Happy non-anniversary to me!
When I switched my computer on this morning, Lotus Notes informed me that it was my anniversary. For several minutes I was highly perplexed, as I tried to remember what sort of anniversary it could possibly be. I was halfway through my breakfast before I realised it was referring to the anniversary of the day I started going out with the boyfriend I obviously still had when I set a recurring calendar entry to remind me of it. 
It seems rather shocking to think that it is now six years since the start of that relationship. Were we still together it would have been a long time to be together, but we’re not, which I am as exceptionally glad about as it is possible to be whilst feeling simultaneously guilty. Now all I need to do is figure out how to cancel recurring calendar entries in Lotus Notes!
The alarm actually shouldn’t have gone off at six am, but more aptly at twenty past two in the afternoon, which is the time at which we started going out, and shook hands upon the business to officialise it. It never fails to make me laugh, looking back, that we managed to make the proceedings so utterly unromantic, but neither of us actually wanted to go out with the other, both fancying ourselves in love with someone unobtainable, and so I suppose there was a limit to how romantic it was going to get. It would be another fortnight before we attempted to hold hands, three weeks before we went on a date, and over a month before we managed to kiss
Actually, in the interests of strict accuracy, we did try to go on a date two days later, but we failed. That is to say, we made it to outside the cinema, tentatively peered inside, couldn’t see anywhere to buy a ticket, so went home again. With the benefit of hindsight, even I have to admit that that sounds a little ridiculous 
I can’t quite remember what the thought process was behind not actually *entering* the cinema and having a more thorough look for the box office, which surely can’t have been so completely concealed. All I recall is that my new boyfriend announced the need to do some shopping, at which point I accompanied him to the nearest branch of Tesco and helped carry heavy bags back to his flat, some three miles away. When we eventually got there, he didn’t so much as offer me a glass of water and I was too polite to ask so, being fed up and thirsty, I quickly made an excuse to leave. This kind of set the tone for the relationship 
It’s late and I’m tired, so I’m unsure what the moral of this story is supposed to be. Perhaps simply that it is not a good idea to prolong relationships with people you do not love. That may sound rather obvious, but it took me somewhere between three and four years to realise it. At least I did realise it eventually however, otherwise life could be an awful lot more miserable than it is now. Or perhaps the moral is more that everyone would be happier if they were going out with Babel… only you can’t, because I found him first
In other news, I am a little concerned about how much work I may inadvertently have taken on when I offered to correct postal courses for people in Ghana. I’ve just found out there is a class of seventy, who are all intending to send me postal course lesson one in the near future 
Everybody please pray the guy I was talking to got a little confused with his numbers and actually just meant seventeen…
Tags: anniversary