by
sixpence
@ Saturday, 05. May, 2007 - 06:13:28
Hello, pale light of dawn (Oi, Dawn. Gimme that torch back). Hello, birds twittering. Hello, hours of tossing (easy tiger) and turning, unable to get comfy due to unwieldy shape and tiny person inside leaning against all my bits and pieces.
The problem good thing about blogging at this time in the morning is that nobody reads the bollocks you write.
Was also up at unsocial hours this time last year. 'Tis a year, you see, to the very day, since morelearning and I had our first date. But having caught insomnia off each other due to being besotted, we were both up at 4am that day having an exceedingly rude conversation on msn.
You have to remember that at this point we had only met each other once - and that was in a fairly formal context.
But on the basis of the few moments we'd spent together, we both knew there was something that had to be pursued.
So we set about getting to know each other by email.
After a couple of months, the inevitable question about whether we should meet arose.
This was a very difficult decision, what with us both being in other relationships at the time. We knew if we met, it would go further. Not being equipped with fortune-telling abilities, neither of us knew if that was the right thing or not, or if it was just going to go horribly wrong and end up with one or both person's heads being fucked up or relationships being destroyed for the wrong reasons etc.
We had our first phone call, me in the car park outside Boots, and I told him that I wasn't interested in a fling and that, while I wasn't looking for any guarantees, I felt we should only meet if we both felt that there was potentially something special between us.
We'd spent barely two hours in the same room.
We agreed to meet.
We met in the Yews on Friday 5 May, the day before his sister's wedding. I don't remember the time but it must have been lunchtime because he offered to buy me lunch after I texted him saying all I could find in the house was a satsuma and a pilchard. I was too nervous for lunch, though.
I warned him I'd be late and I was, because I couldn't decide what to wear and had a girlie tantrum with all my clothes. He texted me saying "I'll be the one in the blue shirt looking tired". I arrived but I couldn't see him. I'd only met him once and there were loads of people at the bar and I was bewildered. Then suddenly he was walking towards me and I walked straight into his arms and he kissed me once briefly on the lips and I was a gonner.
He bought me jd on the rocks and we sat down and he gave me an old autograph book he'd bought on Ebay that had belonged to someone in Wigston, which was where we met, and asked me to look after it. The autograph book said a lot to me. It said that he was interested in old stuff and heritage and it said that he wanted to celebrate where we'd met and that he'd gone to the effort to find me a unique present that was personal to the two of us. I liked all of those things. So I kissed him, rather less than briefly (he'd tell you I pounced on him and stuck my tongue down his throat but it seemed fairly mutual to me) and the afternoon continued in a pretty similar vein until the barmaid threw us out for indecent behaviour. At the ages of 34 and 42 (as we were then). Quite an achievement.
In the car park I clung to him and he reached down my back and read the label in my knickers (New Look, size 12). I said "Oh God, now he knows I wear cheap pants". It didn't seem to put him off though. I can't really say this day was the beginning of it all because I think it had begun before that really. But it's weird to think about how things would be now if we'd decided not to meet and stopped communicating because we couldn't take the risk of fucking up what we already had in our lives. Would things be just the same as they were or would they never have been the same? I think I had fucked up my marriage long before that really and believe me, I've spent a fortune on counselling trying to figure out why but I guess it just comes down to the fact that I wasn't getting what I needed from Mr Expence. People kept telling me that all along, but I didn't believe them because he provided so adequately for all my material needs and looked after me really well in the sense that he fed and watered me and drove me around and was very affectionate towards me and created a beautiful home for me to live in. And given all that stuff I couldn't see what my problem was, so I just assumed it was me that was all wrong, not my marriage. But by the time I met morelearning I think that my marriage was no longer salvageable, because of the way I'd behaved and the complete lack of trust and respect between me and Mr Expence. Even though we were very nice to one another and never argued he didn't believe in me or make any effort to understand the things that were important to me. We were so many poles apart.
Enough about my marriage. Long gone. Today is about morelearning and me, and Boco too I suppose, since s/he is one of the many fantastic outcomes that have resulted from us both deciding to take a chance a year ago. I'm not going to pretend it's been easy and in fact because it's been harder than I ever imagined I don't know if I could even advise someone else to take the chances that we did. We didn't really know each other and it was a chance in a million that it would work out the way it has. I just blindly followed something inside myself that had made a connection with something inside him, and I put everything I had into it. It was such a huge risk and it could have gone so horribly wrong. It's still such an amazing, life-changing surprise to wake up every day with him and feel the way I feel.
"...look forward to a final reign of love-innocence when the so-called impracticable will once more become the inevitable, when miracles are accepted without surprise or question..."
Robert Graves
And only £150 for the privilege!!!
)
) but it really isn't up to the long term challenges of one 6 ft 4 resident coupled with one very restless 6 month pregnant resident. So yesterday we went on a haul around bed shops where we learned all about new developments in 'memory foam' and had fun testing out the waterbed and upset the acne-scarred assistant in Sleepmistress (name changed to protect identity) who seemed not to consider us serious customers. (Morelearning: unshaven. Me trying to dismount from waterbed: help! help! hoist me up!) What we were basically looking for was a decent bed (gotta be kingsize so morelearning's feet don't hang off the edge) for not much money. We eventually ordered one from Beds 4 Everyone which is run by a jolly nice chap in Frog Island who didn't try to blind us with science about memory foam but shrugged his shoulders and said "Have a look round" and when we asked questions about particular beds said "Lie on it. It costs £X." We liked him alot, so we ordered the Airsprung Minnesota and a cheapish but perfectly adequate mattress. We will have it in 2 weeks and the chap explained that he only delivers after 6pm, 'cos it's him that does the deliveries as well, which just made me like him all the more.
