So yeah, I’ve got a fair amount going for me at the moment. Daughter is happy, settled at home, at school and in her social circle, the flat is comfortable and feels like a home, I’ve met a wonderful girl with the promise of a long-term future, and spring has sprung with flowers, bugs, buds on trees and, best of all, fair old bunches of sunshine blazing out of the sky.
I’ve already started topping-up my rather meagre tan having spent two whole days out walking in glorious sun. I’ve got my walking legs on: seven-day total 23.7 miles; twelve-day total 42 miles over four walks. I love it, especially the longer, more challenging distances. I’m hoping to do the Grand Union Canal from north to south through Milton Keynes at 12.3 miles, a walk to write-up for publication perhaps. I want to get to twenty miles with no aches, pains or blisters, then do another middle-distance walk the next day or so, then get myself doing two consecutive twenty-mile days. Then three days at twenty miles each. If I can manage that, I know I can do something a bit more challenging like the Ridgeway or my 100-mile fundraising walk to the sea.
Anyway, this little push towards positivity reminds me that I looked at My Happy Book at for the first time in a while. I’ve not posted there since April 2010; a sign perhaps that things were stable enough to remove the requirement for reflection or that general apathy set in with the process. During a discussion with Mark about skills gained during therapy, reflection and introversion came up as perhaps the most important tools I gained.
The Happy Book was suggested to me a few years ago as a tool to reflect on the good things through the darkness. Nice work, Tracey. It’s something both Sophie and I have used to great effect, and going back to read it now is a wonderful thing, allowing me to empathise with my past self and see through this hazy fog I appear to have hanging over me. Coincidentally, I’ve been meaning to chronicle the roller-coaster that has been the past five months at I think, in starting to writing in the Happy Book again, it’d be good to duplicate a post here and there that looks at the recent past and the positive things that have happened. I intend to write in my Happy Book regularly again and I think that would be a good kick-start.
In mid-October 2010 something unusual happened. My landlady passed me a hand-written note that had been dropped through the letterbox. It was from someone at the Vale of Aylesbury Housing Trust, the people responsible for our social housing application, and said “Came to visit you about your housing application” with a name and number.
I’d been patiently checking the web site every two weeks as required. Check the web site, find suitable houses, express an interest and wait for offers. None were forthcoming and I’d become a little disenchanted with the whole process, simply because very few suitable properties were coming up and those that did were offered to people who’d been on the list for longer than us. Fair enough, really, this is how the process works.
When I saw the note my heart skipped a beat. I’d recently expressed an interest in three flats I thought were on either the new estate under construction on Moreton Road or those in the town centre, as I didn’t recognise the road name. I went to check the results on the web site and noted that one of the flats I’d marked was listed as “offered” and had our subscription date next to it. My heart didn’t just skip a beat, it tried to leap out of my chest and make a break for freedom. It couldn’t be, could it? It was too soon, other people deserved it more, we’ve got a roof over our head, I mean, whaaaaat? It was too much of a coincidence and I couldn’t help but get a little excited even, despite myself, telling daughter there was a miniscule possibility we’d been offered somewhere to live.
I called the Housing Trust and spoke to the person who’d left the note, who was rather coy about her reason for making an appointment to come and see me: “I’m just coming to talk to you about your application.” I could have pushed for more information but hey, don’t bite the hand that feeds you. A few days later she arrived and checked where we were living to make sure it matched our application, and told us the news: we were being offered a flat on the newly-built estate on Moreton Road. I felt like I was living in a fantasy world at this point, with a million fears and exultations fighting for space and attention in my brain. She made a further appointment for a viewing a few days later, and on the 3rd November daughter and I wandered up Moreton Road to the show-home, met the lady and was taken up to the new block of flats for a guided tour of our potential new home.
It all feels a bit surreal, recounting this; it’s almost like a movie shot in Vaseline-o-vision. An image just ran through my mind, coupled with a fair amount of emotion. After the lady had shown us around the flat, she looked at me and said “So, would you like to take it?” I was overwhelmed, to be honest. We’d only been on the list for about twelve weeks and to get offered somewhere so quickly was a shock. The idea of having to find funds for simple things like a fridge, washing machine, cooker, carpets and beds was frightening. The whole concept of taking on our own place, brand-new, empty, with so much to achieve to make it habitable was just plain scary. I’d been sleeping badly over the few days between the good news and the viewing so I was already pretty stressed-out. The image: I turned to Sophie and said “What do you think?” and she grinned and nodded at me. I accepted, and was elated and terrified at the same time. We signed the lease on the 3rd and I paid the first week’s rent on 4th November 2010.
What followed was quite, quite crazy. There was a fair amount of urgency involved in getting moved-in to the flat and out of the annexe else I’d be paying rent for two places at once, so I chatted to my landlady and arranged to move out the following weekend. Over the next ten days I saved like mad, packed up our whole life from Page Hill and, with the help of friends and family alike, moved it all across town and up two flights of stairs into the flat.
Tracey donated a sofa-bed, which I thought was a sofa and was wonderfully surprised to find out a few weeks later that no; it’s a sofa-bed. The move coincided with Barry moving-in with Tracey and he had a bunch of furniture, a big double mattress and duvet and some kitchen items to shift. Woowoo! That was a massive, massive help and they helped move everything back and forth. Splendid.
Mark helped move boxes and bags while Kate sourced white goods on the internet. The first night we stayed in the flat, Sophie, her friend Katie and I had fish and chips and cans of fizzy drink on the sofa in the middle of the living room. Eventually we found a double-oven ceramic-hob cooker for free from Freecycle, and a wonderful washing machine on ebay which was a total fucking bargain. I found a tall fridge-freezer on ebay and Mark’s dad kindly drove his camper van over to this side of Northampton to collect it. Everything was wired in and the kitchen eventually took shape and became a fully-functioning unit.
The next few days are a blur. I worked, sorted stuff out for the flat, and slept. One major stumbling block to getting furniture in the right place and unpacking was that there were no carpets anywhere in the flat, just dusty concrete floors. After much to-ing and fro-ing I managed to get a reasonable quote for putting carpet down and accepted it instantly. Trying to pin down exactly when people were doing what was difficult and frustrating, leading to a constructive blog post about uncertainty. Finally the carpet went down, with daughter getting her surprise orange floor. Her reaction to this made me grin, having told her explicitly that the whole flat would be furnished with a light cream-coloured carpet. Having talked it through with my parents I thought “Why not?” and plumped for an orange section for her room only. I think she likes it!
Something to note here is that, along with having no carpet for the first week or so, the boiler was wired-in incorrectly so we had no heating for the first ten days. Considering this was the last two weeks of November and it was particularly wintery, it wasn't the nicest of welcomes to our new home but it really showed how privileged we are to have central heating.
Three weeks after we moved into the flat was my 35th birthday. I’d planned a wintery walk with a cracking view from Ivinghoe Beacon but unfortunately we were beset with snow and fog which made the trip pretty difficult and, with the fog blocking the wonderful views, pretty pointless. I hope to arrange to do it again once spring is in full bloom. I chilled out for the day and spent a lovely evening in the company of wonderful people at Tracey’s house bedecked with banners and balloons. Awesome! It’s been so long I can’t remember the last time I had banners and balloons for my birthday.
Two days later and a friend from Australia, who I knew via the internet and who’d been travelling around England visiting other internet friends for a few weeks, came to visit for the night. It was great to meet her and we had a lovely evening exchanging stories and experiences, checking out the town and going for dinner at Prezzo. We stayed up late chatting and eventually fell asleep, innocently enough sharing my bed, quite content.
The next morning and we awoke happy. Quite naturally, our fingers intertwined and we traced fingertips over fingers and palms in a slow digit-dance that was thoroughly intimate. Eventually, we kissed; I can remember almost every detail of that moment, like it’s etched in my mind. Here I am, three months, two weeks and about seven hours later with a wonderful girlfriend on the other side of the planet.
There’s a lot to fill in between then and now, of course. After lounging in bed for much of the morning we dragged ourselves out of the house and walked up to Stowe Landscape Gardens in a beautiful hoar frost. We held hands and she slipped on the ice and I showed her around Stowe. We ate chocolate muffins and granola on a bench in wonderful falling ice crystals and it was almost magical. We totally clicked the night before, the morning after and during the afternoon’s walking, and we arranged to meet up again. Just before Christmas and during heavy snow showers, we spent five whole days together before she went to Europe to visit friends and family for the Christmas and New Year breaks. This was wonderful; we had the chance to get to know each other properly, explore fully, and soak up the admiration we had for each other.
We looked forward to one last night together in London before she flew home at the end of her three month’s travelling. Eventually, this evolved into a couple of days, then a few days, then a week, then a nine-day road trip from the source of the River Thames to the sea. Events conspired to bring us together much sooner than we anticipated, and in the middle of January she spent a day travelling thousands of miles across Europe so we could spend the last three weeks of her visit together.
(As a side note, my brain is having severely cunty and suspicious thoughts about this whole process, and I’d quite like it to fuck off now thankyouverymuchly)
During the two weeks before the road trip she settled into our lives with very little disruption and made me very, very happy indeed. The trip itself was… just incredible. We lived in each other’s pockets and spent the whole ten days together. We saw some incredible sights and views, shared many gorgeous moments and really forged our love for each other. I will never, ever forget the wonderful time we had during that time away.
We came back to earth with a bump, then, at the very end of January. During the time we spent together, we’d agreed it was just a fling, that neither of us wanted the complications or pain involved in a long-distance relationship. The day before she was due to leave, we visited Canterbury and spent the afternoon with some mutual friends. While we were eating lunch, it became very clear to me that I really didn’t want to let her go. I remember looking across at her while she laughed and joked with our friends and thinking how utterly natural it felt, how complete I was. I buried it, though, and stuck to our line of “just a fling”. For the rest of the trip, we were somewhat muted. We arrived at our final B&B – a stunning manor house not far from Heathrow – and sorted and re-packed bags and bathed and drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms, with an underlying sadness that it’d all be over the following morning.
When it came to dropping her at the airport, it’s all a bit of a blur. It seemed to happen so fast, and neither of us wanted to prolong the pain for too long. In the queue, we cried. Walking to the departure gate, we cried. As she walked through and waved and disappeared out of sight, we cried. As I composed myself, took a deep breath and walked towards the exit, I broke down and had to lean against a pillar for support, tears streaming down my face and sobs breaking, unstoppable, from my lungs. The drive home in hazy sunshine is a blur. Getting back to the flat with my bags and it being empty was heart-breaking and I cried again.
Man, I cried a lot that day and in subsequent days. I hurt awfully. I just couldn’t bear that it was over. There’s another blog post here, mainly to explore where all the pain went, when what happened below happened.
After consultation with internet friends and The Oracle - I mean Tracey who, incidentally, gave me the absolute best advice and is to be highly commended for her contribution - I decided to just go for it. GO FOR IT! Grab hold of love and don’t let go. The very thought makes me smile like a loon, and perhaps it’s that feeling I’ve lost in the haze – feel the fear and do it anyway.
So we threw caution to the wind, chucked pain in the bin and now we’re a couple, an item. I’m her boyfriend and she’s my girlfriend. We’ve talked about aspects of the future, about kids and marriage and all those things we need to know about if we’re going to invest all this emotive and committed energy into a person on the other side of the planet, but we’ve both had something of an emotional roller-coaster with shadows of depression and anxiety biting us on the backsides. On my side I have all of the above, then love, then distance, then love and distance, all on top of having an incredibly rubbish time at work. On her side she’s had exams, finishing school, travelling for three months, love, distance, love then distance, then university. It’s a lot for anyone to deal with, and it appears we were strong (or, politely, ignorant) together but perhaps a little helpless apart.
That latter point pleases me, actually; that we were strong together. It gives me another thing to hope for, to look forward to. And that’s where I think I’ve lost my way a little bit, where my last post about resentment stems from and where I’d like to think I could employ a little optimism to recover some of that, that positivity. I guess not having Tess here by my side makes it hard to absorb the love, difficult to feel appreciated, tough to put into context quite what I’ve got. The fact that the finality of our relationship, the “actually being together and spending the rest of our lives enjoying each other” part, isn’t set in stone and in fact is just a blur on a long and distant horizon isn’t helping my state of mind one bit, but that’ll come eventually and that’s not what this post is about.
My Happy Book. Happy memories, recording the good things that happen in my life, giving myself a chance to look back and reflect on the happy stuff and see that there is a point, that time flies and that life has a way of being good to you, even when you feel bad.
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