Christmas

Her name is Christmas -- like the Bond girl in "The World is Not Enough" -- and juvenile as I am I can't wait for the opportunity to turn to her and make the same joke: "I thought Christmas only came once a year". I'd sleep with her just for the chance to say it.

Internet dating seems once more to have stalled -- there was a couple of false starts, one girl seemed keen when I complimented her on her smile, another liked that I wrote her a long and rambling second email. But neither came to anything. And yet one night I went the largely-pointless flirtomatic website I always see advertised on MySpace, and have heard people refer to. The website is pretty stupid, just horny guys looking for people to have cybersex with -- pulse optional, age negotiable. Just as I was about to write the site off as a bad idea, this girl caught my eye. I sent her a friendly -- as opposed to sleazy -- message and we talked for the rest of the night, switching to IM fairly quickly. We share a taste in music, but there's still plenty of room for me to recommend bands or songs to her. We'd been talking less than a week when I asked for her phone number, now days don't pass without a message or two back and forth. It's not quite calling each other, but there will be time for that later.

I made her a CD the other day -- I vaguely suggested it last week and she jumped at the chance -- and was wondering what to do about her address, she'd be wise not to trust me with it quite yet. The funny thing is, she lives in Shropshire -- a long way from here, but coincidentally the same county as where Fiona lived, back when we dated. It wasn't very close back then, either, when I lived in the Midlands. Funnier still, I know what town she lives in -- she made reference to it the other day, so bored I stuck her second name into a search of the phone book. There was a list of names. For no reason, I put Fiona's surname in -- and up comes her Dad's new address. It seems familiar. I go back to my original search and I notice that one of the people on the first list lives a mere 5 doors away from Fiona's Dad. And if I was a gambling man, I'd put money on it being her.

I don't know where it's going to lead. Right now we're just friends and I don't feel a stir of anything more than friendship for her, which is just as well. But I want to see where the friendship leads -- if people come into our lives for a reason, I'm eager to find out what significance we will have for the other.

And just to mess with my head, now San wants the two of us to to Paris for the weekend, for her birthday. Just her, and me.