I’ve actually had a horrible day of a horrible week. This evening is the closest I’ve ever come to bursting into tears while at work. But despite the fact that I’ve got a tonne of work to be finished before I go to bed, I wanted to write just a short post to mark this momentous occasion. I feel rather proud that no one else has ever managed to put up with going out with Babel for this long Nah, it’s weird because in a way it feels like two years have gone ridiculously fast, and on the other hand, it feels as if I’ve known Babel forever. That is to say, I can’t very easily imagine what it would be like not to have him around. I’ve grown up so much as a person since I first got to know him, and looking back I’m very grateful for all the help and support he’s given me. It would not be a fair assessment to say that the past two years have been plain sailing, and indeed sometimes it seems like rather a miracle that we’re still together at all, but on the whole, and especially the past 12 months, I’ve been very happy.

Babel is someone I feel completely comfortable around, which for me is a big deal because I’m a rather shy and nervous person, and I don’t tend to be open with many people at all. He also has the honour of being the only guy I’ve ever genuinely found attractive, since my tastes normally lie in the opposite direction. I still get excited on days when I know I’m going to be able to see him And the more I’ve got to know him properly, the more I’ve found that we actually do have things in common, whereas originally it seemed like we were complete opposites in every single respect. He does, of course drive me absolutely mad on fairly regular occasions, and there are some areas where we are never going to see eye to eye as long as we live. But I like the fact that we can fall out with each other and then make friends again, and I like the fact that he will tell me when he thinks I’m being out of order. It’s nice to be going out with someone who knows their own mind and is prepared to be forceful, even if that does mean that trying to manipulate them to do what you want is an absolute non-starter

I shan’t sing his praises too highly, because Babel already has quite a big head and if it grows much more it won’t fit in the hat I bought him for Christmas But despite all the difficult family complications I know it’s going to cause me, there’s nothing I want more right now than to be able to move in with him. And to marry him one day too, of course, because I can’t really think of anything else I’d want in a partner. Well, apart from someone who didn’t burp and preferred sex to reading about semi-famous wrestlers, possibly :ninja: Nah, I’m really very happy, and sometimes I still have to pinch myself to remind myself life can seem too good to be true.

There are a lot of things I could compulsively apologise for but time is at a premium tonight, so I just want to say thank you to Babel for being the highlight of the past few years, and for having the pacience to stick around, despite everything. You should already know how much I value our friendship, but I also look up to you a great deal and wish I could be more like you in so many ways. Happy anniversary – if I wasn’t fed up of being called a soppy git I might make the point that I love you

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…