Apprehensive adaptation and comfort in change

Today my SP and I found out some fantastic news.

Tomorrow evening, her partner comes home.

We are both filled with an apprehensive relief, still not sure, after so many possiblys and probablys and maybes. Neither of us really knows if tomorrow he really will be here and, if he is, how long he will stay: a week; a month; forever.

I have seen my SP deal with the fluctuations of emotion this week that she has experienced with never really knowing whether she could allow herself to imagine the possibilities. She has just left for another appointment and I’ve seen: Inside her somewhere she is slowly, hesitantly beginning to realise and accept. I could see it creeping, cautiously, through her smile and her eyes as she began to see how her life might be changing once again, and he’d be home. And it is really beautiful. She is allowing herself the possibility of being able to express the love that she’s locked tightly away, in just a few hours’ time.

She still hasn’t really allowed herself to believe that she will see him tomorrow night. But she has allowed herself, almost, almost to believe he is coming home.

She has worried intensely about how I will adapt, to living with another person, to living with a couple, to not being exactly what we’d planned.

I would be lying if I wasn’t a little apprehensive about more change and adapting to another person’s routine, their structure, the way they like things to be, especially in their own home (from what I can gather he’s a great deal tidier and more methodical than my SP and I, who are both rather scatty and untamed in the ways of domesticity, although we both give it a damn good go). It is also going to take me a little while to adjust and rebalance a different equilibrium, another entity in the equation. And, from a selfish point of view, I will now have to share her.

I am a creature of habit, my boyfriend is often driven insane by my unfathomable routines, the undecipherable way I like to do things. From his point of view, I appear to have constructed a watertight methodology, an unbreakable code that seemingly only I, and a few close female friends, can interpret.

When I ask him, for example, what time he would like to go out for dinner, he tells me, often plucking a time randomly from the air, not really caring either way as long as he gets fed at some point. Or he did, until he realised that whatever time he mentioned, it wasn’t the time I had in mind. His suggestion would be followed, with shocked reaction, by various reasons why 7 o’clock would be an utterly ridiculous time to go to dinner, but 7:30 (the time I had in mind) would obviously be perfect.

He’d occasionally attempt to second guess me, but it is something that very few have mastered (my SP being one of these, but probably because she herself has such a complex mesh of contributing factors that affect such a decision as to what time dinner should be) and he rarely humours me by trying to understand the complexities of such a decision.

My boyfriend has now totally given up on such ill conceived guessing games. He simply returns the question to me, adding on the end ‘because you’ve already decided, haven’t you’. I retort, insulted, that I haven’t, and, occasionally, I attempt to pre-empt my thought by asking him before I have had time to digest such information and form a complex reasoning for whatever time I have earmarked, but usually, yes, I admit, I’ve already decided. Well, not decided as such, because obviously I want to factor in any opinion and suggestion of his into the equation, but its got to have damn good justification.

Since we moved out of our flat, and maybe even before, during the change, during the uncertainty of if we were going to move to a flat in Dulwich (it is more beautiful than the images of its name evokes, trust me) and settle down into mortgage infused bliss (yes, I know, a blatant oxymoron) and become slaves to the city or if we were going to both follow our dreams, but be apart for a long, long time, since that time, I have noticed a change in myself.

At one point, not too long ago, a change such as this would have greatly unsettled me. But I have developed chameleonic properties (well as much as is possible for an OCD riddled methodologically obsessed WebStress can be) having adapted to numerous routines and lifestyles and homes over the last few months. I have eaten my beans on toast on a variety of plates in many different settings. I have even stopped eating beans on toast every day – how’s about that for a change. And it has made me a better (not to mention slightly less frustrating) person, one poorly designed personal quality gradually subsiding, a bit at a time, and a layer of easygoingness trying desperately, steadily, quietly to form on its surface, like algae, attempting to gradually suffocate my rituals, my routines, my numerous ‘this is how it should really be done’.

I have tried to convey to her the genuineness of my happiness that I am feeling about him coming home. Of course I am bloody happy. She is incomplete without him and they are miserable apart. People in love shouldn’t have to do this, they shouldn’t have to go through this. They should be together, or if they’re not, the reason they are apart should be one that they can somehow find happiness and contentment in, knowing there’s an end, knowing it is for the right reason.

And I think she knows. I am a terrible liar to those that know me well, and she does. I have also heard he is an excellent cook and I am planning to fully exploit any generosity he may wish to exert with regards to tasting sessions and offer my advice (ahem) with any experimentations he may undertake (which usually surmount to ‘I think you might want to put some chilli in that’, being the culinary goddess that I am not).

He is also a wonderful bloke. And he takes the piss out of me (I may point out that loads of people do this as I am an extremely easy target and appear to offer myself for such abuse obviously and stupidly) but with him, I know it is out of affection. Well, at least I think it is.

I have listed my apprehensions first in this post because I wanted to get them out of the way, to highlight their existence but to put them into context, to know how little they really represent, in order to be able to enjoy the time with them both and carry on with the direction I was going, to enjoy the contentment of relaxing into a safe, loving, caring environment, to be with two people I care a great deal about. I am extremely happy in my surroundings and my situation, as best it could be without my boyfriend, and I have the continuous (if occasionally exhausting) affection and love of two beautiful puppies to boot (even if I did manage to drench my socks today by walking through, on two different occasions, dog piss. In the same place. Little buggers).

She will, of course, remain my Surrogate Partner. And now, maybe, I will have two.

Dependency and Distractions

I have been trying to make constructive use of my aching. Last night, my SP and I sat, both a little down, a little fragile, and talked about our sense of loss.

Her loss is somewhat different to mine. Unlike my technological luxuries, she receives the occasional infrequent email, the even less frequent and problematic, distant phone call and never a text message. She has written a letter, but the post will take a long time. Neither of them have the space or are permitted to express their true loss, their true aching. Emails are brief and vague. And the worst of it is, unlike my rigid diary, my days I am able to strike off as if I have conquered another peak, my time I am able to while away until I reach his return date, or my visit to him, she has no idea if her partner will be home tomorrow or in December, and will never know until he arrives. And even then, there is no permanency, no safety, no relaxation into dependency.

I aspire to her strength. Her puppies have consumed a large amount of her energies, her emotion, her love. They absorb her concentration and attention like hyperactive sponges, they have a need and a reliance on her that she has to accommodate and they draw her away from herself. She is constantly exhausted but fulfils their demands with an intensity and an affection that is quite amazing. It makes me realise for how long I've focused on myself, introverted, selfish. She simply rarely has the time to think and to feel. Her love is passionate and genuine for her puppies, but her actions in other parts of her life are at times merely functions, achingly robotic. Too tired, too scared, to full to think.

Initially we imagined that we would be emotional rollercoasters, dipping and rising and intertwining around one another. But, instead, we are experiencing the lows and the highs, as high as they can go with the emotional restrictions impeding them, together. We have followed each other's lurching emotions, we have synchronised and in unison we experience feelings we have no idea how to address.

We have had many 'he'll be back before you know its' from both of our fantastic support network of incredibly loyal, loving, caring friends and relatives. But we are both trying to find out how to not wish away our lives, how to cope, how to carry on. As I've said before, there are so so many people who have to deal with so much worse.

We discussed last night the precarious balance that neither of us have mastered, that of coping and enjoying our lives but not getting used to being without our partners. We are both dependent people, we both need love and support and security from our partners. And we are both terrified of getting 'used to' being without them. Of this becoming what we perceive as normal. We hold a permanent resistance, but with that resistance comes the understanding and acknowledgement that as a result we are automatically making things harder for ourselves.

We are forever making mistakes, in our thoughts, in our actions, not knowing how to deal with things. Both of us suffered destructive dreams following our talks last night that have hung a shadow over our day, that have made us feel a little disconnected, like we are not really here, there is a sadness that I saw in her this morning that I felt, before we'd even spoken, there is a feeling we are to scared to explore and understand.

My commitment to my work, usually a feverish insistence that ensures the day flies by, is little and unfocused. I have had to enforce tasks upon myself, which isn't helped by dwindling client budgets due to the end of the financial year. I grasp tasks and ideas and then they drain away limply and I am left feeling empty and making another cup of tea.

We are very different, my SP and I. I am emotional, I experience regular convulsions of insecurity and my unfocused conscientiousness, coupled with uncontrollable guilt, means I stress and worry far more than is healthy. She is a lot more practical, she has a control on what is deemed an acceptable commitment to her workload and the activities she undertakes. She manages to compartmentalise her emotions and refuses to think, at least until she sleeps, when she thinks, and dreams over and over.

But we are helping each other. We are loving living together and are able to mould ourselves easily into whatever role the other needs, instantly, responsively. I am drinking a lot, as I have done for months, but last night I just had a glass and maybe will even opt for a warm ribena this evening (if I put it in a wine glass its just like mulled wine without the kick). We are each other's strength, in those times, the morning, the evening, when the aching is at its utmost, before the day comes along with its distractions. Our wonderful friends are our distractions, but, from circumstance, we are where we can indulge in discussing the things we didn't realise we were feeling.

The Training Begins

Last night I spent the evening covered in dog saliva and ham.

Apparently, this is what happens at puppy training school.

I was utterly petrified. My SP had briefed me fully, and all the information was precariously balancing itself, one tip ontop of the other, resting on the unstable, volatile matter of my brain. As each tip was dealt, I felt the other sinking further into some unreachable crevice, and eventually had to get my extremely patient SP to repeat them all over again, in a vain attempt to create some sort of vague understanding through parrot fashion repetition (a revision method that has always failed dismally with me).

At puppy training school, the outside world does not exist. As soon as you enter the room, the dust slowly settling from the previous class, and you pay your £2, you're sold to a world of high-pitched wailing (me), and an entire vocal array of noises I'd never been introduced to before (the dog; me) and where it seems quickly normal to be covered in dog spittle, hair, dust and theremnantss of a titbit of ham.

My worries were eased prior to the class as I quickly found that, unlike her, on greeting a dog (cocker spaniel; German shepherd; muzzled-big-black-scary-dog) he will sniff them excitedly then collapsee on the floor and rollover into contented submission. But on entering the class, terror flooded back swiftly through my bloodstream and I was left rigid and petrified.

She'd mentioned it prior to the class. That we'd have to take turns on our own in front of the class. But there were supposed to be around 15 dog handlers there. And there were substantially more than 15.

I stared at the other dog owners as, one by one, they took their dogs up and made them wait as they crossed the room (you think that's easy? yeah, so would I have done, back in the ignorance of my puppiless existence, in The Time Before). I watched, in awe, in terror. The teacher scolded the owners as if they themselves were the dogs, and I tried to control outwardly expressing The Fear. He was sat excitedly at my feet and I looked at him intensely, trying to deduce whether his intentions were honourable or whether he was just going to belt across the room and start trying to hump the muzzled-big-black-scary-dog.

I tried to learn from their mistakes but the thoughts evaporated before I had time to pin them down and I was left with just thoughts of how I was supposed to tear ham, situated in a plastic bag in my pocket, at the enviable lightening speed of my fellow dog handlers.

So it was my SP's turn. And, even with The Devil Child, she did remarkably well. Then it was me.

He was a dream. He was perfection. While, had the teacher not been holding him he'd have probably never stayed, as being male he is clearly driven by a love of sheer volume of food (he waded through the majority of a food bag yesterday when my SP accidentally left the cupboard door open), he bounded over to me en queue and even sat whilst I thanked him, a neediness in my voice that was quite unsettling, and fed him yet another piece of ham.

We attempted various other commands and, sensing my fear, he aided me where possible (although one or two looks from him indicated that he thought I was either insane or stupid), although his weakness as a canine hoover made one or two tricks a little difficult, as his mouth shuffled contently along the ground and I ran around him exhaustedly screetching 'come on, come on' with forced excitement and enthusiasm.

As we walked home, shattered and salivered, I felt extremely proud. I had learnt new commands, mastered the beginnings of ham-tearing, found how to alter my voice from commanding-authoritativebaritonee to banshee-esque wailing in seconds.

And then I realised, it wasn't the dog that was now well trained.

It was me.

Communication Breakdown

The wonders of modern technology have meant that my boyfriend and I, whilst being separated by an enormous carbon footprint and an inconvenient time difference of 11 hours (‘so you want me to call you in the morning’, ‘yes, around 10ish’, ‘so is that ten your time in the evening or ten in the morning my time’, ‘oh just sometime tomorrow morning’, ‘hang on, is that my morning or yours?’) are able to communicate pretty much consistently in a wide variety of ways.

Our communication is usually restricted to early mornings and evenings, now I’ve finally grasped the really rather straightforward but damned inconsiderate time zonal interference (although his birthday utterly confused me as he started his celebrations the night before his actual birthday, as obviously I am continuing in the correct time and he was merely dabbling in alternative time zones while his birthday carried on regardless, happy in GMT contentment).

He is a fantastic writer and we have found our medium for fluid and emotional communication in emails, texts (although, as my boyfriend has developed an inconvenient dislike for texting, I often have to send him an email gently encouraging a text in order to keep my consistently ego-massaging texts topped up so I don’t have to rely on vastly over consumed ones that are near expiry), msn and VOIP.

Before he left, we had talked at great lengths about what an asset Skype would be to our relationship. We are both regular Skypers and I conduct a vast amount of work comms through it (yes I even have a rather becoming headset). We trialled a few nervous and emotional Skype calls and, with a few glitches ironed out, we settled comfortably into what we believed would be a blissful, and free, method of communication (we both even have webcams, so we can see our headsetted faces if we so desire).

It was not to be.

I returned to London and sunk back into my WebStressed routine and he begun his lectures. And we Skyped.

Or at least, we attempted to.

It seems that, on returning to their accommodation, the other students have the audacity to assume that they can also contact their loved ones. So we pursued, valiantly, battling against the diminishing bandwidth, attempting, usually unsuccessfully, to interpret what each other were saying, trying desperately to not say ‘can you repeat that’ and ‘what did you say, I’m sorry the connection just dropped out’ more than around 10 times in the space of two minutes.

But we battled in vain. As our conversations continued, for we attempted this hopelessness on several occasions, the delay swelled and expanded, leaving our conversations fractured and hopeless, and our sentences were spliced, vowels and consonants dropping like dehydrated children fainting from their benches in sweltering summer-school choirs.

My boyfriend, as a surprise, attempted a video call in one of these fateful communication disasters. All I saw, briefly before the connection shattered, was part of his t-shirt. And I ungraciously broke down into tears in my office, before I remembered that I was maintaining an astonishing record in not blubbing and gave myself a sharp talking to, then comforted my whimpering self with a cup of tea.

It is two weeks today since he left, since I said goodbye to him at Heathrow. It feels like a lifetime, but it’s only been 14 days.

Everyone said this would be the turning point, that now I would find myself and my place. That the aching would subside, or maybe I’d simply have grown accustomed to the ache, but instead it still feels like I am consistently experiencing that early morning toe stub rather than a mild premenstrual back ache (I’m lucky to escape the violent spasms that many women are forced to endure).

Maybe I haven’t given it a chance yet. It’s not technically 2 weeks yet. I’ve a few hours to go.

So our Skyping continued, every time with the diminishing hope that this time, this time it would all be okay.

And then, just to be really nice, the owners of his accommodation slowed his connection to a snail’s pace for the rest of the month as his fellow residents had exceeded the bandwidth from, oh and it really had to be didn’t it, downloading sci-fi programs.

Great. Just great.

He couldn’t even access Gmail. Things weren’t, to put it mildly, perfect on the technological communication front.

It is gradually resolving itself, but our morning/evening Skypes will, it seems, be forever be suffocated with problems. I am well aware that the mini WebStress inside of me, the child that desperately wants to kick and scream and throw, as my mother used to call it, an almighty paddy. She just wants to scream ‘its not fair’. But I can speak to him, and I am incredibly lucky.

It just isn’t as easy as I’d have liked to imagine. Its just something else I have to get my head around.

Maybe it is better this way. It almost feels like Skype is deliberately fighting against our communication urges to ensure that we don’t fall easily into those conversations where you end up arguing just to keep listening, keep hearing, keep being with them. All those misunderstandings we’ve so far been spared of because we haven’t been able to misunderstand anything.

And, to be honest, we’re both crap on the phone.

This way I have some beautiful emails that might never have been written, that would have been lost in a disregarded sentence that might never have formed because they were bulldozed by some unimportant note that finds its way into day to day conversation. This way I have something to read over and over, to immerse myself in. This way, I don’t have to have memories because I have physicalities. When I’m reading I don’t miss him because he’s there.

And this way I get to compose beautiful emails too, rather than desperately muttering ‘I miss yous’.

Tempted by the Dark Side

On Friday, where I excelled even my own preconceived ideas of how obscenely driven I could be by guilt, I attended a voluntary client meeting. Until 6pm.

This meeting, however, took a turn that I wasn't expecting.

I admit, I instigated this meeting largely for my own gain. I would hopefully not have to return to London a few days after settling in Yorkshire and was routing for a few brownie points en route, as it was a Friday afternoon and even most clients are fairly relaxed at this point in the week.

In the meeting, with the client that I feared, the very same client that had reduced me to tears on more than one occasion, the client who had called my work 'crap' before in one memorable email, offered me a job.

If I were to ever want to work for them in-house, the door was open and there was even a strong black coffee waiting for me and a stapler with my name on a bit of card selotaped onto the back of it sat on my desk.

The client enthused about my work to what may have been an uncomfortable degree had I not been so utterly shocked. I did the usual WebStress trick of changing the conversation swiftly around on several occasions to flatter the client and to give me time to pin down the corners of my mouth that were trying their best to escape into an unflattering and incredibly unsophisticated grin.

I had heard that the client had praised my work in previous meetings, but this had often been followed by what I would describe as not wonderfully constructive feedback, to say the least. But here they were, saying these really....nice things to me.

On the train home, my mind bounded over the last year I had spent working with the client. I allowed myself to imagine, as we lurched our way through the suburbs of South London and I steadied myself under someone's armpit (not previously being used to commuting at 6pm), what it would be like if I worked in such a beautiful office, where people regularly used the word 'gorgeous', where they enthused about their business, which is something decidedly lacking from agency life.

I had decided before I joined the current agency, that I would never again work for another such organisation. I longed to be immersed within the company itself, where I could flourish creatively rather than be belted down with budgetary restrictions. Where meetings were spontaneous, where expensive coffee was plentiful and they had those nice biscuits which really are nice, where people waxed lyrical about their latest product or service to their neighbour, where 'drinks' and 'nibbles' were second nature, where people wore pointy shoes.

But this is an ideal that, once I trialled a little of it in my current company, tasted bitter sweet. On the few occasions I attended drinks after work it meant that I didn't get home til late, I faced enduring the tube with a hangover, I wasn't with my boyfriend, I didn't get my warm ribena. I suck at being a city girl, a socialite. And, if I'm honest, I can't even wear pointy shoes because my feet are too wide (if I do they have to be a size too big and I look unnervingly like the wicked witch of the west).

Now, working at home once again, the word 'casual' has taken on a whole new level. I've even been wearing jogging bottoms around the house a good few hours before going to bed (which is as a result of finding out within the first hour of being in a house run, and I mean run, by puppies, that any clothes you wear within the house will automatically be deemed 'casual' within a few minutes of being introduced to a furry friend and you will only ever put anything vaguely smart on approximately 30 seconds before you leave the house).

My SP has a pair of wellies and I may well get mine couriered up from Cornwall so we can really indulge in the stereotypical lesbian label when out walking that seems to have been impaled on us in our partners' absence (we actually had this for a good old while before they left, but I won't dwell on that). She mentioned the other day that things were seriously worrying when you'd turn up at the pub with dog-bags in your pocket. I laughed until it happened to me yesterday at the gym. And, to top it all off, we had a text message conversation about the girl pup's bowel movements this morning.

And I've only been here 72 hours.

My boyfriend told me he'd dreampt I'd taken the job, and we'd moved back to London. He asked me what I thought about that.

I did it all wrong. I lived and worked on opposite sides of London for the entire time I was there, apart from a brief spell where I worked in Islington, and indulged myself with a cup of soya tea from Pret on a morning, feeling extremely cosmopolitan. I spent my time commuting. Myself and my boyfriend had an unhealthy alarm set. We were creatures of the early morning, where others were buried beneath their duvets, comforted in their extra few hours.

On this last train journey home, I daydreamed of a postage sized garden, of a walk to work, of 'gorgeous' heels that I could walk effortlessly in (and less like the transvestite walk I seem to have embarrassingly adopted) and were envied by colleagues, of not shopping in Matalan but in places that have a sales assistant that wants to help you and offers you advice, of makeup that wasn't from Rimmel, of drinks in posh bars with my boyfriend after work, of a life that I never would have, because it just isn't me.

So now, I'm sat in my 'scrags', with two really lovely puppies for company (even if one of them has pissed on my bed twice today and I'm not sure if I should take that as a sign that she likes me or really, really doesn't), I can see a field from my window, my SP is on her way home for a cup of tea in the sunshine with me and am spending my days not commuting for 3 hours.

I won't be going back to London. Not unless its for visits and for meetings.

But I can imagine feeling that pang of jealousy, seeing my friends indulge easily and happily in a life that I never quite managed, I never quite got right.

Furry Friends

We have settled into a happy equilibrium, my Surrogate Partner and I.

We have listed each other's analities, foibles and irritations, of which there are many for both of us (she reordered my appalling food stacking; I am on 'window closing' duty) and are happy in our accommodation of these.

We know each other better than most, and we just work together. We move fluidly around one another, except for the fact I am the most sickeningly hyperactive morning person, who has an awful habit of trying to converse with people about complex and emotional subject areas before 9am, and when her path is crossed prior to a intricate morning ritual that I have yet to interpret correctly (I am still graced with my Learner plates and she has to regularly advise me of when the lights are green and I can expel all the inane conversation I’d been choking on until that point).

And I have the assumed position of Dog Looker After, in order that my SP doesn’t have to trek home every day to let her two young and extremely insane puppies out.

I welcomed this position with a little hesitancy, not because I don’t like dogs but because I get the feeling they know who’s boss. And unfortunately it isn’t me.

We are, for the most part of the day, relatively harmonious. They sleep out in the sunshine, or pad around barking occasionally in the vain attempt to attract my attention (but at least it is wholly preferable to the clicking of a million hefty fingers across a multitude of noisy, poorly constructed keyboards). Yesterday for the majority of the day they slept on my bed next to where I was working, him breathing deeply and sighing in contentment in the window of sunshine that had conveniently spread across him, her alert, watching with her eyes closed (she’s damn clever), listening, listening, a chair movement, a text message, a tea cup lift (there were many of them).

As many gender divided double acts, they have assumed their positions naturally, he is bigger and stronger and damn good at biting people’s arms. Yet she has an awareness, an observation, an unpredictability that I find quite unsettling.

I walked them by myself yesterday. Terrified that they sensed my fear, I raised my voice several octaves as is apparently the assumed communication method, and ridiculously echoed their names over and over, scratching the top of my vocal chords in an effort to reach previously undiscovered notes (I should have hired an uncontrollable puppy when I was singing).

As they are boy and girl, I have been trialling a series of phrases, as ‘good boy, good girl’ seems far too cumbersome to say quickly enough for fellow dog walkers not to notice, as their dogs trot contentedly by their owner’s side mocking the fact that ‘my’ puppies appear to have developed the preconceived idea that they are not cross terriers but slightly wayward huskies, and have taken to dragging me helplessly along the concrete pathways.

It is outside, when other dogs are straying within approximately a mile of her, that I really see it.

He sniffs contentedly (with his surrogate owner helplessly gripping on to his lead behind him) around the nose of whatever dog happens to cross his path. She however turns to the devil incarnate. You know that bit in Ghostbusters where Rick Moranis is consumed painfully by the concrete dog? Yep, that’s the look she gets in her eyes. As he’s sliding miserably down that glass panel, and the concrete dog bears its teeth gleefully, its eyes flaring with fire, that’s the look. It scared me then and it does a great deal to unsettle me now.

She growls. She yelps. She yanks on her lead as if she really doesn’t mind if her walker’s arm is yanked out of its socket and comes along for the ride. Then, when her opponent, be it a rat-sized mongrel or a Great Dane, is suitably terrified and has either escaped to the comfort and safety of their owner’s legs or their owner has disgustedly called their little darling back, glaring at me with hatred as I battle helplessly with intertwining leads and bared teeth, then, to top it all off, she’ll bite her brother. I have tried smiling at the owners, or exposing them to the pleading look in my eyes, the desperation, but now I just keep my head down and scuttle off, enraging fight in tow.

Perhaps she is suffering a particularly miserable patch of PMT (which will hopefully resolved from Friday as she’s being ‘done’) and in which case I’d be happy to give her some space, hand her a hot water bottle and offer her some chocolate (dog friendly, of course). Perhaps she was born a stringent feminist or maybe she is just experiencing her teenage years prematurely (next she’ll be playing obscenely loud music and sulking because I don’t understand her). Unhappy childhood I’ve vehemently ruled out as she has the most dedicated, loving and committed owner in existence.

Whatever it is, yesterday was just a mere taste.

She pissed on my bed today.

Twice.

In their defence, they are, for the most part, extremely good. They are puppies after all, and I have learnt from my SP that whatever they do wrong, is our fault. They are merely half way through their toilet training and my bed obviously is a much more comfortable place to urinate than on the hard floor of the kitchen. On that note, I may have discussions with my SP about investing in some sort of fluffy covered toilet seat.

She’s clever. She knows what she’s doing. In her favour, she shrinks away, apologetic, clearly visibly upset by her ‘mishap’. But by then I’m left with a piss stained bed sheet and she’s enjoying the sunshine.

I am fond of her, she is beautiful and she curls up with me on an evening as if she is saying to me ‘all is forgiven’ and I am permitted to stroke her and love her as much as she sees fit, until she strides over to her owner and indulges in the same reception from her. Hang on, she’s a bloody cat isn’t she.

Maybe its me. Maybe I ask for it. Yorkshire Lass’s cat shat on my bed and then proceeded to avoid my room for weeks, as if to say that maybe I should think about sorting out that awful smell.

Tomorrow night we are going to puppy training class, in order that they might respond to me as a surrogate master, a leader, an all powerful entity that they will obey and tremble beneath (and snuggle up to on an evening).

I’m taking him.

And so, they are barking. I’d better go and attend to them, to investigate. And keep my door shut.

Today: London. Tomorrow: West Yorkshire...

Today is my last day in my office, and my last day in London. My last commute on the District line, my last battle through the swarming chavs that hover around the tube station, my last train journey through the southern suburbs of the city.

It doesn't feel like it. In any way.

My bosses do not want me to leave. They offered me many things, included an undisclosed (and probably extremely unexciting) pay rise in order to stay in London. They offered me help with accommodation, benefits, anything so that I would attend my workstation dutifully day after day.

As a result, the London-based meetings which I were praying were to be infrequent are looking to be regular and lengthy. So my joy of leaving London to become a pseudo Northerner once again (I have acquired many colloquialisms and inflections from my Northern friends) has been somewhat tainted by the fact that I'm not really leaving. It seems that if other people think I am not really leaving, and they pay my wages, they have an uncanny ability to actually pretend, unsettlingly effectively, that I'm still here. By, and this is the really clever part, making me be here.

I am digging in my heels as best I can (in silent protest, as per WebStress), and have not yet reduced myself to being so detrimental at meetings that I am simply not invited in case I single handedly destroy client relations by introducing them to my vast array of expletives and inappropriate comments that I have kept to-date well hidden (on numerous occasions with great difficulty), but I'm not far off.

I am, I know, extremely lucky that my bosses have been so accommodating in order to let me work from home, and a good few counties away.

But in knowing that they desperately really don't want to, my leaving is tinged with guilt, and as a result, on a Friday evening, when I should be settling down to a bottle or two of wine and some beans, I have offered to meet a client for an 'informal' discussion.

And this client has, on numerous occasions, made me cry due to not wonderfully tactful comments (to put it extremely mildly).

So you can see the extreme level of guilt that has nestled its way effectively into my conscious, and made me, basically, a complete mug.

I may derive some secret hidden pleasure from these guilt ridden, masochistic endeavours. But if I do, I'm damned if my conscious has ever knowingly bumped into it.

And so, to client.

Home away from home?

In the previous post, I commented that the Plymouth Caravan Centre had claimed it have everything I needed.

I failed wholeheartedly to accentuate the fact that I very much doubt it does, and should therefore be had under the trades description act.

I am having a wild stab in the dark here, but I'm guessing the Plymouth Caravan Centre does a healthy trade in, above all other things, caravans. Sure, it probably sells miniature kettles (which are wasted on hefty tea drinkers such as myself), camping stoves and those clever all-in-one knife/fork/spoon contraptions and seemingly pointless vacuum packed food bags (for me anyway, I rarely walk too far away from a pub that serves substantial quantities of home baked food, its usually one of the criteria for a chosen jaunt). But, unless once again I can drag them to the small claims court, they probably have a variety of those Two-Wheeled-Terrors.

I know several of my friends families who own caravans and who have spent many a happy holiday heading coast-wards. I myself have spent a fair few memorable weeks in stationary caravans littered along the Cornish and Devon coastlines. Once they are still, I find them inoffensive. I even quite like the often ingenious way that they manage to turn a table effortlessly into a bed, cooker or toilet at a moment's notice (and cushion-removing). And the storage space; hidden within seats, in overhead compartments, under beds. Quite remarkable. (The Lego lover in me has always had a love of mini-things).

Everything you could ever need in the space of a few compact, claustrophobic metres, reeking of intensity and oppressive 'quality' time, customised to perfection for a week or so's worth of scrabble-playing while the rain batters down against the net-curtained windows (some of the posh ones even have a pelmet, but I've only had the fortune to glimpse at these in magazines, and yes, a multitude of reading material on this subject exist, if you care to browse in awe).

A hint of sarcasm may have drifted into my monologue, for which I should apologise and recover my original sincerity in reminiscing about such holidays. I have some wonderful memories; they were a world of exploration for a little girl, exhausting every nook and cranny in a bid to discover all the hidden extras. And the game-playing (it forever rains in Cornwall, so you've got to be prepared for some serious family 'bonding' over a tiddly-wink or two).

But, as someone who is forced to flock alongside the tourists when I head home from wherever I happen to be living in the country (Bradford; Hackney; you can see why I invested in a car), frustratedly watching the clock tick furiously, desperate grasp every moment of a bank holiday, caravans are the no less than the devil incarnate.

While I should remember never to bite the hands that feed and tourists should be welcomed with open arms to Cornwall - I should be standing there holding out some tasty treats, armed with a tupperware of melting moments and a flask of tea for their arrival across the Tamar – and am all too aware of how we as a county thrive on the good nature of those who would rather spend many a hapless hour in uncomfortable traffic jams on the M5 to reach their destination which will no doubt be eclipsed by driving rain and bring a whole new meaning to the words 'wind-swept', rather than being whisked off by a low-cost airline to somewhere guaranteed to produce lobster-perfect tans within minutes, if they could just leave their kitchen sink where it belongs – at home – and hire one once they reached their destination, I'd be the Hostess with the Mostess.
Why am I so enraged by these miniature homes on wheels?

I have seen gargantuan caravans towed by Fiestas, unnervingly weaving and swaying across their lane.

I have regularly seen caravan after caravan turned over on the dual carriage way, their owners standing at the side looking bewildered and confused as to what caused this calamity (try: snaking due to the driver being completely oblivious to the concept that having a caravan clamped to the back of their car means actually driving with the understanding and recognition of this fact). When I have been stuck in my car for several hours while the traffic is guided around such scenes of disaster, in a vehicle whose sophisticated air conditioning system involves opening the windows and waving a magazine vigorously in front of my face, I am not at my best and am not overly sympathetic with the caravanners.

I have been stuck behind a driver with oversized caravan in tow inching past a lorry, up a hill, on a failed mission to attempt some sort of vague overtaking manouvre.

I'm not adversed to the odd campervan. From VW to Winnebago, they don't particlarly offend me. I even have notions of owning one sometime (veering to the size of a VW, I can't imagine trying to parallel park anything bigger, although, being incredibly short, I'd like to entertain the notion of being up high). The drivers at least are aware of the cumbersome vehicle they are negotiating, even if it reaches a top speed of 50mph. As long as it stays in the slow lane, I don't mind.

I have managed to restrain my disapproval of moving caravans to quite an impressive degree in this post, and have managed, I think, to justify my dislike effectively.

But what I feel is anything but rational. There's blood boiling in my frustrated veins as I write. This is nothing short of hate.

These caravanners that I have encountered are probably the exception to the rule. As I mentioned, I have friends whose families have enjoyed caravanning for many years, and I am sure they are driven by perfectly competent and proficient drivers.

I am aware if I attempted to tow a caravan I would end up a very unhappy WebStress. I can just about manage a Rover 200. But I combat this inability by NOT towing a caravan. A simple, effective, foolproof plan.

I have a little advice to combat such accidents and aggression on the motorways, especially fitting for this Easter weekend. B&B's are fairly cheap these days and you get a cooked breakfast thrown in free. You don't need your kitchen sink, they'll provide one, and if you splash out you might even get those little complimentary miniature bottles of shower gel and shampoo. And you can leave the towels dirty.

The Simple Life

I love being in Cornwall.

Yesterday, while the M25 was riddled with traffic jams, the traffic website showing the motorway covered with warnings like unsightly boils, Cornwall was blessed with just one.

A faulty traffic light was causing a minor build up of traffic somewhere in the Redruth area. Other than that, all systems go.

Today, I listened to Pirate FM, Cornwall's independent radio station (its either that or Radio Cornwall, not like the uncomfortably rammed airways of North London where, trying to listen to XFM, you'd be introduced to a range of jungle, hard house and trance 'classics' just by turning your head which is all very well if you're looking to expand your musical repertoire but a damn nuisance if you were actually enjoying a song).

A story of note is the Badgers, apparently a division of St John's Ambulance, are holding a jumble sale to raise money for their new uniforms somewhere buried down in the depths of the county where I rarely venture (however if anyone's interested, I'm sure I could find out more details).

And an advert, seemingly the staple of the radio station where occasionally a song intervenes, informed me that Plymouth Caravan Centre had everything I needed.

A world away from tube delays, congestion and overpriced coffee.

This life certainly isn't for everyone. You can't get a soya tea for love nor money in any of the cafes, and I wouldn't suggest asking for an espresso either. Allergies in Cornwall are certainly not a speciality. And the aroma of cow dung spread in gay abandon across the fields may be a little intoxicating at times, the smell of the country certainly not appealing to everyone's taste.

But it keeps me happy.

Time slows, and tea is drunk. The idea of commuting again come Tuesday morning is a thought that is both obscene and ridiculous but it is a reality that is going to have to be faced at some point. It is truly amazing how easily I can avoid the temptation to check my work email. Ignorance truly is bliss, and web design certainly isn't.

At least when I return I will be trudging through my last week in London. And then to the north I go.

Fears and Tears

I am coping remarkably well.

'Well', in this instance, meaning I did not cry throughout the whole of his departure day (this may have been to do with the fact that the day before, having consumed a bottle of champagne and made a good dent in a second, I wailed ungraciously for quite a substantial period of time once I had gone to bed, so I think I managed to get a fair amount out of my system) and we actually had, well not a 'nice' day, but as damn near as.

I did not cry at the airport. I did not get cross or emotional. I was practical, funny in a slightly unhinged, hysterical way (but at least that's something), helpful and a smiley as physically possible (again, a touch of hysteria has helped to create a faux sence of euphoria which manged to hold the corners of my mouth up successfully for a good few hours, with only a few minor lip tremblings which I hid, I believe, successfully- in packing, my boyfriend had dived towards his ipod to skip any track that could be deemed vaguely, in some tenuous way, emotive - when you have to skip a Greenday song for fear of its emotional influence on its listeners, you know things are bad). If a subject drifted into conversation that I could not deal with, I silenced my boyfriend and attempted to distract us both swiftly, plucking a subject at random from a bank of inane conversation I have stored for such events (offensive looking people at Bluewater featured highly in my topics of choice).

I drove all the way home without a tear, with my poor mother playing dj and feeding me cucumber marmite sandwiches. She has never been wonderfully relaxed with my driving (I have the rather unfair name of 'Senna', especially because top speeds in a Rover 200 series that's seen better days, can only be achieved down hill with the wind behind it, but my nickname is due to, apparently, only having two driving settings: stop and....go - in my defence, this largely derives from living in Bradford where you had to floor it at traffic lights) but she only exclaimed once when I veered uncomfortably closely to a rather large, unforgiving concrete wall.

Even when, after firing up the erratic CD player in the car, and, given a choice of 6 mum-friendly albums that I'd compiled for the journey it decided that 'other side of the world' by KT Tunstall was an excellent choice of song to play as I left my boyfriend of 2 years at the airport about to fly to NZ to start his new life, even then I just laughed; unhinged, hysterical, but still it was a laugh of some vague description.

So he flew 36 hours ago.

And I have not as of yet, as he would say, blubbed.

My parents have rallied around me, finding out what they can and can't say on the subject matter by painful trial and error (however this method, due to my widely varying and unstable emotions, is often incredibly inaccurate and a topic of conversation that I had previously deemed acceptable can instantly become a no-go area). They are coping with my teenager worthy mood swings and inconsistencies incredibly well. I feel like I'm not really here, just functioning, running on backup, a million half thoughts in my head never being addressed.

They have plied me with a variety of WebStress-friendly food substances including new and exciting variants of soya produce, which has even led to me deviating from my comforting, highly fat-and-sugar ridden breakfast of jam on toast, and this morning I ventured into soya yoghurt and crunchy territory (although we'll see what tomorrow brings).

My mother has kindly hinted that, perhaps, eating bread for every meal isn't exactly a balanced diet (Atkins lovers would recoil in horror if I revealed the real estate of my calorific intake that bread related produce has managed to commandeer) and is trying to steer me towards integrating a wider selection of vegetables into my eating habits.

They have humoured me with warm ribena and numerous cups of tea. They distracted me with the entire series of Spaced. They are treating me gently, waiting, waiting, until I lose it.

I have been wondering when this will happen.

Its not a matter of if, you see.

I have managed to wrap myself tightly in a clingfilm of numbness in order to hold all my emotion inside my skin, underneath. This wasn't planned, this wasn't a conscious thing, in fact I had absolutely no idea how I would deal with him leaving.

But I can feel it, adjusting, shifting, stretching, tearing. It is moving beneath, it is murmuring, pushing at the edges, testing the weak points to see where it can exploit and vent.

It needs to, I know. I slept badly last night, trying desperately to find other topics to bury this emotion beneath, so I wouldn't think.

I always cry. If anyone's going to take the monopoly on tear-shedding, it'll be me. Its how I deal with things. I am emotional. But I haven't been this time. I can't feel. I can't find myself.

I could help it, I could aid the process if I were to simply think, I could begin the healing I guess. But I am terrified of opening the floodgates and then not being able to control what cascades from within, not being able to control how I feel, not being able to function, to cope.

So now it is a waiting game. As I seem vehement in not permitting any usually cathartic tears I will merely have to wait until they take matters into their own hands. As my usually prominent self analysis, even despite vast quantities of personal time and space, has not been so much as touched these last 36 hours, and, as far as I can tell this is the route that my mind is quite happy to pursue for the foreseeable future, I will have to just...wait.

I have had amazing support from my friends and family. I don't want to let them down. I don't want to let myself down. I have to know I can get through this. I can't break. Not now, not now. Its just the start.

I can't find it in myself to speak to anyone at the moment, because I don't want to lie and say I'm fine and I don't want to hear anymore 'its not for long' and 'he'll be back before you know it' and 'you'll hardly know he's gone' and 'the time will fly'. But I don't want to talk either. I don't want to talk because then I'll have to think.

Just don't let me near the gin.

Mourning the lost art of making a mix tape

My boyfriend and I, like most couples, have songs that they claim are theirs in some way, that they have some emotional ownership of or that branded a moment like a time stamp, or at the very least they should rightly have shares in for volume of airplay.

I have a vague mental compilation of tunes from our 2 year relationship. We have very similar music loves (although he has a thing for Avril Lavigne and will not indulge my musical fetish) .

However there aren't many songs that we both unite in placing in the hallowed position of 'best song on the album' (him preferring intelligent and complicated drum beats, me hankering after poignant, beautiful lyrics or at least a catchy tune that I can attempt to sing along to, even if this involves me swapping octaves or bellowing at the depths of my range - I rarely opt for aiming for the high notes - but, as a rule, Eddie Vedder is usually a good all-rounder for my masculine vocal chords and I can get nearly all Dave Grohl's notes as well on a good day).

When we find such a beauty, we will play it to excess and grin through the entirety and, by default, gets added to the list.

So I toyed with the idea of making him a mix CD, turning over in my mind all the songs that might be granted the esteemed glory of featuring on such a compilation and, just as importantly, their playlist order.

I imagined him, in some romantic notion that seemed more like an uncomfortable seventh series of a tired American sitcom that really should have been axed (where the writers, frustrated with recycling poor jokes and awkward embarassing moments, have opted for emotional drama instead) rather than a poignant moment in a beautiful love story, taking to the skies listening to my well crafted emotional musical journey.

And it would make him think of what an idiot he was for leaving his wonderful girlfriend behind.

But, I realised sadly, it was not to be.

Because what did I get him for Christmas?

An ipod.

Genius forward planning for spacial conservation, completely idiotic in terms of emotional real estate.

I can't exactly make him a playlist out of his entire CD collection (which he spent months digitising while I fidgeted around him thinking how insane I had been to buy him a gift that would distract so intensely from my physical presence, even when I was talking to him) and entitle it something poignant and catchy like 'play on the flight when you're leaving Heathrow and think of me'. There's something painfully unromantic about that.

I mentioned this to him a few days ago. He said I could still persevere with my endeavours and he'd play the CD through his laptop once he was settled in his new home.

So I thought about that one. So I'd basically drag and drop the mp3s from various folders on my computer (intelligently titled 'mp3s', 'more mp3s' and 'final mp3s', a naming convention which is overwhelmingly useless and which I deftly apply to all my files and folders, which gives you an indication of the level of sophistication of my filing system and organisational skills), and burn them onto a CD.

So he'd have a CD that he'd have to fire up his laptop to use and play through tinny, piercing speakers rather than using his ipod where the same identical files were sat happily waiting to be played through his ibass, happily mocking their inferior cousins, showing off their beautifully equalized range through the well crafted speakers.

The romance exhudes out of that notion.

After scrapping this obviously doomed plan, I attempted to resurrect it this morning in the form of a mix CD for the car, final driving tunes on the way to the airport.

But then instead, after staring grumpily at a list of mp3s and creativity carefully avoiding me, I just dragged the entire Foo Fighters back catalogue onto a CD.

He seemed just as happy with that.

I remember when I was younger the joy of receiving a well crafted mix tape and then, as technology evolved, a mix CD (I am not alone in my whistful reminiscing - Nick Hornby goes to lengthy discourse on this in High Fidelity I seem to recall). I received such a gift on my 18th birthday, when, with CD burners being a rarety only the rich and geeky had, my friends spent the afternoon at a borrowed PC collating a beautiful collection of songs for me, and an equally lovely cover.

But it was the mix tape, that painstaking creation, sat at the tape player, timing stop-starts (and, for the more experienced of the 'Mixers', utilising the qualities of the pause button to ensure no nasty glitches), making sure no track ended abruptly as the tape snapped to a stop part way through the song (or if it did, sitting there recording silence over the error) that I remember truly fondly. The planning of the song order, the emotional journey that the Mixer would take their listener on.

I am not getting on with modern technology. My boyfriend's ipod frightens me. I'm only allowed to handle his digital camera under supervison and even then I handle it like a faberge egg, terrified that I will damage it just by looking at it.

But I must comply, I guess. I just wish technology liked me the way that I pretend to like it (being a web designer it pretty much goes with the territory that interacting with bytes on a daily basis is pretty essential).

I have 40 minutes left before we drive to the airport. I think I shall go and stand over my boyfriend and pester him asking if he's packed enough underwear.

Dreams and Ford Escorts

On Thursday I met someone just like me.

I saw her walk across the car park and I knew she was like me. She had that same look like I feel like I have. Exhausted, unsure, full of emotion.

Or maybe that's just what I thought I saw.

We listened about our partner's new lives, as I've done over and over, but this time, this time there were others. It wasn't about him, it was about them. It was about this new group, not just the individual.

And it was real.

There was another girl there, she was someone's fiancee, and I thought for a moment oh that must be awful. But then I felt defensive as if in some way that made her loss, her loneliness, worse, because she had a ring, because she had a finger encased in commitment.

But I don't have to prove anything. Not to her, not to anyone. But perhaps to myself, to justify the way I am feeling.

I'm not sure.

Sometimes I feel it expels from my pores, battling for exit alongide my dominating perspiration glands.

At work I look tired, exhausted, drained. My concentration, my commitment to anything other than my fractious emotions and thoughts has rapidly evaporated, and I am relying on an unstable backup generator that has been left, suddenly and unhappily, to take care of essential maintenance and running.

I asked the first girl, once the PowerPoint had ended and I had a near-drained gin and tonic in my hands, how she was coping.

She said 'just'.

I feel like I am a precarious game of Entropy. There are occasions, talking, when everything is fine, when I have been lacing neatly each new piece of information into the towering composition. Then just one, just a heartbeat of words, just a throw away phrase, just a comment, and it slices through my structure, sends everything off balance.

Those moments I remain silent, or look away, or smile. Whatever I can do.

In my combat class on Friday, punching out violently aggression, tension and aiming it towards several disagreeable clients, a tight knotted fist of thought hit me, winded me. I had to catch my breath.

'I can't cope'.

That thought. That creeps up on me, that attacks my windpipe, that intertwines itself within the problematic interior of my stomach, making my digestion oh so much worse than it previously was (this rise in enzymic production issues only usually reserved for bouts of regular illness, of which I have experience of a wide variety of nestled happily within every crevice of unhappy body, and 'that time of the month', which makes it even more difficult to negotiate what my body craves: small yet highly offensive and extremely volatile pieces of chocolate).

I have been reduced to simple foods. My digestive enzymes can just about successfully deal with my marmite and cucumber sandwich. Anything more taxing, and they throw a revolt, which usually involves a large number of them striking at highly inappropriate times, say at an important dinner for my boyfriend with his new colleagues, for example (not that I'm bitter but lets just say we'll be having words once he's gone).

So, rather than supporting my mind, rather than seeking comfort in small solaces of tasty treats, my body has chosen to unite with my brain in an unlikely scenario and they're both not doing me any favours.

He will be back, and things will return to normal. Not this normal, but then this isn't normal. A new normal. I imagine: a home, a car, a cocker spaniel. And maybe even a cheese toasty. You never know, you have to dream.

When I was younger I used to imagine a grand house, with a pool, with a beautiful kitchen, tastefully integrated stainless steel with country kitchen bliss (although from that worrying description it is clear to ascertain that I am not the interior decorator of the family and I am slightly concerned from my ill conceived visualisation that the house will look less like a feature from Ideal Home magazine and more like the backdrop to some miserable family in Take a Break).

Now, all I hope for, all I really want, out of everything in a home of my own, is a driveway.

I'd dream of a garage, but I need to be realistic on this one.

The reason being: I've lived in London where parallel parking is the norm. And frankly, it scares me.

I am a Cornish girl and therefore can reverse better than I can drive (you don't argue with a tractor) and where the need to parallel park is non-existent.

Plus my horrific attempt at parking was even demonstrated in my second (and final) driving test, when, on reversing around a corner, I managed to mount the curb spectacularly.

To my surprise, the driving examiner, instead of failing me for my clearly reckless display of terrible parking, said 'I think you should try that again'. I later learnt that the examiner 'liked women' and, on passing me, he told me that I had 'driven appaulingly but was going to pass me anyway'.

Nice.

But, whilst other drivers would have quickly become adept at their parking, I stayed firmly and comfortably in the arena of crap. And I will reguarly make my happless passengers walk much further than they would comfortably like because I have driven passed several non-negotiable parking spaces (that, realistically, you could have parked a truck in, but lets not dwell on the finer points).

So, while my boyfriend is away, I will be, if I can exceed merely scraping a living from some talent other than exploiting JavascriptJoy or CSSStress, I will be furrowing away my savings for a deposit on the grandeur I dream of.

I will, realistically, probably not even manage to scrape enough cash to put down a healthy deposit on an aging mushroom and beige coloured caravan.

But the thought of renting again sends my mind into spasms of fear and aggression and results in an unsightly and uncomfortable display of volatile vocal ramblings to whoever is unlucky enough to be the recipient of my rant.

So what of my dream?

My boyfriend once told me there's no point dreaming of a Ford Escort when you can dream of a TVR.

This may be true, but in my eyes, a TVR is noisy, uncomfortable and you can't take it out in the wet whilst an Escort represents reliability and has room enough for your shopping in the boot.

My scaled down, minature dreams allow me to achieve realistic goals so I am not constantly met with an array of disappointment. I'd settle even for a desginated parking space at a push.

I still would, someday, love a heated, indoor swimming pool (and a minion to clean it) but I guess little baby steps means I will achieve something along the way.

All rather safe isn't it? Why do you think I have cushioned my transition from WebStress to penniless writer with the undercurrent of freelance web design? Why do you think, when I took the tentative steps from being fully employed to freelancing last year that I carefully lined up work, ensuring that I was financially stable but also that I was consistently unable to attempt any of the multimedia experimentation that I had envisaged freelancing would allow.

And why do you think my boyfriend, who has taken massive risks, who has endured interviews and tests and examinations, who has offered everything he has, who is giving his all, is just about to begin achieving his dream?

I am not a risk taker. But maybe I should be.

Culinary Expertise

Tonight my boyfriend and I are playing host to yet another leaving party for a few of his University friends that have ended up in the vague London area.

And I thought, in an attempt to appear the dutiful girlfriend (and also being awkward when it comes to takeaway buying, due to my 'food issues'), I'd cook.

Although back in the day I tackled a home economics A-level (which was, contrary to popular common room mocking, not cooking but an indepth study of nutrition and sociology, although I did have an exam in the different methods of cooking sausages), I'm the first to admit my culinary skills aren't exactly what they could be.

There are, like any self respecting vegetarian who attempts to win over the hearts and minds of those who mock the claim that a tasty meal can be created solely using vegetables, a few staples within the wafer thin mental cookery folder that I have collated (I'd call it a book but I'd be done for incorrect trade description).

I can make chilli.

I can cook a variety of pasta based dishes (the variety being the combination of vegetables, the sauce remaining a distinctly tomatoey colour and flavour throughout the permeations).

I can do wonders with Sosmix.

I have also recently added curry to my limited repertoire (with a pre-bought sauce and a few chapattis thrown in for good measure).

And, of course, I can cook beans (as long as someone is willing to scour their scarred remains from the bottom of the inevitably charred pan, because, even though I tend to them regularly, they lie in wait until I'm turning bread under the grill, and weld themselves in a bizarre suicide ritual to the metal).

I also have an unhealthy obsession with mushrooms and will try and sneak them into any meal, appropriate or not. Woe betide any guest who has an aversion to them, as poor Ms B does, because they'll be in there somewhere. Unless I have been kind enough to create a unique dish for my fungiless friend, and this is only usually because I want to add a healthy amount to the recipe in question.

Cookery books, sadly, do not capture my imagination.

Possibly because I am rarely organised enough to buy in food relating to a specific recipe and then if I do try to match the random vegetables that I bought in excess (to add to the previously uneaten ones, abandoned in favour of the instant satisfaction and hunger relief beans on toast provides) I am usually lacking several key ingredients and my dish, whether accompanied by cous cous, rice, pasta or a large amount of any other carbohydrate to weigh down my guests, will eventually just be a vegetable dish. Often with a healthy dose of lazy chillies and garlic.

Another personal culinary downfall is that I refuse point blank to taste my food while in the cooking process.

I am not sure where my phobia of cooking food comes from, unlike my fear of wooden sticks and balls (of any kind, not wooden), which are, obviously, grounded in reality. I can only presume it is through repetitive tongue burning, although I can never remember testing food to burn my tongue, only having the fear of this outcome.

Which means my meals may taste intensely of the chosen herb or spice (or, to be honest, just chili) or be completely tasteless and bland.

I am not a risk-taker and do not tend to enjoy functional cooking, and therefore my meals will remain wholesome (in quantity, rather than quality) but yet lacking in excitement. Although give me a glass of wine, a kitchen with plentiful utensils (I will use every one, but at least I clean as I go) and enough time spread out before me and I'll come up with something that, through the joys of an alcohol-laced tongue, will be exquisite.

But, as I have rarely been bestowed with all three magic ingredients (pardon the poor pun), this doesn't happen all that often.

Tonight, Matthew, I have chosen pasta, with a combination of vegetables.

Safety in Durham Wheat and a few carrots.

The Mundane, The Normal and The WebStress

A very patient reader of my blog, the overnight editor, had obviously been wondering when I was going to write about something other than tea and pointed out, very kindly, that I don't appear to have much of substance to write about.

They are, of course, right.

So now, instead of hastily finishing off some mind-numbing (but also problematic, which is the worst sort of mind-numbing) html which has a deadline in, ooh, an hour, I've decided to abandon my web duties in an attempt to explain why I write about the mundane, the dull and the boring building blocks that construct my day to day office life.

I have no home. My belongings are all in storage. We are staying with my boyfriend's wonderful relatives, who I will forever be indebted to. But my boyfriend of over two years leaves for New Zealand in a little over a week, and we will be apart for the most part of the next eighteen months.

And, to be honest, the mundane is all that I can immerse my busy little mind in at the moment in order to do anything more than merely function.

At night, like I used to when I was a child in order to stop myself from being scared of the dark, I construct highly detailed characters that I can bury myself in, creating every nuance of their character (at least inside, as I have a terrible memory, if I were to construct physical features they'd probably look like a patchwork frankenstein's monster of various famous people that have their faces ingrained into my brain and I really don't think any features pilfered from the external DNA of George W or Tony Blair would help me sleep easy at night, I'd have to leave the light on).

I do this so I don't have to think.

Television provides little escapism for me, I can't switch off, so instead I simply make things up. I am hoping that these characters and scenarios, that I slip in and out of, with their uncomfortable personal characteristics and all their faults, will one day, when I have the time and energy, actually become physical, in the way that I will be able to see them on paper, where they belong, instead of in my head where they often become so mutilated in their exhaustion that I have to leave them for a while and attend to someone else, to give them a break and allow them to generate some fresh perspective.

And my blog is basically my day distraction, the word doodles that allow me not to think (or, instead, concentrate all my brain power on the joys of tea and the stresses of CSS), and it also attempts to make light to myself of the fact that I utterly despise what I do (my boyfriend has been severely relieved since I started it as I have another way to vent my frustration).

When I first met my boyfriend I knew him going away has always been a possibility. It has hung oppressively over us since I can remember. At the start of January, after a long, gruelling process, and a huge personal struggle for both of us individually, we found out that this possibility had become a reality.

At a time that my friends are largely settling down, getting married and, god forbid, even talking about 'trying for a baby' (which is a phrase in itself that instills fear, sickness and dread inside me, but I can safely push that one back a little), I am going to begin a tough personal journey. On my own.
Three months is an awfully long time to think about the person you love more than anything in the world leaving. But it hasn't been three months, its been two years. Three months has been simply the final stage of the realisation process, the confirmation, the green flag.

There are days when, sat in the office alone, like I am at the moment, or on the train, or at any opportune moment that something snaps in my brain, like a thought has accidentally leant carelessly on a switch which starts a domino effect of emotion, I break.

I would like to think that I am a strong person. But I know, through and through, I rely on the people I love, I depend on them, I need them. I think you need that vulnerability in order to love, and allow others to love you.

If I were to begin to prize my limpit like emotions off of the people I love, to release that dependency, if I detach myself from them then I am not sure who I will become.

I have been told of the exciting possibilities of the freedom the next 18 months will offer for me. I have been offered support and accommodation from so many people I have been so touched. I have made plans, I have decided to pursue my dream so that I can create something positive.

But if I realise my vulnerability, and if I acknowledge the sense of loss I am about to endure, then I will not cope and I will not be able to root this last week in the normality that we both fundamentally need at the moment.

Nothing is normal outside the mundane endurances of TheWebstress. Nothing is stable, everything is fragile.

I have been informed enough of the opportunities that I am now open to. I am told repeatedly that it won't be as bad as I think, that everything will be fine, that once he's gone I won't miss him as much as I think, that I'll enjoy the freedom.

And somewhere inside me there is resilience, there is independence, there is strength. People have to cope with a lot worse. And the waiting is the worst part, of that I am aware, that I know. Its like dreading an exam, creating terrifying scenarios of unrevised questions, of revision evaporating from your head just as the text from the paper in front of you muscles its way in. But at least once you're in there, even if all of your worst fears have been visualised, even if your terrors have come to fruition, at least you can think about having a pint post exam.

But right now I'm a week away from the start, I am just about coping, I am just about keeping it together. And I can preserve what little strength I have left in the normality and comfort of a cup of tea (hence why I really get upset when I have awful soya milk).

Which reminds me, after my emotional regurgitation, the HTML calls behind this window, I can see it lurking behind the notepad window, looking suspiciously unsettled and I think its eyeing me up seeing if it can take me on.

But there's no way I'm going to war without a cuppa.