What Was That About "No Rushing?"

It seems very unusual for me to post two blogs in relatively quick succession, but I find it necessary in this circumstance.

I distinctly remember typing along the lines of "me and the lady are dating; no rushing". So, forgive me if I'm a little light-headed right now.

Linda ("the lady" in question) was in göteborg this past weekend, ostensibly to meet up with an old pal of hers whom she hadn't seen for a donkey's age. We talked about "maybe meeting up if there was enough time" but I had assumed that, because of the length of time between them seeing each other before, there wouldn't be much of a chance. That's fine, I would be seeing her this coming weekend anyway.

"Imagine my surprise," as they say in the Letters column of your dreary local newspaper, when I got a phonecall asking if I was free of a Saturday evening, and would I like to come over to a restaurant and hang out with Linda, her long-time friend and some assorted other people who didn't have other Saturday plans already in place. "Sure," I said. My Saturdays of late have been a regular sequence of listening to SLAY Radio, then going to Kville Biljard and playing pool with whoever was available. Enjoyable as it is, sometimes one would like one's Saturday evenings to be a little bit "different".

The evening began as any restaurant-based evening is wont to do: smalltalk, a few drinks, a meal after some time had passed. Replete from our plates of (admittedly very tasty) food, we carried on talking. However, at some point, Linda and I both noticed that we were really only talking to each other; the other guests were sitting next to us but had been blurred out by our minds. Then, "the moment" happened. We stopped talking and just looked at each other for a few minutes. "Why the hell did we split up", was the unspoken question.

A lot of the rest of the weekend was unspoken, too. Suffice to say that Linda and I are now back together, stronger than ever and [insert favourite "spend rest of lives" style quip, cliché, rhetoric or otherwise].

"Life is just a bowl of toenails," as someone once sang. Although I may have paraphrased slightly. And I've just started the previous sentence with a conjunction. And that one. Damn it.

Normal Service Will Be Resumed...

Well. That was quite a number of months wandering around in the wild.

It seems that I was a lot more depressed than I thought I was, looking back. But when you're there, you're kind of numb to it all. That's one of the reasons I haven't Blogged for so long.

Work was drying up, me and the lady had split up, and I was caught up in that horrible "don't want to see anyone but why doesn't anyone ask me out for a drink" Catch 22 situation. I was seriously considering being "yeller", packing my bags and moving back to ol' Blighty.

Then at the end of June, I got a job. A proper, paid, regular 9-to-5 job as a programmer.

Things have definitely changed in the month or so. I see my colleagues every day - human contact at last! Working for yourself - especially in the kind of job I had - tends to make you stir crazy, which in my state a while back compounded the problem. I've also just enrolled for Swedish lessons, something I should have done a long time ago. But in September, I start learning the lingo. It's an intensive 6-week, 2 lessons a week course, held at folkuniversetet. All being well, after the course I'll take a little break, then sign up for the follow-on intermediate course.

Oh, and me and the lady are dating again. No rushing, just taking it nice and slow.

Yep, it was pretty bad, looking back. But now I'm looking forward again.