This is modern life:
More than twenty-five years later than almost everyone else I know, I have finally entered the world of the Bridget Jones mini-break, except that I am playing the part of Bridget after Mr Darcy has left to pursue other interests from his small bachelor flat in Shepherd's bush.
So this is how I come to find myself sipping coffee on the terrace of a lakeside cafe in Bellagio opposite a man who is not my husband with the prefix ex, but who is instead, I suddenly realise, almost a total stranger of whom I do indeed have extensive biblical knowledge, but otherwise know almost nothing about. We've been seeing each other for almost six months but since we live a hundred miles apart and only manage to meet up every few weeks, we have not, until now, spent longer than 48 hours in each other's company.
As the waiter takes our order we are now on hour 36 and will soon enter uncharted territory.
What will we say to each other? Will there be awkward silences? Chance, I see him thinking, would be a fine thing, as I babble on like I'm being paid by the word. I've been on my best behaviour for months, and even that hasn't softened him much. How will I keep it up? He's a self-confessed control freak and has already spoken ominously about itineraries and timetables. Is his idea of fun to recite great chunks of the guide book to me while we are standing in a public square? (Indeed it is, but since I don't have my glasses on and can't see the print - while not exactly John Donne in the bath - this is nevertheless an endearing quality.) Should I hide my aversion to heights (possibly before we've climbed a bell tower with no handrail that teeters on top of a medieval hillside town)? What happens if we quarrel? What if he's a member of the National Front. Or the Countryside Alliance?
'So where do you stand on hunting?' he suddenly asks as I stir sugar into my coffee in a vain attempt to sweeten my tongue.
Someone should really write a user's handbook for previously owned men so that subsequent partners know how to negotiate the time when you are vertical and ambulatory instead of merely amatory, and what topics can be safely discussed when polite conversation is required. It would also help to know such things as a love of blood sports, well in advance.
He's wearing a quilted jacket, stout shoes and a scarf wound round his neck like he's been styled for the Boden Catalogue. Everything I'm wearing is stout. I'm in jeans and a long, large, knitted coat into which I've tucked a pashmina that I've draped over my head hijab style. I keep catching sight of myself in shop windows and thinking I look like a Muslim matron with an aversion to the cold. And it is cold. There's an icy wind blowing off Lake Como, despite the cloudless blue sky that dutifully accessorises the Mediterranean scenery, and white caps tip the jagged waves.
We smile at each other, huddled into our respective sensible coats and he reaches across the table and takes my hand. 'I want to give you my sister's telephone number,' he says, confidingly, and the smile that has been beaming from my face all weekend, widens. This is surely one of the milestones of grown-up courtship. Forget meeting the parents (who are in any case often dead) or the children (you have to meet them because otherwise you don't get to set foot in the bedroom since they are usually blocking the entrance playing Grand Theft Auto) - it's the being invited to befriend the siblings that bestows on one the public seal of approval. I've already met and immediately liked the sister, so much so that I made an early request that I should be allowed to keep her if we break up, so I'm delighted to be invited to take her telephone number. Maybe he's going to suggest I get in touch with her and meet her for coffee one of these days.
'Yes, you really ought to have it,' He adds.
I get out my mobile. 'Why?' I ask cheerfully, seeing family get-togethers and Sunday lunches and tennis parties stretching off into the future (I can't play tennis, but nevertheless)...
'Just in case something happens to me.' He answers. 'I woke in the night and it occurred to me that if I had a heart attack and pegged it you wouldn't know who to contact.'
Ah, romantic, middle-aged love, or what? And so we sit there with our respective phones keying in the numbers of people to contact in case of an emergency. I give him my ex husband's cell phone.
'There's so much we don't know about each other,' he says, by way of explanation.
'That's true, ' I agree and look up at the yellow stucco of the hotel on the shores of the lake next to the cafe where we are seated, whose balconies overhang the the terrace. 'For instance, do you see the Hotel Metropole, just over there?' I ask.
'Yes?' His eyes turn dutifully upwards following mine to the the third balcony on the second floor.
'That's where I stayed for my honeymoon.'
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Monday, 5 October 2009
Monday, 28 September 2009
Reason No. 239
I'm standing holding a plastic cup which someone has just topped up with red wine and, unless I count the cup of coffee I drank when I woke up, I realise that this is breakfast.
I needed it.
I've just given a talk about the desire to escape and reinvent oneself which, coming from a village (population 4,800) was something I did myself when I left Scotland (though then the population was probably only around 3,000 -1, all of whom knew my parents). There's a comfort to be found growing up in a place like Cheers, where everybody knows your name, your mother's name and your grandmother's name, but I'm darned if I could see it when I was fifteen. It was like the social equivalent of an electronic tag on your ankle. It wasn't that much fun to be the 'lassie from the big hoose' or Big Jock's daughter when, if you were ten minutes late home from a dance he marched down to the hall and dragged you out in front of everyone. Yes, we all knew our neighbours, perhaps too intimately. Furthermore, those who didn't know you soon would. The minute you opened your mouth your accent would pinpoint more than just class but also religion and geography, while the mention of a name would immediately link you to a lineage that stretched back two or three generations. Invisibility was an unknown concept.
Moving to Oxford while still in my early, early teens, I loved the fact that I was just the Scottish girl. Yes, I stood out because of my accent and my strange habit of striking up conversations with people on buses, but from that the only thing that could be deduced was that I was from Scotland and either mad or friendly. In Oxford there was little to differentiate the two. It was assumed that I was probably Glaswegian - because that was in the days before Trainspotting alerted the country to the fact that not all people from Edinburgh spoke like Malcom Rifkind and were inherently posh. I didn't care. Glasgow was as good as anywhere as long as it was nowhere anybody had a cousin who might know mine. My surname meant nothing beyond being unpronounceable and just like the heroine of my novel I could be anything, or anyone I wanted. Obviously though my attempts to transform into Kirstin Scott Thomas didn't quite happen...
In the library in Scotland over drinks and nibbles, however, there's great comfort in being told by a woman that the only person she knew with my surname was 'Big Jock' - my father, as it turns out. Our dads used to golf with. And then there's Theresa - the woman who read my book and wrote to me asking if I would meet her for a coffee because she discovered that she and I came from the same village and subsequently, it washer policeman son who walked me through the gates at No 10. Not only do we come from the same village but it turns out she lived round the corner from me and her niece is married to my great nephew. It's a very small world. You see, this is why I ran away when I was seventeen but the past really does catch up with you, no matter how long you stay out of its way. And it's related.
I used to work in a library when I left school and a librarian in this one who remembers me when I was a teenager (who is now, like me, middle aged) starts running through the the names of people I once worked with: Wee Wull, Jean and Margaret, Gay and Audrey. I mention that I met my first boyfriend thanks to Margaret whose son and he were best friends.
'He was friendly with Brian Gilchrist?' She asks... (everyone in Scotland has an encyclopaedic memory for names) and I agree, though I hadn't remembered anything about him, or thought of him for years until she mentioned it. All I can remember about the boyfriend is that he was called Fred, was Italian and his father had a cafe in the next town.
'Di Resta,' She supplies, then corrects herself: 'No that was Whitburn. Serafini it would be.'
'Serafini!' What a fabulous name. Can that be it?
I later asked my sister the same question - wondering what the surname was of the people who had the cafe in a local town. She thought for a minute and then said, jubilantly: 'Wee Tally.' Yep, it's Scottish PC Hour, and your host tonight is...
I have no idea if that was really his name but nevertheless I'm almost doodling it on my exercise book. All these years later and I still get a thrill thinking about him. I wonder aloud what Fred (Serafini?) looks like now and remember how absolutely beautiful I thought him at sixteen and how I couldn't believe he would ever go out with me.
'Oh you might be surprised,' She cautions, not entirely encouragingly. I mention that after we broke up he started going out with the most popular and attractive girl in the village.
'Who was that?' she asks.
'Oh you know, she lived in Park View. Catholic. She had an older sister who died of Weils disease.'
She looks at me blankly, whether it's because she wants more explanation of the disease or the person I'm not sure. I decide to forgo the rats and stick to the girl...
'Oh you must know her. She was very pretty. Had bullet hard breasts (No I didn't say that but I remember one of her ex-boyfriends telling me that - this again, is why you don't hang around in a small village - no ruddy secrets). She died too.' (Ditto - reasons for leaving No. 237)
She still doesn't know who I'm talking about and shakes her head.
'She was my age, so a year older than you. Died of a some bowel disease...' (No. 238) I prompt.
She shrugs.
I'm about to keep on going, trying to prompt her memory of a girl, long dead, whose name I can't even remember myself because of a boy I dated three and a half decades ago - and then I hear myself.
Oh my God. I've been gone from this place all my adult life, yet still, I've turned into my mother.
I needed it.
I've just given a talk about the desire to escape and reinvent oneself which, coming from a village (population 4,800) was something I did myself when I left Scotland (though then the population was probably only around 3,000 -1, all of whom knew my parents). There's a comfort to be found growing up in a place like Cheers, where everybody knows your name, your mother's name and your grandmother's name, but I'm darned if I could see it when I was fifteen. It was like the social equivalent of an electronic tag on your ankle. It wasn't that much fun to be the 'lassie from the big hoose' or Big Jock's daughter when, if you were ten minutes late home from a dance he marched down to the hall and dragged you out in front of everyone. Yes, we all knew our neighbours, perhaps too intimately. Furthermore, those who didn't know you soon would. The minute you opened your mouth your accent would pinpoint more than just class but also religion and geography, while the mention of a name would immediately link you to a lineage that stretched back two or three generations. Invisibility was an unknown concept.
Moving to Oxford while still in my early, early teens, I loved the fact that I was just the Scottish girl. Yes, I stood out because of my accent and my strange habit of striking up conversations with people on buses, but from that the only thing that could be deduced was that I was from Scotland and either mad or friendly. In Oxford there was little to differentiate the two. It was assumed that I was probably Glaswegian - because that was in the days before Trainspotting alerted the country to the fact that not all people from Edinburgh spoke like Malcom Rifkind and were inherently posh. I didn't care. Glasgow was as good as anywhere as long as it was nowhere anybody had a cousin who might know mine. My surname meant nothing beyond being unpronounceable and just like the heroine of my novel I could be anything, or anyone I wanted. Obviously though my attempts to transform into Kirstin Scott Thomas didn't quite happen...
In the library in Scotland over drinks and nibbles, however, there's great comfort in being told by a woman that the only person she knew with my surname was 'Big Jock' - my father, as it turns out. Our dads used to golf with. And then there's Theresa - the woman who read my book and wrote to me asking if I would meet her for a coffee because she discovered that she and I came from the same village and subsequently, it washer policeman son who walked me through the gates at No 10. Not only do we come from the same village but it turns out she lived round the corner from me and her niece is married to my great nephew. It's a very small world. You see, this is why I ran away when I was seventeen but the past really does catch up with you, no matter how long you stay out of its way. And it's related.
I used to work in a library when I left school and a librarian in this one who remembers me when I was a teenager (who is now, like me, middle aged) starts running through the the names of people I once worked with: Wee Wull, Jean and Margaret, Gay and Audrey. I mention that I met my first boyfriend thanks to Margaret whose son and he were best friends.
'He was friendly with Brian Gilchrist?' She asks... (everyone in Scotland has an encyclopaedic memory for names) and I agree, though I hadn't remembered anything about him, or thought of him for years until she mentioned it. All I can remember about the boyfriend is that he was called Fred, was Italian and his father had a cafe in the next town.
'Di Resta,' She supplies, then corrects herself: 'No that was Whitburn. Serafini it would be.'
'Serafini!' What a fabulous name. Can that be it?
I later asked my sister the same question - wondering what the surname was of the people who had the cafe in a local town. She thought for a minute and then said, jubilantly: 'Wee Tally.' Yep, it's Scottish PC Hour, and your host tonight is...
I have no idea if that was really his name but nevertheless I'm almost doodling it on my exercise book. All these years later and I still get a thrill thinking about him. I wonder aloud what Fred (Serafini?) looks like now and remember how absolutely beautiful I thought him at sixteen and how I couldn't believe he would ever go out with me.
'Oh you might be surprised,' She cautions, not entirely encouragingly. I mention that after we broke up he started going out with the most popular and attractive girl in the village.
'Who was that?' she asks.
'Oh you know, she lived in Park View. Catholic. She had an older sister who died of Weils disease.'
She looks at me blankly, whether it's because she wants more explanation of the disease or the person I'm not sure. I decide to forgo the rats and stick to the girl...
'Oh you must know her. She was very pretty. Had bullet hard breasts (No I didn't say that but I remember one of her ex-boyfriends telling me that - this again, is why you don't hang around in a small village - no ruddy secrets). She died too.' (Ditto - reasons for leaving No. 237)
She still doesn't know who I'm talking about and shakes her head.
'She was my age, so a year older than you. Died of a some bowel disease...' (No. 238) I prompt.
She shrugs.
I'm about to keep on going, trying to prompt her memory of a girl, long dead, whose name I can't even remember myself because of a boy I dated three and a half decades ago - and then I hear myself.
Oh my God. I've been gone from this place all my adult life, yet still, I've turned into my mother.
Home, out of range
I'm in Bonny Scotland within sight of the red teeth of the Forth Road Bridge - if I climb up the hill to Tesco's, which I don't have a mind to do though it's about the only place I can get to without a car, which, inconveniently, I do not possess.
Internet access is also iffy, and I feel like someone has cut out my tongue without the ability to communicate with the outside world. However, by standing by the window holding my laptop up at the sun I found a BT Openzone and signed up just so I could check my email. There's one from my daughter who needs some financial juggling before she leaves for Oxford on Friday, and erm, perplexingly my Oyster card has been topped up - though I haven't used it for four days. I want to help the daughter out but I can't connect to my bank. My building society card is still, a month on, in the post thanks to the dual inefficiencies of the Post Office and Santander and so I can't access any of those funds either. My friend George (originally from the next village along) who now lives in Cambridge has been in touch to reprimand me about my personal life which he feels, as honorary elder brother, he has a right to do (in the vernacular - 'och, lassie ye shouldnie be wastin yer time....' though he speaks in real life as though he's presenting the Today program) and so I'm now sulking with him. That leaves a big fat nobody to respond to. And for this I paid a fiver.
Elder daughter is off to Oxford on Friday. I will be leaving work, jumping in the car and driving her straight off there to settle her in to her new home in Cowley Road where I once lived myself. I am going to miss her like an amputated limb though it will also be nice to have a bit more space in the sleeve I can now pin to my chest. Henceforth it will just be me and the younger daughter. The elder son also lives at home but since he is nocturnal we don't actually see him - it's like having mice, you only find evidence of his existence, though thankfully he doesn't poo on the floor (yet) but does leave a small trail of crumbs and dirty dishes. Peace and tranquility will return to Walton's Mountain (not that the elder daughter disturbs this peace but she's probably even more anxious to have some space of her own than I am. When I suggested I might go up to Oxford once a week to see her (for an hour or two) she recoiled with horror: 'Not every week, ma!'
Worcester is off to the Opera and arriving for a very late check in at Hotel Girlfriend on Friday night, so will not be requiring room service, I expect. And that's the coming weekend, already folded into neat little creases like an origami crane.
Meanwhile I'm in saturated fat limbo - north of the Border gorging on scones, Scotch pies, German biscuits, Lorne Sausage, Bourbon creams, morning rolls, fried tattie scones, cream cakes, treacle scones and Cinzano with (diet) Lemonade. So far I've discovered a stockpile of chocolate biscuits in my sister's kitchen that would shock UN Weapons Inspectors. If we sent the Scottish diet - of which I'm currently an enthusiastic consumer - to Iran and North Korea we wouldn't have to worry about the nuclear bomb - they'd be too busy eating multi-packs of crisps and jam sponges to press the button. So far the only fruit I've seen in four days has been the lemon floating in my Cinzano and I've eaten more bread over the weekend than I have in the last month. Readers - I am the EU butter mountain. The jeans that were already tight when I boarded the plane now resemble the ankle to thigh elastic bandages that you have to wear after you've had liposuction (so I'm told, so I'm told) and feel like a non-surgical gastric bypass as they are so constricting they don't leave room in the stomach for food. I now understand why my mother wore an 18 hour girdle - it meant you only had 6 left for eating, and in those you were supposed to be asleep.
I'm also doing a lot of sleep. My sister and her husband are both retired. To their beds until about ten o'clock every morning. So, I'm fat, but refreshed. And half way through my second book. Reading it, I add, writing - not so much.
However, the reason I'm here, other than to catch up on the the X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing marathons and to continue the Worcester tradition of visiting every supermarket in a 5 mile radius (so far we've done Tesco's, The Co-op, Somerfield and Aldi - and lest I get too jaded, Worcester informed me that there are still some left in his neck of the woods, the extensive, green, thick, muddy woods, that I haven't yet been too - oh joy, oh joy, oh joy!) is because I was giving a little talk at a local library.
Not that local, actually. It's - oooooh - a good five miles away from my home village to the metropolis of West Calder which, when I was growing up, was the equivalent of going to Manhattan from Queens. Apparently there are signs like wanted posters advertising my talk in the village library. My cousin saw one:
'Aye Marion, I saw it stuck ootside on the door, so ah went in and said "that's my wee cousin ye've got stuck outside' - yer famous, you know - front page of the Edinburgh Evening News, 'n everything.'
I mumbled modestly and asked her if she was coming.
'Nah, well, ye see, I've already signed up for something at the Rural that day. We're going to Dobbie's Garden Centre.'
Fair enough. Never let it be said I have 'a big heed'.
So I turned up at the Manhattan library, terrified that my cousin would be representative of the local populace who voted with their feet and didn't bother to turn up to hear me. The library was charging a a quid and though fame may have its price, even I don't think I'm worth a pound. However, there was wine being served (at 12.30 - this is Scotland!) and nibbles, so I think the booze was well worth the entrance fee.
I needn't have worried. Despite my cousin being busy with the Rural, and all my other cousins having invented a wedding in Cyprus that they had to go to and so, en masse, excused themselves (as if they couldn't have got married another weekend) - a good audience turned up. Nobody actually made the 5 mile trip from my home village however, which was a shame, but have to eat somebody in my birthplace to be really famous, so I'm trying to get past the disappointment.
As soon as I settled myself in the chair, I felt right at home, as well I should have, since I (nearly) was. There was one woman there who had known my father, another who knew my best friend Patricia when I was a child, another lovely woman called Carol who went to the same school I did, and another whose daughter and son both lived in my village - and everyone was familiar with a lot of the background of the book and even, in some cases, knew exactly where I'd set it and who the characters were based on. I had a lovely time. Actually, with a glass of red wine in one hand and a fistful of crisps in the other, I wonder why I live in London. The sun even shone.
Apparently I'm in the Local History Library too - for reference. Me and Britain's Got Talent's Susan Boyle who comes from a village five miles the other way.
Damn her.
Internet access is also iffy, and I feel like someone has cut out my tongue without the ability to communicate with the outside world. However, by standing by the window holding my laptop up at the sun I found a BT Openzone and signed up just so I could check my email. There's one from my daughter who needs some financial juggling before she leaves for Oxford on Friday, and erm, perplexingly my Oyster card has been topped up - though I haven't used it for four days. I want to help the daughter out but I can't connect to my bank. My building society card is still, a month on, in the post thanks to the dual inefficiencies of the Post Office and Santander and so I can't access any of those funds either. My friend George (originally from the next village along) who now lives in Cambridge has been in touch to reprimand me about my personal life which he feels, as honorary elder brother, he has a right to do (in the vernacular - 'och, lassie ye shouldnie be wastin yer time....' though he speaks in real life as though he's presenting the Today program) and so I'm now sulking with him. That leaves a big fat nobody to respond to. And for this I paid a fiver.
Elder daughter is off to Oxford on Friday. I will be leaving work, jumping in the car and driving her straight off there to settle her in to her new home in Cowley Road where I once lived myself. I am going to miss her like an amputated limb though it will also be nice to have a bit more space in the sleeve I can now pin to my chest. Henceforth it will just be me and the younger daughter. The elder son also lives at home but since he is nocturnal we don't actually see him - it's like having mice, you only find evidence of his existence, though thankfully he doesn't poo on the floor (yet) but does leave a small trail of crumbs and dirty dishes. Peace and tranquility will return to Walton's Mountain (not that the elder daughter disturbs this peace but she's probably even more anxious to have some space of her own than I am. When I suggested I might go up to Oxford once a week to see her (for an hour or two) she recoiled with horror: 'Not every week, ma!'
Worcester is off to the Opera and arriving for a very late check in at Hotel Girlfriend on Friday night, so will not be requiring room service, I expect. And that's the coming weekend, already folded into neat little creases like an origami crane.
Meanwhile I'm in saturated fat limbo - north of the Border gorging on scones, Scotch pies, German biscuits, Lorne Sausage, Bourbon creams, morning rolls, fried tattie scones, cream cakes, treacle scones and Cinzano with (diet) Lemonade. So far I've discovered a stockpile of chocolate biscuits in my sister's kitchen that would shock UN Weapons Inspectors. If we sent the Scottish diet - of which I'm currently an enthusiastic consumer - to Iran and North Korea we wouldn't have to worry about the nuclear bomb - they'd be too busy eating multi-packs of crisps and jam sponges to press the button. So far the only fruit I've seen in four days has been the lemon floating in my Cinzano and I've eaten more bread over the weekend than I have in the last month. Readers - I am the EU butter mountain. The jeans that were already tight when I boarded the plane now resemble the ankle to thigh elastic bandages that you have to wear after you've had liposuction (so I'm told, so I'm told) and feel like a non-surgical gastric bypass as they are so constricting they don't leave room in the stomach for food. I now understand why my mother wore an 18 hour girdle - it meant you only had 6 left for eating, and in those you were supposed to be asleep.
I'm also doing a lot of sleep. My sister and her husband are both retired. To their beds until about ten o'clock every morning. So, I'm fat, but refreshed. And half way through my second book. Reading it, I add, writing - not so much.
However, the reason I'm here, other than to catch up on the the X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing marathons and to continue the Worcester tradition of visiting every supermarket in a 5 mile radius (so far we've done Tesco's, The Co-op, Somerfield and Aldi - and lest I get too jaded, Worcester informed me that there are still some left in his neck of the woods, the extensive, green, thick, muddy woods, that I haven't yet been too - oh joy, oh joy, oh joy!) is because I was giving a little talk at a local library.
Not that local, actually. It's - oooooh - a good five miles away from my home village to the metropolis of West Calder which, when I was growing up, was the equivalent of going to Manhattan from Queens. Apparently there are signs like wanted posters advertising my talk in the village library. My cousin saw one:
'Aye Marion, I saw it stuck ootside on the door, so ah went in and said "that's my wee cousin ye've got stuck outside' - yer famous, you know - front page of the Edinburgh Evening News, 'n everything.'
I mumbled modestly and asked her if she was coming.
'Nah, well, ye see, I've already signed up for something at the Rural that day. We're going to Dobbie's Garden Centre.'
Fair enough. Never let it be said I have 'a big heed'.
So I turned up at the Manhattan library, terrified that my cousin would be representative of the local populace who voted with their feet and didn't bother to turn up to hear me. The library was charging a a quid and though fame may have its price, even I don't think I'm worth a pound. However, there was wine being served (at 12.30 - this is Scotland!) and nibbles, so I think the booze was well worth the entrance fee.
I needn't have worried. Despite my cousin being busy with the Rural, and all my other cousins having invented a wedding in Cyprus that they had to go to and so, en masse, excused themselves (as if they couldn't have got married another weekend) - a good audience turned up. Nobody actually made the 5 mile trip from my home village however, which was a shame, but have to eat somebody in my birthplace to be really famous, so I'm trying to get past the disappointment.
As soon as I settled myself in the chair, I felt right at home, as well I should have, since I (nearly) was. There was one woman there who had known my father, another who knew my best friend Patricia when I was a child, another lovely woman called Carol who went to the same school I did, and another whose daughter and son both lived in my village - and everyone was familiar with a lot of the background of the book and even, in some cases, knew exactly where I'd set it and who the characters were based on. I had a lovely time. Actually, with a glass of red wine in one hand and a fistful of crisps in the other, I wonder why I live in London. The sun even shone.
Apparently I'm in the Local History Library too - for reference. Me and Britain's Got Talent's Susan Boyle who comes from a village five miles the other way.
Damn her.
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Hedging your bets
I got this in my spam this morning (mistakenly thinking it was from Williams Sonoma (kitchen gods...)
Privet, my gentleman I am a woman who values people and this life. I am kind and devoted. I like everything that makes woman beautiful! I am loving and caring. I adore animals. My friends say that I am a reliable and trustworthy person. I am going in for sport as I like to be attractive and healthy. I adore horses and dogs and always dreamt to devote my life to painting and horses. I believe you will like me! Besides I am very sociable and active. I like being a manager. I am fond of dancing, especially, belly dances. I am looking for a good caring man. Children don't matter. I want to devote all my time to family and to feeling my man home. Waiting for your letter
Well. How can one compete with this when internet dating. I too have dreamt to devote my life to painting and horses. I am fond of dancing especially belly dance, not to mention feeling my man home. I like being a manager.
Tis a pity I'm only a receptionist.
Waiting for your letter, Privet...
Privet, my gentleman I am a woman who values people and this life. I am kind and devoted. I like everything that makes woman beautiful! I am loving and caring. I adore animals. My friends say that I am a reliable and trustworthy person. I am going in for sport as I like to be attractive and healthy. I adore horses and dogs and always dreamt to devote my life to painting and horses. I believe you will like me! Besides I am very sociable and active. I like being a manager. I am fond of dancing, especially, belly dances. I am looking for a good caring man. Children don't matter. I want to devote all my time to family and to feeling my man home. Waiting for your letter
Well. How can one compete with this when internet dating. I too have dreamt to devote my life to painting and horses. I am fond of dancing especially belly dance, not to mention feeling my man home. I like being a manager.
Tis a pity I'm only a receptionist.
Waiting for your letter, Privet...
'Of course, I was invited...' says the ex-husband who has been summoned on several occasions, as he reminded me, sniffily, lest I forget which of us is the more important in the great scheme of things, him having huddled with power and eaten sandwiches there over 'working' lunches.
'Actually, I sold Cheri a climbing frame and a trampoline, so I've been there twice.' Worcester tells me before I have a chance to fully self-inflate when telling him how his text arrived just as I crossed the threshold. And indeed the trampoline is still sitting in the garden there, looking somewhat the worst for wear.
Yeah, yeah - but I've been there with a police escort with a semi-automatic weapon strapped to his waist, so there...
'Actually, I sold Cheri a climbing frame and a trampoline, so I've been there twice.' Worcester tells me before I have a chance to fully self-inflate when telling him how his text arrived just as I crossed the threshold. And indeed the trampoline is still sitting in the garden there, looking somewhat the worst for wear.
Yeah, yeah - but I've been there with a police escort with a semi-automatic weapon strapped to his waist, so there...
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