English

Maybe I'm too cynical, I've been told as much before. Anyway. I've never agreed that it is foolish to be proud of your country when you can't choose where you were born, but at the same time I feel it is right to question, and one should never be blindly patriotic. I think Emma once said it better than I can, that you love your country like you love your mum, even when she gets drunk at parties and embarrasses you and you're a little bit ashamed of her. It's a bit like that.

This should by no means taken as wholly inclusive or really anything other than my own meandering experience -- but having been blessed with the opportunity of living abroad, I still like to wheel out the old adage "what can you know of England, when England is all you know?". I consider this something of a work in progress -- trying to include everything I can think of without being too brief or going on too long. Following on from last entry

Red postboxes. Sometimes finding ones with "GR" on them, or if you're very lucky "VR" and being a little bit excited about it. Red London buses, big red double-decker buses -- sometimes still with the bit at the back where you can just jump on. Wanting to cry when remembering July 7 and the bus with the roof ripped off. No bins in central London. Coded warnings. The Tube. Standing on a packed train of commuters that no matter the weather outside is always far too hot. Standing cramped and pushed together, and smiling a little at how absurd it is your head is in some businessman's armpit and yet nobody makes eye-contact or even acknowledge you're there. Until the next stop, when even more push their way on. Tony Blair trying to make conversation with commuters as a PR stunt and being roundly ignored. The man with the megaphone who seems omnipotent in London. Every gig, he's there, shouting through his loud hailer about Jesus and hell and the wages of sin. Standing in Oxford Street and shouting. Crowds of people always in a hurry to get to somewhere other than where they are, pushing past you, bumping into each other with their bags of shopping, and not even noticing. Tramps sleeping in doorways as it begins to get dark. Buskers on the underground -- back before it became a corporate sponsored thing. Men with tattered cardboard signs. Zebra crossings. Giving a wave to the drivers when they stop. Muttering obscenities at the ones who don't. Pelican crossings, Toucan Crossings, Puffin crossings. The red man and green man. Push the button and it says WAIT. The green cross code. The green cross code man who I seem to remember everyone I know being scared of. Stranger Danger, and never really being sure what a stranger looked like. The friendly local policeman who would come to the school and show educational videos.. Educational short films on TV about not playing Frisbee near power stations, or something like that. Four television channels for years, and then one day Five. A man that came round to re tune your TV so it could get the exciting fifth channel that nobody ever watches. Satellite dishes. What do you call the box on the back of a satellite dish? A council house. Back when council houses existed. Pebble dashed rows of terraced houses, and hearing the footsteps or the TV of the person in the house next door. Waiting all year for six weeks off school in the summer and making plans and not doing anything. School uniforms and worse, school uniform shops. Shops with signs declaring excitedly "Back to school!" even in the first week of the holidays. Trips to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs. Still feeling like a child when you go, and still wanting to go only for the dinosaurs -- even being surprised there is more there. Trips to Tower Bridge. Castles. Real castles, and they're not made out plastic. Mottle and keep castles. Castles with drawbridges. Norman castles. Some that are just ruined piles of stones. Some with elaborate mazes and staff that dress up and talk in character. Real pubs. Not city centre council estate pubs with glasses thrown and men drinking pints of wife-beater. But real pubs. Pubs with oak beams and open fires and histories going back hundreds of years. Sitting in a corner and talking and drinking and laughing and thinking how there's nowhere else in the whole world that would ever feel quite the same as this. Pubs with old men sitting in the corner smoking. Pubs with the landlord's dog running around and begging for food. Pub food consisting of little more than egg and chips. Time at 11pm. At least it used to be. Local pubs for local people. Everyone stops talking and stares at you as you walk in. Pubs in Wales where they refuse to admit they can speak English. The English countryside. The countryside alliance, fighting the ban on hunting with dogs, and acting like fox hunting is a civil rights issue. Bleak hills and moors and marshes with driving rain and howling wind and mud. Predicting the weather by if the cows are sitting or standing. Trains crossing on bridges with passengers staring blankly out or reading their book. Public transport where if you can ever help it you avoid sitting next to someone. Sitting on the train between stations with occasional announcements from the driver about signals or problems. Ticket windows at train stations, where they look up your destination in a book. Old brick railway stations with the year on the front in different colour brick, now partially obscured by the soot from traffic fumes. Hackney carriages and black cabs that are almost never black any more. Sitting in the back with no seat-belt on and falling over when the driver turns. Roundabouts and a feeling of Russian roulette. Flyovers. Mini-roundabouts. Traffic calming. Speed bumps. Speed cameras -- traffic safety cameras. Traffic wardens, back when they still existed, and parking on double yellow lines. Skips outside of houses always full of seemingly random junk -- broken bicycles, rusted pogo sticks. Mattresses. Dustbin men who used to come into your garden to pick up the bin, back before you had to leave it by the road. Forgetting bin day and running down the road in your slippers chasing them with a waste paper bin. Black wheelie bins, and later wheelie bin cleaning vans. Recycling boxes and paper sacks. Letters to the editor. Recycling collection schedules. Information sheets on what goes in what bin with lists of exceptions.

Tree-lined streets and still years and years after you left school, still looking out for conkers. Still looking up at the branches for what you might be able to reach, or knock down with a stick. Do kids still play with conkers? Soak them in vinegar and polish them and drill a hole in them for the string to go. And acorns, too, which were just boring and sycamore seeds that twirl like a helicopter when you let them go. Or at least sometimes they do. Piles of leaves in the gutter of the road, and kicking them up and making a mess when you're feeling childish. The snails that suddenly appear on footpaths at night after a little bit of rain, and maybe it's just you, but taking the time to move certain snails out of danger. The occasional sighting of a fox in the city, or in your garden. Where have all the sparrows gone? Hanging up coconuts to attract wild birds, and hanging up in the winter feeders filled with nuts. What were the bird feeders we made at school? Something made of lard and nuts. Suddenly not so sure that birds should be eating lard... Spider webs in the autumn when the bushes are bare, and that certain time of year when there seems to be spiders everywhere indoors. Being irrationally scared of spiders even though they can't hurt you.

The Houses of Parliament. Buckingham Palace -- American tourists with cameras and baseball caps stressing the third syllable. And complaining about the weather. Nelson's Column. The stone lions. The fountains and groups of European students. The Millennium Dome and a history of a colossal waste of money. The London Eye, and trying to be Paris. The North. It's grim up there. How "The North" shifts depending on where you are. Friendly Northerners, and tight Southerners. Trams in the cities. and rain. The constant rain. Realising the rain is why The Lake District has lakes. Standing at the bus stop in the rain and laughing when a traffic cone floats off down the road. Bus shelters with seats that are too small to sit on comfortably and tip up when you get up. Small brick shelters with badly spelled graffiti and phone numbers in black pen. Dank bus stations where you can't smoke indoors but there's nothing to protect you from the bus exhaust fumes. Bus drivers who sit on the bus but wont open the doors early, however cold it is waiting outside. Sitting on the front on the top deck of a bus and pretending you're the driver, and still doing it now. Missing your stop on the bus because you didn't press the bell in time, or because the driver was in a bad mood and just didn't feel like stopping. Buses that will see you running to catch them and stop even though they have left the stop or aren't yet at the bus stop. Other buses that just ignore you. Buses that run once every few hours, and even then sometimes just don't turn up at all, and leave you standing at a random bus stop for hours.

Complaining about our weather. It's too hot. It's too cold. "The Great British Summer" where it rains the whole year. The smell of summer barbecues because you don't know when you might get another nice day. Pub beer gardens packed with people drinking lager and enjoying the nice weather while it lasts. One day of rain and cynical comments like "that's it for the summer then, a whole week of sun" before the weather changes. Weathermen on TV and watching the forecast even if you're not sure if you believe it. Isobars and little black arrows and pictures of sun and rain clouds. Everyone remembering the hurricane in the late 1980s and the weather forecaster reassuring a caller that there wouldn't be one. A changing climate, the summers getting hotter and longer. The seaside. Rock with "Southend" printed through it. Beaches of stones and cigarette butts and freezing water. Takeaway vans parked along the seafront selling doughnuts. Walking along the seafront in the cold and the wind. Lines of cars heading to the coast on nice days. Deckchairs on the beach. Beaches with imported soft yellow sand from the Caribbean. But the water is still cold, all year. Seafront arcades with the machines that push the pennies off ledges, or cranes that will fail to deliver the soft toy. Funfairs with roller coasters and ghost trains. Waltzers that gave you whiplash. Candy floss on sticks, candyfloss in bags and getting it all over your hands. Collecting shells and stones on the beach, and sometimes finding a fossil.
Sometimes finding old bullet casings on the beach. The old stone lookout posts in fields in case the Germans had made it to England. Reminders of the past that increasingly fewer people lived through. Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands war. conflict. the Gulf war. wars that are fought abroad.

Traditional Sunday Lunch. Or is it Dinner? The English civil war was fought over whether the meal eaten at midday was called lunch or dinner. Yorkshire puddings. Yorkshire puddings in the North that are so big the entire roast dinner is contained inside it. Roast potatoes. Now freezers in supermarkets filled with ready made alternatives and feeling just a little bit cheated. Pubs serving Sunday lunch, and occasionally finding a good one, As good as home. Drinking too much over lunch and sleeping the whole thing off on a Sunday afternoon. Saturday afternoons when all there was on TV was football. My Dad with the settee moved in front of the TV and a big pint mug of beer. Playing football in the park and hating it. Shouts of keep your eye on the ball and you standing in a field watching the sun set and wishing you could just go play on the swings instead. Parks when they still had swings and slides and roundabouts and other things that you could kill yourself on. Back before they even had spongy surfaces. Then later, trying to buy beer from the corner shop and taking it to the park to drink. The inexplicable finding of pornographic magazines in strange places. Trendies with their white jeans and silver puffa jackets, where did they go? The townies with their tracksuit trousers and their pitbulls drinking bottles of cider. Eventually giving way to the chav, with their burberry and their gold. Chavs, trendies, townies, always the ones hanging around in the town centre at night and keeping everyone away.

The cringe-worthy "Cool Britannia" of the 90s. Britpop and Oasis and Blur and parties in Downing Street with Tony Blair trying to cool. The 1980s. Margaret Thatcher. Recession and inflation and unemployment. Privatisation -- "new money for old rope" or "selling off the family silver" -- BSE. Mad Cow Disease. Receiving a letter in the post from the National Blood Service saying "You remember that blood transfusion you had in the 80s? Well there's a chance you could have been given infected blood and you might now have a degenerative brain disease. But it's impossible to tell. So please, don't be donating blood again." all because of money. They ground up the dead and diseased sheep and fed them to the cows. Then they ground up the dead cows and fed them to other cows. Then they made those cows into hamburgers and sold them. Foot and Mouth Disease and why the farm behind my house stopped having animals for a little while. The smell of the bonfires of the animals. Wondering if the farmers were burning their fields early. The end of the summer with the combine harvesters and haystacks and burning the stubble. The Harvest Festival with people donating tins of food they don't want. The clocks go back and it's dark at 5pm. Halloween and the increasingly Americanised obnoxious children asking for trick or treat. Or the occasional sweet children in their costumes with parents watching from down the drive and thinking it's not really so bad as they're so grateful for their handfuls of penny sweets. Guy Fawkes Night and the plot to blow up the houses of Parliament. Pretending that we celebrate not the failure but instead the thought, the effort, at least he tried. Fireworks and burning an effigy. Organised firework displays as fireworks become bigger, louder, more expensive. Keep your pets indoors on November 5. Public service announcements about not playing with fireworks or picking up the wrong end of a sparkler. Sparklers. Waving them around and writing your name in the cold night air. Checking for hibernating hedgehogs underneath the bonfire. And the scorched grass that takes all year to recover, if at all.

Being English as separate to being British. Not Scottish, not Welsh, not Northern Irish. The shocking number of people in England who don't know the difference between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Just the same celebrating St Patrick's Day -- the typically English excuse to get pissed -- but not really knowing when St George's Day is. St George's Day becoming a vehicle, a tool, for those with an axe to grind. Political Correctness gone mad and nationalistic opinion columns in the red top newspapers. Resentment of asylum seekers and refugees and immigrants and economic migrants. Councils choosing not to celebrate St George's Day since most of the constituency is Eastern European, and the people stirring up hatred and resentment. The British National Party, with election victories in the North. Enoch Powell and the repatriation charter. Grown men who paint their faces with the George Cross for sporting events. England consistently failing to win the World Cup since 1966. The hope with Wimbledon each year -- even though nobody really likes Tim Henman -- and not being altogether surprised when we're out of the tournament in record time. Sporting events cancelled because of the rain. Cricket matches that seem to last for weeks. White vans with red tape stuck on their roofs to make a flag. "Cut out and stick in your window" flags from the tabloids. Celebrity gossip and birds with their tits out on the front. Everything dumbed down, stripped down, sensationalised and reduced to the lowest common denominator. Right wing newspapers with the vitriol and their campaigns and "stop this menace". Discussions in Parliament about things they've never seen, or songs they've never heard, from a story they didn't read but someone told them about.

Local radio stations that wherever you are in the country always sound the same. The same slack jawed vacuous listeners who call in and request the new song by Will Young, in between advertising jingles for double glazing. BBC radio stations with the same news repeated all day, and the same songs from the playlist played every show. And while we're at it, BBC television with now who-knows how many channels on sky and digital and freeview with BBC news and BBC parliament and BBC consumer information. The old Reithian ethics of to educate, inform and entertain, but no longer necessarily in that order or even in equal quantities. The television licence fee and the detector vans that know if you're watching TV without a licence. Points of view where Angry from Manchester writes to complain about all the repeats on TV.

The working week. The whole rat race and the streams of people in grey and black suits as they walk and drive and cycle to the station every day, for 40 hours a week. Sitting in their luxury car traffic jams and listening to the great British bands like the Beatles and the Stones and the Kinks and the Who and the Jam and not seeing the irony in "I hope I die before I get old".

Modern shopping centres where everything is exactly the same but in a slightly different order. The cloning of modern high streets -- or the death of the high street as everything moves out of town to shopping centres and retail parks and leisure parks. The same cinemas and clubs and bars and bowling alleys -- the American themed diners and the Australian themed steakhouses and the Italian restaurants. Leaving the towns with just Chinese takeaways, Indian takeaways above a shoe shop. Feeling sad when the windows are smashed and graffiti sprayed on the walls. I said nobody goes into the town at night these days.


And that's sort of it. Like I said, it's a work in progress so I must make a permanent link to this as I expect it to be constantly updated and changed.

Sweetheart this city has beautiful, beautiful snow

"Last day in December
and the world is a white line of unshovelled cars,
'cause you can walk to the bars.
In a town where the drinkers are ploughed like the roads,
in a heap round their breakfasts in yesterday's clothes.
Sweetheart, this city has beautiful, beautiful snow..."

An unspecified prize goes to anyone that can correctly identify the quote (and with it the entry title) without cheating. It's been snowing on and off here for a few days, it snowed first the morning of the 27th -- although I was in Portsmouth, on the coast, so we didn't see any until we got further inland towards London. By the time I got home the snow had been melted by the incessant rain and I headed straight back out to work.

It was hardly any time at all before Laura got in turns hyperactive and frustrated because it was snowing, and because she couldn't go out and play. I was more bemused at her moods, but the way the lights outside would light up the big flakes of snow did have a certain atmosphere. The pub was quiet -- in that sort of post-Christmas, before going back to work, on a cold wet night sort of way. The snow was intermittently heavy, and then light, and then heavy, and then stopping. Laura would keep me informed of its current status whenever she ran to the window to check. She wanted to make a snowman before the snow even covered the grass.

Like I say, this was Tuesday night. Since then the snow was steadily melting, until this morning, when there had been a heavy snowfall overnight. It frustrates me, snow and no winter sports. I'm scraping together my savings for a snowboard holiday this season -- comparing Utah with Eruopean destinations, wondering if I'll have to go alone, or worse yet not go at all.

I can't believe I'm writing a whole entry about snow.

I dreamed the other night I was joining the RAF. I've talked about it before, I've seriously considered it and had them send me information packs. But recently I shrugged and threw it out, and said it wasn't going to happen. And there I thought it ended. But in my dream I was in a recruitment office, and instead of wanting to be a photographer I was interested in being a gunner. Something I have taken one look at and thought "canon fodder" in the past. I don't think the dream last long before the scene turned into a gym and the recruiter chick was trying to kiss me or something. The dream was hardly worth mentioning if one of my colleagues today hadn't mentioned he applied to be a photographer, in the RAF. He said he wanted to be a physical training assistant or something, but didn't get the points. He didn't elaborate on why he didn't go through with it -- maybe like me they said there was a very long wait, and he said to forget it. But he also mentioned they told him there were vacancies to be a gunner, and he laughed at the suggestion.

It's funny sometimes the things you have in common with the people you least expect it.

It hits you so much harder than you thought

It's sort of difficult to know what to write in an update, so for the past 4 weeks I have been putting it off. It sounds stupid, I surely have no less to write about now than I did however many years ago when I first started an online diary.

So, what's new? I'm still unsure if my stupid job is going to lead me anywhere fast, and increasingly of the opinion that journalism was a massive waste of time. I make plans, like I get my head down on my training at work and then can get onto the management program and get out and up. Or I will decide I will pass my driving test -- on like my third attempt -- and go work for a better company. I have no idea if these are just things I tell myself so i can sleep at night, to excuse that I work for minimum wage, can't afford to leave home and have no prospects.

This is totally not what I wanted this update to be.

Jon failed his driving test the other day for something like the fourth time, and has had to admit to himself he has problems with anxiety. When you're up all night throwing up then it's a pretty good guess -- but like I say, he's just had to admit it. He says it's made him sit back and take stock of his life, and has decided however nice a guy he is, he's still a loser. Which more or less makes me a loser, too, since I've nothing more going for me.

On a random whim the other day I found Tai Chi classes vaguely nearby. I figure it combines several things I want -- like fitness, self defence, and a centring of the mind and spirit. Of course, I might think it's all a load of old bollocks when I actually start it. I also want to get into mountain boarding. I went surfing in Portugal, except all week there was no surf. Nothing. Hardly a ripple. So on like the last day, a bunch of us went mountain baording since there was a guy called Alex Deimos who sort of lived at the surf house.

Alex is fairly well known in certain boarding circles -- I have an all-terrain boarding magazine with him on the cover -- so Alex and this Australian guy called Nick had a bunch of these all terrain boards, and took us out. It was a lot like snowboarding, but on rock. I liked it a lot -- like snowboaring and surfing -- and although I scraped up an arm pretty good and twisted a foot quite badly and spent weeks thinking I had cracked a rib, I want to pursue it. So one night at the pub I was explaining to Deb how I managed to scrape my arm up, and how I wanted to carry on boarding, and she said she would go too -- since she used to be a skateboarder. I just haven't got around to finding a place to do it yet.

I want to be somewhere else. Jon mentioned the other day -- again -- of moving to Milton Keynes. I don't expect anything to come of it this time any more than it does any other time, and I don't know what we could do even if we did move there. I want to be somewhere else tho, like Norway. Or Mexico. Or maybe Canada. The trouble is, though, you can't run away from yourself.

07/07/05

07/07/2005

I woke this morning, a little after 9am. Confused and disorientated, I lay staring at the ceiling while I tried to work out what time it was, what day it was. Once I established it was my day off and I had another hour in bed before I had to get up, I tried to go back to sleep – almost on cue, San called me. We were meant to be meeting up today, and she wanted to check what time I would be coming to see if she had time to go to the gym. We discussed our arrangements, and again I tried to go back to sleep. I heard my phone vibrate with a text message shortly afterwards, but I ignored it – thinking it was probably San trying to wake me up again.

After about half an hour of non-sleep I got out of bed and checked my phone; the message was from my Mum saying to check the trains because there had been an explosion in London. I didn’t think much of it – assumed there had been some kind of isolated accident. I logged onto the internet and checked train times and everything seemed normal. Then my Dad called me into the living room where he had the TV on.

It was then that I saw that it wasn’t an isolated accident, but rather a series of coordinated terrorist attacks on the transport system in London. The reports were still a little vague – it seemed undeniable it was terrorism, and the similarities to the attacks in Madrid were obvious.

Although San lives in Kings Cross, where one of the attacks had been, I felt sure that she was safe – since I had spoken to her after the attacks, without either of us knowing it, and that she wouldn’t have so much as left her flat. Then like so many other people today, I started trying to contact friends who would be in the city. I couldn’t reach San, the mobile networks were jammed and nobody was answering at her flat – but as I say, I already spoken to her already and more wanted to make sure her family were okay, and let her know that – perhaps obviously – I wouldn’t be seeing her today.

I have friends among the many people in this town who commute into London every day – their trains arriving in Liverpool Street station, before they take the tube to their various workplaces in the city. I have no idea how many people I know -- more acquaintances than they are friends -- might be caught up in it all.

I have little else to say, I have no intention on getting into the politics of the day.

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.