New Blog

You might have noticed something of a lack of recent updates.  After my initial period of optimism just after the Lieutenant started his tour in Afghanistan I lost the ability to do anything besides bemoan my lack of boyfriend/job/money/life, and I suspect it doesn't make for great reading material. 

I did, however, come into possession of an iphone and began something of a love affair with a number of photographic apps, so in place of whining or trying to force 'funny' onto a page here, I started a photographic blog elsewhere.  Here's the link:

http://dailydetails.tumblr.com/

Tumblr isn't my ideal site and leaves a lot to be desired in terms of format and personalisation possibilities, so I may move back over to Blogger at some point in the future.  I am also painfully aware of being the oldest person on Tumblr by something in the region of 10 years, which isn't helping in the run-up to the big 3-0!

Season of Mists and Mellow Boyfriendlessness

Autumn has staged a coup. Summer is nowhere to be seen and the trees stand quivering defeatedly in the courtyard, branches held high, surrendering leaves to the ground. The squirrels, opportunistic little buggers that they are, have taken advantage of the situation and are out looting the garden for conkers, acorns and anything else that stands still long enough to be eaten or buried. The air is thick with the smell of burning leaf-litter. I don't know if it's some kind of dated attempt to keep warm, or if pyromaniacs only come out of hibernation in October, but either way it's a smell that's synonymous with autumn. People are buying up gourds like they're going out of fashion, but I defy anyone to know what the hell to do with an onion squash. I for one certainly don't, and furthermore I harbour some serious reservations about food that sounds like it's having an identity crisis. You wouldn't eat a mushroom fruit, would you?

I feel a little shiver of excitement (which could also be attributable to losing nearly ten degrees in under a week), for soon it'll be Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes Night, and you know what this means? Fun food and festivities! I'm dreaming of bonfires and scarves, sweets and toffee apples, candyfloss, gluhwein, sugared almonds, fairground burgers with onions and cheap ketchup (undoubtedly the best variety), and then the opportunity to ride the teacups and swallow vomit in the taxi all the way home, just like last year.

Hallowe'en is so tragically underdone here in the UK. I'm disappointed in our unwillingness as a nation to adopt a disguise and beg sweets from strangers under cover of darkness, I really am. I'm also disappointed that this is the third autumn with the 2^nd Lieutenant, and yet we have not succeeded in disembowelling a single pumpkin or lighting a single sparkler together. What does the army have against people getting drunk in a field and watching explosives in the dark anyway? Sounds like just another day on the job to me. I suppose next October, just over three and half years into the relationship, we will still have the pleasure of doing our first autumnal things together. That's assuming, of course, that I survive the morning beach ride I've booked in his absence this Hallowe'en weekend. Now I realise horses aren't terribly scary unless you've cheesed off The Godfather, but when you've not ridden for a while and the last few times you've taken one for a spin round the paddock have ended in A&E, there are few things more terrifying or likely to result in death.  I'm told fancy dress from the neck up is the order of the evening. I call shotgun on the mummy.

Praise be to Almighty iphone.

The Almighty iphone, which has been surgically grafted to my right hand since its arrival yesterday, is telling me it's 09:53 on the dot, and I'm feeling like an eighty year-old who's been left out overnight in December. I'm not terribly tempted by what I feel the day has to offer so I resolve to remain in bed until I take root or am driven out by a compulsive urge to cheat on my diet with a bar of Galaxy.

What does the Almighty iphone have to say? No one has emailed, though I'm relieved to see that erectile dysfunction can be cured by sending my bank details to some guy called Dave, and I can make a quarter of a million quid by laundering money for a company in Nigeria. Maybe I'll take them up on that if I don't have a job by the end of the week - the money laundering, I mean, not the cure for erectile dysfunction. Though I suppose there's always the off chance that even that'll come in useful one day.

My Facebook feed is full of babies (I'm sorry girls, you say 'adorable' I say 'part-boiled monkey') and there's a spate of 30^th birthdays which serve as a painful reminder of the fact that my own mid-life crisis is just around the corner. Funny isn't it, that the 2^nd Lieutenant is essentially away foooreeeveeer (ie. until April) but my birthday (May) is just around the corner? I feel a wallow coming on and flick to a tune on the Almighty iphone, the title of which I deem worthy of my current state of mind; 'I'm on my own' by Vincent Vincent and the Villains. (Check them out, by the way, they'll rock your world.) Cue a little pastiche of imaginary events; me showering dejectedly (no wally singing into the scrubbing brush and turning on the cold jets so he can laugh at his girlfriend shrieking and trying to hide from water in a shower cubicle); me in the kitchen, measuring out single-person portions of breakfast and failing to open jam jars; me in the living room, watching Jeremy Kyle and eating peanut butter off the teaspoon. You get the picture. I can see my whole day stretching out before me and it's not pretty. My iphone, however, is. Hurrah for technogadgetry!

Solutions to missing him

He's been gone almost a week now and I'm not warming to this tour idea one bit. Sure, I can starfish to my heart's content at night, and I don't have to defend my meals against endless snatch offensives once he's finished eating. The bathroom floor isn't swimming 3 inches deep in stagnant shower water, and my book collection remains on the bookshelves and not stacked next to the toilet collecting fluff and errant drops of pee, but God I miss him. I miss how he aims the shower head to point directly out of the cubicle when I turn it on in the morning, I miss his discarded socks in the hall, and the way he wakes up and kisses me when even I can't bear to be in the same room as my breath.

The spiders have heard he's out of town and are buying up real-estate faster than I can change the hoover bag. The bed is sodding freezing. I'm restricted to about two movies that don't make me cry, and I have to vet my music for themes of war and solitude. I have to carry heavy shopping home for miles and all the best Waitrose meals are made for two. Life is laughing at my predicament. To rub salt into a gaping wound, the neighbours upstairs have traded their mattress for a set of rusty springs and an amplifier. I hate them.

But they say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I don't believe for a minute that this can be solely attested to the notion that the less time you spend with a person, the smaller the chance you have of discovering that they bite their toenails and worship Will Ferrell. There has to be something that we all enjoy doing while our partners are away, some single-person throwback that remembers how good it was not to have to remove every. single. little. hair growing anywhere except our heads EVERY morning. I mean, it's 7am, you can't even remember your own name and there you are, wielding a razor in a slippery shower so he can marvel at how smooth your underarms are! That stops right now - another reason to be thankful for a winter tour.

Okay, I'd aimed for a rant here, a list of forbidden pleasures that would make it all worth while, but alas I'm stuck at one. Like most things in life, this would be so much easier if I were a man. I could wax lyrical for hours about the joys of burping, farting, scratching my balls and leaving the toilet seat up without fear of admonishment. But nope. We women have shaving and precious little else. So it seems that the answer to the problem of missing him is simple; he needs to step up to my level of nagging so I can at least enjoy the freedom to rebel next time he goes away.

The Winter of My Discontent

I think everyone says goodbye differently. Some cry and hug and wave tearful farewells, have to be parted from their loved one with a crowbar and placated with promises of wine, chocolate and bottomless boxes of Kleenex. Others are nonchalant, upper lip stiffer than an army salute - I actually know one chap who woke up one morning, breakfasted, and uttered to his bewildered girlfriend the immortal words, "So long darling. I'm off to war" before flying out to Afghanistan that afternoon. As for us, we did it in the hall way, beside the empty regimental colours case in the then empty Mess.  Big kiss, no tears, no fuss.  He left.  I rescued a tiny frog from the hallway and ate my weight in pie at a friend's house. 

That was, I'm starting to discover, the easy bit.  Eventually I had to leave the friend's house.  There were no more suppers.  No more exciting ceremonial events to go to with friends. They all went back to work. 

Eventually I ran out of pie. 

And then it started.  When I least expected it.  I was sat on the sofa, idly channel hopping as every unemployed person worth their salt tends to, and suddenly every channel is airing films like 'K19: The Widow Maker', 'Only The Good Die Young' and 'Full Metal Jacket'.  The world is conspiring against me.  It's an omen.  I decide to distract myself, do a little housework, listen to a little music.  Magic FM is playing 'All By Myself'.  Quick! Where's the iPod?!  Echo and the Bunny Men's 'Killing Moon'?  Are you kidding me?!  And just when I think it couldn't get any worse, there's an old friend telling me via the medium of Facebook that she knows *just* how I feel, because her boyfriend has just left on his second two-week business trip this year.  I resist the urge to question the current level of Taliban activity in Luxembourg and tell her instead that he'll be back in no time.  Lucky cow. 

I ask the dashing 2nd Lieutenant (this will read so much better when he's promoted in a couple of months) on MSN today whether or not he's missing me yet.  He replies "Nope", and then quickly adds "You know I do". [smiley face].  But it was an honest question.  After all, men work differently.  They're more practical.  The male mind will reason that we've only been parted 5 days and we've been in touch almost every one of those, that we've done far longer with far less.  The female mind just sees 6 months of separation and a lot of chocolate.  He reasons in my case that it should be a very happy six months then.  True.  God, if only I hadn't promised myself I'd lose weight.  All I've got is 6 months and carrot sticks.