Boys Boys Boys

Is it only me or are there no good boys about lately?

I broke up with the ex in January and some how am over half a year on without a serious flirtation in sight. Worse still I don't think I've even met someone I fancied.

Wanted: Tall, dark, intelligent, funny (really funny-witty) chap. Must like curvy girls with 'padding' (bit of extra chub to you and me!), sunday lunches, G&Ts, bottles of wine, random wandering, high heels (on me not him but not for wandering in), reading in bed, afternoon naps, chats and be possessed of an ability not to look oddly at the more eclectic members of my extended family. Catholic would nice purely to avoid rows about children and make visiting granny easier. Cheeky and the ability to convey "god I want you" with the eyes is valuable.

Any takers?

:)

Up A Gumtree?

I love Gumtree. It's great for a number of reasons:

• It has a swaps page: you would not believe the random stuff people will swap - cars/toys/bananas (ok so maybe I'm exaggerating here) the point is its random

• It has a personal ads section. I love personal ads. I think its hugely interesting to see what people think is a good idea to post as a description of themselves. I remain horrified however at the the number of people who no longer use 'real' English to communicate.

On a different note - things are still progressing with the ex and his new love interest. She smacked him about over the weekend when he tried to wrest a BB gun from her. I kind of hope they sort it out. They are both pretty competitive and it might make for an interesting relationship. We've fairly firmly established that there is jack-all left between us and since I'm not really the kind of girl to worry moon after the uninterested, he has unwittingly helped me slice the ties.

On a much sadder note, UK people may have seen the tragic story on the BBC new this evening about a sail boat that they think was run over by a P&O ferry. One of the guys who was killed was supposed to be an usher at my boss' wedding in two weeks time. It really sucks and my thoughts and prayers are with him and their families at this time.

God Bless.

"My Feet Are In Pieces"

...said my cousin Dan yesterday as we sat on the Jubilee Line towards North Greenwich. My brother, who is 9, has been up visiting for the weekend. Dan and I are his godparents and promised to show him a good time. To a 9 year old this means:

FRIDAY:
- Dinner at the Rainforest Cafe (can you believed they deep fried a filo pastry parcel. eugh.)
- Visit to National Portrait Gallery
- Playing the Trumpet
- Bed.

SAT:
- 7.30am wake up. Ouch. It's early.
- Sobell Centre in Holloway for ice skating
- Wander over to Emirates Stadium to "check it out". Meet Emmanuel Petite. Don't meet Thierry Henry sadly.
- Tube to Natural History Museum. Visit dinosaurs, blue whale, panda, etc. Lots of stuff
- Home (collectively the above takes 12 hours)

TODAY:
- 7.20 am wake up
- 9am get up (Dan went out last night, rolled in at 5am. I knew he wouldn't get up so I stayed in bed)
- Go to Imperial War Museum. See much sad stuff. Much amazing stuff. Discover that it costs 1/5 of the cost of training a dog to sniff for landmines to train a pig to do the same thing better. You can also use rats
- Home for lunch
- Two hour drive to coast and back to return brother to parental unit.

Exhausting.

Upside Down Bouncing Off The Ceiling

Whilst you may recognise the title above as the catchy chorus of the eponymous A-Teens classic this post is actually more trauma.

Good News First: I got offered the job I mentioned as a secondment. It's great because for 3 months I will do that and a bit of my current role, then my current contract is up anyway and I can go and apply for something else with recent experience. Whoo.

Upside Down: I mentioned I saw my ex on Tuesday evening and it was nice. We had 'relations' and a hug good bye. I emailed saying hope we can stay in touch, value your friendship etc etc. He replied saying since you took your Mum's side in the court case (about 18 months before we broke up!) I haven't been able to trust you and I don't value your friendship.

How shitty is that - we meet, we laugh, we have sex (foolish in reterospect) and then he responds with that. My friend says he a 'bad man' (not quite verbatim!) and I should just leave him to it. But it really offends me that he thinks this.

a) because most of the trauma and the wracking depression I had was brought about trying to manouver in such a way that I wouldn't fuck my mum over and I wouldn't damage our relationship. I did everything I could to be sympathetic to the fact he had to support his dad.

b) becuase he accused me of being a thief (the case is about money and whether its paid back) by consipring and I really, really resent the accusation.

c) his opinion weirdly and rather annoyingly still matters to me because I think he's usually pretty pricipled if a little dogmatic a times. He's also bloody minded which means if he has decided what's right, then will cling on like whatever that animal is that has teeth biting backwards to keep its prey.


Anyway - I'm supposed to be writing up a business case and a report about improving haemato-oncology services. It's almost as interesting. Honest.

All Over It

I’m feeling very detached from the whole ex-thing at the moment. It was very much agitating me but given how nonchalent he was about everything and the people we knew last night I I’m inclined to think “bugger it”. Why worry about it – do I really want to be in a situation where I’m only average. Average friend. Average rembrance. It’s a bit like going from be a renaissance fresco to be a beige wall in a hospital corridor.

On a more exciting note, I think one of the people I work with is going to offer me a job. IÂ’m a little bit worried it involves more data handling than IÂ’ll be comfortable with and also IÂ’d be responsible for the cancer waiting times targets. You breech those babies, you have to tell the Dept. of Health. It affects the Trust performance as a whole. Scary shit really.

Love Has Left The Building

So I spent this evening with my ex-boyfriend. See post below for more angst ridden details. He was the first person I properly went out with and the first person I had sex with. He came over this evening to set up my wireless access - which was great because I couldn't do it. Now I can type from bed. Having done that, eaten a gingerbread man and sipped a Coke Zero he jokingly said he should have traded sexual favours.

See now we've been here before. After six months of not talking, since we met up recently we have indulged in 'naughty fun' twice already. Once at my house when everyone was out and then in a hotel for the night. This isn't your run-of-the-mill old flame sex because it involves bondage and some Dom/sub roles. If you've ever tried this, or regularly indulge you'll know that trust is a huge issue, as is feeling comfortable with someone. We've got these aspects in the bag. So anyway - we 'fell' into it again this evening. After an hour or two a couple of things started us giggling which killed that mood.

We lay on the bed chatting for a while and I reminisced whilst he just mumbled agreement with my ramblings. He's always been the kind of guy who is a) brutally honest and b) able to tourniquet emotions/segments of life in such a way that they no longer impact on him.

I've now become one of the things that has been tied off. I asked after some friends of his we holidayed with at Christmas as we were parting. In that typical female way I asked a leading question along the lines of "I bet they don't remember me fondly" (based of the fact that he and his friend had a huge row at the end of the holidays). He replied "I don't think they even think about you" or words to that effect, basically "you are a non-entity". As we hugged good bye I said " I miss you. Sometimes. Not all the time". To which he replied " What can I say back?" which was pretty harsh I thought.

It would be nice if he could at least acknowledge that we had had some nice times together. Afterall we did go ou for two and half years. Anyway, I don't think we'll see each other again. He finds the NSA thing too weird and is developing an ever deepening interest in this girl who has slept with over 100 men (ok so that wasn't the first thing he mentioned!) and is the sister of some old friends.

She's cool and funny by all accounts - she does outdoor sports, is presumably shit hot in the sack and even got to name one of the above friends new kittens. Whilst I hope they are happy, assuming it actually gets off the ground, I'd honestly like her not to quite measure up to me.

As we parted I thought I'd go for the money shot and asked "Do you want to go for lunch or something or would you rather we just didn't stay in contact?" The response to which was "I don't really know". Fuck all use.

Anyway- I think that's essentially a no. I think its a bit sad, but as we've still got to trawl through the court case its probably better we aren't friends, let alone lovers. He'll always be my friend in my head. Can't shape much outside that though.

Where Is The Love?

I'm really cross with myself and just generally. My ex-boyfriend and I broke up at the beginning of February. I led the way because I couldn't bear the situation we were in anymore. I didn't feel I loved him enough to be the kind of girl he deserved. Also, when we started going out he was more 'mighty' for want of a better word but by then, I was able to ask for anything I wanted virtually and get it. Instead of it being what I thought I wanted, it turned out to be a destructive thing. It goads you to challenges boundaries and make unreasonable demands like a spoilt child.

We had, and it still continues, an ongoing legal dispute between our parents that eventually eroded away our ability to honest with each other. I got to the point where I would deliberatly not mention when I was going to see my family and didn't want to hear about his. In the end, an email came to light which at the time I believed he had filtched from my email account (he's a techie wizz - such things are child's play!) I was really, really hurt by this - it drove me crazy almost. We'd always been so honest and I was heartbroken that he could have gone behind my back like this. I was also furious that a stupid fucking court case could have driven us to this.

Anyway, we broke up, without me ever mentioning the email or his percieved theft. I'd fought against the secrecy for so long, and was so upset by the betrayal that I couldn't face discussing it. Even if he had said he hadn't taken it I don't know if I would have been able to believe him. Since then we've had an extended (6 month) period of silence. It was easier all round I think but lately we've started talking again. As part of a casual discussion I mentioned the email. He looked at me blankly and said he knew nothing about it.

What's most awkward is that at the time I knew I had made the right decision. I probably still have. My real angst comes from the fact that essentially I am a coward. Rather than keep loving him like he loved me, and he really did love me lots, I piked out and always worried about what might happen. I was worried the legal stuff might break us up. Because of that I have the suspicion that I always held something back when I shouldn't have. I wanted the uncomplicated stuff from our early days when all we thought about was each other and 'naughty fun'.

It's all bothering me now because he's falling in love with someone else. And she's going to have all the nice things. And I know its really unreasonable to not want him to do that, especially since we don't appear to have futures destined for each other and I've been perfectly happy in the six months we haven't seen each other, but I can't really help it. I am really happy for him because he deserves someone great. But seeing him recently has made me remember that for nearly two and half years he was my best friend. The person that I told everything to. The person who argued with people for me because he loved me. The person who made me cry with laughter and nearly kill myself with stress. And the person who made feel more safe than I have since I was about five years old.

I Pay For His Crapness

My landlord is crap. Not part-budget but truly crap. It's part of a relatively recent problem than began in May when we foolishly rented through Ludlow Thompson. We had a complete weapon of an estate agent dealing with stuff, he was late, he didn't return calls, he had the gas certification for a completely different property and failed to set up the rent so after the first month we were charged for defaulting of a payment they failed to recieve despite them not having set it up. Oh yes. They are silly.

Anyway - back to the landlord. He's told us he doesn't own it - it belongs to his daughter. This apparently exempts him from eveything that needs his attention in some way. He's failed to pay the service charge and we now can't have a parking permit, and we've had so many final demand letters and aggresive correspondence from her creditors/lawyers etc that I could start my own recycling business. Particularly when you factor in the amount of wine/gin I've had to consume to cope with the stress and the number of glass bottles that's yielded.

Why are people so crap? You agree to do something, just bloody do it. Don't be a weapon.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

The NHS As An Addiction

I work in the NHS. I have done since I left university in 2002. I started temping and went onto management. I really like the NHS. Its an amazing place to work because:

a) it provides an outstanding level of service for the majority of the time, free at the point of delivery;

b) staying in a NHS hospital provides on tap expertise in more areas than you can shake a stick at, certainly more than if you went privately;

c) no one works in it for the money really: people do it because they want to help others;

d) you never have to wait for an appointment if you work in a hospital;

I've always been a hospital junkie. For as long as I can remember I've liked the bussle, the rushing, the deadly quiet periods and the whole juxtapositioning of emotions and experience: life; death; eleation; despondency. It gives you a respect for human life and human beings generally that I'm not sure you could get elsewhere. You see people who give up and sometimes you agree with them and also the people who keep kicking in the face of all odds. It's truly amazing.

Anyway - almost hometime.