Bath-ward ramblings.

A different route this time around, quite a bit quicker and easier (And cheaper – using a “buy a ticket to one point, then another from another” sort of wheeze to save about £15. Not that I didn’t try other things, but, me being too old for a “young person’s” travel card; too young for a “senior citizen’s” travel card, no children to travel with for a “friends and family” card – and not going the right way to benefit from the network railcard (seems to only work around London). So no third off my tickets, but still, a bit of creative purchasing and I’m on my way).

This is my second trip to Bath, by train, to visit my girlfriend. Using up a little bit of my owed time saw me leaving work just after lunch and it being a bit of a three-day-weekend-and-a-bit, what with the bank holiday and everything. She’s been suffering this past week, a bout of tonsillitis – I hope it wasn’t down to me and all the kissing we’d gotten up to the weekend before! (touchwood, I seem to not be suffering with anything – and I hope that nothing untoward comes on over the weekend; that would really suck (lemons?))

I travel by train almost every day (the notable exceptions being those days that I don’t; usually due to working at home or it being one of those rare days that I have off (not counting the weeks I take off when I go and visit my girls in the states)); but despite the constant travel, I still enjoy myself a huge amount. I love looking out the windows and watching the scenery fly by, often with music in my ears (today, as an example, sees me listening to a bit of Camera Obscura on my way down, but it varies so much from day to day – largely depending on my mood and how awake I am). One of the things that I like is the change between countryside and towns, cities as we rush through. Everywhere seems to have its own character – and I wish I was much better at geography so that I could talk with confidence of the places I passed; instead I’m limited to the rail stations we pass. This train, for example, passed as far as Gloucester before darting off in a different direction. When I was a student, and was looking for job experience in my gap year, I was sent to Gloucester for a job using Delphi (imagine visual basic for PASCAL – if you remember what that is!) and one of the few things I remember is the guy interviewing me telling me that Gloucester has some of the most beautiful girls in the country. (I’ve still not seen enough of the country to form a solid opinion one way or another, but I think everywhere has its mix of people (plus, I think I've found the most beautiful woman in the whole country))

As it was, I didn’t get the position; instead I wound up working at the University where I would graduate from, then fall into a position (I am a firm believer that things happen when they’re needed, people enter your life when they’re are meant to, etc. etc. etc. Kinda like fate a bit, but more a “fate, if you chose to accept it”) and find myself in a pretty good position after having worked for a number of years.

I wonder if I would ever move from my current place. If you don’t have time to do anything but commute, does it really matter where you live? I mean, at the end of the day, my house is just a place I leave my stuff and sleep (occasionally, I eat there too). I really don’t know. Maybe.

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Is in a relationship with...

Okay, let’s get it out of the way. I’ve rejoined facebook.This time though, I’m not going to fill my pages with all the time-wasting games; all those applications that steal my pretty pointless personal details (yeah, go on, steal my identity; for the most part you’ll find it pretty ordinary and like anyone else’s) – really I’m not going to, and I’m not in denial. But that’s not what this is about. One of the things I like, although can be abused, is spying on people’s relationship status. And, one of the first things that happened to me when I joined was that my status changed almost immediately to “being in a relationship with”

Somewhere around the beginning of the year I met someone on twitter. Not that you actually can meet people on twitter, 140 characters isn’t really that much to say much. But, in so much as you can meet, we met. Ups and downs in each other’s lives, we stayed in touch, gave each other 140 characters worth of comfort, support and encouragement. All of which led to, a couple of weeks ago, the pair of us getting in touch in a bigger sense. No longer limited to 140 characters, we chatted. We talked. We saw there was more to us than just friends and last weekend we met in person for the first time.

Everything we felt, everything we thought, everything. Apart from a little pre-meeting nervousness it was perfect. It was like we’d always been in each others’ lives. We gelled. We fitted together like a well thought out simile. The weekend passed quickly, but we made the most of it. I don’t think either of us had smiled so much before.

The weekend saw us spending every moment together. She showed me some of the people and things that make up her life. We walked, met family and enjoyed the sights and sounds, the scenery and so on. Just enjoying being together, be we walking the dog on the field or sitting watching the tv; cuddling in front of shows whose names I forget; slow dancing to the radio.

Everything was perfect. Everything was what I thought it would be. I am so happy now.

So anyway, now my status has gone from “single” to “is in a relationship with” ... I’m wondering how long it’ll be before it changes to “is married to”?

(don’t worry, we won’t rush anything; but...)

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Places we call home (1)

Sometimes I find myself walking to places I used to live. Places where there are a whole bunch of memories ready to be stirred by familiar surroundings. The other weekend, I took a walk on the canal and walked around my town. I found myself walking to the house where my ex wife and my children used to live, at least for the first twelve months that I lived in Kidderminster. It is always a bit odd, and a bit sad; remembering the things you did. The way things were. Those reminiscences – it’s always the same. The way I was walking, you come up the back – by where the bins are left and the garages exit. You can see the windows of the house – the attic windows which were the children’s’ bedrooms, the window of the master bedroom, the shed and summer house, the plants and trees. Everything being still pretty much the same way as it was when they lived there.

This is one of the houses that K---- used to get scared in at night. She was convinced that there were monsters lurking in the shadows in the night. I don’t know why. I don’t know if anyone knew why.

This is the house that I spent the first few months sleeping on the floor in, while I waited for my house purchase to complete; something which seemed to take forever while I waited for the seller to find some document or other to say work had been done adequately. (I did offer to pay to have a structural engineer go around and produce a report to say that it had been, but was told that the seller had the papers and it would all be okay; three months later they let me send an surveyor around to inspect and we completed shortly afterwards)

This was the house that had my ex-wife re-marrying and starting her life with her, then, third husband. This was the house that I spent my first Christmas in as a divorced man.

This is the house my children had Tara the dog (I forget the breed, but small – the sort used in duck hunting?). A really sweet dog, an excitable puppy (as I found out every morning when she would be let out to go toilet, but as I was between the garden and the kitchen she would run up and bounce onto me and lick my face). But in the end they had to pass her onto some people who actually worked the dogs, and she was trained to retrieve ducks (and as far as I can remember, was really quite good at it); they had to get rid of her because of allergies; like me, K---- suffers with them, and in this case it was leading to a build up in her ears that was slowly making her deaf.

This is the house where they kept the mice; the mice that kept escaping from the “mouse suitable” cage they’d been sold at the pet shop. (There is something about scampering mice running all over the place – you do find yourself jumping; even though you know there’s nothing to be worried about and that you’re just being silly.

I spent three months in this house, getting up early, coming in late. The Autumn months of 2003 (if my memory serves me); having spent Halloween in the Coventry house with my girls, then all of my stuff being taken and being put into storage “for a couple of weeks” through to the early months of 2004. I know it was only a short time, but, it holds lots of memories.

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Insomnia

Last night I woke up this morning when it was still last night. I might have gotten half an hour's rest, maybe an hour tops. But I was awake, suddenly; awake, tired and unable to slip back into slumber. I lay there in the dark, staring at the inky blackness of the ceiling. Sometimes when I stare at the ceiling, light swirls around and makes odd shapes. Like ghostly apparitions formed of my over-active imagination, combining with the creaks and bumps of the house to scare me witless. That didn't happen this time. There was nothing there. Even the bumps and creaks of the house were silent, the tippy tapping of the rain hitting my window obscuring any other sounds.

I lay there.

I reached over, turned on the clock. 12:34, I'd been lying there awake for about an hour. (I love it when I coincidentally see the time and it forms a pattern, like 12:34). I got up, turned on the light. Went the bathroom. My urine reeked of coffee. I think, if I was mean, I could have peed into a cup and given it a blind man and he wouldn't have been any the wiser until he took that first sip of this 'amber nectar'. I wasn't feeling myself at all. I was extremely tired, but nothing would cause slumber.

I lay there.

When I can't sleep, I try and put myself into a happy place. Usually this involves having intimacy, imagining myself somewhere safe, warm. Cuddling or snuggling with my lover. It's probably semi-normal to do that sort of thing. No matter how hard I imagined; no matter how hard I relaxed, sleep still refused to come.

I checked the time again. Turned the light back on. Got a book. Opened it. Closed it. Put it back. I wasn't in the mood for reading.

I returned to bed. Again.

I lay there and imagined anything I could think of to relax me. Nothing worked.

I checked the clock one final time. It was about 3:45. I wake up at 6. Strangely, it was not long after this that I slipped into sleep and found myself being woken by the strains of my alarm going off.

I was a zombie.
It has been a while since I suffered with insomnia. When I was a teenager I would toss and turn all night, but since then; not counting my student "never go to bed" years, I've not suffered until now. It started when I was in the USA, but only minor. I had a couple of nights when I just lay there.

I wasn't worried. My mind wasn't busy.
I think it was coffee.
I drank a lot of coffee yesterday.
We'll see what happens tonight.

Intentionally left blank

I'm sitting here at my desk, staring out the window at the sunshine in the trees. Give or take, I've been back in England for a week and a smidgen. In my ears is the album "Flood" by They Might be Giants (the song "Lucky Ball & Chain" playing as I type this [lyrics]). I think I'm over my jet lag now, which means any delay between my ears is just my normal, usual lag. I find it odd the way my emotions have been these past days; down one day, up the next. I think it's normal... I'm told it's normal. It felt good talking to my girls on Saturday; I talk to them every Saturday (unless something import comes up; like I'm visiting them :o) )

Things I've found since coming back.

1. Coffee from most places (i.e. non-coffee-shop places, like Millie's cookies) sucks; but coffee from Starbucks tastes pretty much the same the world 'round. I don't know if I cared less about it before, or whether something else has happened to my coffee-pleasure centre in my brain. Probably I didn't care too much before.
2. I've gone off alcohol. For some reason, the bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale I had chilling in the fridge seem tasteless and barely palatable; I don't know if this is because I've actually gone off them, or if it's the fact that they're barely out of code (they had a best before of the 31st July). I think the former, ale doesn't go off :o)
3. Sunshine makes me happy.
4. I eat so much more junk when I'm in England. I hardly ate anything when I was in the USA; when I did snack, it would be a couple of chunks of dark chocolate or a handful of sunflower seeds (I would eat the David's seeds - loved sucking the salt off the husks and then breaking the shells to get at the kernels beneath (then extracting the empty shells from my mouth))
5. The reason my laptop's docking station's USB ports stopped working in Vista was because of a rogue windows update in about February this year that gave the impression that everything was fine, only the USB ports refused to recognise anything plugged into them. Not a problem until I needed to plug more than three things into my laptop! A googling provided the answer.
6. I always say this, but, I don't need half the things I have in my life to be happy. All I need is a couple of books, a notepad, food, water, shelter; I'm so happy with an uncluttered life. That said though, I come back to England and I like my clutter too. I just need to do something with it to make it seem "organised" rather than "clutter"
7. Just doing the day to day stuff; walking, playing with the children etc. is no substitute for doing sport and exercise. I played badminton for the first time since coming back on Friday, and came away with aches in places I didn't even realise I had muscles (and this is without me running or playing football; two things that usually tax my body. I am a little worried about how quick fitness can be lost)
8. I'm happy with a routine; lack of organisation makes me depressed; particularly when things start piling up "to do" around the house.

Hmm. I wasn't planning a list, how did that happen? I'd better crack on with work now - that's what they pay me for :o)

One more thing, I'm glad I started blogging again. I've missed writing and it's good to have an outlet for all those random things inside my head.