For the next few days this blog will be silent. Listen to the crickets and the night song; read a paperback novel, a trashy romance to pass the hours; watch that television you scoff at and compare yourself to what you see.
Because blogging is not on the agenda.
Me and my man are jetting off to London in search of Tourist Life. We are going to don our bum-bags, squint through bug sunglasses, and stuff our socked feet into sandals as we peruse a map, inconveniently placed in the middle of a busy tube station.
I joke.
…Mostly.
(Our reliance on maps in the past has annoyed many a Parisian)
This trip was a surprise birthday present from me to le man, because HE HAS NEVER BEEN TO LONDON. To all who live in England, this seems a little bit odd. Who doesn’t have a vague family member living there or flocked to watch a gig in the sticky early hours of the morning?
So I thought that he simply had to go, and we simply have to live up to the stereotype and do all those activities locals hate to witness tourists do.
I will be blogging all about it when I get back, of course, so keep your eyes peeled for some travel writing: ‘London Bound: The Adventures of Sam ‘n’ Ella!’ …or something equally cheesy along those lines.
You ever feel that tingly buzz in the air that means summer has arrived? Because I think it’s here.
The city is fragrant with summer tonight: the sun is shining, the sky is blue, my feet are covered in stripy tan lines from my sandals as I type this is the back garden. And I can hear the sound checks and laughter and music that announces the preparations for the University Summer Ball.
This is my first year here so this Ball is somewhat new to me. An unknown. With a hefty price tag on the ticket, I will not be going tonight, but I still feel it in the air. It’s like that feeling of summer. It IS that feeling of summer.
Ahhh! I feel excited! It’s like an addiction almost, this happy bubbly season. I want to whack on a pair of shorts and go barbecue some meat, sunglasses shading my eyes, a cold can of beer clutched in hand as I wave the prongs around.
Burger anyone?
Source: thebroadhouse.com
Some of my best summer memories are evenings spent out in the garden. One of the family barbecues sizzling away as we sit chatting until the sun goes down, fat jacket potatoes puffing out heat from the oven, glasses sweating white wine. Giggling about boys and wistfully planning out future holidays. New York, Milan, Hawaii…
It’s pretty great having an all-girl family. I love my dad and my brother TO BITS, but it is nice to relax with your girls. We can swap clothes and nail varnish, and spend hours getting ready in front of mirrors with a bit of Britney Spears blaring as we dance around trying to zip up a dress. It’s the expected girly traits, it’s the cliche, and it’s fantastic.
This is how summer makes me feel, I suppose. Girly. No excuse for wearing big hoodies and hiding away in a bulky coat. It’s the time to paint yourself in beautiful colours and wear skirts that swish around your ankles; share cocktails in the sun and play music out of your open bedroom window.
On this particular summer night, I am with my man, who is currently whipping me up some tea (isn’t he nice?) He’s no girl, I grant you, so perhaps the nail painting isn’t going to happen.
But, it’s summer, and we can feel it in the air.
And there’s nothing to stop us dancing to a bit of Britney in the setting sun with a bottle of wine.
…and I wish to sprinkle a little happy on the week before diving head first into the weekend.
Just for a moment, let go of the big things. Of the worries and stresses and schedules and expectations.
Humans are only tiny little beings, a dusty speck on the timeline of history – we can’t always shoulder the weight of the world.
So for a second, look for the good. Cherish the smile of a stranger on your way back from work or school; get excited about your favourite colour; dance to a song vibrant with memories; look for the brightness that makes you YOU, and cradle it.
The way I see it, humans are incredible. Precisely BECAUSE it’s the little things that count the most.
‘I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.’
– Audrey Hepburn
Today, I have been with the love of my life for a magical two years. I don’t want to write a stream of uncomfortably intimate memories, or gush at how in love I still am, but I do want to tell him one thing.
Thank you. You are the man who I want to grow old with. You are the man I want to kiss every single day for the rest of my life. You are the man who has turned my world around.
And it has been the most unforgettable adventure.
Teaching a terrified me the realities of boat life at Dartmouth.
A spontaneous trip to Paris.
Our first drunken Christmas.
All our educating trips to the Flight Museum.
Driving in a getaway car to Weymouth
Another spontaneous trip because…Pefkos.
Up and moving out for our first year at University.
Our second drunken Christmas and your continued attempts to grow a beard.
…coupled with my continued drunken attempts at seduction from a pile of wrapping paper.
Deciding to become superheroes for Easter…someone’s gotta do it.
All of your super exciting Geology lessons. Every time we go out for a walk.
And then, perhaps most importantly of all, the adventure of loving you in the moments that carry us from photograph to photograph, my Forever Boy.
I’ve got to be quick as I’m sneakily writing this whilst my man goes out to buy some wine before we settle in for a movie night together. The second he shut that front door, I was here on wordpress, because I just HAD to say something.
I hate endings.
This evening I watched the finale of Will and Grace, after months of watching the entire collection. It was beautifully written, it was typical W&G comedy, it tied the loose strings, it brought smiles to my face…it broke my heart as the end credits rolled across the screen.
The conclusion of a stranger would be that dear god, she is that person: the one who gets overly attached to something to the point of obsession, when the steely glint of madness begins to shine in their eyes. And well, yes I suppose I am that person.
But I’m also the person who relishes a smile while it lasts. I revel in life and all it’s roller coaster moments. I can’t get enough of a thing that makes me happy, and I don’t think that’s a thing that could ever be criticised.
Sitting here, staring at a blank screen, knowing there is not another season of my W&G to keep me going in those dull twenty minutes over breakfast tomorrow, makes me glum. When a thing is that good, I hate to see that it can just be cut off, ended, that someone out there can simply decide that we’ve had enough of a good thing.
(Getting the subtle tone of over-attachment?)
No, but in all seriousness, it was an excellent show. It was the kind of show that stays with you. It leaves you with that lingering feeling that I wish to reproduce one day in my writing.
So now I shall leave you. With my overly attached, mildly obsessive, incredibly hormonal reflection on a tv show forever immortalised for my not-quite-as-oestrogen-filled-body to read over next week and regret.
And a clip from the Finale.
(Gotta go. The man is back with alcohol and a Russel Crowe movie.)
Over the past week or so, the pattern of my life has changed. I have finished uni, completed all assignments and am faced with a 4 month summer holiday. That leaves me with so much spare time I hardly knew what to do with myself…so I sent out a plea for company and was treated to a welcome invasion of my best friend coming to visit.
I believe that friendship is supremely important. They are the people you can laugh with, debate with, drink with, go crazy with, talk about love and sex with…they are whoever you need them to be without any complications.
Don’t get me wrong – my partner is my best friend and love of my life – but at the same time, when he’s really annoyed me, I need that friend I can turn to for a vent before seeing him again. Because if I don’t, he’s more than likely to be met with an incredibly hostile She-Hulk, green muscles bulging out of tattered remains of clothes that he will be expected to replace out of his own wallet, however unfair that may seem.
We ALL need friends. We’re like watermelons: independent, colourful, delicious, and full of seeds of potential…but put us on a table and we can’t help but roll off the edge. Everyone needs a bit of support sometimes.
Back to the point.
When my best friend arrived, we headed straight for the nearest coffee shop…and then the nearest bar…and eventually found ourselves tucked up in bed giggling through mouthfuls of strawberry donuts in the early hours of the morning.
Being with her was like travelling back in time to when we were children, running around the house performing private concerts of Britney Spears songs, and playing ‘House’ in the middle of a football pitch, ignoring the yells of frustrated boys. But it’s always like that with her. However long it’s been since we last saw each other, we simply slot back into place, settling into our friendship as if it’s been no time at all.
In some ways, it was like a Detox – granted, not the healthy food kind – but a detox from life itself. We took some time out from things that were upsetting us and worrying us, talked them through, and then shrugged the worries off, re-living old memories and sharing secrets. She soothed my qualms about my partner and I made her laugh harder than she had in months. We were, temporarily at least, each others’ cure, which I love about seeing her.
Friends are not hard to come by, no matter what some say. I don’t know if I believe in soul mates, but I do believe in mates, and I believe they are everywhere you turn. It just so happens though, that once in a while you meet that special One. That One that gets your sense of humour, that loves the things that you love, that shares experiences and dreams.
That One that you stay up with all night long chanting maniacal mantras after eating too much sugar, despite being 20 years of age.
So for pulling me back through time, for making me young again, and being my One, I dedicate this one to you, my crazy best friend and sister.
‘Hand to hand, foot to foot, bum to bum, boob to boob. Forever together, pinky to pinky.’
I am a planner. I plan what I do, when I’m going to do it, and what that will achieve. I plan until I feel secure that that plan will lead to happiness.
So, in a way, I always know the end before I am even halfway towards it.
The past year has been one Hell of a ride for my partner and I, but I got us through it by planning our way out. I made lists and timetabled talks and implemented activities to pull us through the hard times. I re-established a bond through planning, and so have faith in it when I feel lost.
But now I have a problem. I feel lost and I cannot find my plan out of it.
I mean that literally. I know I sound like an incredibly strict person but I’m not. I don’t sit up in the dark hours of the night scribbling a schedule for the next day, working it out to the minute. I simply know myself and know the man I love well enough to know what we need and when we need to do it. The plans sort of appear out of thin air, dangling tantalisingly in front of me until I calm down enough to see it and grab hold, waiting patiently for it to haul me out of the current crisis. I find my plans because they find me.
Right now though? Nothing.
This terrifies me. Like in an outright, freaking out, crawl-into-a-shell-and-never-come-out-I’ve-decided-I’m-a-snail kind of way.
Which got me wondering…why? Why is it that having no solution scares me so completely? Do I believe that my relationship will fall apart because for the first time in two years, I don’t have a fix?
No. I have more faith than that. I have more faith in love. I have more faith in him. He wouldn’t let me go. I wouldn’t let him let me go.
And that’s the strange, hypnotic thing about love. Over time, it changes you, there is no denying that. You have to decide whether those changes are healthy ones, ones that make you a better person…but once you make that choice, you have no real control. Love is the control. Love is the deciding factor when lost.
Love is the plan.
So, for now, I’m just going to close my eyes, sit back and hope for the best. And let love plan the way out for once.
Relationships become a complex wiring of life the older you get. They stop being a fairytale and start to hollow out, waiting for change.
And that’s the problem: we spend too much of our lives waiting for change and then moaning when it doesn’t happen. It’s difficult to make that leap from wishing for something to change to doing something about it, especially in a relationship when previously things have gone so smoothly. It would be so easy to give up the second things became hard.
But there is a reason relationships get harder. They wouldn’t be worth having if you didn’t want to fight for it. Relationships become unrecognisable. They hurt you and heal you and make you laugh and make you cry. They are infinite and living.
