Category: very old blogging

from my horoscope for today: “Do something out of the ordinary with a friend tonight. You are ready for someone to convince you to try something different. Don’t worry about what everyone will think, just do it!” hmmmmmm.

Sunday night review of the weekend: how many of my objectives have I achieved?
– fixing washing machine – failed. Indesit sent the wrong part. guh.
– doing laundry – achieved. Took my laundry over to my parents and did it there – hopefully by tomorrow it will all be dry and I’ll be able to bring it back. That should give me enough to keep me going until I get my machine fixed.
– drinking beer – achieved. Friday night I met up with Sacha, Tanya, Fi, Nick and Nick’s fiancee Anne, as well as bumping into Leigh and also James W. We went to the Dolphin and Anchor, which was particularly cold and unwelcoming, and then came back here (my place) afterwards.
– going to dinner – achieved. And what a night that proved to be. But all you need to know is that we met at Sadlers for beer, moved to ASK for food, and then ended the evening in Woodies. After Woodies, we went out to Thursdays nightclub, which isn’t usually an experience I enjoy, but it wasn’t too bad, and it was Tanya’s birthday after all. In the end, I ended up back at Ian’s talking about life, drawing and the graphic novel until around 5.30am (walking through the empty streets of Chichester on a damp, drizzly, foggy night, whilst quite pissed and feeling very mournful is about the best mood enhancer I know – I once made a compilation tape to listen to in the car and called in “Late at Night and It’s Raining”, just for when I was in that sort of mood – must dig it out!). So today has been shot to pieces as I didn’t get out of bed until 12.30, which is almost unheard of for me.
– going for walk – failed. The plan had been that Sarah, DAGS and I would go for a stroll on the Downs today and have lunch in a pub somewhere, but the weather wasn’t very inspiring (steady rain and very low cloud), so we decided to go for lunch instead. We went to The Vestry in Southgate, my first time, and had a pretty good lunch. Naturally we sat and chewed things over – it seems that we can’t do anything much else lately.
– college reading stuff – failed so far. Might do some in a while. Have been and purchased the new text that I need to read, so that is something I guess.
– missing Andrea – achieved, needless to say.
– trying to get back on my feet – failed mostly.
It all just keeps running round and round and round inside my head. Things like the thought of the two of them going to the pub together and spending the night together just make me feel nauseous – literally. I’m still so very hurt by the whole thing, that it’s hard to feel any other way.
Sarah went to visit Kev on Saturday, and Andrea was there. She (Sarah) phoned and told me as I was walking around Waitrose, and I had to go and hide by “margerine and butter” whilst I composed myself – it doesn’t look good to walk through “cheese and yogurt” with tears running down your cheeks.
A few things have come to mind – I’m single now, I can’t really see much chance of Andrea ever come back to me (but GOD – I’d give ANYTHING to make that happen). So, with being single and lonely, I guess it’s time to start looking for someone new. At the dinner at ASK, I met Tanya’s neighbour Jodie, who is very pretty. We sat opposite each other for the meal, and chatted extensively. As you might expect, I was flirting away, and was doing quite well (or so I thought) until she said “Well, I’ve just started seeing this new bloke….” which I took as a sign. Hey-ho.
Of course, going out with anyone at the moment would be an absolutely disastrous thing to do – I’m still in love with Andrea, and all I’m really looking for is a bit of company and possibly even a touch of revenge (although I’m not sure exactly what sort of revenge that would be). The thing I miss most of all is having someone to share things with (all I have now is you, dear invisible, unknown reader) – I had been looking forward to dinner last night for a couple of weeks, and it should have been something I’d been sharing with Andrea, with my best mate there too. But I’ve been dumped by one and betrayed by the other, and now they are “seeing” one another. ack. Having a new girlfriend would certainly give me some sort of “defence” when eventually I do meet them again (which I know will happen sooner or later and is something that makes me sick with apprehension), but at the moment I’m quite happy to avoid them – I even have an escape plan should they come into Woodies whilst I am there. Of course, if I did have a new girlfriend and used her in that way, it would be utterly utterly unfair, and not really the way I work.
It isn’t just the special occasions that I miss sharing with Andrea, it’s the everyday things too – sharing meals, sharing a steaming scented bath, listening together to the very good Doves album which I bought just the night before we split and will now always be associated in my head with a time of sadness, meeting up with Sarah and DAGS for lunch (the conversation would certainly have been different!), and, yes, sharing our bed and waking together in the morning. My flat is only small, yet it seems incredibly big and empty without her here.
So what now? Should I keep chuntering on about it on my website on a daily basis until everyone stops feeling sorry for me? I know it may not appear that way, but I am actually trying to be upward and forward looking, whilst dealing with the whole thing from inside, and quite a few people have said that I’m handling things amazingly well – I met a friend in the street yesterday, and she said that I was “surprisingly perky when all things are considered”, which I took to be a good thing. At least I’m like that on the outside.
And then there is the book idea – looks to me like this would make a great story, although possibly a bit Mills+Boon-ish. But then, if it was proper Mills+Boon, the boy always gets the girl in the end, and that seems unlikely from my perspective at the moment.
I jest.
oh I don’t know. I’m quite taken with Gemma’s new beginnings idea. DAGS is going to keep an eye open for any suitable job opportunities in marketing at IBM. Charlotte (from college) is doing a similar thing at Zurich. But somehow those things seem a bit more temporal, and may not necessarily help with the more emotional issues that I’ve got to deal with. So in the end, we end up coming back round to “time”. guh. At least a new job would give me more money, which would be a major-league boost at the moment, as the finances are precarious to say the least.
Maybe just thinking less and doing more might be a good thing.
Either way, I’m going to go and do some reading now – not the college books, as my mind is just not ready to deal with them. Nope, it’s going to be Memoirs of a Geisha, which is a very splendid book, and is certainly keeping my mind full at the moment.

time to head off for the weekend. planned for this weekend: fixing washing machine (assuming correct part has been sent); doing laundry (subject to the first one); drinking beer (assuming favourable circumstances); going to dinner; going for a walk; missing Andrea enormously; trying to get back on my feet; college reading stuff.
I’ll let you know on Monday how many of these are actually achieved.

this morning I have a hangover.
and yes, I miss Andrea incredibly. I would *still* do anything to get her back, which might seem surprising to some observers, but she is an amazing person. *sigh*

post-pub blogging is always a dangerous thing to do, but here goes anyway….
in answer to my dear friend Robyn‘s ponderings, Deckert’s first name was Frank. I know because I flicked through the book once whilst in Borders in Brighton, so therefore I am an authority. And, yes, I was disappointed too.
Tonight, I had a brilliant evening thanks to DA, DAGS, Kearn, Paul F and James W, with support from Claudette and Kristian – occasionally it is really good to know who your friends are. Unfortunately the college crowd couldn’t make it in the end, but we plan a drinks session for a couple of weeks time. I’m in a much better mood now, although I seriously still miss Andrea. But, hey, I don’t think that she is ever going to come back to me, so maybe it is time to be more forward looking. And thanks to Sarah P too, for being cheery in the text message department.
Obviously I’ll be as miserable as sin tomorrow when I’m in hangover central, but I’m making the most of this whilst it lasts.
Also, kudos to Tom for mentioning Carolus Linneaus, bane of the life of any horticulturalist like me.
And, interestingly, since everything involving Andrea blew up, and word spread that I had blogged it, I have received two requests for paid work to design/construct websites – for money! As someone who has only ever designed websites as an aside to proper work or as a glorified hobby, this is hugely flattering, and something I may just take up (after not a little consideration).

I keep having the most horrible thoughts. The ones that go: “have they slept together yet?” “have they been out together?” “where did they go?” “what did they do?”
I know these thoughts are not helping, but I can’t stop them – I push them out of mind and they just find their way back in when I’m not looking.

Another thought which I’ve been pondering for the last few days is the position that my poor friends find themselves in. They have all been brilliant and really supportive, and can totally understand how and why I feel like I do. But equally they are caught between a rock and a hard place at the moment. I don’t envy them at all.

I still haven’t told my parents the whole story – they don’t know about the Kev element yet. I’ll have to, somewhen.

god, this is so hard. I keep catching myself falling into a bit of a trap of self pity, which is incredibly easy to do, and I’m trying to avoid it. I know that if I do fall too far into that trap, I’m just going to piss people off.
Last night wasn’t easy. It was my first night back at college for the new term. I’d already let Heather, Leigh and Charlotte know (by e-mail) what was going on and not to expect me to be too cheerful. Inevitably there was lots of catching up to be done – none of us had seen each other for a month. We had a new tutor (Sandy) who is quite a laugh and there were a few jokes flying around. But there were hard moments too – Libby has got engaged over the Christmas period, which is really great but made me feel a bit sorry for myself. Then there was a discussion of peak business times during the year for the legal profession, and how they are always busy after Christmas dealing with relationships breaking up. I know these are stupid little things, but at the moment, some stupid little things can seem quite big.
We’re going to go for a drink tonight after college, which will be good. It’ll save me going straight home, as that was one of the worst bits last night – I’m so used to going home from college and finding Andrea there waiting. Not that we ever did anything great or spectacular after I’d been to college – usually I just cooked our dinner and we went to bed. But I couldn’t help but think that that is not going to happen any more.
Food is an issue too at the moment. I have never been very good at cooking for one – not the actual cooking, but the quantities – cooking for two is so much easier. Since last Thursday (yes, one week today – only a week! it feels like years) I’ve eaten much less than normal – I’ve been trying to control my weight a bit anyway, so it’s good news on that score. I just have a problem with cooking anything. Last night was the first time I actually cooked much – reheated some veal escalopes (which weren’t very nice) and did some vegetables. Then when it was ready, I just picked at it.
I guess it’s just that I’ve got so used to doing everything with Andrea, all those little everyday things that normally you don’t think about, that doing anything on my own is a struggle and brings back memories. Last night I sat with my dinner, looking across the table to where she used to sit.
OK – I am wallowing now. It’s not helping me. It’s probably pissing you off. I’ll try and stop it.
At least I’ve got some work done this morning.

some semblance of normal blogging service: a TPL update: 20 points, taking my total to 575. Not a great week. Hughes transferred out, Hreidarsson in.

Further thanks for kind messages. There are some kind and generous people out there, including “real” friends, “virtual” friends and people I’ve never heard from before.
One or two people, including at least one of my “real” friends, have questioned the wisdom of relating the whole thing on my blog. I guess they are wondering who I hope will read it. Well, I guess I’ve written it as much for myself as anyone – it has been a cathartic exercise, and has helped me build a better picture in my mind of what has happened (although whether that has helped is a matter for conjecture). I suppose I also think that the people involved and my friends will read it too. One of the reasons for that is that I find it easier to write down what I really feel than to say it – I’m just a bit emotionally damaged at the moment, and I’m frightened that what comes out of my mouth may not be what is in my heart and mind. The long post I wrote yesterday took me nearly two hours to compile – I wrote bits, deleted them, read it through umpteen times, re-edited it, re-read it – over and over and over. I even thought about deleting the whole thing, and writing something about the weather, or posting a few links to Romania stories on Ananova. But I’m sure that what I wrote there is what I truly feel, hurtful as parts of it may seem.
Other people have said that time will heal. Well, I guess that can be true, but scars sometimes linger. I think back to the last time that someone I really loved broke up with me (and I didn’t love her anything like as much as I love Andrea), even though that is now nearly four years ago, the scars are still there. This time the wounds are deeper and have been inflicted twice over. One or two people have written to tell me of similar experiences in their lives – I know I am not unique. I guess that helps, but I’m not yet sure how.
There is nothing that I have written here that Andrea did not already know – including my feelings about Kev. If I learnt anything about Andrea in the time we were together, it is that me saying anything that is intended to deter her from her chosen path will serve only to make her more determined to follow that path. So I will not add anything more to what I have already said in Grayblog, which is no more than I said to her face. My love for her is such that I can only wish that she finds what she is looking for – I certainly do not wish her anything bad, and I hope that she will be happy.
And, of course, I do wish for her back. I miss her so very much. I won’t bore my poor readers with the little things that I miss – they even include her used teabags on my kitchen worktops, and the toilet lid always left open. But above all, I miss her in the mornings.
And, yes, I think maybe I should have seen this coming. They say that love can be blind, meaning we don’t see the other’s imperfections. I knew Andrea’s imperfections, and loved her just the same. But it also means that we are sometimes blind to what is happening. I guess that is why all of this is such a shock to me – I was blind, I didn’t see it coming.
Where I go from here, I’m not quite sure. New beginnings do seem a good plan. My cousin offered to give me a weekend break in London, which I’m going to take her up on. She thinks I need a fresh start. Other friends, especially DAGS, are determined to get me back on my feet and functioning again. Sometimes I feel ready for that – at other moments, I just want to curl up and hide with my sadness.
One thing I have to do is begin to focus on work again – I have done hardly a single productive thing since last Thursday, and whilst my parents will tolerate my inactivity for a while, there is a limit. It’s a family business after all, and we all rely on it to a greater or lesser degree. At least being busy may stop me thinking so damned much.

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to trust anybody again.
This is probably the most painful thing I have ever experienced. Memories keep running through my head of various things that happened, things that were said, parties, nights at the bar. The memories are not helping. There are some good memories too – though I’m not sure that they help ease the pain either.
Anyway, I’m going to stay with my parents tonight. Crap TV. Good food. A book that Fi lent to me. Safety.