Sunlight, Spring, work and love.
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Ezekiel has been away visiting the Rt Hon Horatio Monkeypants this weekend, leaving me to my own devices, desires and preoccupations. In recent months weekends like this have been a little strange to me ... I had started to feel as if I had forgotten how to exist properly as a single entity and had spent my time being quite strange and hermit-like here in my cave. This weekend, however, has proven me wrong in a delightful fashion.
It all started on friday, where despite a morning that neither of us enjoyed particularly, we were able to set things more right before she departed northward and I departed townward to run a few errands, eventually ending up curled up behind the counter of my friends shop, drinking mock-coffee and talking about all kinds of everything. We used to do it all the time but since work took me to the other side of the city it hasn't been possible nearly as often and we've both missed it. It's a good way to catch up with a lot of other people too as everyone seems to come through the door there sooner or later 
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It continued that evening when, despite the sadness of discovering that someone I've been introduced to recently (who I am hoping will turn out to be a good friend) needed to cancel plans we had made the next day, Nick and Maggie (who make a ridiculously cute couple ^^) and I decided to descend on london the next day and have lunch and a wander around Bloomsbury together instead.
The sun decided to smile on us all afternoon and, in spite of some ridiculous rail fail that saw the tubes turned into communter time sardine tins all day and my taking a pleasantly sleepy potter down the liverpool street route (leading to my acquiring the rather cute bag pictured above) rather than skipping into Kings cross on the express we had a fantastic time. Having all made the daft decision to climb mount russel (the very long spiral emergency staircase next to the lifts in the tube station), we piled into the Brunswick and found a place selling interesting little mixed fruit concoctions and smoothies to go through while we got our geek on and chilled out a bit. Once we'd recovered, we wandered on over to Hare & Tortoise, a little london noodle chain I'd never heard of who served the most fantastic food at distinctly non-london prices (Anyone who ever suggests the overpriced japanophile trap Wagamamas to me again is being dragged into one of these post haste!) and kept us supplied with green tea and plum wine while we talked the rest of the afternoon away.
It was about half past four by the time we emerged in a sleepy post-prandial daze so we decided to take a brief wander around the nearby streets, ducking briefly into Gay's the Word to pour over some UK small press published gay comics and, in my case, acquire a fantastic novel by Tove Jansson, Fair Play, a series of snapshots from the lives of two female artists, lifelong partners, living and working together in their old age. I love it more than anything when a book gives you a glimpse into the life of a relationship that has lasted years, the interplay between two people who know how they fit together and have crafted an enduring and lasting love together - you really don't see it often enough. Usually we see either the fireworks and passion of first romance or the crumbling of a love neglected, leading the protagonist to run off and meet someone new. More Please! The translation is very smooth and pleasant and makes me wish that more of her adult books had been translated (there are only three in English that I know of, other than the Moomin series of childrens books). The foreword talks a lot of 'Love and Work, Work and Love', an idea beloved of Jannson while she was alive which is expressed in beautiful simplicity between these covers.
Returning hope and doing a little research showed me that Tove Jannson was a lesbian, living with her partner, the artist Tuulikki Pietla ever since they met while the latter was a student. It feels a little silly, but this makes the Moomin stories I read when I was young more precious to me than they were before. They stayed together the rest of their lives and reading that makes me so happy.
We parted from each other by the tube with the intention to do this again soon surrounding us. A brief case of having little sense of the date lead to my catching up with the Raindog on the phone who seemed to have had an equally good day before pottering home again to spend today pottering around the house, putting things in order and enjoying the sunlight in the garden. With this restful start I am looking to the coming week as positively as possible, ready to accept whatever it chooses to give me.
I finish this one by saying hello to a new reader, a friend of mine from the Virtual Pilots Association! Please feel free to comment here if you wish, a blog is more than a monologue though not quite a dialog and you are most welcome to join in. Though if you are not so inclined we can always save the conversation for Frankfurt in September, yes?
I hope you have all had a good weekend too, namaste everybody.
