A first kiss

I wrote about my first kiss. It wasn't romantic, really. I wasn't in love with Michelle, wasn't particularly interested in dating her and I don't think she felt much differently. I don't remember what I said the last time I spoke to her, or even when it was. So I'm thinking I want to write about a good kiss.

I kissed Michelle when I was 17 or 18 -- I can't even remember exactly now. Then, one night in early November, when I was 20, I kissed San for the first time.

San and I "met" on Open Diary. She was a favourite of Dave's, and I'd seen her comments on his diary so one day, when I was bored and online in Salt Lake City, I'd started reading her diary. I found San lived in London -- which perhaps sparked an initial interest for me, in that I knew I could see her. Knew there could be something. If I returned from the USA, at any rate -- and at the time (early in the summer of 2001) I wasn't sure I was going to.

As people meet people in situations like this, we read each other's diaries, we left each other comments, we chatted on instant messenger when it was late at night for her. And I really liked her.

So much so that when I returned to England we started talking on the phone, and after a week I kind-of, sort-of, asked her out on a date. We liked each other but didn't date because we thought it wouldn't be feasible living in different parts of the country, as we would do in term time.

This is largely background, not meant to be a whole history of us. Just setting down there were feelings there, for in November when I went to stay with San at her university.

I don't remember what we did all night. If we talked, or drank, if we stayed in or if we went out. I don't remember what music she played, if any.

I just remember when we were going to go to sleep -- San on the floor -- and San turned the light out. We sat on the bed, facing each other, in the dark. It was hard to make San out in the dark, but her skin was -- and is -- amazingly soft. As it should be for how much she moisturises. I think we held hands, or I stroked her face or arms. Then we gradually got closer and closer in the dark.

Until suddenly we were kissing. It was dark, so I couldn't have seen much, but we kissed for what seemed like all night. Her lips were as soft as the rest of her skin.

I mention it was November, because in England in early November is fireworks night. Maybe this was or wasn't that night, but the fireworks go on for days if not weeks, and I remember we laughed at the fireworks that night.

That kiss was the best first kiss ever. Yes, better than the first time I kissed Fiona -- and better than the other girls before and in between.

Now that you're not here

Saturday afternoon, just after midday, I got into London and met Tom. I had invited Tom to come and stay with me again now I'm back home, under the impression he was going away next weekend. But I was wrong, it was this weekend. So on Saturday I arranged to meet him in London, and spend the day with him before his flight to Japan.

Even though we never kept in close contact all that much, it seems so strange now that he's gone and I can't talk to him. Knowing that he's in Tokyo, probably drunk and jet-lagged, carrying a small fortune in Japanese Yen in cash on him. Or by now on (in? what's correct) some kind of orientation, where he will be saying moshimatsu in his thick Northern accent.

Who in Japan will ever tell him that Hull is grim and smells like fish? Who will beat to death the same joke about fish over and over again, and still make him laugh?

I worry about him out there, all on his own. I know he can take care of himself, he -- like me -- took himself around the USA one summer and lived and worked in New Orleans for a while without knowing anyone. Just the same, I worry how he will cope if his depression comes down on him and he realises that he's an 11-hour flight away from home, knows nobody and can barely speak the language. Maybe he will luck out and run into Scarlett Johansson while in Tokyo (like he said he was going to do).

Tom was a wholly different person on Saturday to the depressed, subdued guy who had stayed with me in Leicester shortly before I left. I don't know precisely what prompted the change, just as I was never really clear on what had got him so depressed to begin with. I give credit to a girl named Kim that was on the Jet program like him, and whom he'd met on the interview day in London. I won't divulge details, but I'm sure she had a part to play in cheering him up when I couldn't.

Tom and I wandered around Camden market, and he found a retro shop and bought himself a pair of 1970s-style football shorts. Even though he said the seams would probably split if he tried to play football in them, he was pleased to find them and sent text messages to friends telling them of his great find. We then spent most of the afternoon drinking in a bar and talking, like old times.

I took him to the airport, we met his family and he checked his baggage and the representatives from the Jet program. And I hugged him goodbye, and made my way home.

Even though I have written how I am sick of feeling impermanent and that nowhere is my home and starting over all the time, I was envious of him. I might just sign up myself and go try teach English to kids in Japan. It would only need to be for a year -- which out of a lifetime is nothing. I can settle down later.

---

This is Tom: Tom with his silly hair, playing with my digital camera. Currently speaking Japanese somewhere with a thick Northern accent...

On diaries and girlfriends

Before this diary, there was Open Diary, and I started on Open Diary as Sharkbait. The name didn't -- and doesn't -- really mean anything, it was going to be Sharky Sharky but I had email accounts and IM names with it and I wanted my diary to be private from Fiona.

I kept that diary for years, upgrading to Open Diary Plus when that was launched to be free of the pop ups and for the better service. But in the end, I didn't like how Open Diary was run. Some days it just didn't work, sometimes one thing after another would go wrong and stay wrong for days. What really got to me was when people were paying for subscriptions, but not having them recognised. The money would be taken, but the service wouldn't be provided.

Eventually it became time for me to leave my past behind and start over. I came here, after looking at what other sites were available. I liked how Stephen was involved in the community, and how it felt like more of a community. I liked how Stephen answered my emails, and asked me what I thought of d-x and how he explained the idea was for a place where people wanted to write better.

I've never regretted coming here. Until today.

No, only kidding.

All this is just nostalgia, because I was looking through my old open diary for a poem to show Diane, and I forgot that if I edited something my diary would show up as updated and everyone I knew there would be confused. But I can lose myself in reading entries written when I lived in Salt Lake, 3 years ago.

I'm toying with the idea of including a link here back to that diary -- entries written when I was 19 and fretting about my relationship with Fiona, notes from San on old entires -- after all, that's where the two of us met. I won't include such a link yet, though -- this diary was set up to free me from my past. To start over. But I wonder if knowing my past doesn't help understand me better. It's something to ponder.

Anti-social day

I feel like trash today. I didn't sleep very well last night I think, and today just feel run down and anti-social. It's funny, I'm sat around wondering abut calling my doctor. Not because I don't feel good, but because he apparently called wanting to speak to me over the weekend. I really don't know what he wants. I'm not expecting any sort of test results, nor any feedback from him on anything. I saw him last week and he changed my medication, and it's possible that with my moving and his surgery reopening my medical records weren't available to him at the time. In this case he could be concerned that my records show I'm all kinds of screwed up and he wants to talk to me about it or something. This seems kind of above and beyond the call of duty to me, especially since he wasn't overly concerned with talking to me about why I was on medication to begin with.

The other option is that I mentioned to him I needed a job. That here I am, a qualified journalist, and I can't get a job. He said something like he would keep his ear to the ground for me in case he heard of anything I might be suitable for. There's a chance, then, that this is why he called -- that he has heard of a job or recommended me for a job and wanted to tell me.

But it's the uncertainty, the fear that it could be the first option and not the second, that is stopping me from calling. I'm wrestling with whether it is better to not know. If it's about a job then surely it is better to call sooner rather than later? I don't expect to make a move any time soon.

On an unrelated topic, I finally got compensation through for my assault back in January. It's not a fortune, but I'm pleased enough that it has cleared my overdraft, cleared my credit card debts and given me some savings again. It also meant I could take San out to dinner on Friday night and buy her a pretty bracelet from Camden market. Of course, since my parents don't know I was assaulted I also haven't told them about my compensation and am having to be careful about my spending. I bought a usb device and a new pair of boots before I left Leicester -- knowing I had money coming -- and so have successfully avoided being asked where I got the money for those from. I have my reasons for keeping it from them -- mainly because it would be too difficult to explain who I got compensation from when I told them that I merely slipped on some ice and fractured my jaw. But it's also because I know they would want a share of the money.

I talked to the university before I left about getting a hardship grant from them, since I had to pay out for all my exams. They said they could give me £1500, if I met certain requirements. Once my parents found out about this they decided that the majority of this money should go to them, and not to me. I resented this at the time, but have since agreed to just keep £500 for myself, since they don't know about the other money. Out of this I will take them out to dinner this week.

I'm wondering to myself lately if maybe I should go travelling. I've got a little money and nothing really to do here right now, so it could be a good time to see something of the world. Most likely it's an idea I will do nothing more about -- yeah, I said I was feeling anti-social today.

Shannon

Shannon

For some reason this evening my thoughts are centred around a girl named Shannon, that I knew online several years ago -- when I first started a journal on Open Diary.

This isn't a tale of lost love, or undeclared crushes -- or even of two close friends losing each other. But she was a friend, and I can still remember random facts about her -- how she lived in Canada, and used the name Raven to begin with. Her diary was the sporadically updated type -- even more sporadic than is mine, but she had a very distinct writing style.

I don't recall now if she often wrote poetry, or if it was a rare occurrence. If I close my eyes and concentrate hard, I think I can visualise various poems of hers -- though I can't read what they say. I can almost see myself in the third person, sat here in front of her diary and reading her poetry. One poem stood out, though, it was called Lupine Dreams and I can always remember the first line read: "I dreamed of you as you ran with the wolves". I think she said it was inspired by a real dream of her boyfriend, and wolves.

She was an angry and depressed person -- as you might expect -- and I think she was about the age I am now, which would have given us something like a 5-year age gap. We'd talk late into the night on ICQ, and I think we even used voice-chat once or twice. What did we talk about? I can't remember. Probably Fiona, when I was with her. Her boyfriend, who she always referred to as "the boy". It was easy conversation, though it won't ever go down in history.

As I sit here and write I keep pausing and I will stare into space for a minute as I try to recall the names or nicknames of her coworkers from diary entries. I try to recall place names, or the type of job she did.

I'm sorry, Shannon, but I can't.

Just the other day a girl I knew from university -- a sort-of friend of Fiona's -- started talking to me on IM. We hadn't talked in about 4 years, or thereabouts, and to be honest I didn't much care for her when I knew her, let alone now. But maybe Shannon will one day resurface on yahoo, or maybe she never left but thinks it's been too long to talk to someone she didn't know that well to begin either way.

Just the same, I have a copy of her poem kept still, I like it so much. I've searched for the title online, but with no success. I've searched lines from it, but I get no results. She changed her name from ravengirl to Crimson raven, but there's no sense in searching those names -- they'd be too popular.

She's out there, somewhere, tonight. And I hope she's still writing.

"We were on a break" and jealousy issues

San has gone to the coast to celebrate her flatmate Krystina's birthday, along with (most of) her other flatmates, and most likely their boyfriends. I agreed to go, and was actually looking forward to it for a while -- then figured that I would hardly know anyone, and it wouldn't be much fun if San felt she had to keep me company the whole time rather than have fun. So I've stayed home, sending San with the card and the pretty stud earrings I bought for Krystina.

I spent most of yesterday in Camden, again -- this time with San and the additional company of her flatmate (from Leicester, like any flatmate of hers I mention) Natalie, since the two of them wanted to shop for something for Krystina and I just didn't want to have to wait another week to see San.

I don't remember how it started, but over lunch I was teasing San about this guy Sebastian she slept with when we were "on a break" this one time. The conversation had gone from a general discussion -- or rant, perhaps, on my part -- about how nobody ever says "I think we should see other people" without having somebody else in mind. That's probably where Sebastian came into it, I said that San had known perfectly well when she decided we should take a break that she wanted him. After all, he'd made it pretty clear what he wanted from her and she'd kept in contact with him.

It was about the time I was teasing San about him just wanting to be her "friend" that I said how she had been a really, really good friend to him all night. Yes, said San, that night, and the next night, and the night after that...

I stared at her.

What I'd always thought was a one night stand apparently wasn't at all. But we were on a break, says San. I don't hold it against her, I tell her, I was just 'surprised' and needed a minute to take it in. Natalie thought watching all this was hilarious.

San then picked up my phone and started looking through my inbox, and I went to the bathroom. When I came back, San showed me my phone and had highlighted the name Charley in my inbox. Yes, you know Charley, I told her. I've talked about her before, she's a friend of mine that was on the same Psychology course as Kirsty, her flatmate. San wanted to know why Charley had been thanking me for a lovely afternoon. Not that I felt I should have to justify or explain myself, but I told her that, yes, Charley is my friend and we hung out one afternoon. Seems when I was in the bathroom San had read my messages, found this one, got jealous, and toyed with the idea of calling her, to see who answered. Natalie had agreed with San this was just a little bit psychotic, and talked her out of it.

Everything's fine, though.

I'm no longer bothered by the idea of her spending several nights with Sebastian -- it caught me off-guard at the time and that is all. We were on a break, as she says, I just hadn't expected her to start up with someone else so quickly at the time. But it's all in the past. As for San's jealousy... I assured her that there's no funny stuff and it's all platonic. But it was because of a reaction like this I didn't tell her to begin with.

Don't get me wrong, I adore San. I miss her during the week, and love her for who she is, as a whole -- not in spite of her flaws, they just make up who she is. Like I say, everything's fine -- she's texting me today, in typical San fashion, saying she wants to live by the sea, but only in the summer when it's nice weather...

Cry as they all die blonde

I've been slacking off. There's been things I should have been writing down, but haven't. Instead I will make this entry a sort of mish-mash of recent happenings.

I was interviewed last week for a paper that for privacy reasons I will refer to only as "The Chronicle". I had sent them a speculative letter asking them to keep me on file for any vacancies that might come up, and they invited me for a preliminary interview, or an "informal interview".

I was mislead by the word informal. Even when i got there the news editor -- whom I remembered being a happy and laid back sort of guy from when I was on work experience -- led me to a meeting room and told me it was just an informal chat. The interview didn't go entirely badly, but I think that my nerves might have lead me to lose my train of thought once or twice. Also, I wasn't prepared for when I was asked to talk factually about the paper. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I must have appeared as a terrible journalist, since the first thing a decent journalist does is his research -- but I hadn't researched the paper. I'd read the paper and familiarised myself with the news locally, but nothing about circulation figures, that the paper is the oldest business in the area and is one of the oldest papers in the country.

I also had to do a kind of written test -- remember this isn't even the official interview, this is just to see if I am worth interviewing for a position. It might have gone well, or I might have crashed and burned -- trying to write 250 words and find the right news angle from a vicar's newsletter.

I am yet to hear back from my first interview -- the much nicer interview I had weeks back. I'm told this can be a good sign.

In non-journo news, I spent yesterday with San wandering around Camden. Camden is like no other place on earth. In fact, London is a very unique city in that it appears to be run entirely by people from other countries -- from waitresses to bar tenders to shop assistants in tourist shops, every last one of them speaking with an accent. It makes me smile. But Camden... one big melting pot of cultures and counter-cultures and people with sandwich boards and taxis trying to run you over as you cross the road, or markets mixing the sounds and smells together to just make that unique Camden feeling.

San and I are going to her flatmate Krystina's birthday next weekend, so I was looking for something to buy her and texting one of San's other flatmates asking for ideas and guidance. In the end, I bought her some pretty studs for her freshly-pierced ears. I miss being pierced myself.

Ashes ashes, we all fall down

Before I start, I'd like to offer my sincere thanks to Annabegins, noyoudont and Emma for their assistance in customising this layout -- and thanks, too, for anyone who offered to help or sent me instructions on how to work with it myself. As you can see, I have scrapped the e.e. cummings quotes, and have decided so far not to replace them with anything else.

If it wasn't for the fact this is a brand-new layout I wouldn't be using it today, instead I would be using my old, grey comatised design I bring out and dust off for occasions -- like today -- when I just really want to take a razorblade and slash my arms up. It's kind of funny, I can almost visualise the cuts on my skin. And I don't feel the least bit bad about it, either.

I know that it's bad to think about it, since it will in turn make such things easier to think and from there it's hardly a step at all to acting them out. Perhaps it is fortunate that it's summer and such acts of self harm would not go unnoticed, and dammit, I'm not meant to do that shit any more. Seems my medication takes the edge of my depression just enough to get by, but not enough for me to feel like living from one day to the next. Neat, huh?

I wish I hadn't come back yet, but I have an interview tomorrow and I'm broke, and was hungry. But I don't have the peace I need here, I'm persistently being bugged to work, to get a job, to look for a journalist position, learn to drive, and I'm finding it all hard to take. Which is probably why self harm, or worse, seems so attractive to me. It's almost perverse.

And as for last entry's promise of a prize for the most right answers, it is hardly worth mentioning since only three people appear to even read the entry. Makes me wonder just who is reading this, and if anyone is why they often choose to remain silent.

Stolen

Instructions: On your current playlist, hit shuffle and pick the first twenty songs on the list (no matter how cheesy or embarrassing), and write down your favourite line of the song. Try to avoid putting the song title in the line. Then, have your friends comment and see if they know the songs. (yeah, I know it's so very LJ, but I am still seeing how the template looks without updating properly. whoever gets the most right gets a prize -- I can guarantee nobody will get all of them)

1. Get out of my head, get off of my bed -- yeah that's what I said
2. When your heart’s that cold a little gunfire warms the soul
3. It makes me feel like I’m a man when I put a spike into my vein
4. I’m falling in love too fast, with you – or the songs you chose
5. They know who is righteous what is bold, so I’m told
6. If you can judge a wise man from the colour of his skin then, mister, you’re a better man than I
7. We’re sick of being jerked around
8. He's just a drunken, gambling man, dealing with the hands of desire's game
9. You left a stain on every one of my good days, but I am stronger than you know
10. Am I scaring you, too? I'm just scared of losing you.
11. You can tell a woman that you love her face to face, or you can do it from a phone call that can’t be traced
12. When you’re alone and you got the shakes so am I, baby, and I got what it takes
13. I heard a voice from on high, clear like a light in the sky, it said: “Quit blowing each other up”
14. She never loved me, why should anyone?
15. Look into my tired eyes, you’ll see someone you won’t recognise
16. Every time she sneezes I believe it’s love
17. Well me, yeah, I got hitched and, yeah, we’re still friends – I don’t see her often, still I get the kids at weekends
18. The ignorant people sleep on their backs like the doped white mice in the college lab
19. We were brought up on the space race, now they expect you to clean toilets – when you’ve seen how big the world is, how can you make do with this?
20. If you were smart you’d send her home on BART before the real trouble starts – cos who’s she gonna slap when she sees me in your lap and you say you’ve had a change of heart?

Sometimes I don’t want to understand her

Today I walked out of the pouring rain into the post office where the song Summer Holiday was playing. At first it made me smile, in spite of myself – “we’re going where the sun shines brightly”, since in this city it hardly seems to ever stop raining. But as I stood in that queue while the guy in front of me debated football with the clerks behind the counter and took his sweet time doing whatever the hell it was he had to do I realised something. It wasn’t the radio I was hearing, instead the song was on a damned loop. The same song was playing over and over and over. How the three members of staff in the post office didn’t go insane I don’t know. They probably already had, and that’s why a Cliff Richard song was playing endlessly.

For some reason, I can smell the coast today. This city is miles from anywhere, let alone miles from the coast, but the torrential downpours all day must have come from the ocean. I would not have been altogether surprised to have seen the occasional fish or frog in the puddles – why the city council can’t fit drains that can cope with the constant fucking rain I don’t know. It was probably cheaper to put in small drains and some man with a big cigar and a pot belly gives himself another payrise. The whole world’s coming to an end, I swear.

If Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday wasn’t bad enough, the person who lives next door to me and whose bedroom wall apparently shares mine was also playing the same song on repeat – I don’t know the artist or the title, but I know that it involved repeating the words fuck you endlessly. I stood against the wall and called myself using my mobile. It made me smile as I heard his stereo’s high-pitched whine from the interference block out the music.

And here we are, another day. It rains, it floods, another ambulance screams past on its way to somewhere or another. Someone tonight will probably get stabbed to death in an argument about who is the best football player on the same team. I can’t say I feel all that terrible about the idea.

Warning: badly punctuated and very rambling

I’d start by saying it’s late. But it’s not that late, not really. It’s a little after 11 on a Friday night. I couldn’t be bothered to cook any of the few bits of food I have – which is not a lot, unless you want soup or beans – so I sent out for pizza and charged it to my credit card. I’ve got compensation coming in and will clear the debt soon enough, so a pizza is no big deal. I feel anxious or wound up. It could be a side effect of restarting the medication after half-stopping it. I’m alone in my flat, which isn’t so surprising when you consider that I live on my own. I have been through the address book on my phone repeatedly, hoping that out of nowhere I will hit upon someone to call. But even with the compensation coming in, I can’t afford international phone calls and however great the internet may be for having friends all over the globe, when you really want to talk to someone you realise just how far away everyone else is. Even San, just in London, seems a world away. I could call friends back home – but however much some of them might say that they’re there to talk to, they aren’t. Not really. Not in a way that I could call them on a Friday night a talk about any of this. I met [Charley] for a few drinks earlier and it was good. We’d never met before, and didn’t know all that much about one another, but it was good company – she was good company. Even though I had originally wondered what she might mean when she asked if I wanted to meet her for coffee, it was completely platonic – which is fucking great when I so often feel I fall in love too easily, or at the very least develop wild inappropriate crushes. But just the same, the only light in the room is my desk lamp and the glow of the monitor. My heart feels like it’s beating too fast – although I pause and put my hand against my chest (did you know, you can see my heartbeat even through the two shirts I am wearing? It surprised many doctors, until they concluded in all their great experience and wisdom that it just must be unusually near the surface, or some thing) and I can’t tell. It doesn’t feel to my hand like it’s beating too fast, but I feel a little short of breath and my hands are restless. It’s not panic, or even anxiety exactly – I wouldn’t say I’m worried, so much as troubled – but at the same time. At the same time, I don’t know. My head reels off the various inappropriate crushes I have and then I return to thinking of San and wondering – worrying maybe – what is in store for us, when I might see her next or whatever. I really am a mess. What do I want from life? What exactly has kept me alive – other than a fear of the unknown? I want to travel, I want to see how big the world is. Sadly I can’t focus on the day to day – although there’s movies I want to catch, bands I want to see, records I want to hear and books to read, they aren’t enough. A desire to see more and do more does interest me. Also a desire to find more from my own life, maybe it’s a symptom of my illness – the eternal underlying mania that every now and then comes out like this week and that gives me that immature thought that I am special. A kind of messiah complex. A thought that I could find my way to becoming pure energy, a kind of Buddhist enlightenment means lawnmower man or something. I want to be the clouds dropping rain. But what do I want, really? A job I enjoy, and do well. Security – not having to worry about what is coming next. The usual, peace on earth but I don’t think I’m holding out much hope on that one. I want to meditate in the desert again. I want to live in a monastery and live a purely simple life of a bed and plain white walls. I want to be a fire lookout in a national forest, even if the job is so reportedly amazingly dull and lonesome it induces breakdowns. And now I stop. The words or thoughts aren’t coming, except it still feels too damn light in here – even with just the glow of the monitor. I’ve stopped. Nothing feels resolved or any different, except my heart has returned to a normal pace. I found an old address book when looking for a mislaid address. It’s full of numbers for people I don’t talk to, or incorrect numbers and addresses for people I still know. I found my grandmother’s old address and phone number. I had stopped using this address book by the time she died, the summer before from the look of it. I wonder to myself now, in that stupid dreamer sort of way, that if I call this number I have for her if there might be some chance that she will answer. The area codes for London have since changed so that number wouldn’t even work – which encourages me to try calling it all the same. I wouldn’t be calling anyone any more, so in some made-for-tv-movie sort of way could it happen that I’d get to talk to her, one last time? Maybe get to say goodbye this time.

This life has taken its toll on me

Much of the last entry can be disregarded.

Uber-Jay was so shortlived that had I not mentioned the feeling in my last entry it would have gone unremarked. Instead the feeling that I could take on the world has been quickly replaced by a feeling like the world has largely forgotten I exist and how it would be just so much easier to step in front of a train.

I stood in the shower this morning and as the too-warm water fell on my face I wished I was dead. It's not an uncommon feeling. I have had enough, this life has taken its toll and I don't much feel like carrying on.

I had a job interview, and it didn't go badly -- but I think the fact I can't drive and haven't passed a single fucking one of my exams yet might stop me being offered one of the two vacancies they have. I didn't mention that last part to them, by the way, I more coyly suggested I am not the most academically brilliant person and had some resits to take, but was expecting to pass them without a problem. The truth is I have no more idea if I will pass my exams next week, or if I will find them any easier than the original ones.

As I stood at the station, waiting for my train back I observed casually how many high-speed trains just fly through the station, and how it would be all-too-easy to 'accidentally' get that little bit too close to the edge.

I have since seen my doctor, who says that last week's pains in my stomach and side are nothing to worry about if they have gone away, she also could find nothing untoward in that place guys dread to check for lumps. But most of all she was not the slightest bit happy that I wasn't taking my medication. She didn't seem as interested that on Monday I was Uber-Jay and nothing could stop me, so much as that now I am incredibly unhappy. She says this is not the time to stop the medication.

I wonder what she would have said, had I told her the thoughts I am writing about today.

Last night I lay on my bed, screaming out in my mind for someone to hear me, for someone to help me. Someone to just come and take me away, because I don't want this any more. Needless to say, nobody heard me.

So at the end of this we find me now back on the medication, realising that I am actually not a fictional, half-robotic and undead serial killer (and probably should not compare myself to such things), and -- yes -- I do realise that if I want anyone to hear me I should try screaming outside of my own head next time and maybe try calling someone instead.

Sunshine in the morning

It's Monday morning, and Tom has now left again. He actually left about this time yesterday -- give or take -- but I can't get online on a Sunday here. I really didn't get the impression he was any better off for having stayed with me. I hope that he doesn't think unfavourably of me, I try to be a good friend but I have issues of my own, no experience in psychiatric counselling or the like and at the end of the day I'm only human. He goes to Japan in about a month, to teach English. Says he will probably stay in Asia for a few years, dig stuff.

As for me, I've actually stopped taking my medication. I didn't mean to, I've just lost them and since I'm seeing my doctor this week anyway I think I will say that I want to give them up for a while. She will probably disagree, like she did last time I said it, but it's my decision. Aside from a slightly dizzy feeling today that is probably why the advice leaflet says not to just stop taking them, I'm doing fairly well. Yesterday I anticipated a return to my uber-Jay state, which is the feeling I got a few years ago when I stopped taking my medication. Actually, it was the feeling I got when I just about scraped through some of the most intense and debilitating bad moods that came first after stopping the medication. Uber-Jay was a reference to Jason Voorhees in Jason-x, but I felt like I was stronger and better than before.

I've sworn off beer...for the time being. Not for any good reason, but because I want a flat stomach and without being able to afford gym membership this is a good start. Cutting out the booze should also help with the moods. I'm also not drinking soft drinks, instead subsisting on water. I shall also endeavour not to snack between meals, and possibly even undertake some kind of fitness regime in my bedroom. See? Uber-Jay. Stronger, happier, more productive.

Or I would be more productive if I stopped writing this and went back to my flat to revise for next weeks exams.

Company, good or otherwise

Tom has come to stay, once more. It all started with a text message the other night. He asked me how the exams were going, I replied, and asked him how work was for him. He said he hadn't been in recently, since he's spent the last 10 days in bed, depressed. I tried to offer advice, encourage him to leave his bed and do something, but I'm not sure he was listening.

So I called him the next night, to see how he was. Conversation is suddenly incredibly difficult, he has withdrawn almost completely into himself. Voice low and apathetic, nothing to offer, no interest in conversation. I'm hardly the most stable of people, yet suddenly I find that I'm trying to be talkative and interest and encouraging while sympathetic. In the end, I invited him to come stay. I stold him I don't have anything much interetsing to do, since I have to revise, but he's welcome.

In person it's almost more unbareable than on the phone. Don't get me wrong, I love the guy -- we've been friends since the first year in Derby, and although we've had some minor disagreements over the years we've remained friends. Just the same, I'm finding his intense depression very hard to deal with. I couldn't very well leave him in Hull to sulk and stay in bed, and I figure at least here I can keep an eye on him -- make sure he eats, make sure we leave the house, even entertain him here or there.

He apologised last night as we sat in the pub, in silence, for not being very good company. I told him I didn't invite him here to entertain me. I invited him here because I care, and want to do anything I can for my friend. It just doesn't seem to me that there is a lot that I can do.

He keeps disappearing for lengths of time. This morning he went to brush his teeth in my flat, and was gone long enough for him to have scrubbed his entire body clean with a toothbrush. He has now left the computer lab here at the university to use the bathroom, and even given that he didn't know where it was and he had to find it, it isn't far. It's not as far that it should be taking him this long. I feel the need to check up on him, see what he's doing.

I have no idea how long he plans to stay for, but he is welcome with me for as long as he wants to be here. I just don't know how to help him, and not being outgoing myself it can be very awkward.

The way I see it, though, is that this can't be any worse for him than staying in bed and not eating. That's what I hope, anyway.

A return

It felt like old times when I got off the bus in north London to go see San. I used to always take the underground in London, it was faster and simpler than the buses -- but it's also very temperamental, and so one day when the engineering works made it difficult to go straight to San's I started taking the bus. Since then I have become a bus-convert -- I like to sit on the top deck and stare out fo the window at the city. Sure, it takes longer but you don't get the feeling you could be trapped in a tunnel and it's more interesting.

I got to San's and although it had been less than a week since we last saw each other, things were different. There was a renewed passion between us, a rediscovered desire to just sit on the couch and make out that I can't remember us doing in Leicester.

Our plans for the day were simple. The Tate gallery of Modern Art were hosting an Edward Hopper exhibition, and being a big fan of his work it went without saying that we would go. When I called the gallery, however, I discovered that booking in advance was "strongly recommended". We went anyway, and although it couldn't have been very late in the afternoon we were told (after standing in line forever) that the earliest we could be admitted was 17.30. We booked tickets for 19.00 instead -- so we could take our time with the rest of the day.

It was one of those days where you can forget everything else. I could forget about exams in Law and Public Affairs, and my search for a job. I could even forget the uncertainty of what might happen between us.

The exhibition was more or less all I could have hoped for. Hopper's canvases were often bigger and more dramatic than I had expected, and I was only slightly disappointed that the exhibition hadn't included New York Movie.

It was late when we got out of the gallery -- having been side-tracked on our way out because I wanted to see something by Damien Hirst -- and we decided to walk a different way to the way we'd come in. Instead, we crossed the Thames on the Millennium Bridge, taking our time to look at the lights of the city and to stop and stare down-river and the lights of Tower Bridge. There was some confusion over where to catch a bus from -- San has no sense of direction -- but we were in no real hurry to get home.

The first time I ever met San we went to the Tate Modern gallery, and she tells me now she thought I hated her because I was so quiet. I tell that I loved her even then, and had always tried to be sure I knew where she was the whole day -- but didn't think it necessary for us to be at each other's side the whole time. I uphold that Saturday wasn't meant to have any significance, I would have wanted to see the exhibition wherever it was being held. It was just coincidence we'd spent the day together there once before.

The questions still remaining are: Is San right, and were we complacent seeing each other all the time? Will it be better to have a chance to miss one another now? Will our relationship stand up to this change of pace? And of course, what the sam hell am I doing with my life?

Tune in next time for all this and more...

Farewells

Sometimes it feels like my life is punctuated with goodbyes. Over the past few years I have given up thinking of anywhere as home for any length of time, given up thinking of anything as permanent. Anything, that is, except for goodbyes. It might sound over dramatic, but saying goodbye, so long, see you later –- these seem to become permanent farewells.

I stood in the car park of San’s flat and watched her leave. I’ve never been properly introduced to her Dad, and have no idea if he knows who I am or if San even has a boyfriend. Just the same, without caring if he would see and ask her questions I held her hand, wiped away her tears, and kissed her goodbye. I then just stood and watched the car pull out, and drive away. I lingered a little to watch her flatmates leave too. Then I sat down on the curb and wondered what to do next.

I remember years ago, Fiona and I spent New Year together and at that time I had held her in my arms and thought how I could spend my life with that girl, if only given the chance. Just a few days later, I stood in a bus station in London and watched her crying, as her bus drove away. We said it would only be temporary, we’d pick up where we left off when I got back from Utah – we’d be a little older and a little wiser and it would be good. But of course that didn’t happen. She moved on, or I moved on, and what we intended to be a brief farewell really did turn into goodbye. The couple of times we have met in the years since then haven’t changed that.

I have moved from city to city, moved back home, left again, and then now face the prospect of moving back once more with little to show for it. I don’t feel at home anywhere, and I have so many nights that feel like my last night in town.

San knows I’m scared this is it, and I think she feels the same. It will be at least a month before I see her again – after we are used to seeing each other almost every single day. Even then I don’t know what I’ll be doing, or how long for – but San will return to Leicester this September, and possibly on to Maryland in January. I don’t know if we will make it.

I want somewhere that feels like home. Not somewhere where I feel I’ve been forgotten that I’m here, or somewhere that I only get to call home for only a few months or a year. I want to see the world, but I want somewhere to return to. And as sappy as it sounds, I want a love.

My life was ruined when the Green Dragon closed

It was about 8am today when my phone rang. It was late enough in the day not to be an "Oh God, what's wrong?" sort of feeling when it rang -- but just the same, I didn't know why anyone would be calling.

I answered to San in fits of tears, telling me it hurt to pee and asking me to take her to the hospital. Of course, I paused only to dress and headed over to her flat -- where I expected I would wake the whole place up.

I'd forgotten that today San and various flatmates were meant to be going on a road trip to Blackpool, and kind of final group bonding outing for the girls. So they were all already awake, and reassuring San while she looked up things like "cystitis" and "urinary tract infections". With San suitably convinced that she wasn't dying of anything, and that I hadn't passed on anything I might have caught off any random slutty (and entirely fictitious) girl, she dressed and a plan was made.

We would take San to the chemist we knew was open, she'd tell them what was up and most likely they'd say to see a doctor when the surgeries reopen and to drink lots of water. And then with a free space in the car, I'd accompany the hotties -- sorry, flatmates -- on their roadtrip to the coast.

These things never really go to plan. The chemist couldn't help, because they weren't sure if San had cystitis or a urinary tract infection, and so San insisted on going to the hospital while the others went to Blackpool, without us. They practically begged San to go with them, and San even said I could go. But, really -- if San wouldn't, then I couldn't leave her.

The hospital.......
...................gave San a prescription, and said to see her doctor. They could have done that tomorrow, and we could have gone to t'pool. But never mind. San took me to the hospital when I needed her to, twice, and instead we just had a low-key day together and I cooked a roast dinner tonight.

San leaves Leicester tomorrow, I've got about a month left. She said she turned down a place at Derby university originally because she felt it would be weird seeing all the places we'd gone to when she was visiting me there. But now she feels that way about it here, I won't be here next year -- but first I've got a month without her here. The weekends without her seem quiet enough.

All day staring at the ceiling

It's Sunday, and San has only just started talking to me again.

We didn't even really have a row. She and I don't really argue, she has said before that she thought we should argue more -- though I can't remember exactly why, maybe it was for the making up afterwards? I can't say.

Anyway, on Friday it was much like this. I went over to San's, she was tired from the night before and so she slept while I used her laptop -- mostly trying to sort out a mess on ebay that we got ourselves into. But that's a long story in itself, and generally requires a passing familiarity with different models of Nokia mobile phones.

So San slept for an hour or so, until a friend of hers stopped by to pick up some clothes she had left behind the night before. San was in a bad mood with me when she woke up -- because she had a dream that I was ignoring her, and when she woke up it seemed to be real. I think that's where it started -- San can take hours to calm down once she's got mad, even if she forgives you.

After her friend left I think I mostly finished what I was doing online and San got out of bed to use her computer herself. Once she was using it, however, she was behaving exactly how she described I was behaving in her dream -- that is, more or less ignoring me. Eventually I got fed up with it, and with nothing better to do decided to go home. San showed so little interest that it annoyed me further, though I didn't show it.

San got the hump that I was leaving, and wouldn't so much as hug me goodbye. The argument for the rest of the day was, from her side, that because she was a little grouchy I got in a mood and just walked out.

The way I tell it is like this. When it's not sunny, San will be in a bad mood. When San has a cold she claims -- literally -- that she is dying. She will insist over and over that she feels like she is dying. So she was in a bad mood, and when I felt ignored I did decided to leave and when she made no indication of wanting me to stay, or noticing I was there, I was less inclined to stay. I did not just walk out, I even asked San for a hug before I left and she refused me.

By the time I got home I wasn't really that annoyed any more. I find it hard to hold a grudge for long, and I was more bothered about trying to get it sorted out. I called San and we tried to talk about it, but she was mad at me and didn't want to talk to me, and even when I explained to her how I felt and apologised there was no apology forthcoming from her.

Like I say, that was Friday and only now is she talking to me again properly. She confirmed yesterday when I spoke to her she was still mad at me, and expected to be for the rest of the weekend. All because I apparently walked out, when she knows full well that I didn't even.

Next weekend San moves out of halls here in Leicester for the summer, and it will be at least a month before I leave here. What happens between us after that -- after being used to seeing each other whenever, to not even knowing where I will be in a few months time, not to mention San most likely going to college in Maryland from January. It feels very familiar and I wonder if San isn't pushing me away to make anything that comes next easier.

Saturday night

I wasn't planning to update quite yet, but since barely anyone actually still reads this I might as well -- especially since I found my notebook in my bag. So this will be part three of my writings from Ireland.
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Saturday night, 8.30pm

I almost feel as if I am at home here. I'm pleased to see Juan-Manuel (one of [Dave]'s flatmates) come home, even if our conversations are limited and in broken English. I just like him, he seems like a genuine, and honestly friendly person. I love to listen to him talk, imparting his 30-odd years of life lessons in his clumsy and stilted English.

And there's Julie, too. I have no romantic or sexual designs on her -- which is unusual, I just like her, and am happy to just be around her, causually.

I feel, in some way, as if I belong here, or at the very least that I am welcome here, with these people.

Not to leave out Dave, my very generous -- and modest -- host.

I spend the days mostly on my own at the moment, or I go to the pub, and I can almost forget how so very cool, and -- yes -- welcoming he is. I didn't realise that he was a shy person, and often he can't be convinced to discuss what is on his mind. Even though he knows that I know, or I at least have an idea, of the basics -- but just the same he can't be drawn on it.
----

The second entry ends there, almost abruptly. I can't remember now if I was writing that before we were going out, but it seems to but off suddenly -- as if I had to stop writing in the middle of a train of thought. But I like it like that.

She's gone

So, Rie has gone.

Friday night San and I got a train to Derby to see Rie one last time, at least for the forseeable future. It was a typically-Rie evening. I called her from the station after we had been waiting for a while, and it turned out she wasn't in Derby herself but had been visiting friends somewhere else. So I had to call her friends Anouska and Ben, who I vaguely knew from Derby -- mostly Ben -- to get them to pick us up. It could have been very awkward, but Anouska is an outgoing person who likes nothing better, it seems, than to make a fuss of people. We talked plans for the night and after Rie arrived we headed out into the night.

Like I say, it was a night typical of Rie -- I barely saw her all night, she spent the night flitting between where we were sat and talking to the DJ she had a crush on, and god knows where else. Photos were taken and stories were told. And Rie lost the keys to the flat where she had recently been staying and where me and San were supposed to stay the night. So instead, Anouska gave us sleeping bags and pillows and a duvet and we slept on her living room floor.

It was sad to say goodbye to Rie. To hug her and call her a butt-monkey and know I might never see her again. I don't know how Matt took the news that his recently-ex wife was leaving, or how he reacted when he said goodbye to her the day before.

I know she will be fine, she's a survivor -- in comparison to some of the other things she has been through in her life, this is nothing. She will see her family and some of her oldest friends again, and I expect for her life will more or less pick up where she left it, before she met Matt and everything changed.

A dirty news bomb irradiating the reader with facts

I don't have my paper journal here with me today, so there will unfortunately be nothing from Ireland today. I'm not sure what more I have in there that's worth reading anyway, but the other entries will follow with some kind of more prosaic ramblings like before.

Instead today I just feel like writing about what's on my mind. I don't want to talk about "the beheading", I said my piece in the forums and I find it upsetting. Nuff said.

I've been working the past two nights in a Royal Mail sorting office, sorting parcels -- or "packets" as they are called. It's not very interesting, but talking to the guy next to me is entertaining enough. I start work at 9.30 and finish at 6am. Like today, I go home, go to bed, and get up around midday. Then I am spending the day being a journo and trying to find news, interview people from the fostering and adoption agency or whatever and try not to think "I'm tired".

Next week I resit my first law exam. A lot of fun there.

[Rie] emailed me today to say that on Saturday she is going back to America, never to return. Just the other week she was talking about moving to London, and inviting me to come and stay with her in Derby. Now she has broken up with her boyfriend and is leaving, and I might never see her again.

I used to be in love with Rie. Or maybe not. But there was a time, when I was first leaving in Salt Lake and missing Fiona, that I would see Rie every weekend and we would just hang out and wrestle or do fun stuff. And I had a crush on her, She didn't mention it at the time, but she liked me too. But she was married to Matt, and it was Fi that I really wanted and nothing ever happened about it. In Derby when we lived together and she broke up with Matt we talked about a marriage of convenience, where we would get the appropriate visas for each other's home countries, But it was more of a joke than a real idea.

The adoption agency aren't calling me back. I might save the copy to disk and work on it from there. I also have a whole stack of letters to send to newspapers. Aren't I just a dirty bomb of interesting info today?

The much-delayed

I know it's been forever since I last updated, and for that I am sorry. Life has been getting in the way just lately, with nights spent at San's when I locked myself out (yes, again) or weekends spent in Hull with Tom. I did actually write an entry about the Wednesday night in Ireland, but I accidentally navigated off the page and lost it all. I know it was weeks ago now, but I figure if anyone is reading at all then you won't mind what I write.
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Wednesday (the first) night.

The flight to Cork itself was short and unremarkable. I stared intently out of the window on the descent into Ireland, trying desperately to see if I could spot the Spire that I had read about. [Dave] found this very amusing when I told him later I hadn't seen it, since the Spire is in Dublin and not Cork so he would have been very surprised if I had seen it.

Dave met me at the airport without a hitch. Among the crowd of friends and relatives looking for their own individual passengers I saw him, waiting for me. It makes a real difference to arrive somewhere to see someone waiting for you. We stepped out of the airport into the night and pouring rain and waited for the bus into the city. Dave said he felt bad that my first impression of Ireland was to be waiting for a bus in the rain. But the truth was, my head was reeling and buzzing. Ahead of me was a week, if not of adventure then certainly of good times and new experiences in an unexplored city. The truth is, I hardly noticed the rain.

On the walk from the bus station to Dave's house we stopped at a bar for a drink -- a recurring theme of the week is stopping at bars, although the last night I think was a record. We sat at the bar and talked and I had a feeling not so much of being somewhere new, but of somewhere known to me, but forgotten. It felt like I'd been there before, in some half-remembered way. It's difficult to explain. The feeling wasn't of deja-vu, an odd disquiet when something echoes a dream, but rather more was just familiar. Perhaps it's that sometimes one bar is often much like the next, whether it is in England or Ireland or North America. Maybe it was that Dave and I already knew each other, have known each other for several years, but have only spoken on the phone twice and never met before.

All the same, the bar was what you'd expect on a dark and wet night in the middle of the week. A few friends were sat in a corner talking and drinking, the bar tender was polishing glasses or reading the newspaper, when he was around at all.

I don't much remember now what we talked about. It wasn't anything life changing, and if it was important or personal I didn't feel the need to record it in my notebook. Maybe we discussed past relationships, current friendships, the state and direction of our respective lives. Maybe we talked about films or tv, I couldn't tell you.

After one drink we continued our short walk back to Dave's house. I don't remember it as a short walk. I remember the dark and the rain, and constantly looking around me at all of the streets and houses. So in my memory the walk was both short, because it was almost no distance at all -- even when you don't know where you are or where you are going -- but at the same time it seems much longer, since I was seeing everything for the first time.

We got to the bar where we had arranged to meet friends -- other diary friends, namely [Cat], Dan, [Joe], Naomi and [Tara], along with Cat's friend Anne, who doesn't have a diary and most likely won't be mentioned again. Probably ever.

The bar was the Bodgea, described in my very-short Cork guidebook as Dublin chic comes to Cork. Since I have no idea what Dublin is like I don't know what that means, but the bar was very impressive. A huge place, with impossibly high ceilings and a sweeping expanse of floorspace, and huge lampshades hanging from the lights. A bar like that you might find in London, but there would no doubt be a door charge and a dress code and you'd need proof of earnings before being served. In Cork it was none of those things, just a very cool bar with people enjoying their night.

Dave and I walked in, and I was immediately struck by the size and scale of the place, along with feeling intensely nervous about all the people I was about to meet -- people whose diaries I have read and have emailed and chatted to, but never actually spoken to any of them. We looked around but couldn't see our friends, so we decided the best course of action would be to head to the bar, get some drinks, and then armed with a couple of pints try to find them. I think I just wanted a drink.

In what may be a recurring of my stay, Dave ran into some other friends of his on the way to the bar (he had already known the other customers in the earlier bar), and while he stood talking to them Cat spotted us, and came over. We hugged briefly, then I told Dave I was going to the bar to get our drinks and where we would be. And that's exactly what I did. I was introduced to everyone at the table, who were far less scary than I had expected. Since there are my Thursday-morning thoughts and deconstructions of various people I won't go into any real detail about them -- also because any commenting here might reveal their individual identities in the Thursday morning entry. It's enough to say that everyone was very welcoming, considering that I was practically a stranger to them I was pleased to find that I was firmly treated as a friend.

I commented to a couple of people in the course of the night that I felt I had the attention span of a cat. I was constantly looking about me, there was different conversations going on around the table -- that each required my full attention if I was to decipher what was being said through the accents and the general noise of the bar, there was different things to be seen, and naturally different people I wanted to talk at great length to about everything in the world. This is starting to sound like I had drunk too much, if you imagine it as a blur of colours and noises and accents and conversations and music and body language I would study when I couldn't hear what was being said. I was drinking probably too much too fast, but I was nervous as hell and trying to project myself as someone interesting and at least a little outgoing or confident, rather than the moody and pensive individual most people know me as. Not that how I was projecting myself wasn't real, but more a side to me that has to be consciously projected sometimes rather than being allowed to show through naturally. In the circumstances, it made sense.

All too quickly the bar was closing and we were going to an alternative club -- by all accounts the definitive alternative club of the city. Dave had to go home because he'd been up early that morning, but left me in the capable charge of the others -- once armed with the knowledge of his address, if not exactly how to get there. "It's near a bridge" I said, and everyone laughed. Cork is full of bridges. I may as well have said he lived on a hill, and now I think of it, I probably did.

The club was good -- although not as good as it used to be in its previous incarnations at different venues, as many people told me. I couldn't get the girl behind the bar to understand my accent above the music and resorted to trying to point at what I wanted from the fridge. Instead of a bottle of beer I got some white wine cooler thing. Luckily for me, Cat took pity on me when I moaned to her about it and took it off my hands and bought me a beer in exchange.

As with many nights, the later parts become less clear. I remember Tara good-naturedly dragging me back onto the dance floor whenever I wandered off, and at the end of the night Tara and Dan took me to a kebab fast-food place -- it seemed strange, because although kebabs are almost compulsory in England after a night out we don't have -- to my knowledge -- any big places dedicated to kebabs like Abrakebabra was. Sometimes I really feel almost like a stray animal, like when Kyle took me in when I was down and out in Salt Lake City, or this night when I was in new country with no idea how to get home on my own and no money left. Tara and Dan looked after me, got me food and let me share their cab ride home.

I only regret I didn't get the chance to see either of them again after that first night, but I hope there will be other opportunities.

Thursday morning

My apologies for making people wait for me to get my ass in gear and start copying up entries from my paper journal -- I hope I haven't built it up too much, because it's really not that detailed or interesting. It's also edited in places.

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Thursday morning, 11 am

I'm sat in a strange girl's bed, in Ireland. I'm hungover, tired and eager to see what is out there. I've tried climbing on the bed to look out the skylight at the city, but I think I might fall off.

The worry that whoever this girl is whose bed I slept in might come back and find me here has mostly dissipated now I'm dressed. I guess that she has probably gone home for Easter, wherever it might be for her. (note -- I did not sleep with her, just slept in her bed. Have not so much as met her at this point)

Everyone seems nice. I hadn't known what to expect, but it's good -- they are all good people. I'm a little concerned that [blank] doesn't like me, however. But as San would no doubt tell me, 'they' don't know me yet.

[blank] is a hottie, and I had no idea. I know, it sounds shallow, but it's true. Am I surprised? I don't know, I didn't know what to be expecting. But 'they' are an incredibly nice person, too. What's weird is how platonic I feel. I like that way though.

[blank] seems oddly familiar. Quiet, easy-going, and laid back -- perhaps to a fault. But I could be basing that more on [blank]'s rants than on anything else. 'They' seem kind, loving and generous -- although perhaps without any great convictions.
----

That is where the first day's scribblings end. I've removed individuals names and am going to refrain from any retrospective analysis of personalities, mainly because that's better left to my private thoughts. I don't want to have to choose my words carefully for potential readers, either, although I wouldn't ever have anything bad to say about the people I met. Just the same, I've tried to disguise the identities of people mentioned here.

Since this was so short, I might later on write some blog-style ramblings about the first night itself -- much like my entry about the Wednesday. We shall see. Maybe I could host a poll about it?

Start at the end

Despite that there isn't a time difference between England and Ireland, and with it no jet lag, I'm still a little out of it today. I might as well start at the end, and then write up the bits and pieces from my paper journal over the next few days.

My flight was at 9.20pm, which meant that the airline had 'recommended' I check in two hours before, which seemed unnecessary for a flight that was just under an hour long. Dave and I got to the airport around 8. We'd left the house in plenty of time, stopped at a bar for a drink, continued to the bus station, checked what time the airport bus was, went to another bar for another drink, and got to the airport for 8. I checked in and no problem so far. We got something to eat, and -- yes -- went to the airport bar for more drinks. I wanted to squeeze out the last of the time I had left with Dave.

I remember at some point over drinks telling Dave that out of principle I had decided that I wouldn't board the plane until they were prepared to ask for me by name. I was joking, of course, but even though there was one announcement which prompted Dave to ask me if it was for my flight, I ignored it. I told him we had plenty of time yet. I guess he must have heard where it was going. Only when we were finishing our drinks and thinking it was about time I got over to the departures did I hear them call me by name. It makes you feel kind of special.

Security seemed in too much of a hurry to get me through to bother checking me too thoroughly -- I set off the metal detector as always, but that could have been the coins in my pocket, my belt buckle or my steel toe capped boots. On my journey out at the airport I had been made to remove my boots and x-ray them, because security said they were large enough to conceal something in. In Cork, they just patted me down and made me empty my pockets.

I was personally escorted across the runway to the plane, whereupon in the driving rain the zip on my rucksack broke open, spilling cds and odd socks and spare t-shirts across the floor. But I managed to stuff it all back in, get the bag shut and get onto the plane -- where I shrugged my shoulders and grinned sheepishly at the other passengers. I don't think they were aware that it was my fault they were still sitting there and not in the air -- but dammit, it wasn't even time yet.

In some karmic law-of-the-universe way, I waited an hour at the airport in England for my taxi to turn up. My plane was due to arrive at 10.20pm, and I'd told the taxi to pick me up at about 11 -- since I figured planes never take off on time, and there would probably be delays and I'd have to wait forever for my luggage, and all the rest. The plane was early, my bag came out almost right away, and when the taxi driver arrived at 11 he couldn't see my flight number on the tv screens because by that time it had been and gone. So it was closer to 12 by the time he found me, I'd been wandering about with my bags on a luggage trolley trying to look as best as I could like someone waiting to be picked up.

I got home, called San because I had missed her all week, and went to sleep. My brother woke me up with a text message at 8 am, asking me to call him. I went back to sleep after talking to him, only to be woken up again an hour later with a phone call about a shirt I'd bought from a catalogue but returned because its colours didn't match the pictures and I didn't like it. I was groggy, but I think what they told me was my shirt wasn't defective but, yes, it doesn't match the picture and they'd give me a refund. I don't remember why they said it wasn't the same, but I'd rather the cash.

And so here I am. I've found that I missed the deadline for submitting my music reviews to the student paper, and I've got shedloads of work to do if I am to stand a chance at passing this damn course.

Saw things so much clearer

I really should award stickers for one thing or another every entry -- whether it be for being able to correctly identify where the entry's title comes from, or just some obscure reference in the entry itself. Last entry's sticker was won in record time, so I'm interested to see who will win this one.

There's not a whole lot to say today. After all my sulking, I'm actually sorta glad to be back in Leicester. I like having the space to myself, I like cooking for myself when I feel like it, and I like just lying around on my bed listening to music or reading. I found I could plug my computer's speakers and sub-wooofer into my cd-mp3 player, so with my newly burnt cd of epic length I am just enjoying doing nothing.

After I got out the pool yesterday and dried off I found a worrying red rash over one arm. I got chills as I examined it and remembered photographs of the rash that comes with meningitis. But I lacked all other symptoms, so I just got dressed and ignored it. Since I am not dead today, and the rash has gone away, it was probably a reaction to the washing powder or something. The strange thing about me is that I have a kind of death wish. If in the shower I come across what can only be described as a lump in a place guys dread, what do I do about it? Nothing. If I come out in a rash which could mean that I have developed meningitis and without medical attention could be dead in days, what do I about it? Ignore it. But it's a nice day out, so let's not dwell on that.

The sun is shining and it's warm out, and for what I have of the day I'm trying to get a few jobs done before the taxi picks me up for the airport, and my trip to Cork. All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go (and no, you don't get a sticker for that reference), and I guess this is my way of saying that if you don't hear anything from me for the next week, that's why.

The last day

Once again, it's my last day 'back home' before I return to Leicester. I can't say I desperately want to stay here, for a small town this place has more than a fair share of trouble and violence. But I miss my friends, and I miss the cat, and I miss not living alone. Just the same, you face forward, or you face the possibility of shock and damage (in the words of Emma, whoever knows what that's from gets a sticker).

This afternoon, after perhaps too much wine at lunch, I took a nap on my bed with the cat. Actually, the cat was already asleep on the bed -- but he was willing to share with me, if I didn't take up too much space. Which was good for him.

So it's back to Leicester I go, for all of about a day and a half, before I fly off to Ireland for a week. It's about time that I went somewhere new, digged stuff, had an adventure. Dave is letting me sleep on his couch, for which I am eternally grateful, and armed with a camera and a notebook I shall see the sights and... well, dig stuff. I'd take my battered copy of On The Road or The Dharma Bums, but perhaps the books I read when I travelled across the USA don't have the same relevance in Cork.

Outside it's a bright spring day. The sun is shining, but the air is still cold -- and I'm grateful that I didn't have to work today.

-- and as a post-script to this entry, I'd like to point out that my diary-x email is now rejecting all mail, because someone out there is using it as their return address for all kinds of shit. So for now, you have to use the comments box if you don't know how to reach me any other way...

Must see

As you might have noticed, this new layout didn't really give me the opportunity to list my favourites -- or 'required reading'. This is a shame, because unless I make a point of saying "Hey, go look at the links!" I don't think anyone does, and these truly great people go unread. I might make a separate special entry of good reading.

This is on my mind, because I want people to go read Kara's blournal. I'm not actually sure how she would like to be known, so don't be surprised if that link's name changes.

Having left d-x in favour of writing on her own domain, Kara is now writing sans inhibitions once more in a new setting, and I wanted to take this opportunity to refer you kids to it. Because she's damn good, and a cool person to boot, and should not go unread. ever.

Also, she is currently taking suggestions for aquatic pets if anyone has any ideas. These pets must like playgrounds, and slides if possible. And be well-tempered.

Getting along all right

Once again I spent a week working for a newspaper without pay.

You know what, though? It wasn't so bad. I hate the first day, but it was the morning that sucked really but it put me in a mood until about Wednesday. I'm like that.

Once you -- or, I, in this case -- get used to getting up in the mornings and wearing a suit and stuff you come to appreciate that the job isn't all that bad. It's not the best job in the world, and for the most part, yeah, it does feel like work. But like my profile says -- for now, this is who I am and this is what I do.

Working for a daily paper is a little more fast paced than a weekly, but not massively so -- you just tend to finish things by the end of the day. I didn't think I'd ever say it, but I miss going out on my district and finding news -- it isn't the same working with a desk, a phone and a computer. Not that I ever found much good in my district, but that isn't the point.

I know I can do this. Once or twice I was told by staff that my writing was good, and nothing was ever given back to me with instructions to change it completely -- like it was last summer. I may not get the best grades, I might not be sure I can pass the course, but I can do the job. And it looks like with a little bit of luck I probably will do the job.

There's little else to say. I've not seen San in a week, since I've been here and she's been in Leicester, but I'll see her tomorrow in London like old times.

Other than that, I'm tired and I'm moody -- which I've got to snap out of soon -- but I'm getting along alright.

Nothing

Let go. Let everything slide, dissolve into dust. Less than dust. True nothing. And within nothing exists, not everything, but nothing. Within nothing exists the world. As you sit in the evening sun. In the warm wind that blows across you and over you and through you exists nothing and just as the wind is nothing you, too, are nothing. True knowledge exists not in "knowing that you know nothing" but in knowing nothing. True knowledge is in being nothing. Just as the bird "scuffling in the bushes" thinks nothing, so too must we become one with nothing. For nothing is more than just merely an absence of matter, nothing is more than an opposite to matter, nothing exists outside of matter. Nothing comes where thought ends. Nothing is where the universe ends and before it began. Nothing exists before birth and after nothing exists after death. At least it should. We fill our lives with distractions in an attempt to run from the nothing we feel inside, but the soul is nothing. We must exist as nothing if we are to exist at all. The nothing we feel inside can not be filled for this nothing is the universe. This nothing is the non-thoughts of the trees. This nothing is the non-thoughts of the beasts. Within this nothing exists, not everything, but nothing. Everything is mankind. The cars. The cities. The settees. The cluttered, constant monologue of mankind is mankind. In running from savagery we turn our backs on nothing, yet it is nothing that is in the essence of us all. Nothing is beautiful. Nothing is complete. Because nothing is beautiful, and because mankind is forever searching to fill its inner nothing, mankind is essentially self-mutilating. Mankind seeks to dominate the wilderness and map the universe in order to deny its inner nothing. But it is through the wilderness and the emptiness of the universe that nothing can truly be known. Nothing can be known because it can be felt, but nothing is not something that can be understood. Nothing is not logic or mathematics, nothing is the essence of art. But art is not nothing. Art can be an expression of nothing. Art is an echo of feeling a sense of nothing. But only a sense of nothing. Nothing can only be expressed as a sense, a silhouette, because nothing is lost within civilisation. Nothing, perhaps, can not be regained within civilisation because civilisation is about the denial of nothing. Civilisation, almost by definition, is about filling nothing. Nothing has become linked to laziness -- doing nothing is a sin. But nothing is not apathy, nor is it laziness. Apathy is linked to motivation, to feelings of 'should'. Nothing is not reached through apathy, for while the consciousness is cluttered -- and it is rarely as cluttered as when in a state of apathy -- nothing can not be considered. Nothing, and thinking about nothing, requires stillness, but an inner stillness. Nothing can be found in a crowd as easily as it can be in solitude, providing you are still inside. To think nothing and to do nothing requires more than to cease doing, it requires one to totally stop thinking. To actively stop thinking one must know what nothing feels like. To think nothing one must recognise nothing within themselves, and learn how closely linked to nothing they are. And know that nothing is not bad. Nothing can not be 'bad' just as the universe can not be bad. Nothing does not operate nor exist within senses or thought and can not be categorised as such.

Note to self: get a spare set of keys

Helpfully I have managed to lock myself out of my flat.

I realised yesterday evening I didn't have my keys, but since I was staying the night at San's anyway I didn't figure it would be much of a problem. Instead, I said I'd call my landlord today if I didn't find them in university. So this evening I call my landlord, only to find I can't get through, instead I get a message telling me it has not been possible to connect my call and to try again later.

I have tried again later. And later still. I have called my parents to find out his home address from their copy of my tenancy agreement, and called directory enquries. But that number is ex-directory. Fecking useless bastard.

It looks like my only course of action will be to try and find where he lives and hope that he -- or someone who can help me -- is at home. I'm lucky I know San, otherwise I would have nowhere to go at all -- as it is, I have only the clothes I'm wearing and my law revision.

I should be revising for tomorrow's exam, instead I'm stressing out because I can't get into my flat. And trying not to stress out by playing a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text game, and not doing very well at it.

I should leave now and try and find his house, rather than wait for San to come back from her dance class in an hour's time.

Update:
Right before I was going to leave I got through on the phone, and found my landlord had gone out. Long story short, I got in the next day. No harm done. Going home for Easter now so it might be a day or two before I get online again, kids.

Bringing back my star

I was trying to hold out on renewing my d-x plus subscription, not because I didn't want to renew but because I wanted to see what the new features would be. But the new features aren't yet here, and I had been reduced to a normal user again. I was more worried about losing the pics I had saved here than anything else, but the pics are all still there and my gold star will be returned.

Things here are much the same as ever. That is, I'm confused.

I have edited this entry to cut out what was a bit of a ramble about some issues of a more personal nature, so if you read it and have come back to find it gone -- that's why, you're not crazy. I have deleted that stuff because I have since found some medical information that has put my mind at ease a little, and where San was being cold and/or moody this morning she has since found that her essay that she thought was due in tomorrow isn't due in until next week, and has told me she isn't in such a foul mood any more. Just the same I've declined her invitation to stay the night since I need to go home for drugs.

As for me, yeah, I'm currently feeling a little adrift. I need to get out to the swimming pool and exert myself a little -- swimming, rock climbing, I exert myself and I'm not troubled with thoughts of I'm not good enough, or I need to do this right. Maybe I just forgot to take my medication yesterday, or maybe I just need some time alone.

And look at the new template I have wasted about five hours fiddling with, rather than learning about copyright, defamation and the 1981 contempt of court act. Or going swimming. But I shall put right the latter now...

Weighing up the options

I wrote a short entry perhaps last week, or earlier, about things with San which promptly got deleted after we slept on things and talked it over. But one thing that sticks with me now is that I mentioned how with our track record together we were about time for another break up. I have a feeling things might yet go that way.

I don't want to say it is a major factor, but last week San went to bed with another guy. She insists that she didn't do anything, that she only went to his house (she had met him something like the day before, which I've pointed out is not so smart) but it got late and she fell asleep. Or something. I've asked her very specifically to tell me if anything happened, but she's sticking with nothing did.

The reaction I've got from most people so far is "Doesn't this bother you?". Apparently her friends don't think it was on, and expect me to be mad. Mine are more bemused than anything as to why I'm not mad.

I've told San in no uncertain terms I'm far from happy about it, but I don't plan to make it into a big deal. If she behaved herself then that's fine, but I don't want it happening again. And it's not safe to be going to guys houses alone when you barely know them.

In conversations over the past day or two, San has seemed interested in the idea of seeing other people. She said the other day that of course she would like to be sleeping with other guys, but wouldn't want me to be seeing other people and realises that it just wouldn't work.

All the same, some of the old ideas are reemerging -- that we're still young, should be out having fun, and have the rest of our lives ahead of us to be settled down in serious relationships. She asked me to marry her once, incidentally. I didn't think she was serious, and later explained to her it couldn't work out here and now. I'm right, too. San is interested to know what else is out there, what being with other people is like, what she is like with other people. But she realises we couldn't go on seeing each other in such a context, and has said she wants to "shelve" the idea. That is, ignore it and hope it goes away.

She says to me "You want me to tell you I don't want that, don't you?". I tell her honestly, I don't want to break up -- but I do want her to be happy.

I know I love the girl, don't get me wrong, and she does love me -- but unless love is a different animal to different people, I'm not sure we would be having discussions like this. And we all know I'm not entirely without blame. I think about other girls, what it might be like to be with them. But ultimately I weigh up which I want more -- the lady and the tiger, or what is behind the door. And I choose what I have.

I expect this will all pass over in a day or week or so, just like it usually does.

Update--
San seems to have quite a different perception on our earlier discussions, almost to the point of denying what she said. But then again, she has been in and out of sleep mostly all day -- though I'm not sure why she's so tired -- and now and again starts having an entirely different conversation on her own. She just woke up, told me my hair was nice, and went back to sleep again. But I'm straying off the point -- which is I don't expect anything much, if anything at all, to change between us. For better or worse.

News and apologies

I feel kind of bad about my last entry.

While I was sat here whining about people throwing water-bombs at me in the street in the background News 24 was playing. I just didn't stop to think that hundreds of people are dead in Madrid and I was being a complete ass to complain about some water balloons. I'm sure there's plenty that would gladly trade places with me, I just wasn't thinking.

But moving swiftly on-- I got to climbing, and it rocks (no pun intended). It might not have the "rush" of snowboarding, or the more relaxing feel of swimming, but it is damn cool and something I am going to pursue further. Unfortunately I probably won't join the group who arranged the introductory day yesterday, since they don't meet in the city itself and I can't drive. I know there is at least one group who do meet in the city and go climbing on a weekly basis so I will chase up them. My arms hurt today, but it's a good hurt. Not like when my neck hurts because I've been sat in front of a computer all day.

In other news, everyone go and express their eternal love and devotion to Emma for her help in making my bravenet comments form a reality. Until I manage to get the form to have required fields, can everyone please at least include their name and email? I've got a comment sitting in my inbox that says "Cool, new comments system! Nice choice." but I have no idea who it is from, and IP lookups aren't being any help.

And that's about it for now. I need to stare at this story for tomorrow's paper some more -- it's written, but I'm not happy with it yet.

One year ago today

Guess what?

Entirely by chance, I have found that this diary is precisely one year old today. You can find my first entry all the way back on March 12, 2003. There's some interesting reading in the archives, if you have the patience -- but please be tolderant of the template changes, some of the very oldest entries had a template that has since been deleted.

But yes, there's not much to say other than that really. San's busy working for an essay due in on Monday, and however much I want to see her I know there's little point. She has no tv, and even if she did it would be distracting for her to have it on. She will be using her laptop to work on, and music would be as distracting as a tv. Also, I wouldn't be able to bug her for attention because she has to get this work done, and no ammount of chastising her for not starting it earlier will change that.

However, I am going climbing tomorrow -- finally, and again something that wasn't planned. Because I was flicking through one of my shorthand notebooks looking for someone to chase up for news today, since the stories I had wanted to cover have falled through until at least Monday which is going to be deadline day next week -- a day earlier that normal, and a complete pain in the arse.

As I was looking I found some stuff about climbing that I had drawn a bracket around to tell me it wasn't about work, but stuff I should follow up for myself. I called the first number about an event happening tomorrow, and found that not only was I planning to go but if I brought along my camera and notebook I could make it into a story, too. Which isn't bad. I may not have the build for a climber -- as people have pointed out to me, albeit in a very indirect way -- but I'm looking to get into it just the same. And tomorrow it starts.

And in other news, it bugs me that I am still jumpy about going out since my attack. Twice since the attack, I have been walking past the pub where it happened and have had water balloons thrown at me. I think it happened once before the attack, too, but back then I just found it annoying. Last time it happened I actually called the police to report it when I got in. I only called the local number, rather than dialling for emergency help, but I reported it because it really shook me up and I hadn't known what it was they were throwing. For all I knew, it could have been rocks.

Last night I was walking up the road, and noticed people further up the road, by the pub. I don't know what I saw, or how I could tell, but I got the feeling it wasn't 'normal' behaviour of people walking one place or another, probably because I could see one or more people running into the road. So I just took the early opportunity to cross onto the other side of the street, away from the pub. As I walked past I could see people on the other side of the wall behind the pub -- the same place they had been before. I think they were checking me out, and trying to remain hidden. I laughed to myself as I walked on, saying to myself that I had out-smarted them by spotting them early and there was no way they could reach me from their hiding place.

I quickly found they weren't going to try to, instead they ran into the street to try and hit me with the balloons as I was getting away. Obviously they didn't have the courage to get close to me, which is why they normally hide behind a wall, and even though they ran into the street they didn't get close enough for a good shot. They all missed, and ran away again.

I didn't call the police this time, because I knew it was only balloons and unlike last time didn't think it was a personal attack on me, or that I was going to be followed up the road and assaulted. Just the same, it annoys me that I should have to put up with this -- that I should have to walk a different way home to avoid trouble down my own road. But I expect I will be out of here by the end of the summer.

A girl named Bob

It was a little after 10 last night when I left San's flat. Rather than just go straight home and read for a while I figured that instead I would come here, to the library, and check my email. Not for any real reason, I just like to check it when I can -- since I can't back at my own flat, and hadn't been able to at San's since one of her flatmates was using San's laptop to make her CV.

It's important to the story that I was planning on coming here, because if I was going home I would have walked in a completely different direction -- that is, I would not have been walking past this one particular bar just as a very drunk girl in big black boots and a very short skirt stumbled out, and almost fell down the steps. I hesitated for a minute, when I thought she was going to fall down the steps, but she regained her balance just as her equally-drunk friend came out behind them.

I think they might have seen me hesitate for a minute, because as I started to walk away from them towards the library they started calling out to me. So I stopped walking and let them catch up. Like I say, they were very drunk but they weren't obnoxious so I was happy enough to walk with them a little way and humour them. They asked me my name, and introduced themselves. They were Vicky, and Bob. A girl named Bob. I didn't really believe that was Bob's real name, but it was nothing to me what she claimed her name was so I let it lie.

They asked me where I was going, and not having a good explanation ready I told them the truth -- to the library, to check my email. They were far from impressed, and instead insisted I should go to the pub with them. I quickly weighed up in my head what would be more fun -- checking my email, and getting a very uncomfortable neck (much like now), or going to the pub with these two drunk, but friendly, girls.

Of course, it was no contest. So we got some cash out a little way up the road, and by this time the rest of their friends had come out of the bar and caught us up. I was introduced to the others -- albeit awkwardly, because they were too drunk to remember my name -- and we all carried on to the pub.

Bob was attractive, but in a way that is difficult to explain. I can describe her long legs, big boots and short skirt -- but it wasn't this that made her attractive. It wasn't even the oversized cardigan she was wearing, with big holes in the sleeves where she persistently stuck her hands through. In some way, I think she reminded me a little of Kath -- both crazy and a little bit quiet at the same time.

In the short time we were in pub Bob got progressively quieter and withdrawn, while her friends tried to get her to wake up or join in. Bob's quietness turned instead into tears, although she was refusing to tell anyone what was wrong. Vicky did manage to get her to talk, but only on the condition that everyone else move to a different table so as not to be able to hear what Bob was saying.

By this time, the pub was closing and before long we had been asked to leave so we waited outside for Bob and Vicky. I talked a little to one of their sober friends, who it turned out had gone to the same school as Fiona -- although I didn't ask her if she had known Fi. I just mentioned that I knew a girl that had lived in Shropshire.

Bob and Vicky took their time while we waited outside, but eventually they turned up and it was decided that -- despite Bob protesting that her feet hurt and she wanted only to go home -- that we were going clubbing. It was to be an indie club, so I was happy enough to join them. Unfortunately, the only way Vicky could get Bob to stop complaining about her feet (I personally think they should have taken her home, but it wasn't my place to get involved) was by promising her a piggy back.

From me.

So she jumped on my back, with her legs wrapped round my waist, and I carried her down the road for as long as I could. She wasn't excessively heavy, but just the same it wasn't an easy task to carry her -- but not wanting to offend her by saying I needed to put her down, I continued down the road with this drunk girl who was almost a stranger to me hanging on to my back and occasionally screaming when I pretended I was going to make her hit something. I had to amuse myself somehow. There's probably other ways to amuse yourself with a drunk girl who has her legs round your waist, but I'm not that kind of guy.

In fact, one of the only reasons I had agreed to go to the pub with Bob and Vicky was not because I fancied them -- which I didn't, they were just not my type -- but because I thought if I didn't go with them then another guy would, and someone else might have other ideas on how to treat two drunk girls. I figured it was no inconvenience to me to have some drinks with them and have a laugh, especially if it kept them out of trouble.

I did have to put Bob down before too long, although she didn't seem to take offence to it. She was too busy insisting to Vicky she wanted to go home, and Vicky insisting Bob had agreed to come to the club and have a good time (because you really can just agree to have a good time, apparently) and that she would be able to sit down when we got there. This was all fine until we got to the city centre and Bob recognised a shop which meant she wasn't far from where she lived. And more or less refused to go on.

Bob was refusing to go on, but instead insisting she wanted to go home -- and go home on her own, too. Naturally nobody was prepared to let Bob walk home on her own, and Vicky was still insisting she come to the club. Eventually it was decided that we would go on ahead to the club, and Vicky would talk to Bob and catch us up. I think it was clear that Vicky was more than likely just end up taking Bob home, however much she was protesting.

So I walked on with the less drunk and semi-sober friends, until they decided they'd go to a different club, and not the indie club. Without Bob and Vicky there was nobody to insist on my company, it was coming up to midnight and I wasn't prepared to go to a club I didn't like just for the sake of it. And I went home.

I can't tell you how it ends. I don't know if Vicky let Bob walk home on her own, or if Bob agreed to go to the club with Vicky. But most likely, I think Vicky just took Bob home.

An interesting sidenote -- at one point in the evening, someone asked what Bob's real name was. Apparently, according to Vicky, it was Charlotte -- she just doesn't like her name, and calls herself Bob instead.

For a minute there, I lost myself

As usual yesterday I went swimming. Since I have my phone on nearly 24 hours a day, sometimes it's a relief to turn it off for an hour or so while I go swimming. Maybe it's an ego thing, I can imagine people are wanting to get in touch with me. I don't know.

Anyway, the mood I was in before I went swimming had more or less lifted by the time I had got out of the pool. I turned my phone on to a message from San telling me that her friend Kris was over, along with some people called Eric and Mo, and I should come over. I then got an almost identical message from her a second time (she probably couldn't remember if she sent it the first time, since she got no reply) and when I answered her she told me again to come over.

It turned out Eric and Mo were her friend Maureen and her boyfriend Eric, who we had met briefly before one time. I remember that we had been meant to go out with them for a drink, but they opted to stay in and get stoned instead so we gave it a miss.

San was bugging me that they were hungry and wanted to go eat, and since I wasn't sure how long I would be getting back (I had to wait for a bus) I told her to go on without me and I would catch up with them later. I figured I'd just spend the evening on my own. But the bus arrived, and they waited for me, and we all headed out to a Mexican restaurant in the city center.

It must have been a good restaurant, because they had no tables. So we went to a Tapas restaurant, who told us it would be an hour and a half before we could get a table. But as we stood outside in the cold discussing what other options were open to us, the manager came out and told us if we still wanted a table one was just leaving and we could have it.

It felt like being on holiday.

The restaurant was of course dark and mostly lit by candles in wine bottles on the tables, and as we talked I imagined that the traditional Spanish music was being played by a real band and we were in a Mediterranean country. I told San how good it would be, there would be windsurfing and rock climbing and hiking and snorkelling -- even if she didn't like the sound of any of those things.

Kris, San's friend, had given us each pictures. These pictures are hard to describe, but they were roughly hashed images of messy lines and we were to write whatever we wanted from the pictures. So I wrote descriptions of what I saw -- a man fighting with a demon, a bride standing over her dead groom, a couple waltzing like in Jack Vettriano's painting "The Singing Butler", but since they had no feet they seemed insubstantial as ghosts.

Me and San would swap pictures and read each others interpretations -- what she saw as a soldier walking home along a mountain path I saw as a prostitute walking along a deserted road.

It was a night to forget yourself. To forget that tomorrow morning I am missing classes in shorthand and public affairs to meet up with a mediation service in hope of getting a story for Tuesday's news page.

It's now a cold and grey Sunday afternoon. I should perhaps go home and get a fresh towel and dry shorts to go swimming again today, maybe then I can kick these blues.