her and nothing more so she should have been reassured. As she was quite down on herself I also said overtly complimentary things about her, perhaps too much, and as her communication was drying up I undoubtedly sounded and became more desperate to maintain contact. I wasn't very interesting, I didn't burden her with my shit as I didn't think it would be appropriate, I went out of my way not to flirt in any way. I just needed to talk to a real person, someone I trusted (from our connection in the past) and unfortunately my closest friend and his partner had decided to take themselves off half-way round the world in August for some extended travelling. I was a washed out, pale imitation of myself for most of the summer, very down, glass empty, mostly on the back of my unhappy domestic situation and how it was making me feel.
From M's Facebook postings it was clear she'd got back into her relationship after a couple of weeks. The timing of my bout of loneliness was clearly not ideal, even less so for M than me, I bet she never envisaged this from that summer meeting. Nor did I come to think of it. Approximately a month after the last response from M I sent a short email saying that I was glad things were working out for her after all and that I hoped she didn't feel she needed to avoid me because of it and she responded curtly that she didn't feel she needed to avoid me. That was the last I heard from her and I suffered the 21st century indignity of being locked out on Facebook (the shame!!) that weekend which prompted a snappy email from me. I don't know what it was that started her retreat from me, probably something that I've already mentioned. Then again perhaps it was nothing I did and was simply that she was happy to keep in touch with me while I was useful to her and less so when that time had passed. I don't know. You can't have a dialogue with silence.
So M came back into my life and just as quickly back out again. My running and dieting bit hard and I lost 2 stone in all though had to ease back on my running pace late in the summer as I found I was getting shortness of breath and about to tip into hyperventilation every time I ran. I also started to get numbness and tingling in my fingers and hands. I was looking drawn and gaunt. I stopped smoking...again.
Studies resumed for yet another exam and I started writing this series of posts, the final one coming next.
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
2010, 1st half
Link to the beginning of the story
So, 2010. Just another year. The same pressures that had dominated my recent past carried over into 2010. The properties that I bought were all rented and covering their mortgage payments...just, but not without incident or episode in each. At the start of January one of them suffered burst pipes due to the big freeze we had which lasted weeks. The ensuing damage is still being rectified.
In January I also started studying for yet another work-related exam as I have done for the last 2/3 years. It kills the evenings and weekends for much of the year though I can't say I'm enjoying it but mostly it's just been a distraction from life, unfulfilling as it is.
In February I decided that I needed to look to the future. My daughter was now 6. Dealing with the emotional and financial stresses of the last few years that I'd been with J was having a major effect, directly and indirectly, on my health. I wasn't happy and I wasn't healthy. I decided, to start with, that I needed to get fitter and healthier and that that should be my most important goal this year. I just wanted to feel and look better. Previous attempts at getting fit over the last 10 years had foundered quickly through the ever present shin-splints but on one of those sub-zero February nights I donned some running gear and headed out. Although I encountered the dreaded splints, and the accompanying clown feet, I persisted patiently over the next few months and was able to largely get around the problem. I am, after all, a stubborn cunt and there's nothing like regularly getting some running gear on at 10pm on freezing February evenings after a few dreary hours studying to put that to the test especially when, for many weeks, it was apparently yielding no results. It's the triumph of stubbornness over stupidity and I am a world champion in that respect.
Around that time my former boss approached me with a business proposition. The numbers looked amazing but getting involved with it would put my current job in jeopardy. I couldn't afford to give my present job up and would have to do it alongside. Just being involved with it would risk dismissal from my current job if they found out, nothing illegal - just competing with my employer for the same end-clients, but a tentative toe was dipped in the water. There was a lot going on now, work, a business opportunity, hours and hours of exam study and the fight to get fit, all on top of my unsatisfactory domestic arrangements. There was practically no fun in life, little to look forward to, little to feel good about and I had to try to reclaim some of that one way or another for the sake of my sanity. Feeling fitter, healthier would be a part of that.
Chest pains in the early part of the year had meant I was mostly staying clear of cigarettes, just occasionally dipping into them when having the odd night out with friends. There was no point going to the doctor about the chest pains, X-rays previously for something else hadn't shown anything. Nor did I go to see him about the hard lumps under my arms and elsewhere. Googling doesn't help at these times. It's all just physical manifestations of stress anyway.
By the end of April I'd been able to very slowly build the running up to a point where I could manage about 9/10 minutes before I was trespassing into shin splint territory. I'd lost precisely no weight though, in part due to a rapacious biscuit habit during my evening studies and in part due to not being able to run as fast, long or often as I would need to to lose weight but that was next. I was able to ramp up the running a bit without any ill effects and curbed my diet weighing myself and recording it daily and immediately started to see results.
In May I contacted M by email. We hadn't had any contact since back in 2005 bar the odd response I sent to her when one of her email accounts had been hacked and was spamming contacts, all formal, brief, polite. I had wondered what had happened to her and felt guilty for not being honest with her back then particularly in light of the fact that she had been going through the roughest of times. I haven't done much that I've come to regret but how I'd been with M was up there and I'd had plenty of time to think about it since so I wrote an email saying I'd be in her neck of the woods soon and asked if she wanted to meet up for a drink. If she said yes I'd use the opportunity to make my overdue apologies face to face. I'd been expecting her to tell me to fuck off. She didn't and the date was set...
So, 2010. Just another year. The same pressures that had dominated my recent past carried over into 2010. The properties that I bought were all rented and covering their mortgage payments...just, but not without incident or episode in each. At the start of January one of them suffered burst pipes due to the big freeze we had which lasted weeks. The ensuing damage is still being rectified.
In January I also started studying for yet another work-related exam as I have done for the last 2/3 years. It kills the evenings and weekends for much of the year though I can't say I'm enjoying it but mostly it's just been a distraction from life, unfulfilling as it is.
In February I decided that I needed to look to the future. My daughter was now 6. Dealing with the emotional and financial stresses of the last few years that I'd been with J was having a major effect, directly and indirectly, on my health. I wasn't happy and I wasn't healthy. I decided, to start with, that I needed to get fitter and healthier and that that should be my most important goal this year. I just wanted to feel and look better. Previous attempts at getting fit over the last 10 years had foundered quickly through the ever present shin-splints but on one of those sub-zero February nights I donned some running gear and headed out. Although I encountered the dreaded splints, and the accompanying clown feet, I persisted patiently over the next few months and was able to largely get around the problem. I am, after all, a stubborn cunt and there's nothing like regularly getting some running gear on at 10pm on freezing February evenings after a few dreary hours studying to put that to the test especially when, for many weeks, it was apparently yielding no results. It's the triumph of stubbornness over stupidity and I am a world champion in that respect.
Around that time my former boss approached me with a business proposition. The numbers looked amazing but getting involved with it would put my current job in jeopardy. I couldn't afford to give my present job up and would have to do it alongside. Just being involved with it would risk dismissal from my current job if they found out, nothing illegal - just competing with my employer for the same end-clients, but a tentative toe was dipped in the water. There was a lot going on now, work, a business opportunity, hours and hours of exam study and the fight to get fit, all on top of my unsatisfactory domestic arrangements. There was practically no fun in life, little to look forward to, little to feel good about and I had to try to reclaim some of that one way or another for the sake of my sanity. Feeling fitter, healthier would be a part of that.
Chest pains in the early part of the year had meant I was mostly staying clear of cigarettes, just occasionally dipping into them when having the odd night out with friends. There was no point going to the doctor about the chest pains, X-rays previously for something else hadn't shown anything. Nor did I go to see him about the hard lumps under my arms and elsewhere. Googling doesn't help at these times. It's all just physical manifestations of stress anyway.
By the end of April I'd been able to very slowly build the running up to a point where I could manage about 9/10 minutes before I was trespassing into shin splint territory. I'd lost precisely no weight though, in part due to a rapacious biscuit habit during my evening studies and in part due to not being able to run as fast, long or often as I would need to to lose weight but that was next. I was able to ramp up the running a bit without any ill effects and curbed my diet weighing myself and recording it daily and immediately started to see results.
In May I contacted M by email. We hadn't had any contact since back in 2005 bar the odd response I sent to her when one of her email accounts had been hacked and was spamming contacts, all formal, brief, polite. I had wondered what had happened to her and felt guilty for not being honest with her back then particularly in light of the fact that she had been going through the roughest of times. I haven't done much that I've come to regret but how I'd been with M was up there and I'd had plenty of time to think about it since so I wrote an email saying I'd be in her neck of the woods soon and asked if she wanted to meet up for a drink. If she said yes I'd use the opportunity to make my overdue apologies face to face. I'd been expecting her to tell me to fuck off. She didn't and the date was set...
Monday, 15 November 2010
2009
Link to the beginning of the story
The prospects for 2009 seemed gloomy. Christmas 2008 had been even worse than previous years thanks to J's inability to factor a father (me) and some communication into the equation.
I'd managed to borrow the last amount of equity I could raised on my main residence, whilst it's valuation would still support borrowing, to use to pay the shortfall between income and outgoings each month. It would buy a few months' grace, perhaps a year.
On the work front my employers predictably upped their requirements of me at a time when business was getting more and more difficult. Their expectation were completely unrealistic by any standards. At the end of March myself and colleagues throughout the UK were flown in to a meeting for some training but something about it didn't feel right. Everyones' names were on a board and each had a letter beside it denoting a room those people were to go to. I asked one of the organisers why it seemed so much like X-factor and if I was in the room that was to be sent home. She pretended not to hear but various managers present seemed too pre-occupied with asking individuals which room they were to go to. It stank. Sure enough those in some of the rooms were sent home, stripped of any business related accoutrements. Amazingly, for those of us left, we were expected to complete some training afterwards. That the bosses actually thought we wouldn't be rocked to our core at the immediate departure of 1/3 of our colleagues in such a calculated, contrived manner beggared belief. Those leaving with their jobs that day didn't know whether to feel grateful or whether to feel this was a pre-cursor to a forthcoming "Night of the long knives 2".
The properties that we had, as mentioned earlier, went unrented for most of the previous year. In one a tenant's girlfriend had been allowed to stay by the agent. He turned out to be a heroin dealer and stopped paying rent then couldn't be shifted, then when moved out kept breaking back in and threatening the new tenant. You couldn't make it up. In another a tenant died. Overall costs weren't being covered.
My boss, who thought highly of me, was one to lose out in the night of the long knives. Stress levels were high.
For a few weeks I had been developing a swelling under my chin. Then my tongue started to swell and eating and speaking became difficult. Neither my dentist or doctor knew what it was and after various antibiotics first seemed to work then failed I found myself arriving at my local hospital's A&E department on Mothers' Day where a consultant examined me, X-rayed me, conducted tests and injected me with more anti-biotics. I had a form of cellulitis called Ludwig's angina and was several hours away from being unable to breathe. Lucky.
To distract me from my various personal, financial and work related woes I'd decided to study for work related exams. It used up many free hours each week where I'd otherwise just watch TV on my own, mini-me now being in bed, J going at the same time. It was a lonely life. As pathetic as it sounds I hate being lonely more than anything. The vacuum that loneliness creates in your mind becomes very destructive, negative. You don't tend to see yourself in a good light, glasses are always half empty and a self fulfilling downward spiral seems to edge ever closer.
A highlight in the year was going to Disney with mini-me in July, J going too obviously. We couldn't afford it but I thought that this was the last grand gesture, the last holiday that I might have with mini-me and that it should be a good one. Mini-me had a ball. We met Mickey Mouse, the real Mickey Mouse as she said. I came back despondent about what my life had become. I shut the blog down again, not that I had much interest in it anyway. This would be the last summer I'd live my life like this I said.
The prospects for 2009 seemed gloomy. Christmas 2008 had been even worse than previous years thanks to J's inability to factor a father (me) and some communication into the equation.
I'd managed to borrow the last amount of equity I could raised on my main residence, whilst it's valuation would still support borrowing, to use to pay the shortfall between income and outgoings each month. It would buy a few months' grace, perhaps a year.
On the work front my employers predictably upped their requirements of me at a time when business was getting more and more difficult. Their expectation were completely unrealistic by any standards. At the end of March myself and colleagues throughout the UK were flown in to a meeting for some training but something about it didn't feel right. Everyones' names were on a board and each had a letter beside it denoting a room those people were to go to. I asked one of the organisers why it seemed so much like X-factor and if I was in the room that was to be sent home. She pretended not to hear but various managers present seemed too pre-occupied with asking individuals which room they were to go to. It stank. Sure enough those in some of the rooms were sent home, stripped of any business related accoutrements. Amazingly, for those of us left, we were expected to complete some training afterwards. That the bosses actually thought we wouldn't be rocked to our core at the immediate departure of 1/3 of our colleagues in such a calculated, contrived manner beggared belief. Those leaving with their jobs that day didn't know whether to feel grateful or whether to feel this was a pre-cursor to a forthcoming "Night of the long knives 2".
The properties that we had, as mentioned earlier, went unrented for most of the previous year. In one a tenant's girlfriend had been allowed to stay by the agent. He turned out to be a heroin dealer and stopped paying rent then couldn't be shifted, then when moved out kept breaking back in and threatening the new tenant. You couldn't make it up. In another a tenant died. Overall costs weren't being covered.
My boss, who thought highly of me, was one to lose out in the night of the long knives. Stress levels were high.
For a few weeks I had been developing a swelling under my chin. Then my tongue started to swell and eating and speaking became difficult. Neither my dentist or doctor knew what it was and after various antibiotics first seemed to work then failed I found myself arriving at my local hospital's A&E department on Mothers' Day where a consultant examined me, X-rayed me, conducted tests and injected me with more anti-biotics. I had a form of cellulitis called Ludwig's angina and was several hours away from being unable to breathe. Lucky.
To distract me from my various personal, financial and work related woes I'd decided to study for work related exams. It used up many free hours each week where I'd otherwise just watch TV on my own, mini-me now being in bed, J going at the same time. It was a lonely life. As pathetic as it sounds I hate being lonely more than anything. The vacuum that loneliness creates in your mind becomes very destructive, negative. You don't tend to see yourself in a good light, glasses are always half empty and a self fulfilling downward spiral seems to edge ever closer.
A highlight in the year was going to Disney with mini-me in July, J going too obviously. We couldn't afford it but I thought that this was the last grand gesture, the last holiday that I might have with mini-me and that it should be a good one. Mini-me had a ball. We met Mickey Mouse, the real Mickey Mouse as she said. I came back despondent about what my life had become. I shut the blog down again, not that I had much interest in it anyway. This would be the last summer I'd live my life like this I said.
Saturday, 6 November 2010
2008
Link to the beginning of the story
2008 started with a flurry of snow, rare enough these days in these parts. It was enough to stop easy movement and many people took some extra days off, enjoying the crisp, still silence. On the health front my liver tests in December meant that I started the year avoiding drink, cigs and anything else that might be in danger of harming me. I ate almost exclusively whole foods, no additives and decided to start training for a short charity run in March. The wheels soon came off that part of the plan when I twanged a calf muscle almost immediately. Repeat liver tests in February, after my period of sustained healthy living, came back showing further deterioration. I haven't had a retest since.
The meltdown of the world's economies started in the 2nd half of 2007, properly hitting these shores at the end of 2007 and first half of 2008. For me the timing couldn't have been worse. In 2007 J and me had entered into some contracts to purchase new-build and other property almost exclusively with borrowed money. For 2 such properties deposits had been paid in 2007 but the project had been delayed by some planning issues so was running behind. Now, in 2008, we were several months from completion. We knew the bubble would have burst soon anyway but the credit crunch had brought that point from some time not far away to exactly right now. The developer was in no particular hurry because he had signed contracts and we were struggling to raise money to complete on our side of the deal in May. Lender after lender refused after putting up more and more obstacles. Through February and March many frantic weeks passed where fresh applications for loans were completed. I was still eating properly, not drinking or smoking but started to develop strong abdominal pains. There were plenty of reasons why sleep didn't come easy.
In April work took me and some others to Texas for some 5 star, waited-on-hand-on-foot, luxury as a reward for my efforts the year before. On boarding I was to find myself seated beside my boss's boss. Dreading the next ten hours of full-on work related chat I decided to break my alcohol embargo. Much red wine was taken before I got off. Due to a flight ban on some aircraft after arriving in Dallas the global boss of the company I work for sent his private jet in from San Antonio to collect us. Over the next few days there couldn't have been a more stark contrast between the lifestyle I was enjoying and the financial reality impacting my life.
To add to my health worries I started to get sharp pains in my nads.
In May and June we took possession of 2 properties that by now were already worth slightly less than we had agreed to pay for them. Loans had been obtained, eventually, but at a premium. We hadn't intended to keep them anyway but sell them for a profit and if completion had happened 3 months earlier we'd have got out clear or with a small profit. As it was we were to become reluctant landlords of properties that weren't properly finished by a developer who himself was in financial difficulties.
Me and Mini-me and J went on holiday to Cyprus and Egypt in July. The holiday was a welcome break from the madness. Unfortunately Egypt was to give me something that appeared to be dysentery for the second half of my vacation. By August the pressures of everything were becoming overwhelming. I was still living with J and paying out £4800 a month in mortgage payments. Needless to say I didn't earn close to that never mind enough to live and cover all my other expenses. I took a blogging sabbatical while I tried to avoid bankruptcy...
2008 started with a flurry of snow, rare enough these days in these parts. It was enough to stop easy movement and many people took some extra days off, enjoying the crisp, still silence. On the health front my liver tests in December meant that I started the year avoiding drink, cigs and anything else that might be in danger of harming me. I ate almost exclusively whole foods, no additives and decided to start training for a short charity run in March. The wheels soon came off that part of the plan when I twanged a calf muscle almost immediately. Repeat liver tests in February, after my period of sustained healthy living, came back showing further deterioration. I haven't had a retest since.
The meltdown of the world's economies started in the 2nd half of 2007, properly hitting these shores at the end of 2007 and first half of 2008. For me the timing couldn't have been worse. In 2007 J and me had entered into some contracts to purchase new-build and other property almost exclusively with borrowed money. For 2 such properties deposits had been paid in 2007 but the project had been delayed by some planning issues so was running behind. Now, in 2008, we were several months from completion. We knew the bubble would have burst soon anyway but the credit crunch had brought that point from some time not far away to exactly right now. The developer was in no particular hurry because he had signed contracts and we were struggling to raise money to complete on our side of the deal in May. Lender after lender refused after putting up more and more obstacles. Through February and March many frantic weeks passed where fresh applications for loans were completed. I was still eating properly, not drinking or smoking but started to develop strong abdominal pains. There were plenty of reasons why sleep didn't come easy.
In April work took me and some others to Texas for some 5 star, waited-on-hand-on-foot, luxury as a reward for my efforts the year before. On boarding I was to find myself seated beside my boss's boss. Dreading the next ten hours of full-on work related chat I decided to break my alcohol embargo. Much red wine was taken before I got off. Due to a flight ban on some aircraft after arriving in Dallas the global boss of the company I work for sent his private jet in from San Antonio to collect us. Over the next few days there couldn't have been a more stark contrast between the lifestyle I was enjoying and the financial reality impacting my life.
To add to my health worries I started to get sharp pains in my nads.
In May and June we took possession of 2 properties that by now were already worth slightly less than we had agreed to pay for them. Loans had been obtained, eventually, but at a premium. We hadn't intended to keep them anyway but sell them for a profit and if completion had happened 3 months earlier we'd have got out clear or with a small profit. As it was we were to become reluctant landlords of properties that weren't properly finished by a developer who himself was in financial difficulties.
Me and Mini-me and J went on holiday to Cyprus and Egypt in July. The holiday was a welcome break from the madness. Unfortunately Egypt was to give me something that appeared to be dysentery for the second half of my vacation. By August the pressures of everything were becoming overwhelming. I was still living with J and paying out £4800 a month in mortgage payments. Needless to say I didn't earn close to that never mind enough to live and cover all my other expenses. I took a blogging sabbatical while I tried to avoid bankruptcy...
Thursday, 28 October 2010
2007
Link to the beginning of the story
Having just changed employers at the end of 2006 I was busy trying to impress the new bosses. They had realistic expectations of me for my first year and I set about earning some brownie points and some bonus money.
I'm not someone who has a lot of friends, never was, I let very few "in". I'm very selective about who I become friends with and share things with even fewer. In fact I'd say there's nobody I share everything with, even today. Over the previous few years I'd lost many of my closest friends. One of them went to Canada, many lived in various places in England. One had just left to live in Australia. Now it was the turn of my final remaining close friend to up-sticks. He was going to go travelling, probably best part of 2 years, and he was in no hurry to get back if he would ever make it back at all. I wrote about it here on one of the previous blogs. As the years had went by I'd been feeling more and more isolated. None of them were really very computer savvy, there was no Facebook, contact was infrequent and my very best friends lived in very different time-zones, had completely separate lives.
Work had kept me busy, so much so that I earned about £16000 bonus after tax for the first 3 months work in 2007. As the year went on I was to continue to earn well.
J's sister-in-law had tried to kill herself at the start of the year. A few months later her brother tried and nearly succeeded the 2nd time. J packed her job in, supposedly to start buying and selling property and to spend a bit of time helping her brother get back on his feet. She'd lost a friend to cancer the year before. There was a major boom here at that time and prices were going up 30%/40% a year. Just flipping a property would likely make you £10000 to £20000. Through friends we got involved. J was supposed to check everything out, she had the time, I was busy knocking my balls in at work. We put deposits down on new-builds. I queried the fact that there were no time scales mentioned, no opt-outs on our side if the development stalled which got an extreme and negative reaction. J cannot take criticism of any sort, direct or by implication.
Needless to say this, and other projects we entered into, were all poorly researched. Whatever query I raised on them was aggressively dismissed out of hand by J. She wasn't stupid I was reminded. I still signed the pieces of paper so my fault for not trusting my head and my gut. Over the year I got increasingly concerned about the bubble bursting. I knew that the market would peak and fall and that timing was everything and was becoming more and more concerned about the progress of things. We bought a property in England on 100% mortgage and the agent was having problems with some tenants. No one was controlling things, developers were dragging their feet.
On holiday that year I'd felt a sharp pain down my left arm and chest when dismounting an unhappy camel, I thought I'd never get off. When I eventually did I fell forward sharply on my left arm and immediately didn't feel well. It lasted most of the afternoon. I'd been very stressed, it was about 40C, the camel stank and I was constantly swatting away flies and bluebottles. I'd just got my daughter off safely but then got stranded up there myself. I didn't know if it was some sort of heart attack, angina or just something like a trapped nerve. When I got home I'd been feeling occasional chest and abdominal pains. I never went to have anything checked out, not immediately anyway. I left that until December.
My state of mind at the end of 2007 can probably best be summed up by this post.
The only good thing was that I'd earned quite a bit of money this year, somewhere around £90k. Everything else though was shit. Surely 2008 would be better...
Having just changed employers at the end of 2006 I was busy trying to impress the new bosses. They had realistic expectations of me for my first year and I set about earning some brownie points and some bonus money.
I'm not someone who has a lot of friends, never was, I let very few "in". I'm very selective about who I become friends with and share things with even fewer. In fact I'd say there's nobody I share everything with, even today. Over the previous few years I'd lost many of my closest friends. One of them went to Canada, many lived in various places in England. One had just left to live in Australia. Now it was the turn of my final remaining close friend to up-sticks. He was going to go travelling, probably best part of 2 years, and he was in no hurry to get back if he would ever make it back at all. I wrote about it here on one of the previous blogs. As the years had went by I'd been feeling more and more isolated. None of them were really very computer savvy, there was no Facebook, contact was infrequent and my very best friends lived in very different time-zones, had completely separate lives.
Work had kept me busy, so much so that I earned about £16000 bonus after tax for the first 3 months work in 2007. As the year went on I was to continue to earn well.
J's sister-in-law had tried to kill herself at the start of the year. A few months later her brother tried and nearly succeeded the 2nd time. J packed her job in, supposedly to start buying and selling property and to spend a bit of time helping her brother get back on his feet. She'd lost a friend to cancer the year before. There was a major boom here at that time and prices were going up 30%/40% a year. Just flipping a property would likely make you £10000 to £20000. Through friends we got involved. J was supposed to check everything out, she had the time, I was busy knocking my balls in at work. We put deposits down on new-builds. I queried the fact that there were no time scales mentioned, no opt-outs on our side if the development stalled which got an extreme and negative reaction. J cannot take criticism of any sort, direct or by implication.
Needless to say this, and other projects we entered into, were all poorly researched. Whatever query I raised on them was aggressively dismissed out of hand by J. She wasn't stupid I was reminded. I still signed the pieces of paper so my fault for not trusting my head and my gut. Over the year I got increasingly concerned about the bubble bursting. I knew that the market would peak and fall and that timing was everything and was becoming more and more concerned about the progress of things. We bought a property in England on 100% mortgage and the agent was having problems with some tenants. No one was controlling things, developers were dragging their feet.
On holiday that year I'd felt a sharp pain down my left arm and chest when dismounting an unhappy camel, I thought I'd never get off. When I eventually did I fell forward sharply on my left arm and immediately didn't feel well. It lasted most of the afternoon. I'd been very stressed, it was about 40C, the camel stank and I was constantly swatting away flies and bluebottles. I'd just got my daughter off safely but then got stranded up there myself. I didn't know if it was some sort of heart attack, angina or just something like a trapped nerve. When I got home I'd been feeling occasional chest and abdominal pains. I never went to have anything checked out, not immediately anyway. I left that until December.
My state of mind at the end of 2007 can probably best be summed up by this post.
The only good thing was that I'd earned quite a bit of money this year, somewhere around £90k. Everything else though was shit. Surely 2008 would be better...
Monday, 25 October 2010
2006
Link to the beginning of the story
At Christmas 2005 I moved house. I would say J and I and Mini-me moved house but it was just me, at first anyway. I would have a proper office, there were 4 bedrooms, it was a big house. J moved round a month or so later when I had decorated everything. I also had my old house and she had what had been her house. Both would eventually be rented out but for now we kept them both as prices were rising quickly. I think both of us were thinking that this would be our escape route. An extra house each. It was a business decision. The job I'd started a year before was not going well, the relationship with my boss getting ever worse.
The turn of the year was welcomed in by a house party culminating in me going to bed at 7.15am, BisonGrass Vodka now my tipple and some pure MDMA having been my partners in crime. Last memory of the night is of one of my best friends telling me how much he's going to miss me.
In March 2006 one of my two best friends, the one above, moved to Australia. He had lived 100 yds from me in my provincial town days, a real good guy. I knew he wouldn't be back, not to live anyway, it was a one way, life-time trip. I would miss him and did. Do. Another of my closest friends had left a couple of years before to go to Canada to live. He never came back either. I had just one close friend left.
The year was largely uneventful. The non-relationship with J continued. Being that it was a big house it was easier to not cross paths. The house had more TVs than Currys.
As mentioned in the previous post the pressure of the job got harder being impossible to meet their expectations, and I sought a new one, moving in October 2006. Almost straight away it felt right. My new boss loved me and I hit the ground running.
Mini-me was approaching 3 yrs old. The time I was spending with her was fantastic. I showed her how to do things, taught her words, she was smart. Every parent will tell you that of course. But it was like she'd lived before. Much smarter than me at her age. I couldn't imagine my life without seeing her every day.
Nothing much of note happened this year, at least compared to other years. I was an off-on smoker and stopped (again) towards the end of the year. I went on holiday mid-year to Puerto Banus and I've noticed in my old blog archives the first occurrence of a problem (November 2006) that has recently come back, numbness, loss of feeling, in the fingers. The year went out with a whimper. Some things in my life were good, like work, money and the relationship with my daughter, some things weren't. But that was my lot. The new year, 2007, would bring it's own highs and lows...
At Christmas 2005 I moved house. I would say J and I and Mini-me moved house but it was just me, at first anyway. I would have a proper office, there were 4 bedrooms, it was a big house. J moved round a month or so later when I had decorated everything. I also had my old house and she had what had been her house. Both would eventually be rented out but for now we kept them both as prices were rising quickly. I think both of us were thinking that this would be our escape route. An extra house each. It was a business decision. The job I'd started a year before was not going well, the relationship with my boss getting ever worse.
The turn of the year was welcomed in by a house party culminating in me going to bed at 7.15am, BisonGrass Vodka now my tipple and some pure MDMA having been my partners in crime. Last memory of the night is of one of my best friends telling me how much he's going to miss me.
In March 2006 one of my two best friends, the one above, moved to Australia. He had lived 100 yds from me in my provincial town days, a real good guy. I knew he wouldn't be back, not to live anyway, it was a one way, life-time trip. I would miss him and did. Do. Another of my closest friends had left a couple of years before to go to Canada to live. He never came back either. I had just one close friend left.
The year was largely uneventful. The non-relationship with J continued. Being that it was a big house it was easier to not cross paths. The house had more TVs than Currys.
As mentioned in the previous post the pressure of the job got harder being impossible to meet their expectations, and I sought a new one, moving in October 2006. Almost straight away it felt right. My new boss loved me and I hit the ground running.
Mini-me was approaching 3 yrs old. The time I was spending with her was fantastic. I showed her how to do things, taught her words, she was smart. Every parent will tell you that of course. But it was like she'd lived before. Much smarter than me at her age. I couldn't imagine my life without seeing her every day.
Nothing much of note happened this year, at least compared to other years. I was an off-on smoker and stopped (again) towards the end of the year. I went on holiday mid-year to Puerto Banus and I've noticed in my old blog archives the first occurrence of a problem (November 2006) that has recently come back, numbness, loss of feeling, in the fingers. The year went out with a whimper. Some things in my life were good, like work, money and the relationship with my daughter, some things weren't. But that was my lot. The new year, 2007, would bring it's own highs and lows...
Thursday, 21 October 2010
2004/2005
Link to the beginning of the story
There were people from the UK and the US mostly setting up blogs on the MSN service and a box on the top of the page suggested other MSN Spaces to you and that was how many blog virgins discovered each other. In between reading blogs I played with the limited settings and scoured the web for coding hacks to make the blog page do something different/look different. I acquired several blog friends and particularly enjoyed reading a blog from someone called M. She wrote something practically every day. It was about her, her life. She was funny, smart - my two favourite things. I was intrigued. We swapped comments, sometimes a bit flirty until one night she asked for help with something and asked if I could contact her on Messenger, something I'd only ever used once before. It was late but I did. That Messenger chat became a daily, usually nightly, occurrence in January of 2005 when I started my new job. M was younger than me, from what I could see quite pretty, and I really liked her sense of humour, it matched mine. When the Messenger box popped up each evening I found my heart beating faster and my throat going dry. I was falling for somebody I'd never met, never spoken a word to in real life and who could have been a fat 50 year old guy with a warped sense of humour for all I knew.
J and me effectively just lived in the same house now. Different working hours meant meals were seldom shared and we didn't see each other much at all. My new job had me out of the country quite a bit, especially in the early months, for meetings and training. I coined a new phrase for my relationship with J, I called it my non-relationship. J worked late most nights, we swapped Mini-me when she came home if Mini-me wasn't already asleep, J went to bed and I went and turned on the PC in what was my bedroom.
The chatting with M was about everything and nothing in particular but it got more flirty quickly. I felt a really strong connection with M. She'd been through some difficult times though, life wasn't going well for her at this point. I wished I could be with her. Of course, if we'd actually met up she might have swiftly changed her mind. Apart from age, location, the fact that I was living with somebody everything was perfect. All this time our conversation took place in type. We hadn't even heard each other's voices. I suggested meeting up but with work and home life the windows available were always being pushed back. M lived far enough away that I'd have to get a flight to see her, either take a couple of days off from work or sneak away at a weekend. As time went on I realised that M was mostly sitting in, waiting to chat with me, and not getting her life back. My daughter was now 1 year old and was talking and walking and laughing and I'd got really attached to her. She knew who her daddy was now. The non-relationship with J was just that. She'd regretted me registering the birth and, as she had a green card, threatened to take Mini-me to America. I was living and working out of a spare bedroom. I didn't feel guilt towards J because we didn't have a relationship, we just lived in the same house. I felt guilty towards M though, more-so later. She knew I had a baby daughter but she didn't know I lived with someone. I was evasive about many things and she let me off the hook every time. I imagine she had a good idea but preferred not to know. Everything was a fuck up.
As the months went on I felt more and more that I could lose contact with my daughter and that M was being held back by me. The planned meet never happened, I continually deferred it. Eventually it became evident that she was starting to move on with her life and I became aware that she'd hooked up with somebody. There must have been an exchange on Messenger or by email but I can't really remember what was said. It had knocked the wind out of me. I'd been really flattered by the attention from M. She ticked all my boxes and it wasn't until it was over that I realised how much I'd cared for her. Right person, wrong place, wrong time, perhaps, perhaps not. Who knows what might have happened, it might have turned into something real, it might not. The opportunity had passed. But I missed M. It made a hole and it hurt. I'd been a fool though. When it started M was not in a good place and I wouldn't have helped that. She'd have felt rejected by me. I'd let her down.
Over the following months I tried to forget her. Part of that involved flirting with people I met here and there at work functions or going out with friends. I never did anything though, I'd realised how complicated it would have made my life and the prospect of becoming a Saturday father didn't appeal to me. It helped me move on though, feel attractive and was good therapy. Though I didn't realise it then M was to come back into my life later on.
The new job I started at the beginning of 2005 hadn't been going well. In fact me and my new boss fell out on day 1 back in January and the expectations and targets they had set for me were entirely unrealistic. Changes were due...
There were people from the UK and the US mostly setting up blogs on the MSN service and a box on the top of the page suggested other MSN Spaces to you and that was how many blog virgins discovered each other. In between reading blogs I played with the limited settings and scoured the web for coding hacks to make the blog page do something different/look different. I acquired several blog friends and particularly enjoyed reading a blog from someone called M. She wrote something practically every day. It was about her, her life. She was funny, smart - my two favourite things. I was intrigued. We swapped comments, sometimes a bit flirty until one night she asked for help with something and asked if I could contact her on Messenger, something I'd only ever used once before. It was late but I did. That Messenger chat became a daily, usually nightly, occurrence in January of 2005 when I started my new job. M was younger than me, from what I could see quite pretty, and I really liked her sense of humour, it matched mine. When the Messenger box popped up each evening I found my heart beating faster and my throat going dry. I was falling for somebody I'd never met, never spoken a word to in real life and who could have been a fat 50 year old guy with a warped sense of humour for all I knew.
J and me effectively just lived in the same house now. Different working hours meant meals were seldom shared and we didn't see each other much at all. My new job had me out of the country quite a bit, especially in the early months, for meetings and training. I coined a new phrase for my relationship with J, I called it my non-relationship. J worked late most nights, we swapped Mini-me when she came home if Mini-me wasn't already asleep, J went to bed and I went and turned on the PC in what was my bedroom.
The chatting with M was about everything and nothing in particular but it got more flirty quickly. I felt a really strong connection with M. She'd been through some difficult times though, life wasn't going well for her at this point. I wished I could be with her. Of course, if we'd actually met up she might have swiftly changed her mind. Apart from age, location, the fact that I was living with somebody everything was perfect. All this time our conversation took place in type. We hadn't even heard each other's voices. I suggested meeting up but with work and home life the windows available were always being pushed back. M lived far enough away that I'd have to get a flight to see her, either take a couple of days off from work or sneak away at a weekend. As time went on I realised that M was mostly sitting in, waiting to chat with me, and not getting her life back. My daughter was now 1 year old and was talking and walking and laughing and I'd got really attached to her. She knew who her daddy was now. The non-relationship with J was just that. She'd regretted me registering the birth and, as she had a green card, threatened to take Mini-me to America. I was living and working out of a spare bedroom. I didn't feel guilt towards J because we didn't have a relationship, we just lived in the same house. I felt guilty towards M though, more-so later. She knew I had a baby daughter but she didn't know I lived with someone. I was evasive about many things and she let me off the hook every time. I imagine she had a good idea but preferred not to know. Everything was a fuck up.
As the months went on I felt more and more that I could lose contact with my daughter and that M was being held back by me. The planned meet never happened, I continually deferred it. Eventually it became evident that she was starting to move on with her life and I became aware that she'd hooked up with somebody. There must have been an exchange on Messenger or by email but I can't really remember what was said. It had knocked the wind out of me. I'd been really flattered by the attention from M. She ticked all my boxes and it wasn't until it was over that I realised how much I'd cared for her. Right person, wrong place, wrong time, perhaps, perhaps not. Who knows what might have happened, it might have turned into something real, it might not. The opportunity had passed. But I missed M. It made a hole and it hurt. I'd been a fool though. When it started M was not in a good place and I wouldn't have helped that. She'd have felt rejected by me. I'd let her down.
Over the following months I tried to forget her. Part of that involved flirting with people I met here and there at work functions or going out with friends. I never did anything though, I'd realised how complicated it would have made my life and the prospect of becoming a Saturday father didn't appeal to me. It helped me move on though, feel attractive and was good therapy. Though I didn't realise it then M was to come back into my life later on.
The new job I started at the beginning of 2005 hadn't been going well. In fact me and my new boss fell out on day 1 back in January and the expectations and targets they had set for me were entirely unrealistic. Changes were due...
Monday, 18 October 2010
2003/2004
Link to the beginning of the story
All was well, panic over. J had lost quite a bit of blood and was on a drip but they wheeled her through to hold her baby for the first time. She'd be in hospital for a few days. J being J started to make work related phone calls the next day between visits. It had snowed between Christmas and New Year and I picked them up from hospital on a cold, slippery day.
I found the first 3 or 4 months tough. The baby just wanted her mum, looking at men just seemed to make her cry and J didn't give me any real time with her apart from when she worked late nights and Saturdays. From the 2nd week I took Mini-me shopping with me every Saturday. J went to bed early, she was never happy when she got home anyway, was always complaining about something as she passed over the threshold. It wasn't an altogether good atmosphere. About 3 months in we went to register the birth but J didn't want me to come. I insisted as my attendance changed my legal rights giving me full parental responsibility.
Mini-me didn't take well to sleeping in her cot, always pulled the bedclothes off and made herself cold. One night I went to check on her as normal and found her stone cold and silent. I brought her in to our bed and and woke her up which took a bit of doing and she slept between us to warm up. It had been scary for a minute or two. After that she slept in the bed with her mum. It made no difference to me anyway as we weren't making use of it ourselves. I slept in the spare room I used as an office.
The months rolled by and things stayed as they were. I saw more of Mini-me than J did and saw her first steps. At that age babies do something different, something they didn't do yesterday, every day and I got more involved. Her first word was da-da. For that reason it was an amazing time but if it hadn't been for that I wouldn't have been with J. We both knew it. Work had been going well for me over the last couple of years. I got a very decent basic and earned uncapped bonus on top. In July of 2004 work sent a group of top people away to one of the best hotels in the world, gave us spending money and made sure there was always somebody a few feet away to look after every need or whim. For that brief time we got on okay, not great but okay. As soon as we got home it went back to normal. Arguments about nothing were daily occurrences.
The summer rolled through to winter and I changed jobs again to one where they'd pay me more money for doing the same thing. Officially I was paid until 31st December but in reality I was to spend December on garden leave. J's mother always looked after Mini-me during the day and didn't want to change the routine. I spent my days tidying, doing odd jobs and reading stuff on the internet on my seldom used PC which sat on a tiny desk in what was still my office/bedroom. One day I read that Microsoft had started a new blogging service called MSN Spaces in beta. I think I got there a day after it started and fiddled around setting one up. I didn't know what I was going to do with it or what I was going to write but I had time on my hands and like to learn how things work. What harm could it do?
All was well, panic over. J had lost quite a bit of blood and was on a drip but they wheeled her through to hold her baby for the first time. She'd be in hospital for a few days. J being J started to make work related phone calls the next day between visits. It had snowed between Christmas and New Year and I picked them up from hospital on a cold, slippery day.
I found the first 3 or 4 months tough. The baby just wanted her mum, looking at men just seemed to make her cry and J didn't give me any real time with her apart from when she worked late nights and Saturdays. From the 2nd week I took Mini-me shopping with me every Saturday. J went to bed early, she was never happy when she got home anyway, was always complaining about something as she passed over the threshold. It wasn't an altogether good atmosphere. About 3 months in we went to register the birth but J didn't want me to come. I insisted as my attendance changed my legal rights giving me full parental responsibility.
Mini-me didn't take well to sleeping in her cot, always pulled the bedclothes off and made herself cold. One night I went to check on her as normal and found her stone cold and silent. I brought her in to our bed and and woke her up which took a bit of doing and she slept between us to warm up. It had been scary for a minute or two. After that she slept in the bed with her mum. It made no difference to me anyway as we weren't making use of it ourselves. I slept in the spare room I used as an office.
The months rolled by and things stayed as they were. I saw more of Mini-me than J did and saw her first steps. At that age babies do something different, something they didn't do yesterday, every day and I got more involved. Her first word was da-da. For that reason it was an amazing time but if it hadn't been for that I wouldn't have been with J. We both knew it. Work had been going well for me over the last couple of years. I got a very decent basic and earned uncapped bonus on top. In July of 2004 work sent a group of top people away to one of the best hotels in the world, gave us spending money and made sure there was always somebody a few feet away to look after every need or whim. For that brief time we got on okay, not great but okay. As soon as we got home it went back to normal. Arguments about nothing were daily occurrences.
The summer rolled through to winter and I changed jobs again to one where they'd pay me more money for doing the same thing. Officially I was paid until 31st December but in reality I was to spend December on garden leave. J's mother always looked after Mini-me during the day and didn't want to change the routine. I spent my days tidying, doing odd jobs and reading stuff on the internet on my seldom used PC which sat on a tiny desk in what was still my office/bedroom. One day I read that Microsoft had started a new blogging service called MSN Spaces in beta. I think I got there a day after it started and fiddled around setting one up. I didn't know what I was going to do with it or what I was going to write but I had time on my hands and like to learn how things work. What harm could it do?
Friday, 15 October 2010
2003
Link to the beginning of the story
I went out to buy some test kits. J did her thing and the first one was reasonably clear. We did another one. Definitely pregnant. J was in shock. Thirty eight, never really wanted kids, had an abortion in earlier years when she lived in America. She was worried she'd have to give up work. I was worried that we weren't in a particularly strong relationship, one that looked like it was supposed to be and I knew she thought that too. The thought of another termination was too much so the decision was made to have it. She didn't enjoy the pregnancy, she was used to the sort of life all career women are and this was going to stop that dead. At the same time she knew she might not have another chance to have a baby, a lot to deal with.
We lived in separate houses up until a couple of weeks before the birth though I was staying there most of the time anyway. We weren't getting on at all well, the weaknesses in our relationship all the more evident under the stresses it was now under. I'd never really wanted kids myself. It wasn't a definite no, more a someday, possibly, but then time isn't so much of an issue for a man, you never have to ultimately deal with that question.
I made Christmas Dinner that Christmas Day. We each visited our own parents, came back to her house, watched TV. J was due anytime. She went to bed that evening and I sat up to watch something. About 11.45pm J said she was hungry and asked me to make up another dinner to bring up for her. At midnight she called me, something had happened. I told her her waters had just broken and to get anything she hadn't already put in her bag, the hospital being only a few minutes away. I stayed there for a couple of hours but J didn't want me to be there. There wasn't any point anyway as, after examination, they weren't expecting anything to happen for some time. I came back in the morning and they started to induce her. Nothing was happening. Nothing much happened for most of Boxing Day and by about 6pm the staff were getting concerned. We'd got a private gynaecologist arranged for all the pre-natal stuff and the birth and were waiting for him to make a call. The baby heartbeat monitor was very erratic and I alerted the midwife and they had to quickly arrange an emergency caesarian. An hour later on Boxing night I had a baby daughter, her head temporarily deformed from getting stuck in a uterus she was just never going to have gotten out of. I'd been in the operating theatre all the way through and had seen the level of panic rise. I was ushered with baby into another room, her mother wasn't doing too well.
I sat in that adjoining room on my own, they couldn't spare anybody for me, it was all hands on deck, a crying baby in my arms, thinking that she might never know her mother. Eventually a nurse came through...
I went out to buy some test kits. J did her thing and the first one was reasonably clear. We did another one. Definitely pregnant. J was in shock. Thirty eight, never really wanted kids, had an abortion in earlier years when she lived in America. She was worried she'd have to give up work. I was worried that we weren't in a particularly strong relationship, one that looked like it was supposed to be and I knew she thought that too. The thought of another termination was too much so the decision was made to have it. She didn't enjoy the pregnancy, she was used to the sort of life all career women are and this was going to stop that dead. At the same time she knew she might not have another chance to have a baby, a lot to deal with.
We lived in separate houses up until a couple of weeks before the birth though I was staying there most of the time anyway. We weren't getting on at all well, the weaknesses in our relationship all the more evident under the stresses it was now under. I'd never really wanted kids myself. It wasn't a definite no, more a someday, possibly, but then time isn't so much of an issue for a man, you never have to ultimately deal with that question.
I made Christmas Dinner that Christmas Day. We each visited our own parents, came back to her house, watched TV. J was due anytime. She went to bed that evening and I sat up to watch something. About 11.45pm J said she was hungry and asked me to make up another dinner to bring up for her. At midnight she called me, something had happened. I told her her waters had just broken and to get anything she hadn't already put in her bag, the hospital being only a few minutes away. I stayed there for a couple of hours but J didn't want me to be there. There wasn't any point anyway as, after examination, they weren't expecting anything to happen for some time. I came back in the morning and they started to induce her. Nothing was happening. Nothing much happened for most of Boxing Day and by about 6pm the staff were getting concerned. We'd got a private gynaecologist arranged for all the pre-natal stuff and the birth and were waiting for him to make a call. The baby heartbeat monitor was very erratic and I alerted the midwife and they had to quickly arrange an emergency caesarian. An hour later on Boxing night I had a baby daughter, her head temporarily deformed from getting stuck in a uterus she was just never going to have gotten out of. I'd been in the operating theatre all the way through and had seen the level of panic rise. I was ushered with baby into another room, her mother wasn't doing too well.
I sat in that adjoining room on my own, they couldn't spare anybody for me, it was all hands on deck, a crying baby in my arms, thinking that she might never know her mother. Eventually a nurse came through...
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
2002/2003, the crash
Link to the beginning of the story
I arrived at the party with my best friend. J was a particularly attractive girl, everyone thought so. She looked younger than she was, my age, late thirties. I'd been talking to her during the evening, flitting between groups of friends, and my best mate cornered her in the living room. He really fancied her and they flirted a bit but she knew his form well and engaged me next time I came near. Before I knew it we were in her car on her way to her house. I stayed the night and most of the next day and when she gave me a lift home I felt a bit pleased with myself.
We saw each other for 2 or 3 months until she dumped me by text after she went to a friend's wedding I declined to go to. This, of course, was the point I should have walked away. But I didn't. She had met someone at the wedding, took his number, and arranged to meet him the following week. I fell apart. Couldn't sleep for weeks, not a wink, lost 2 stone in weight. The lack of sleep increased my anxiety levels further, me and rational thinking departed company. But it didn't make sense, I'd only been seeing her for a short time. I felt in pain but didn't know why and the pain never left. I went to my doctor who gave me some anti-anxiety medication and sleeping tablets and I got a number for a psychotherapist from a friend I rented a room to who had used him previously.
I felt relieved after the first meeting, started to sleep again but didn't know how I'd arrived at this point. On the second meeting we made some progress. He'd asked me what I was unhappy about and I told him "My head". I was suffering from a bit of Body Dismorphic Disorder, probably had been most of my days. I was happy with everything else but my face at times had seemed very unattractive to me. This rejection brought it to the surface. So J was my 2nd, and final, infatuation I suppose.
A few weeks and several sessions later and I felt a lot better, well even. Several people had heard about my falling apart including my ex AM in New Zealand. We talked on the phone. It hadn't been because of J, it had been down to the BDD running silently in the background. That was the transition of AM from a partner, an ex, into a friend and I felt so glad that we could do that after all. She came up trumps when I really needed someone I felt I could trust and someone that cared. There was love, it was just a different kind of love now.
In a short time I was back to myself, I stopped taking the Seroxat. I'd never taken time off work though I'd felt a terrible stigma at the thought of being mentally ill, of having broken down. I didn't talk about it in those terms then. I do now.
J had been aware of my troubles through 2nd hand information and rang me too. She came to visit and somehow we ended up back on again. We continued to see each other for a few months but I don't think it felt right for either of us. Unfortunately she looked nice and the sex was quite good even though the conversation was a bit stilted. She didn't get my sense of humour, she didn't understand a lot of what I said. In April 2003 J missed a period...
I arrived at the party with my best friend. J was a particularly attractive girl, everyone thought so. She looked younger than she was, my age, late thirties. I'd been talking to her during the evening, flitting between groups of friends, and my best mate cornered her in the living room. He really fancied her and they flirted a bit but she knew his form well and engaged me next time I came near. Before I knew it we were in her car on her way to her house. I stayed the night and most of the next day and when she gave me a lift home I felt a bit pleased with myself.
We saw each other for 2 or 3 months until she dumped me by text after she went to a friend's wedding I declined to go to. This, of course, was the point I should have walked away. But I didn't. She had met someone at the wedding, took his number, and arranged to meet him the following week. I fell apart. Couldn't sleep for weeks, not a wink, lost 2 stone in weight. The lack of sleep increased my anxiety levels further, me and rational thinking departed company. But it didn't make sense, I'd only been seeing her for a short time. I felt in pain but didn't know why and the pain never left. I went to my doctor who gave me some anti-anxiety medication and sleeping tablets and I got a number for a psychotherapist from a friend I rented a room to who had used him previously.
I felt relieved after the first meeting, started to sleep again but didn't know how I'd arrived at this point. On the second meeting we made some progress. He'd asked me what I was unhappy about and I told him "My head". I was suffering from a bit of Body Dismorphic Disorder, probably had been most of my days. I was happy with everything else but my face at times had seemed very unattractive to me. This rejection brought it to the surface. So J was my 2nd, and final, infatuation I suppose.
A few weeks and several sessions later and I felt a lot better, well even. Several people had heard about my falling apart including my ex AM in New Zealand. We talked on the phone. It hadn't been because of J, it had been down to the BDD running silently in the background. That was the transition of AM from a partner, an ex, into a friend and I felt so glad that we could do that after all. She came up trumps when I really needed someone I felt I could trust and someone that cared. There was love, it was just a different kind of love now.
In a short time I was back to myself, I stopped taking the Seroxat. I'd never taken time off work though I'd felt a terrible stigma at the thought of being mentally ill, of having broken down. I didn't talk about it in those terms then. I do now.
J had been aware of my troubles through 2nd hand information and rang me too. She came to visit and somehow we ended up back on again. We continued to see each other for a few months but I don't think it felt right for either of us. Unfortunately she looked nice and the sex was quite good even though the conversation was a bit stilted. She didn't get my sense of humour, she didn't understand a lot of what I said. In April 2003 J missed a period...
Saturday, 9 October 2010
2002 again, the lost year
Link to the beginning of the story
AOR stayed at her father's for a few weeks until he got better. We saw each other over that time. In case you were wondering I did feel guilty about the fact that she was married, even guiltier when she told me she shared everything with her mother and had told her almost straight-away what was going on. Not guilty enough to stop though. I wasn't very nice to women then. I wasn't a bastard either, everybody knew the score but I think many wanted more than I did. Even with AOR I got bored quickly. She was slightly younger but lived a life much older than I did, sensible girl. I was earning good money then and AOR had a very good job, very senior, back in England, and earned a stack more. She hinted she'd leave her partner and that I could move over to be with her but I didn't want anything long term with her. When she finally got the plane back home I deleted her number and avoided calls on the house phone.
As I said in the previous post this was a period when I lost myself. I've always been a relationship person, need a relationship, it makes me comfortable. So this wasn't me. I wasn't happy doing what I was doing. It had it's momentary excitements but most of the time I just felt alone, not close to anybody.
There were still plenty of parties going on in my circle of friends. Me and best friend had acquired a bit of a reputation by this stage though I couldn't see myself being in the same sentence with him in that regard. He was your typical alpha male, find 'em, fuck 'em, forget 'em. Very confident but like most alpha males many sociopathic traits too. A good guy, very amiable, a man's man as they say but a complete cunt with women and so good at lying that 9 out of 10 of them never even realised. He always said what they wanted to hear. When I was going out with AM he was going out with a girl and they became good friends. It was amusing to hear what he had been telling his girlfriend compared to what he was telling me. He got her pregnant just before we went travelling together at the millennium and told her to "sort it out" before he came back. He told me something different. As it happened she didn't "sort it out" and he has a son though they split up a few weeks after the birth.
Back to the parties though...it's still 2002.
One night I went to an artists' exhibition, one a friend was having. Just about everybody there knew each other and it was being organised by someone I vaguely knew, J, on behalf of the artist. She was single for the first time in years. We chatted and everybody retired to the bar. A couple of weeks later her best friend was having a birthday dinner and invited me along. She was a mutual friend. J had a habit of being invited to things but rarely coming so when the meal started a long table of 16 had me in the middle facing an empty seat. Thirty minutes later J appeared. We chatted more.
A few weeks after that another mutual friend was having a house party. She invited J and told me to make sure I didn't leave it too late before arriving from a night in the bar. I didn't...I left the bar about 10pm and when I got there J was there...
AOR stayed at her father's for a few weeks until he got better. We saw each other over that time. In case you were wondering I did feel guilty about the fact that she was married, even guiltier when she told me she shared everything with her mother and had told her almost straight-away what was going on. Not guilty enough to stop though. I wasn't very nice to women then. I wasn't a bastard either, everybody knew the score but I think many wanted more than I did. Even with AOR I got bored quickly. She was slightly younger but lived a life much older than I did, sensible girl. I was earning good money then and AOR had a very good job, very senior, back in England, and earned a stack more. She hinted she'd leave her partner and that I could move over to be with her but I didn't want anything long term with her. When she finally got the plane back home I deleted her number and avoided calls on the house phone.
As I said in the previous post this was a period when I lost myself. I've always been a relationship person, need a relationship, it makes me comfortable. So this wasn't me. I wasn't happy doing what I was doing. It had it's momentary excitements but most of the time I just felt alone, not close to anybody.
There were still plenty of parties going on in my circle of friends. Me and best friend had acquired a bit of a reputation by this stage though I couldn't see myself being in the same sentence with him in that regard. He was your typical alpha male, find 'em, fuck 'em, forget 'em. Very confident but like most alpha males many sociopathic traits too. A good guy, very amiable, a man's man as they say but a complete cunt with women and so good at lying that 9 out of 10 of them never even realised. He always said what they wanted to hear. When I was going out with AM he was going out with a girl and they became good friends. It was amusing to hear what he had been telling his girlfriend compared to what he was telling me. He got her pregnant just before we went travelling together at the millennium and told her to "sort it out" before he came back. He told me something different. As it happened she didn't "sort it out" and he has a son though they split up a few weeks after the birth.
Back to the parties though...it's still 2002.
One night I went to an artists' exhibition, one a friend was having. Just about everybody there knew each other and it was being organised by someone I vaguely knew, J, on behalf of the artist. She was single for the first time in years. We chatted and everybody retired to the bar. A couple of weeks later her best friend was having a birthday dinner and invited me along. She was a mutual friend. J had a habit of being invited to things but rarely coming so when the meal started a long table of 16 had me in the middle facing an empty seat. Thirty minutes later J appeared. We chatted more.
A few weeks after that another mutual friend was having a house party. She invited J and told me to make sure I didn't leave it too late before arriving from a night in the bar. I didn't...I left the bar about 10pm and when I got there J was there...
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
2002
Link to the beginning of the story
So AM left in late 2001. Christmas came and went, the new year. I'd been working hard, biding my time on the relationship front. I missed AM, missed not having a friend and soul-mate there. Not trying to move on, not trying not to. People kept asking me if I'd heard from her but we'd decided to avoid keeping in touch. It was much harder then anyway. I had a phone for work, AM only had a pay as you go. I had a crappy PC my brother gave me that I quickly broke through taking it apart. If you did have a PC it was on dial up. You might have had a Hotmail account. You probably didn't want to use a mobile phone abroad, even for texting.
In the town I lived everyone we knew drank in the same lively bar, knew each other. Everybody asked if I'd heard from AM, every time I went there I had the same conversation over and over, how we'd decided to call it quits and why. But as everyone that knew her also knew me I was the bar eunuch and female company kept a respectful distance, at least romantically. Well, most of them. Without the relationship I felt alone. I was gregarious, confident, socialising to the max yet very, very lonely. And I hate being lonely, it's the worst feeling in the world.
As time went on I saw people, had dalliances here and there all the time knowing in the back of my head that maybe AM would come back and we'd want to pick up the threads. At some point I heard she'd hooked up with a guy in New Zealand, steady. How was I feeling at this point? I didn't think I'd love or be loved again, that's how. Always in company but always feeling alone and I lost myself for a time after that.
I saw various women, older, younger, tall, short, several at the same time. At one point 3 in one day. Don't get me wrong, I'm no oil painting as anyone who has seen me would know, but I always seemed to pull above my weight and more often than I should.
I wasn't in a relationship with any of them though most wanted one. There was a final year university student, a woman with a son in his final year at school, a girl a year younger than me at school who I'd really fancied but couldn't make an impression on back then, some others. I thought she was gorgeous but I'd been really shy at school, only had 3 very short term girlfriends back then and left school a virgin. Obviously I wasn't that shy any more.
I met her when she came back from England to see her ill father. She was with a friend in the bar I mentioned earlier one Friday night and me and my friend took them both back to my house for a drink. She'd just got married having been with the same guy for 11 years. We had a lovely snog then she went home to her father's house. She was called AOR.
The next morning I found her coat. AOR called down later to pick it up and asked why I kissed her so I told her. Then she told me she'd left the coat there deliberately so that she could have a sober chat. I went drinking with my friend later and got home very drunk and rung her father's house after 1am. She answered and walked down to mine, only 5 minutes away. I'd left the front door open and told her that I'd be upstairs. She saw me as some sort of Don Juan, which might not have been too wide of the mark then. It was exciting for her. She was very short, about 5 ft 2, curvy, long black hair and alabaster skin. Never smoked, drank little, went to bed early, lived a sensible life, until then anyway.
So AM left in late 2001. Christmas came and went, the new year. I'd been working hard, biding my time on the relationship front. I missed AM, missed not having a friend and soul-mate there. Not trying to move on, not trying not to. People kept asking me if I'd heard from her but we'd decided to avoid keeping in touch. It was much harder then anyway. I had a phone for work, AM only had a pay as you go. I had a crappy PC my brother gave me that I quickly broke through taking it apart. If you did have a PC it was on dial up. You might have had a Hotmail account. You probably didn't want to use a mobile phone abroad, even for texting.
In the town I lived everyone we knew drank in the same lively bar, knew each other. Everybody asked if I'd heard from AM, every time I went there I had the same conversation over and over, how we'd decided to call it quits and why. But as everyone that knew her also knew me I was the bar eunuch and female company kept a respectful distance, at least romantically. Well, most of them. Without the relationship I felt alone. I was gregarious, confident, socialising to the max yet very, very lonely. And I hate being lonely, it's the worst feeling in the world.
As time went on I saw people, had dalliances here and there all the time knowing in the back of my head that maybe AM would come back and we'd want to pick up the threads. At some point I heard she'd hooked up with a guy in New Zealand, steady. How was I feeling at this point? I didn't think I'd love or be loved again, that's how. Always in company but always feeling alone and I lost myself for a time after that.
I saw various women, older, younger, tall, short, several at the same time. At one point 3 in one day. Don't get me wrong, I'm no oil painting as anyone who has seen me would know, but I always seemed to pull above my weight and more often than I should.
I wasn't in a relationship with any of them though most wanted one. There was a final year university student, a woman with a son in his final year at school, a girl a year younger than me at school who I'd really fancied but couldn't make an impression on back then, some others. I thought she was gorgeous but I'd been really shy at school, only had 3 very short term girlfriends back then and left school a virgin. Obviously I wasn't that shy any more.
I met her when she came back from England to see her ill father. She was with a friend in the bar I mentioned earlier one Friday night and me and my friend took them both back to my house for a drink. She'd just got married having been with the same guy for 11 years. We had a lovely snog then she went home to her father's house. She was called AOR.
The next morning I found her coat. AOR called down later to pick it up and asked why I kissed her so I told her. Then she told me she'd left the coat there deliberately so that she could have a sober chat. I went drinking with my friend later and got home very drunk and rung her father's house after 1am. She answered and walked down to mine, only 5 minutes away. I'd left the front door open and told her that I'd be upstairs. She saw me as some sort of Don Juan, which might not have been too wide of the mark then. It was exciting for her. She was very short, about 5 ft 2, curvy, long black hair and alabaster skin. Never smoked, drank little, went to bed early, lived a sensible life, until then anyway.
Sunday, 3 October 2010
2001
Link to the beginning of the story
I'd been here and there, travelled to many of the places I had wanted to. AM hadn't. She'd been to Australia once, the normal Mediterranean jaunts and Canada with me. Her best friend was closer to my age and wanted to take a few months out, maybe more, and needed a travel buddy so asked her. She asked if I'd go with her, take a year or best part of it off if I could. In my job they just couldn't have replaced me temporarily. If I wanted to go I'd be leaving the job behind, the car, the money and on my return it would take a long time for another similar position to come up. So for me the answer then had to be no.
AM didn't want to miss this opportunity. Why should she. She could slot back in to a similar job easily, her only fault being a lack of ambition. The time was perfect for her, she was just the wrong side of 25. I didn't try to talk her out of it. She wanted to see what was out there. She'd travel, work, travel for as long as she could, maybe a couple of years, maybe more. What then would become of us?
We both knew. We didn't want to let each other go but that was what had to happen. Neither of us could expect the other to sit on our hands for an indefinite time hoping, waiting to be reunited again one day, if indeed we were the same people wanting the same things. So we talked. There were tears, lots of them, nice ones.The next few months were filled with many party nights and the same amount of quiet, coal-filled-fire cosy nights.
AM lived with her mother just around the corner and the day she left she called round to my house for the final goodbye. We were both worried about each other and how we'd deal with the reality of the other not being there the next day. We hugged and kissed and cried and silent tears streamed down. Not much was said but the few words that were said were important ones and we each told the nicest things about the other. It was good and bad all at the same time. She left to get her lift to the airport. She didn't want me to go, her family would see her off.
It had been the best relationship I'd had, same for her. All the same, she knew the days immediately ahead would be harder for me, getting up in the same house, in the same place, everything the same except no her. And she was right...
I'd been here and there, travelled to many of the places I had wanted to. AM hadn't. She'd been to Australia once, the normal Mediterranean jaunts and Canada with me. Her best friend was closer to my age and wanted to take a few months out, maybe more, and needed a travel buddy so asked her. She asked if I'd go with her, take a year or best part of it off if I could. In my job they just couldn't have replaced me temporarily. If I wanted to go I'd be leaving the job behind, the car, the money and on my return it would take a long time for another similar position to come up. So for me the answer then had to be no.
AM didn't want to miss this opportunity. Why should she. She could slot back in to a similar job easily, her only fault being a lack of ambition. The time was perfect for her, she was just the wrong side of 25. I didn't try to talk her out of it. She wanted to see what was out there. She'd travel, work, travel for as long as she could, maybe a couple of years, maybe more. What then would become of us?
We both knew. We didn't want to let each other go but that was what had to happen. Neither of us could expect the other to sit on our hands for an indefinite time hoping, waiting to be reunited again one day, if indeed we were the same people wanting the same things. So we talked. There were tears, lots of them, nice ones.The next few months were filled with many party nights and the same amount of quiet, coal-filled-fire cosy nights.
AM lived with her mother just around the corner and the day she left she called round to my house for the final goodbye. We were both worried about each other and how we'd deal with the reality of the other not being there the next day. We hugged and kissed and cried and silent tears streamed down. Not much was said but the few words that were said were important ones and we each told the nicest things about the other. It was good and bad all at the same time. She left to get her lift to the airport. She didn't want me to go, her family would see her off.
It had been the best relationship I'd had, same for her. All the same, she knew the days immediately ahead would be harder for me, getting up in the same house, in the same place, everything the same except no her. And she was right...
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
1997 to 2001, the Red Bull years
Link to the beginning of the story
Before AM had too much time to think about it I made some plans. I told her to bring her passport but pack light. She arrived at my house with a small bag and I had 3 envelopes for her to choose from, each with a destination inside. The one she picked was for a night at an old bar/hotel nearby. We drove to the hotel where we had a meal, drinks in the bar and a lovely first proper chat. The bar closed up but the manager showed us in to a side room filled with old decor and an open fire so that we could finish our drinks in peace. It was just us and we ever so slightly took advantage of that.
Some time later we made it up the creaky stairs to an even creakier old, but comfortable, room. Everything about the night had been as I'd hoped or better. The meal was fantastic, the place, the company, the chemistry, the anticipation. It was one of those nights that was so good the memory of it would be enough to feed on for months. Me and AM continued to see each other steadily for the next 3/4 years. AM was the funniest girl I ever went out with. Sharp in every way. Gorgeous smile.
These years were the Red Bull years. A Friday night would involve me getting home from work, heating the water while I made something to eat then taking a pint of Vodka and Red Bull up to drink while I steeped in the bath listening to Radio 1's dance music booming out from downstairs. Somewhere between 8 and 9 I'd hit the bar and meet friends and AM or she'd come round as I got out of the bath and we'd head down later. There was always a lot of drink taken, invariably people would be invited back from the bar, it was a party house.
The Red Bull allowed stonking amounts of Vodka to be consumed, all the time appearing lucid. Fridays and Saturdays were much the same in that respect. On top of that were the drugs.
Those years were largely good, almost without exception. We looked forward to seeing each other, every night was a laugh. AM was my closest friend. Though never needing anyone to lean on before I was starting to enjoy revealing a bit more about me, what I thought. I started to trust her enough to show her my vulnerabilities, sides of me I had kept scrupulously private before. I was changing.
About a year into the relationship with AM I invited S over as a guest to my sister's wedding. AM would be on holiday at that time. It was a mistake of course for several reasons not least of which was that whilst I was still physically attracted to S there was no chance of this becoming anything. In my head I'd made her into something she wasn't. After that wedding I put S behind me and saw her only once more when I had to fly in to a conference in Birmingham. She asked if we could be friends, she didn't want to lose me completely but I now felt differently about her, hurt by her. I didn't need her in my life in any capacity and told her so. I now think of her as the first of my infatuations. (There are 2, so another one down the road if you read on).
That was the last I spoke to her. I haven't felt anything for her since. Nothing.
Being that I lived in a not very large town AM found out that S had been here. I got a few well deserved slaps, lots of shouting and a humiliating telling off at a party in my house, all of which I deserved. I didn't want to lose AM and made sure I didn't. As I said earlier I was changing. I liked the person with the vulnerabilities I was becoming, the person who could tell someone how they felt without it feeling like those feelings themselves were a weakness.
On the work front things were tough, I changed jobs just before the millennium to get a pay hike and easier hours and was sent on more residential training, part of which was interrupted by some travelling I'd arranged over a year earlier. The new employers were happy to accommodate. I'd been taken on to replace someone who then decided he was going to stay. Eventually that would mean the new employer had one too many people and they pulled a fast one. Luckily, and because I'm usually good at interviews, I sorted myself out with another job, got a top spec TT as a company car, more money. I had enough money to buy just about anything I wanted, go here, go there. I earned a lot more than my friends though so lived more humbly than I could afford too. The bank account got fat. I took off with some friends to see in the millennium on a castaway beach.
Life was so very, very good. Hard work during the week, drink and drug fuelled weekends. Lots of time with someone I felt really comfortable with, loved.
Then one night, in late 2001, AM said that she wanted to go travelling...
Before AM had too much time to think about it I made some plans. I told her to bring her passport but pack light. She arrived at my house with a small bag and I had 3 envelopes for her to choose from, each with a destination inside. The one she picked was for a night at an old bar/hotel nearby. We drove to the hotel where we had a meal, drinks in the bar and a lovely first proper chat. The bar closed up but the manager showed us in to a side room filled with old decor and an open fire so that we could finish our drinks in peace. It was just us and we ever so slightly took advantage of that.
Some time later we made it up the creaky stairs to an even creakier old, but comfortable, room. Everything about the night had been as I'd hoped or better. The meal was fantastic, the place, the company, the chemistry, the anticipation. It was one of those nights that was so good the memory of it would be enough to feed on for months. Me and AM continued to see each other steadily for the next 3/4 years. AM was the funniest girl I ever went out with. Sharp in every way. Gorgeous smile.
These years were the Red Bull years. A Friday night would involve me getting home from work, heating the water while I made something to eat then taking a pint of Vodka and Red Bull up to drink while I steeped in the bath listening to Radio 1's dance music booming out from downstairs. Somewhere between 8 and 9 I'd hit the bar and meet friends and AM or she'd come round as I got out of the bath and we'd head down later. There was always a lot of drink taken, invariably people would be invited back from the bar, it was a party house.
The Red Bull allowed stonking amounts of Vodka to be consumed, all the time appearing lucid. Fridays and Saturdays were much the same in that respect. On top of that were the drugs.
Those years were largely good, almost without exception. We looked forward to seeing each other, every night was a laugh. AM was my closest friend. Though never needing anyone to lean on before I was starting to enjoy revealing a bit more about me, what I thought. I started to trust her enough to show her my vulnerabilities, sides of me I had kept scrupulously private before. I was changing.
About a year into the relationship with AM I invited S over as a guest to my sister's wedding. AM would be on holiday at that time. It was a mistake of course for several reasons not least of which was that whilst I was still physically attracted to S there was no chance of this becoming anything. In my head I'd made her into something she wasn't. After that wedding I put S behind me and saw her only once more when I had to fly in to a conference in Birmingham. She asked if we could be friends, she didn't want to lose me completely but I now felt differently about her, hurt by her. I didn't need her in my life in any capacity and told her so. I now think of her as the first of my infatuations. (There are 2, so another one down the road if you read on).
That was the last I spoke to her. I haven't felt anything for her since. Nothing.
Being that I lived in a not very large town AM found out that S had been here. I got a few well deserved slaps, lots of shouting and a humiliating telling off at a party in my house, all of which I deserved. I didn't want to lose AM and made sure I didn't. As I said earlier I was changing. I liked the person with the vulnerabilities I was becoming, the person who could tell someone how they felt without it feeling like those feelings themselves were a weakness.
On the work front things were tough, I changed jobs just before the millennium to get a pay hike and easier hours and was sent on more residential training, part of which was interrupted by some travelling I'd arranged over a year earlier. The new employers were happy to accommodate. I'd been taken on to replace someone who then decided he was going to stay. Eventually that would mean the new employer had one too many people and they pulled a fast one. Luckily, and because I'm usually good at interviews, I sorted myself out with another job, got a top spec TT as a company car, more money. I had enough money to buy just about anything I wanted, go here, go there. I earned a lot more than my friends though so lived more humbly than I could afford too. The bank account got fat. I took off with some friends to see in the millennium on a castaway beach.
Life was so very, very good. Hard work during the week, drink and drug fuelled weekends. Lots of time with someone I felt really comfortable with, loved.
Then one night, in late 2001, AM said that she wanted to go travelling...
Saturday, 25 September 2010
1997
Link to the beginning of the story
S cried. She couldn't do this. She couldn't move. I was devastated. I kept thinking about the summer, all those weeks, her smile, the laughs, the out of this world sex. I couldn't stop myself thinking about her. I kept ringing her or her me. She told me she still loved me but she had feelings for her boyfriend too. Classic head-fuck on the way, you saw that one coming. I got on a plane and met her. We went back to her place, talked, shagged, talked some more, flew home, all in a day. The weeks turned into months and I wouldn't let go. We talked often on the phone, met up occasionally in different places. She said she needed more time. Obviously I should have walked away. Me, former IceKing, was getting seriously fucked up and emotional. She wrote me letters, sent me presents, told me what I wanted to hear and I let her slowly destroy me over the following year. On one occasion I went to see her I went to a bar with her and her boyfriend, him thinking I was just a work colleague from that course months ago. I was staying the night in their spare room and ended up managing a bottle and a half of vodka plus what I'd had earlier on and all the paracetamol I could find. In the morning I woke up in a lot of pain and my head and my liver stang for days. Nobody ever knew, just me. If I'd died the cause of death would have been listed as "drunken stupidity" and been the grossest understatement ever made.
That won't ever happen again. I hadn't wanted to kill myself. I didn't even do it for attention, I told nobody. It was just a realisation of lying in the next room and the thought "Why the fuck, given everything, am I in this house?" hitting me like a sledgehammer.
Over that year I'd became a sullen, unmotivated, emotional bag of shite, a mirror image of my former self. This was the first time I'd been rejected by anybody that I'd cared about. I didn't like it. I didn't know how to deal with it, clearly. It's probably the most embarrassing part of my life to look back on. I'd been rocked out of the dull existence I'd let myself fall into, was coping with a change of career which I found unsettling and was heavily in lust with an Amazonian beauty. That plus a heavy dose of push me-pull me rejection were enough to send my thinking up my arse.
Obviously I then started to see sense. I went out drinking with some friends regularly, started to meet people again. I stopped ringing S then though the story with S isn't quite finished yet. I'll come back to that somewhere down the line.
One of those people I met was a smiley, cheeky, funny, in-your-face, feisty Indian waitress called AM. We drank in the same bar, we hit it off straight away. She had lovely skin, a very good head on her shoulders and certainly didn't seem 22. Age is an irrelevance to me, the other factors aren't though.
The night we met we went back to my house, 5 minutes from her house and the bar, for a late drink. I didn't know if she was more interested in the drink or me and I still wasn't completely back to my normal self from the S episode so presumed nothing. After some more vodka and Red Bull we kissed and went to bed, nothing you could call sex though. In the morning I asked if she wanted to meet again. She'd think about it...
S cried. She couldn't do this. She couldn't move. I was devastated. I kept thinking about the summer, all those weeks, her smile, the laughs, the out of this world sex. I couldn't stop myself thinking about her. I kept ringing her or her me. She told me she still loved me but she had feelings for her boyfriend too. Classic head-fuck on the way, you saw that one coming. I got on a plane and met her. We went back to her place, talked, shagged, talked some more, flew home, all in a day. The weeks turned into months and I wouldn't let go. We talked often on the phone, met up occasionally in different places. She said she needed more time. Obviously I should have walked away. Me, former IceKing, was getting seriously fucked up and emotional. She wrote me letters, sent me presents, told me what I wanted to hear and I let her slowly destroy me over the following year. On one occasion I went to see her I went to a bar with her and her boyfriend, him thinking I was just a work colleague from that course months ago. I was staying the night in their spare room and ended up managing a bottle and a half of vodka plus what I'd had earlier on and all the paracetamol I could find. In the morning I woke up in a lot of pain and my head and my liver stang for days. Nobody ever knew, just me. If I'd died the cause of death would have been listed as "drunken stupidity" and been the grossest understatement ever made.
That won't ever happen again. I hadn't wanted to kill myself. I didn't even do it for attention, I told nobody. It was just a realisation of lying in the next room and the thought "Why the fuck, given everything, am I in this house?" hitting me like a sledgehammer.
Over that year I'd became a sullen, unmotivated, emotional bag of shite, a mirror image of my former self. This was the first time I'd been rejected by anybody that I'd cared about. I didn't like it. I didn't know how to deal with it, clearly. It's probably the most embarrassing part of my life to look back on. I'd been rocked out of the dull existence I'd let myself fall into, was coping with a change of career which I found unsettling and was heavily in lust with an Amazonian beauty. That plus a heavy dose of push me-pull me rejection were enough to send my thinking up my arse.
Obviously I then started to see sense. I went out drinking with some friends regularly, started to meet people again. I stopped ringing S then though the story with S isn't quite finished yet. I'll come back to that somewhere down the line.
One of those people I met was a smiley, cheeky, funny, in-your-face, feisty Indian waitress called AM. We drank in the same bar, we hit it off straight away. She had lovely skin, a very good head on her shoulders and certainly didn't seem 22. Age is an irrelevance to me, the other factors aren't though.
The night we met we went back to my house, 5 minutes from her house and the bar, for a late drink. I didn't know if she was more interested in the drink or me and I still wasn't completely back to my normal self from the S episode so presumed nothing. After some more vodka and Red Bull we kissed and went to bed, nothing you could call sex though. In the morning I asked if she wanted to meet again. She'd think about it...
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
Summer 1996
Link to the beginning of the story
I said she was stunning. She'd done some modelling for a few years. She was 5' 11", had perfect skin, was intelligent and funny. Everybody noticed her. She must have felt like she was the North Pole. Wherever she was it seemed that everyone else was facing towards her, magnetically attracted.
I got my Sunday flight the following week, then a taxi to the training venue. Everybody else drove to the venue on Monday mornings. I sat in the bar on my own and fiddled with my new Nokia 1611 phone (mobiles were a novelty back then and took credit card sized SIMs). There were 5 days of training ahead.
On Monday morning everyone else arrived. We were divided into groups and I ended up in the same one as S. During the week we became buddies and one night sat up in the bar after others had gone to bed. In fact we'd left the group to go up to the bar and never came back. They went to bed, it was just us, perched on bar stools, and the waitress, left. As we chatted the eye contact got stronger, we altered positions until we were so close our legs were touching. I lent in, she lent in, we kissed. The waitress had been disappearing out the back periodically, restocking. When she was at the bar we chatted, when she went out the back it went quiet. Knowingly, she set us up some free drinks and left. Me and S went to her room. I left at 7am having not slept. The die was cast.
That week was a heady week and others would follow. Skipped lunches with our colleagues, flimsy excuses of phone calls to be made, liaisons in the bedrooms and training rooms dodging the maids and back to the afternoon classes. In the evenings there were carefully choreographed solo departures from the bar. Every week I'd get left back to the airport by S and picked up again by her on Sundays listening to this band called Oasis. We'd go to her flat, mess about, travel to the training site where we would be the only Sunday night guests, have a couple of drinks and get into bed and into each other's arms. Sometimes we'd leave out the drinks.
Her new boyfriend was just about to move in to her flat, I had a partner at home, and none of it mattered. We were both a bit overtaken but neither of us were looking further ahead than the next week. She was smart, funny, sexy, the sex between us was the best I'd ever had, she couldn't have ticked any more boxes than she did.
A couple of weeks later and halfway through the course we were in bed and, at THE moment, she said "I love you". I wasn't expecting it and I didn't reciprocate because I didn't use that word. Before then the fact that I needed a plane to get here and she didn't had meant that neither of us were thinking that way. But in that moment it changed.
Was this love? Was it lust, I'd assumed it was mostly lust but now I started to question myself. From that point on we started to have conversations. What did we want to do?
I thought it best that we get home, get back to our lives and see how we felt in a month, my logical, controlled brain determining the sensible path. On that last Friday afternoon we drove to a bar near the airport, held each other, said little. She cried, I didn't. Still Mr SuperCool. It was the end of summer and I was due to go on a holiday to Barbados in 2 weeks, with my partner of course. I told S I wouldn't cancel it but if I had the choice I'd want to be going with S instead. Of course I did have that choice, I just didn't make it.
I was like a bear with a sore head until and during the holiday. I avoided any intimacy with my partner, C. When I got home from holiday I knew what I would do. I rang S from a payphone on holiday and she cried. When I got home S was undecided about what to do. She asked me not to leave my relationship because of her but it was, and had been, dead for some time. I helped my partner, C, get somewhere to live, gave her some money and furniture. She begged to stay, keep things going but there was nothing to keep going. I felt terrible. I felt guilty.
It took a month to sort out and when it was done I rang S again to tell her...
I said she was stunning. She'd done some modelling for a few years. She was 5' 11", had perfect skin, was intelligent and funny. Everybody noticed her. She must have felt like she was the North Pole. Wherever she was it seemed that everyone else was facing towards her, magnetically attracted.
I got my Sunday flight the following week, then a taxi to the training venue. Everybody else drove to the venue on Monday mornings. I sat in the bar on my own and fiddled with my new Nokia 1611 phone (mobiles were a novelty back then and took credit card sized SIMs). There were 5 days of training ahead.
On Monday morning everyone else arrived. We were divided into groups and I ended up in the same one as S. During the week we became buddies and one night sat up in the bar after others had gone to bed. In fact we'd left the group to go up to the bar and never came back. They went to bed, it was just us, perched on bar stools, and the waitress, left. As we chatted the eye contact got stronger, we altered positions until we were so close our legs were touching. I lent in, she lent in, we kissed. The waitress had been disappearing out the back periodically, restocking. When she was at the bar we chatted, when she went out the back it went quiet. Knowingly, she set us up some free drinks and left. Me and S went to her room. I left at 7am having not slept. The die was cast.
That week was a heady week and others would follow. Skipped lunches with our colleagues, flimsy excuses of phone calls to be made, liaisons in the bedrooms and training rooms dodging the maids and back to the afternoon classes. In the evenings there were carefully choreographed solo departures from the bar. Every week I'd get left back to the airport by S and picked up again by her on Sundays listening to this band called Oasis. We'd go to her flat, mess about, travel to the training site where we would be the only Sunday night guests, have a couple of drinks and get into bed and into each other's arms. Sometimes we'd leave out the drinks.
Her new boyfriend was just about to move in to her flat, I had a partner at home, and none of it mattered. We were both a bit overtaken but neither of us were looking further ahead than the next week. She was smart, funny, sexy, the sex between us was the best I'd ever had, she couldn't have ticked any more boxes than she did.
A couple of weeks later and halfway through the course we were in bed and, at THE moment, she said "I love you". I wasn't expecting it and I didn't reciprocate because I didn't use that word. Before then the fact that I needed a plane to get here and she didn't had meant that neither of us were thinking that way. But in that moment it changed.
Was this love? Was it lust, I'd assumed it was mostly lust but now I started to question myself. From that point on we started to have conversations. What did we want to do?
I thought it best that we get home, get back to our lives and see how we felt in a month, my logical, controlled brain determining the sensible path. On that last Friday afternoon we drove to a bar near the airport, held each other, said little. She cried, I didn't. Still Mr SuperCool. It was the end of summer and I was due to go on a holiday to Barbados in 2 weeks, with my partner of course. I told S I wouldn't cancel it but if I had the choice I'd want to be going with S instead. Of course I did have that choice, I just didn't make it.
I was like a bear with a sore head until and during the holiday. I avoided any intimacy with my partner, C. When I got home from holiday I knew what I would do. I rang S from a payphone on holiday and she cried. When I got home S was undecided about what to do. She asked me not to leave my relationship because of her but it was, and had been, dead for some time. I helped my partner, C, get somewhere to live, gave her some money and furniture. She begged to stay, keep things going but there was nothing to keep going. I felt terrible. I felt guilty.
It took a month to sort out and when it was done I rang S again to tell her...
Sunday, 19 September 2010
mid 90s
Link to the beginning of the story
I'll start my story here. Mid-nineties I had a career change. Up until then I'd managed retail outlets, managed a lot of people, got reasonably well paid. As a consequence I always had money in my pocket but lived a quiet life for the most part. In the retail world Sunday shopping had just come in and it meant that I was usually working 70 hour weeks. It was too much effort for too little life and a change was needed.
At heart I'm a relationship sort of person and I'd been in several over the previous few years, finding myself in another one soon after the previous had ended. Sometimes there were overlaps. I didn't seem to have a lot of trouble attracting the opposite sex. But for now I was with someone, C, and we'd been living together for 3 or 4 years. How that came about was more by accident than design. She had got herself into money trouble and her family lived a long way away. It was a mistake, of course, as events would later reveal. Initially we got together through me stealing her off a friend, she'd only seen him once or twice so nobody fell out, but it wasn't something I was proud of.
Back then I was cool character. Very controlled, very disciplined. I said little and gleaned a lot and that usually gave me the advantage over others in work. I worked smarter than other people and usually quite a bit harder. I was considered the best among my peers and had the respect of many and envy of more and there many wanting to knock me off my pedestal.
Outside of work the coolness was apparent too. I'd never told anyone I loved them at that point. To me the love word was to be used sparingly if at all. Both my father and grandfather were stern types, not known for their softness. Maybe you could say my male role models were not the touchy-feely type and that had permeated down to me. I don't blame them, that's just how it was for them. Men were men.
So, in my relationship with C I was this strong provider, apparently without weakness. She was dependant on me financially and emotionally. I lifted her up when she was down, wound her up and set her going again every time she needed it, which was often. I didn't need any such input from her, I was a doer, successful, always able to set myself right without help from anybody else. She saw a future with me. As time went on, however, I didn't see a future with her but I felt a responsibility to her. She kept letting down her friends and became practically friendless as a result and my importance to her became ever bigger. It got to a point where she started to resent me having time with my friends. She became jealous and accusatory. I had a lot of female friends who were just that, friends. She thought several times I'd been dipping elsewhere. I hadn't but eventually she would prove herself right on that one. Later.
Right now I didn't want her here but she had no friends, no family close that could take her in. I'm sure I must have let this go on for over a year or so.
As said earlier I took a decision to change career. That involved some long term residential training in England. Each Sunday I would get a BA business class flight over to Birmingham, sometimes the only person on the plane, and return the following Friday.
The first week of training started on a Tuesday and was only 3 days long. On that first day a tall, tanned girl caught my eye, I'll call her S. She was extremely attractive but more importantly sexy. When class was over and meals taken, everyone from our group retired to the bar to make informal introductions. It was an in-house training facility so certain things were off limits and made plain in some written material handed out. Relationships between employees was a no-no of the highest order. The amount you spent at the bar was monitored. If conduct was not how they wanted employment would be immediately terminated and you'd be sent home.
Over the next 2 or 3 days we kept seeming to be sitting in each other's company, in class, at meals, in the bar. I made her laugh, she made me smile. Christ, if I lived here I'd take a shot at her I thought. I was 32, she was a wise, confident, older in all ways, 23. And stunning...
I'll start my story here. Mid-nineties I had a career change. Up until then I'd managed retail outlets, managed a lot of people, got reasonably well paid. As a consequence I always had money in my pocket but lived a quiet life for the most part. In the retail world Sunday shopping had just come in and it meant that I was usually working 70 hour weeks. It was too much effort for too little life and a change was needed.
At heart I'm a relationship sort of person and I'd been in several over the previous few years, finding myself in another one soon after the previous had ended. Sometimes there were overlaps. I didn't seem to have a lot of trouble attracting the opposite sex. But for now I was with someone, C, and we'd been living together for 3 or 4 years. How that came about was more by accident than design. She had got herself into money trouble and her family lived a long way away. It was a mistake, of course, as events would later reveal. Initially we got together through me stealing her off a friend, she'd only seen him once or twice so nobody fell out, but it wasn't something I was proud of.
Back then I was cool character. Very controlled, very disciplined. I said little and gleaned a lot and that usually gave me the advantage over others in work. I worked smarter than other people and usually quite a bit harder. I was considered the best among my peers and had the respect of many and envy of more and there many wanting to knock me off my pedestal.
Outside of work the coolness was apparent too. I'd never told anyone I loved them at that point. To me the love word was to be used sparingly if at all. Both my father and grandfather were stern types, not known for their softness. Maybe you could say my male role models were not the touchy-feely type and that had permeated down to me. I don't blame them, that's just how it was for them. Men were men.
So, in my relationship with C I was this strong provider, apparently without weakness. She was dependant on me financially and emotionally. I lifted her up when she was down, wound her up and set her going again every time she needed it, which was often. I didn't need any such input from her, I was a doer, successful, always able to set myself right without help from anybody else. She saw a future with me. As time went on, however, I didn't see a future with her but I felt a responsibility to her. She kept letting down her friends and became practically friendless as a result and my importance to her became ever bigger. It got to a point where she started to resent me having time with my friends. She became jealous and accusatory. I had a lot of female friends who were just that, friends. She thought several times I'd been dipping elsewhere. I hadn't but eventually she would prove herself right on that one. Later.
Right now I didn't want her here but she had no friends, no family close that could take her in. I'm sure I must have let this go on for over a year or so.
As said earlier I took a decision to change career. That involved some long term residential training in England. Each Sunday I would get a BA business class flight over to Birmingham, sometimes the only person on the plane, and return the following Friday.
The first week of training started on a Tuesday and was only 3 days long. On that first day a tall, tanned girl caught my eye, I'll call her S. She was extremely attractive but more importantly sexy. When class was over and meals taken, everyone from our group retired to the bar to make informal introductions. It was an in-house training facility so certain things were off limits and made plain in some written material handed out. Relationships between employees was a no-no of the highest order. The amount you spent at the bar was monitored. If conduct was not how they wanted employment would be immediately terminated and you'd be sent home.
Over the next 2 or 3 days we kept seeming to be sitting in each other's company, in class, at meals, in the bar. I made her laugh, she made me smile. Christ, if I lived here I'd take a shot at her I thought. I was 32, she was a wise, confident, older in all ways, 23. And stunning...
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Something about me
Click here and read this post first. You'll get back to this post from a link there.
Today I've been thinking about what I'm going to write. I said I'd maybe tell something about me, and I will. I'm working out where to start, where to finish. What to leave out, what to put in. I don't know how long it will take me. I've a lot of things to sort out over the next few weeks and months which will become evident. There will be several posts and they won't be my normal 11 word ones, a bit longer. As I write this in draft I think I'll be covering from the mid-nineties up to present day. It'll be a cathartic cliché, a reveal, and will be as uncomfortable to read at times as it will be for me to write. When I've finished, presuming I get that far, I'll hang up my hat.
I've fiddled with blogs for 5 or so years. I'm not a blogger though. Bloggers can write, they usually do so everyday and they've got something to write about. They also make proper use of grammar and punctuation, something I seem to have long since forgot. Back in 2004 when I first started typing I had a period of about 2 seconds where I thought I could write but quickly realised my talents lay elsewhere. Didn't stop me spluttering posts out though as I had too much time on my hands and like to get rid of the negative in my life with a gripe. Mentally, I'm like a car that can run on the merest hint of fumes so a handful of commenters was all the encouragement I needed.
So, instalment 1 being cooked.
Today I've been thinking about what I'm going to write. I said I'd maybe tell something about me, and I will. I'm working out where to start, where to finish. What to leave out, what to put in. I don't know how long it will take me. I've a lot of things to sort out over the next few weeks and months which will become evident. There will be several posts and they won't be my normal 11 word ones, a bit longer. As I write this in draft I think I'll be covering from the mid-nineties up to present day. It'll be a cathartic cliché, a reveal, and will be as uncomfortable to read at times as it will be for me to write. When I've finished, presuming I get that far, I'll hang up my hat.
I've fiddled with blogs for 5 or so years. I'm not a blogger though. Bloggers can write, they usually do so everyday and they've got something to write about. They also make proper use of grammar and punctuation, something I seem to have long since forgot. Back in 2004 when I first started typing I had a period of about 2 seconds where I thought I could write but quickly realised my talents lay elsewhere. Didn't stop me spluttering posts out though as I had too much time on my hands and like to get rid of the negative in my life with a gripe. Mentally, I'm like a car that can run on the merest hint of fumes so a handful of commenters was all the encouragement I needed.
So, instalment 1 being cooked.
Monday, 13 September 2010
Telling time
Nobody knows me here. At least nobody that knows me in real life. None of them read this. For years I worried that someone, no-one in particular, just someone, would connect here (or previous incarnations) with me. The real me. But nobody knows who I am. Maybe I should tell a bit more...
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