The Naked Truth

Kay's home for the weekend to celebrate my forthcoming birthday. I haven't seen her since she started the new term in September. She's suddenly become so confident and self-assured in those few months. I think it must have something to do with the fact that she spends all day going up to strange people and asking them to take their clothes off. ( Do I hear gasps? ........ as part of her medical course, she's currently doing a clinical placement on an elderly ward in hospital, before you guess wrongly!) She came home very late last night and we chatted and laughed into the wee small hours. It's great!

Alterations in progress

I have been thinking a lot recently about the amount of time that has passed since Greg died. It helps me perversely to get closer to him and to accept what has happened, how I have coped since he went etc. I usually do all these complicated calculations in my head and decided yesterday to succumb to the time ticker I have now installed on the right of this page. Up to now, I have been able to say that Greg died this year, then last year, but from 1 January, it will become "the year before last" and therefore more of a mouthful to say. The time ticker will be more accurate, although no less of a mouthful to say.

I wonder whether to change the blog design. I've had this one since I started back in May 2008, so I question whether a change is due. On the other hand my blog is so part of me now, it is like stepping into an old pair of pyjamas to watch TV. It wouldn't seem right watching TV in a ballgown. I am still undecided.

I have also been reading back through some of the archive to remind myself what the last years were like. The last twenty months have been much more peaceful and I needed reminding of how grim things had got in the years before Greg died. So now I have created a new page for my archives so I can dot back to them more easily. Not pleasant reading. A shudder passes through me when I recall those days. Greg really was a lovely person. So kind, thoughtful, sensitive, wouldn't-kill-a-fly type of guy. Intelligent, knowledgeable, in a high-flying career. You would not have thought so if you met him in the last five years of his life. That alcohol changed him into something else. A monster, a tramp, a depressive. He had a streak in him that didn't like being told what to do, but that amber liquid led him by the nose wherever it wanted him to go. It led him to a place where he could not fight it and it finally consumed him. It takes a lot to get my head round that.

Leaps and Bounds

On the back of what I wrote last week, my confidence knows no bounds. Last Thursday I met my two best friends here for a long-due natter and yesterday I met some American friends who were passing briefly through London on their way home to San Fransisco. As I had not seen them since before Greg died, they invited me to lunch here. Like I said, no big deal for some people, but for me ..... it's gargantuan.