Life-&-Living

When the clock chimed in the New Year, I was cuddled up next to the girlfriend at the time. I had my feet on a foot stool, was sat in a couch in front of the television and was cradling her head as it lay on my chest, whilst we mused about the new year, and all the wonderful, beautiful things we hoped it would bring us. I had flown nearly 5000 miles to make this moment, and in the heat of the moment, life couldn’t have felt better. There was me, the one woman in the world I loved, and a bright and shining future ahead of us. If ever there was a fairy tale moment in my life, that was it. ...

As seen in the window of a pub on Union Street.. Couldn’t be truer…

I think it is a little too early, but out here in ruralville the airwaves are already awash with ads for Christmas get aways. At work our coffee room conversations too are taking a decidedly christmas-sy bent: turkey shopping, holiday bookings, grand children, the company christmas ball and fine wine seem to come to the fore a little easier these days. The weather man promised an Indian summer of sorts, but our sun - for all its light - seems to be the evil twin of the one which terrorised us a scant few months ago, all light and no warmth ably aided by the wind which howls through every open space like a spurned suitor. ...

Rebirth says men are never 100% single, and offers further clarification in a comment: In my opinion, being single means free from any baggage, no causal dating or stringing along, emotionally available and willing to commit if its the right person…but i find most guys have more than 2 women they are talking to at a time And I have been thinking. If I met someone (new) today, would I be emotionally available to commit, if it was the right person? Most probably not. Every time a picture of EJ flashes or her name comes up in a conversation, I realize I still haven’t forgotten, still haven’t let go. Am I ’talking’ to any other woman? No. There are the long term friends elC, TheB and ER who ostensibly might be options - but we’ve been stuck so much in the friends zone, I doubt anything can progress from that. ...

Memory is a strange thing. Even the most tenuous of links can breach the walls of enforced forgetfulness, triggering the release of a barrage of memories once thought to have been successfully sequestered deep beyond the reach of even the most pernicious of random triggers. There are the shared banalities, the simple everyday things which in themselves hold no sentimental value but which in the context of a shared life paradoxically serve to bridge the miles. She, bored in a work meeting, emailing you a doodle of the big fat goat head that is her boss, you roasting rice to dryness, setting off the fire alarms and eliciting mock sympathy from her, all in good faith. ...

Amidst the continuing babble of concerned friends, I may have hit upon my very own final solution. Granted it is decidedly more benign than the Nazi version, but as a strategy to buy myself much needed respite, it has worked like a charm. When asked awkward questions about being single when hanging out with the lads, my answer goes along the lines of being too busy, but declaring that I am very open to recommendations from so-called ‘knowledgeable others’. ...

Between working extra hours on a couple of projects at work - and my natural proclivity to laziness - honing utilising what precious little cooking skills I have has been relegated to the very back of a fully loaded back burner. It hasn’t helped that the main African shop in town is off my route (and involves an extended walk to and fro the nearest bus stop if I were to use it), or indeed that the final surviving African eatery in town closed shop a couple of years ago. ...

The pointlessness of most work is never more obvious than when it is suddenly cut short. Like an unexpected breath of fresh the relentless flow of work in my direction has suddenly stopped, even if only for a day. In it’s stopping it has become clear that a lot of what I had- as a matter of course- sifted through daily was unnecessary. It is the team day off, and the brilliant sunshine currently bathing the city in its glow makes it seem like a particularly potent rainmaker was contracted to make it a success. Usually by this time, I have been on the phone five or six times to clarify one issue or the other with my offshore counterpart (who I outrank on paper, but earn way much less than), attended a couple of meetings and or have had to respond to a request for information. ...

It seems like a bloke is forever bound to trawl life, f aced with conundrums every step of the way - safety versus adventure versus satisfaction… Sigh… Update: Miss Complicated got married last Saturday.. One less conundrum then.

To do a Fernando Torres or not is the million seven thousand dollar question facing me now. The situation can’t be more similar - a move across town to the old enemy, at a ‘wrong’ time, and a few kegs of bad blood spilt on both sides. Sometimes too much choice is bad…. sigh.