Another day, another week....

So, heres the skinny.

I've been back in the country for a little over a week. Its cold, rainy and I have a cold already. Grrrrr.

Much worse than that, I have been without my baby. This is NOT GOOD! I spend most of my days thinking about her, and worrying about how much she has to do without me, and worrying that we wont be able to afford the wedding, and worrying and worrying and worrying.

Everything feels wrong. The pain in my recovering ankle has always been dull, but maybe with the damp weather it feels worse. The food I've had since I got back is fine except it just doesnt taste the same. Even the TV shows just dont entertain me as much. Everything is as I left it 7 weeks ago, but somehow slightly different.

I just miss her.

Anyway, I'm here to write a blog, not whimper on about how life is terrible.

I do however want to write an apology. I have a number of friends, good people whom I let down consistantly, I dont keep in touch, I ignore their requests, and dont return their phone calls. Its not because I dont want to. They are all very entertaining and great fun to hang out with, but as I get older I have noticed that this is the compromise we all make.

Friends... take up valuable time that we could be much better off spending watching soap operas, and keeping warm tucked up in bed. When we feel down and depressed we avoid our friends. When we feel poor, we avoid our expensive friends. Our friends may give us great memories, but they also give us hangovers, they also force us to get out of our comfies and make us whip round with the hoover in a mad flurry.

For me right now I have two things to focus on. Spend as much time with my baby on line as possible, and work. I have so little time I can freely give to my friends, whom I miss and whom I care about very much.

I really miss chewing the fat with my brother. We used to compete over almost everything, and discuss pointless rubbish like the astethic values of Tarantino's "Kill Bill" til the early morning. We once watched 30 hours of movies back to back, with help of a few friends, snacks, pizza and a hell of a lot of coffee.

I miss cooking strange new recipes with one friend, watching her face as I throw in handfuls of dried spices. I miss us having a meal and sitting down to watch a Vin Diesel or Russel Crowe, seeing her purr at the screen. Or another day we would pig out on chocolates and chat til 2am. With my unreliablility, however and her busyness its been months since we have done that.

I have another great friend whom I adore spending time with. When I was younger I used to pop round to see her and her fella. They would put up with me tinkering on their guitars, playing their music and asking silly questions like "Who is Bruce Springsteen anyway". Now I only ever get to see her on family occasions or very very rarely I stop and chat to her at the odd gig. Im so sorry.

Then theres my oldest friend who now lives in Bournemouth with his beautiful wife. Its not so far away, and yet I rarely even call. When they first moved away I used to go round and stay for the evening. We would hang out in the best Chinese restaurants eating 100 yr old eggs, and dim sum to die for. Then after a few bevvies it was back to the flat for an entire night of playing "rocky" on the X-box. Now I have to search around to remember his phone number.

My great school friend, another married lady now, who tries her very best to stay in touch with me. Offering me a coffee every now and then. We have spent a few New Years together, but I've never done enough to deserve your attention.

My favourite work colleague. Who endlessly asks me out for a drink. Im not a big drinker, you always knew this, but I wish I could spend more time just hanging out with you. I'm always saying I dont have the time or the money. I'm sorry buddy. I miss you.

My literary friend. Who throws ideas off his walls like a sparkler on a cold bonfire night. I know how busy we have both become, and how hard it is just to hang out anymore, and I'm sorry. And my ex-flat mate, who actually lives on his own at the moment. Do you think I would come round more often if we had two playstations set up? lol. I should spend more time pal. I'm so sorry I dont.

There are many many others who I could mention. There are many others that over the stretch of time I have simply lost. Perhaps we all do. Perhaps people really do drift apart like this.

I can only assume its my melancholic mood thats making me think these things, plus the recognition that next year I will move away. Perhaps not forever, but for long enough that things may never be the same again.

I have found that through the net, I have done better at keeping in touch with these lost amigo's. That in some small way I can tell them whats going on in my life, and maybe get a glance of what has happened in theirs, but know that you all mean so very much to me, and I really do miss you even if I dont have the time to say so in person.

The Majesty and the Misery

There have been some fabulous unforgettable moments that I have been lucky enough to enjoy over the last 6 weeks of pseudo-marital bliss. Moments that I found surprising, like the day we went to my lady’s friends house, and we, they and the kids played chickenfeet ‘til we couldn’t laugh or stay awake any longer, or the time we went flying kites and even my lady was surprised at how much fun it was keeping a 4 foot square piece of plastic in the air or the afternoon I stuffed myself silly eating a small mountain of frozen yoghurt with every topping imaginable cascading down its slopes with each spoonful.

There have been moments of such warmth the like of which I have never experienced before. Like introducing Roald Dahl to the skiddles, putting on silly voices as we read them “George’s Marvellous Medicine”, and “The Witches”, or watching the oldest skiddle have that moment of realisation when he finally saw, after 75 minutes of fighting with me, that if you carry that number down, long division really does work, or making my girl hold her chest with belly laughter, watching her tears stream down her beautiful cheeks as I tell her stories of what her evil cat did to me in the middle of the night. Or when I read the warm and touching comments from the lady whom I hope will soon be my mother-in-law.

There have been moments of total synchronicity too. Like when my girl and I told the 2J’s, at exactly the same time, that they could both wear dresses to the wedding if they really want to. Hearing the older boy moan his complaint for the next few minutes would have been great fun, but we were laughing so much at saying it at the same time that we couldn’t hear him. Or occasionally thinking and acting with perfect understanding, like suddenly singing to the same song on the radio, or ordering things without asking each other while out to dinner.

Every now and then, individually the skiddles would turn to us and say in a petulant and frustrated voice “I have the weirdest parents!”. Words which on its own would fill me with pride, being referred to as “parent”, but when said in reaction to us just being “in-love” made it all the more special.

Today was not a good day however, for so many reasons.

First and most obviously, the dream has ended. My six wonderful weeks are over and I had to say goodbye to the woman who has taken my heart. I know I will return and that I have to go home to organise myself and say a different set of goodbyes, but, stealing a line from a man much funnier than me, when you finally know who you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want that life to start right away.

I feel like I have been a balloon, and when I am near her I am blown up, stretching my heart to its fullest, but now she is not by my side. Now that I know I will not get to touch her hand or kiss her lips or smell her hair for so long, I feel like the balloon is empty, and the rubber has warped and gone wrinkly. I feel all wrong, out of shape and uncomfortable. I don’t feel like I will function right again until I am with her again. That’s all I am going to say about her. My feelings of loss are mine own, they are also unreasonable and in my more lucid moments I recognise that this has to happen. It doesn’t serve me to dwell on them, but it is useful to know that my mind was never where it should have been, and still isn’t.

This is probably why on my trip back from OKC to Heathrow I managed to get lost twice.

I can’t say very much about leaving Oklahoma, it was a little bit of a blur, I simply wasn’t thinking about it. I can tell you it was flat, but then most places look flat from above on high. I could tell you that the staff were polite, but I don’t remember a single word they said to me. I didn’t cry on that flight, I just went quiet, stoic and statuesque. It’s a form of shock I imagine.

I landed in Minnesota, the twin city, an hour or two later. I have never been to Minneapolis airport. Last time I came back via Cincinnati, I think, and the in flights were always through Atlanta, both of which seemed quite generic places, but Minnesota had some real character. If It were a real holiday I would have spent a few days there hiking through the woods looking for deer or bears to photograph.

Unlike the times previous however I got to leave the airport. Not out of choice, I should add. For some reason, as I left the flight from Oklahoma I felt I had to collect my luggage from the baggage claim place. After walking past security it dawned on me that they would probably just move my bags directly to the next plane, just like they have always done in the past. So I asked the very nice police lady with the very large hand gun who politely told me that I was right, I needed to check back in, but if I was trying to go back the way I came she would have to use the aforementioned device and floor me. After a swift retreat I found myself facing another security guard type person who told me I was allowed outside the airport for as long as my visa was good, if I didn’t mind missing the flight. With this newly garnished knowledge I ventured my first few steps into the metropolis of Minnesota, and with my second few steps I ventured back into the airport and to the safety of airport control.

A cup of coffee a dose of self-consternation later and I had resolved to pay more attention to what was going on around me and stop sonambulising myself through a coma.

Minnesota really was an interesting place to visit, and even though I was only there for a short amount of time, and only in its airport lounge, there was a sense of identity that you don’t see in other places. They were far more in touch with their spirit. Native Indian art and jewellery was everywhere, as were stuffed wolves and pictures of snow. Even cowboy hats and boots had their place, something you just don’t see in the much smaller OKC airport, but my real joy was taking off.

It’s not that big an airport having what appeared to be only one runway, but it was certainly nice to see the planes taxi in turn on the runways in such an orderly fashion, but the truth is that it was the clarity of the night lights that I enjoyed so much. The freeway lights causing regular areas of shadow and light reminded me of tiger snakes as far as the eye could see. Every block clearly defined and spaced out in such an organised grid pattern that would make mathematicians and town planners the world over turn pale with jealousy. The Vikings stadium and the baseball pitch next door so beautifully lit up. And The big river meandering through it all, with its brightly lit bridges creating focal points throughout the city.

I was stunned by its elegance, but as we flew higher and higher, the wispy clouds blurred most of the lights until they were like distant galaxies seen by the hubble telescope. This notion stayed in my head for the next 30 minutes as we drifted across the states passing small towns that looked in my wandering head like tiny constellations. A horse prancing, a bucket spilled, a field of mushrooms.

The hours dwindled, I flicked through some in flight movies, but even X-Men made me feel sad and Transformers got turned off within 5 minutes. I ended up watching Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and wondered when Matthew Mcconaughey will remove his misogynistic thumb out of his apparently sexy derriere and make a movie that doesnt involve him being an annoying playboy type to women who fawn over him all the time.

Eventually, we began to lose altitude and I looked out my window onto a bright and hot London. Its odd the things I never normally noticed before, that we dont appreciate. I looked down at a rich green patchwork of fields, not a straight line separating them. It was almost as if a five year old were told to draw them. And every field, road, house, garden and farm edged with the trees and bushes that so epitomise my country.

I watched as the landmarks of london came into view. The Thames Barrier, The Millenium Dome, The Ghurkin, The London Eye and Parliament. I watched Buck Palace pass underneath and for the first time perhaps I noticed just how many fields, greens, parks, play areas and commons it has. How you are never too far away from grass and always have a tree in view within a minute. I look in wonder at a very different sort of elegance. At a country that wasnt planned, but formed over centuries of struggle and debate, that was torn by class conflict, by unfair taxes, by crazy civil wars, by religious bickering and also by rain that cuts through our rolling hills and creates so many irrisistable natural boundaries.

And I realise that even on this, the saddest of all days when I say goodbye to the love of my life for a period of time too long to contemplate without invoking a panic attack, that my exhausted state allowed me to see things of elegance and beauty, things that describe the differences between our two countries so simply, things normally overlooked by me and many like me I am sure.

The world has a habit of throwing you curve-balls... and sometimes they are just the tonic you need to keep going a little longer.