It’s kind of a tradition to write blog entries while I’m on the train it seems only now it’s gone a little more high-tech. Rather than writing offline on a rickety old laptop I’m writing online thanks to my Three dongle on my new Samsung nettop (courtesy of The Sun and Prince William).
Today my journey is to Chester to meet up with a group of friends to celebrate Scott’s impending marriage. The weekend will be spent in rural North Wales, the rest of the journey from Chester to the bunkhouse in which we’re staying will in Ben’s dad’s car.
I was thinking I might try to get this blog up-to-date while I was on the train, but it’s been so long since I last wrote I can’t think how I should start. In all honesty, from day to day, not an awful lot has changed. work is still the same, and I’m still living with Dana in our little flat. The biggest difference, I suppose, is there might be some romance on the horizon.
There’s a girl I met online and she’s lovely, but she’s from Romania. We talked for going on 6 months at first once or twice a week, and more recently every day. And then about a month ago we finally met face-to-face. I have been having all kinds of problems getting a passport sorted out (although I think there’s light at the end of that tunnel at last) so eventually we abandoned the plan for me to be the first person to travel so we could see each other, and she came to visit me in London. We both took a couple of days off work, and she flew over on a Friday.
I met her for the first time at arrivals in Heathrow’s terminal 4. I though I had set off from home nice and early – I think I gave myself something like 4 hours to get to the airport – but thanks to the tube I still found myself standing on a tube station platform in west London watching planes coming in to land, counting the minutes to her estimated arrival and fully expecting her plane to some flying past. (As it turned out it didn’t. Had the service arrived at the time it had for the previous few days and the flight stats was expecting it would have. Thankfully it landed on time.) Of course we knew what each other looked like, we had talked on Skype a lot before we met, but when she came through the doors she was even more lovely than I had imagined. She was dressed in green (apparently not especially dressed up, but I’m sure she looked smarter than I’d seen before, and than she did the next few days), dragging her suitcase, and looking very cute.
I thought it might be a good idea to get to know each other face to face before we did anything else, so we headed into London on the tube so we could sit in a bar for a while and just talk. The tube trip was a little awkward for me. I just didn’t know what to say. I’m not saying we sat there in silence, I doubt she would have liked me had I done that, but there were times when I felt I should be saying something but just didn’t know what to say. Things got considerably better from then on. Once we got used to each other things went really well.
I had thought we might head to the seaside on Saturday but the weather didn’t really suit it. It wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t as warm as I might have liked to go to the beach so we just stayed around home. We got up late, went for a walk, got something to eat, and just relaxed. Even though we didn’t do much it was still a nice day. Sunday we headed into London. Her return flight was at 4pm on Monday and I didn’t want the whole day to be rushed heading back to the airport so we stayed over night in a hotel in central London. It turns out Sunday night stays are really not too expensive. So Sunday we spent wandering around London. She wanted to see the tourist things, so we walked through Westminster, past Buckingham Palace, and on to Hyde Park. We lay in Hyde Park for a while together. We also got tickets for the London Eye and I thought we should go on it a bit later – my hope was that we could go on it just as it stated to get dark, but sadly that didn’t quite work out. We went up at about 8.30pm but it was still very light. It’s still a good experience, but now I’ve done it both at night and in the day I’d defiantly say it’s better to go up once it gets dark.
So Monday came and we headed back to the airport via a few souvenir and magazine stands. She bought some little keyrings for her friends and a fishing magazine for both her dad and her boss. Once she’d checked in we sat at Costa and had a final drink and slice of cake. I guess we both knew that moment would come when we had to say goodbye again, but I think we wanted to put it off as long as possible. The final goodbye came at the door just before security. We hugged and kissed and hugged again some more. I didn’t want to let her go and get on that plane just when we had got used to each other. As a left the airport and sat on the tube again by myself I just couldn’t help feel like I wanted her back. After only 4 days I’d confirmed what I had started to suspect before: I love her.
Of course now we are apart again and things are hard. My passport is on the way, and as soon as I get it I’m going to head off for a few days to see Bucharest. Of course there will be the time at the end of that when I have to get on the plane myself and leave her behind there. I think it will be just as hard as that Monday was but I’m trying not to think about that. Maybe one day we won’t have to do that again.
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