Crawley

I don't know if anyone reads this - mostly these days it seems to be strange kids from all over the place who send friend requests. But for completeness and to close off the last post:

Last week I was camping down in Cornwall with my girlfriend. We stayed at the gay campsite called "Out in the Open", near Falmouth.

We had just the worst weather ever - most days were high, near gale-force winds with driving rain. This we could deal with - we are hardy and resourceful. But somewhere a few weeks ago something had gone wrong in our relationship and we just weren't getting along as much as we were, and that made the week less than fun. I mean, sometimes things were good, but mostly they weren't.

So we got back on Saturday, and we talked about it, and we broke up.

I'd seen it coming, and we weren't together for that long, but, well, I was in love and it really hurt. Yesterday was a pretty horrible day for me. Last night was not good - I got maybe two hours sleep. But at least the pain has gone, and I just feel numb.

Just a little while ago we were going good.

I'm not going to feel good about it for a while, but I'll be alright.

My girlfriend and I did not spend this Saturday night together.

My poor friend T just broke up with his girlfriend. He's devastated: I don't think he realised how much he loved her until it ended. My girlfriend's good friend also broke up with her girlfriend, although I think that she was on the kicking side rather than the kicked. Why is the measure of love loss?

My girlfriend and I stayed together on the Friday night, and went to comfort our repsective heartbreakees on the Saturday night. She was in Great Yarmouth, I was in Bedford.

T is a lovely guy. He's a chilled out, sorted guy, a carpenter and an amazingly creative man - his house is beautiful, handmade in a slightly unfinished way that looks lived in, half-finished and very refined. T was confused about the nature of love, more specifically their relationship. He was saying that he never really felt sparks when he was with her, and got worried sometimes because he thought that she did. He wondered if he had loved her at all, but as he described his sudden sense of loss it was obvious that he actually, really, did.

T asked about my partner and our relationship. He asked how it would feel if ours suddenly ended, and how I feel about her. How do I feel about her?? I don't want to share that, suffice it to say that T tells me that I can't speak about her without looking happy. Could she be just anyone? Suffice it to say that other women haven't had that effect. Losing her would hurt me a lot more than I realise, but likewise one day I will die, and these things need not be spoken of.



The view along the Bedford embankment on a sunny day in July.

I used to live in Bedford with my ex girlfriend Cathie. Breaking up with her was long and painful, but now we are like sisters. Bedford's a lovely town. I only saw one person who I had known from our time in Bedford, and I asked if he remembered either me or Cathie. When I said her name, he said "you mean the one with the big..." and made a breast gesture with his hands. No-one remembered us, but at least they remember my ex-girlfriend's breasts.

I like London, in that I love going there but wouldn't want to do it every day. I love racing in London, although admittedly I've only done it twice and wouldn't want to do the London Marathon (oh no, running marathons is just silly). The second time I went running in London was last Thursday night, when I ran the Crisis Square Mile run: 6k around narrow streets with 2699 other runners.

It was cool because the run started at St Paul's Cathedral, and then went across the Thames and along the South Bank – through the crowds of tourists and londoners that you always get there – then back along the river, crossing the Thames another three times before finishing back at St. Paul's. It was pretty crowded and we had to queue to get up and down the several flights of stairs during the run, hence the terrible time of 40 minutes. But the important thing was that it was a fun run that actually was a lot of fun to run in. May do it next year...

My girl was working on Saturday morning, so I went to see a friend in London before heading over to my babe's place in the evening. We had a really chilled out evening, and a quiet Sunday: we only got dressed in the afternoon so that we could go out running. We'd been planning some 3.5 mile run, but got lost somewhere and ended up doing 5 or so, something like that, and getting caught in the rain.


Winnie the Terrapin. My crazy friend Graham called us up on Saturday night and asked for a picture of all of babefriend's animals. He is totally nuts.

Booked flights and hotels for Euro 2009 last night. I'm hostelling it for most of the stay, but my sweetheart is coming out for the last week so we looked at hotels. It's woman's football and I was hoping the hoteliers wouldn't notice it, but the cost of the hotels drops dramatically after the day of the finals!! We have plans for the future already so we are trying not to spend too much, and gf agreed that a twin room in a hostel was fine for the first half of the week – may even head up to Oulu then and not stay in the hostel at all. How awesome is my girlfriend though – not only will she come all the way out to Finland, she'll also go and watch soccer – a sport she has no interest in at all* – and stay in a hostel for half the week.


'Tikru' the Cyclosternum fasciatum. Tikru is mine, but lives at GF's house as tarantulas are not welcome in my house - housemate restrictions. Its legs are about an inch and a half total diameter, but it moves slowly, like it's bigger than it is.

See now, I worry about this blog. Maybe a year ago it was full of misery and despair, now it is all full of love, happiness and creatures. I liked it when it was dark, but I didn't like life that much at the time. Oh well.




*My girl is a big ice-hockey fan. We have to have some things in common...

I love my girlfriend, but we are having major problems in the bedroom.

She needs 8+ hours sleep every night, and I can't have more than 6 - generally less at the weekends. So I'm finding that most saturdays I've got a couple of hours free in the morning to do something else while the babe lies in bed and dreams of me.

It's kind of like having two weekends: I have the one which I am spending with my girlfriend, going out doing things with her, and I have the morning stretches where I can get up and work on a couple of projects, while my honey sleeps.

At the moment, I'm working on a little English-Finnish dictionary to run on my phone. It's derived from a translator program which I wrote a couple of years ago, but obviously it's running on a phone, so there are some differences. Too exciting to describe here. No, really.

When I wasn't in an early morning nerd session, I took my girl on a surprise trip to Battersea Dog's home in London this last weekend. We aren't thinking of getting a dog/cat - or rather weren't, until we saw this one adorable Rex cat. Ho hum.

From there we wandered around Covent Garden, and then after dinner mooched around a couple of gay venues. We dropped in at Halfway To Heaven, which is just round the back of Trafalgar Square, before heading off to CXR for a drink. I do like CXR, even though it's predominantly a gentleman's bar. We then headed off to a friend's party in Hackney. I've known my friend for about 17 years, but never been to a birthday party yet. It was just too exciting.... she has this whole other group of friends who I see about once a year or so (usually New Year's Eve), it was very pleasant to get the latest snapshot of their lives. How transient our existence is.

We left at midnight – any later would have meant getting back real late, and my girl does like her sleep. We arrived at Victoria Station at about 1.20, well, we weren't in a hurry to get home. The next train wasn't until 2, so we dropped in at The Stag, just round the corner. The Stag is a little gay bar which the wifey had spotted earlier in the day – I'd never seen it before. She's got sharp eyes, has my girl, probably because she gets a decent amount of sleep. We stayed there for about an hour – lovely little pub, very friendly atmosphere. And then home on the 2 am train, getting to bed at just gone 3.


I love late night bar hopping, and I'm pretty glad that my girlfriend will come out with me and drink shots at two in the morning. A lot of people just won't do that.

Quiet weekend. Ran a go-karting event, went to girlfriend's, gave a sports injury to a boxer, watched football, became an international football fan.

Like most weekends, I went to my girl's house on Friday night. We went out to some bar in Uxbridge, the kind of gay venue which thinks a lot of itself but is really just the local bar where queers go to. We didn't stay particularly later.

Went running with girlfriend on Saturday, and her dog - which is a German Boxer doggy - swerved across the track in front of me, well, boxers are pretty bouncy dogs. I caught one of her back legs with my foot, she didn't complain at the time but slowed right down towards the end, and later that evening (and the next day) was limping. Poor Dana - I feel a bit bad although not my fault as was an accident. Dana the boxer doggy has a legitimate (and noble) sports injury. What a dog.


An iguana from the Galapagos. My girlfriend took the picture - I boosted the detail on it because she needed a more detailed version, but she took the picture not me.

It was a bank holiday! May Day bank holiday was celebrated all over the west on the Friday, except for the UK where we had Monday off. My woman was working the Monday, so I went to see my family instead, and while there we watched the FA Women's Cup Final. This year was Arsenal, the queens of the premier league, vs. Sunderland, the underdogs from the first division. Arsenal won, which was not a surprise, although I don't think that victory was guarenteed for them: the Arsenal have recently lost three of their best players to the USA, and Sunderland put up a feisty defence with defender Lucy Bronze and goalie bdjsakgbjk putting in some good work. For most of the match the score was 1-0 to the reds,until stoppage time when hgdjsak made it 2-0. Sunderland made a last goal about 5 seconds from the final whistle to give Arsenal the cup with a score of 2-1. Shame really, a Sunderland victory would have been one of those fairy-tale endings.



Rachel Yankey dancing with Stokes from Sunderland. Entertaining, but they should have been playing soccer.

Tickets for Euro 2009 went on sale on Monday at 8.00 am CET. When they actually appeared on the internet some time on Monday afternoon I clocked them and got my tickets. I've booked tickets for the opening Finland - Denmark match, which should be cool, all three of the England group games, and the final, which I reckon will be awesome and will hopefully involve England. Maybe. I didn't book quarter or semi final tickets as I don't know which of them England will be in yet: I'll have to hope I can get them on the day.