And the best bit of all?  He demanded she ring him back.

We were told about it quite a long time ago, and Miss D had spoken to Mr T about him going.  He’d not been very keen on the idea and had initially tried to convince Miss D that she shouldn’t go, simply because he didn’t want to.  Thankfully she stood her ground and said she was going, and that it was up to him if he wanted to.  He agreed to come along after he’d finished work and made his way back from Birmingham.  She offered for him to give both me and Mr P a lift back after the reception.

The evening came around and we went to the reception.  I wasn’t much looking forward to it and had managed to get myself into a bit of a bad mood before the evening got started.  Miss D and I hung around together not doing much until Mr P arrived.  Once he was there things picked up a bit, we sat around and talked as a group.  Miss D and I were getting on very well, at one stage she even leaned on my knee while talking to Mr P (this is unusual — she’s normally very physically disconnected, the few times I’ve tried making friendly contact with her, the way I happily do with my other girly friends, she’s moved away).  About 9.45 Mr T rang Miss D saying he was on his way, he just needed to get changed and set off from his parent’s house about 10 minutes drive away.  An hour later he rang again asking where the hotel was.  There was some confusion while Miss D tried to explain to him how to find the place, but in the end he turned up.  This was about 11.

Mr T got himself a drink, Miss D attached herself to him, and he and Mr P started chatting, and I felt left out.  So I went to talk to other people.  The talking to other people went on a while, but I was starting to get restless.  I’d been working all day and was tired and getting grumpier.  I just wanted to go home.  After a few attempts at trying to speed up the leaving process I stomped off into the garden and sat in the dark on some steps somewhere for a few minutes.  Once I’d wallowed in my own misery for long enough I turned around and headed back.  On the way back in I bumped into Miss D, Mr P and Mr T heading out looking for me.  They’d finished, presumably noticed I was missing, and come to look for me.

So we all crammed into Mr T’s little car and headed off back to the flat.  It was too late for Mr P to get the train back home so he stayed on our floor.  On the way back the conversation turned to politics.  Mr T has some very right wing and often poorly informed views which can at time really get on my nerves.  I decided that, because I wasn’t in the best mood, I’d keep quiet, so I sat in the back of the car biting my lip.  Throughout the journey I was aware that Mr T was occasionally looking at me in the rear-view mirror.  I wasn’t sure if he was trying to get a response out of me with what he was saying, or if he just expected me to say something, but I wasn’t the only one to notice his looks — when I spoke to Mr P about it a little later he said he’d noticed too.

Once we got back to the flat Miss D started fussing about, offering Mr P toast and various other things.  I tried my best to politely get rid of both her and Mr T: “It’s ok, I’m sure we can use the toaster”, “we’re both grown ups, I think we’ll be ok”; but it didn’t work.  They stood there and Mr T started talking again.  He talked for about another half hour while I stood there keeping quiet.  After a while Miss D started saying things like “I think we should leave before Carreg falls asleep”, and everything looked reasonably promising.  Just as they were about to go someone said something unwise about the Ireland and the Euro.  Mr T turned back and started talking again.

I’d had enough.  “Can we talk about this some other time, there’s another 2 hours work of conversation here.”  I can’t remember who said what next, but it was my response that was the problem. “Are you going to stay all night?” “I can if I want.” “Yes, but are you?” Miss D didn’t like that much.  I’m not sure too much thought went into it prior to saying it, but I think perhaps the next move was going to be something like “if you are then I’ll give up pretending to be polite and go to bed”.  They left pretty quickly. It just reached a point I couldn’t hold it in any more.  Mr T annoys me anyway, and the whole evening put together was just too much.  I would have been fine, with a little bitching at Mr P later on, had they gone then, but I just reached the point it was too much.

I know I shouldn’t have done it. I felt bad as soon as they’d gone and I sent Miss D a text saying sorry. I bought her flowers to try to make up for it; we’d been talking earlier in the week and she’d said it would be nice to have flowers around the house more often.  I made sure I wasn’t in when she got back on Sunday, I thought it would be best to leave a little note with the flowers and get back after she did, I thought it would be easiest.  Sunday night was still a bit quiet and awkward.  The same of Monday night.  I tried to talk about just other things, but it didn’t seem to work very well. On Tuesday we talked to each other on Windows Live Messenger and we cleared the air a little (we weren’t in the same room at the time whilst talking on MSN, I’d like to point out!).

One thing which was good to clear up was for me to know that she knows I don’t much like Mr T.  Before that I’d never really been sure if she really knew what I thought.  While she might not really appreciate exactly what I think (although I think she probably does subconsciously, just doesn’t want to really admit it — I’m still holding on to the thought that once her and Mr T are no longer an item she’ll come back and say I was right all along…), it’s kind of good to know she sees the friction between the two of us but can cope with that. As I’ve said before, I’d never win if it came to a choice between me and him.  Rightly or wrongly, that’s just the way it goes.

Guess who I’m talking about.  Yeah, it’s Mr T.  Miss D’s not very well — she’s got a pain in her lower abdominal area which has been bothering her for a few days, and today it got worse.  So she went to the doctor today and they gave her some antibiotics for the infection she’s had, but they also said it might be apendicitis.  That’s a bit worrying in my eyes and I know it can take a turn for the worse very quickly.

She’s gone to his house again tonight and said she might take tomorrow off work (which seems like a good idea if she’s not well).  But what upsets me is that when he came round here to pick her up he didn’t seem to care how she was feeling.  First of all he made a comment about her being desiesed because she wasn’t well.  That might have been a joke to make her feel better, if I were giving him the benifit of the doubt.  But it was other little things — she’s not well and yet he sat on the chair and made her sit on the arm.  She was talking about something, and he just turned and started talking about something totally different with me.  It was just as if he’d lost interest in what she was saying.  How would that make her feel?  If I thought he was doing it on purpous I’d be worried that he was trying to make her feel like she’s not important so that he doesn’t have to worry about giving her any thought of attention.

But I don’t think that’s the case.  I think he just doesn’t realise he’s doing it.  I don’t think he realises that it would make her feel bad.  I don’t think he stops to think about anyone but himself, and that’s the problem.

I met Mr P this weekend.  I didn’t intend to but as I was on the way back from a little shopping trip I bumped into Alex who said he was going to meet Mr P for a drink and them go on to the cinema.  So I invited myself along.  It was a nice afternoon.  On the way there, having spent all my money shopping and not intending to do anything else, I needed some cash.  So I stopped at a cash machine.  This cash machine was a little bit slow.  I typed in my pin and pressed enter.  It didn’t do anything.  I pressed enter again.  It did something.  I said I wanted some money and no reciept using the buttons down the side of the screen.  It didn’t do anything.  I pressed it again.  It did something.  The next screen was the one which asked me how much money I want.  The amount next to the button I’d pressed twice on the last screen was £100.  As soon as I saw it I turned to Alex and said “I bet it gives me £100″.  I pressed the button next to £30.  It didn’t do anything.  I pressed it again.  It did something.  Out came my card.  Out came £100.  Drinks on me then.

Now I don’t often drink and, following an event in the Cotswolds during summer, I’ve not had a drink for months.  So it doesn’t take much to get me a little tipsy.  When I’ve had a bit to drink I get pretty talkative and the conversation ended up going around to my opinions of Mr T.  I don’t mean to keep talking about him, but it bothers me because I care about Miss D and I don’t want to see her getting hurt.  I know there’s nothing I can do about it but I’m worried she either won’t see what’s going on or, if she does see there’s something wrong, will come up with all sorts of reasons why it is her fault or is just in her imagination.  Mr P agreed in some ways but thinks she will notice and will do something about it.  I really do hope so, I’m not sure I can survive another 6 months tearing my hair out about how little I can do about it…I’m going to try to stop talking about it.

6 months.  Yes.  We agreed to stay living together for another 6 months.  You never know, maybe come the end of the new contact I’ll make an effort to move back up north again.

That’s a post for another day I think.

Let me explain.  Mr T is an animator, he draws stuff.  Currently he works for Rare, a computer game studio owned by Microsoft.  It seems that this industry, like most industries based around the arts, is pretty fickle and unstable.  When there’s work on it’s great, when there isn’t then there’s a whole load of talented people all looking for work doing the same thing.  His contract was only ever short — 3 months I think initially extended to 6 months — working on the little rip-off Wii Mii things Microsoft are releasing as part of their XBox 360 dashboard enhancements this autumn.  He heard today that they wouldn’t be extending his contract simply because they don’t have any work for them to do.

Normally this wouldn’t bother me, but this time it does.  It impacts on me in a number of ways.  Firstly there’s the effect it’ll have on Miss D.  Mr T is very selfish and when he’s worried about something then nothing else in the world matters (this was illustrated well when we were moving into this flat.  Miss D was worried about the move and things surrounding that, Mr T was worried about his job.  Every time Miss D tried to talk to him about her worries he didn’t seem to care, all that was going on in his mind was his problems.  Forgive me if I’m being naive but I thought relationships were supposed to be two-way.  Sure he was worried about things, but couldn’t he find any time to talk to her about her problems and try to help, or at least give some words of support?  Apparently not.).  This coupled with the fact that Miss D is far too nice, far too forgiving, far too understanding, and “In love” means that she’ll constantly be trying to comfort him.  And he won’t listen.  I’m not going to go into what I think he wants from a girlfriend, I’m sure I’ll cover that more in time, but one of the things is just that — someone to comfort him (I’m not saying that’s not what we all want, but that it has to be a two-way street).  And all this will drag her down.  She’ll feel she’s trying to help, but that it’s not working.  She does understand that he doesn’t listen when he’s worried about things, she said that to me today, but that still doesn’t stop you feeling down and, ultimately, frustrated when someone you care about refuses to listen to anyone trying to help.  Secondly it means, unless he finds another job elsewhere, he’ll be coming home and looking for work round here.  While that might take time, and in the meantime he’ll be living with his parents, in the end he’ll find something and there has in the past been talk of he and Miss D moving in together.  That would leave me in the lurch a little.  Once again I wouldn’t have anywhere to go.  Once again someone will have chosen someone else over me.  I’d be left with a choice — stay where I am and go back to living by myself again, or pack up and move back closer to home.  Neither of which sound very appealing just at the moment.

Finally it means Mr T will come hounding me again about his website.  He needs it to sell himself, but doesn’t know anything about it.  He knows what he wants it to look like, but not how to get there.  His site was originally built by Mr P but a few times I’ve helped him out by making some changes.  When I first heard he had lost his job one of the first things I thought was that he would soon be coming asking for more changes.  This would be fine if I got anything from him for doing it, but I don’t.  It’s the reason Mr P stopped working on it, it’s the reason another guy stopped working on it.  He wants it all for free because we are his friends.  Again, this would be ok if he wasn’t so picky and demanding.  We all put up with clients like that because we know that, eventually, they will fork over some payment for the work we’ve put in and once they have signed off on the project if they want more changes, they’ll have to pay some more.  But this doesn’t work like this.  He wants his portfolio — the key to him finding work and making money, the shop front employers see before giving him contracts — for nothing.  So this’ll be more work, for nothing, for me.

Earlier I put “In love” in inverted commas.  I thought quite long and hard about that.  I don’t know if she is.  If she is then she’s misguided.  I’m certain he’s not.  I’m certain that to him, if she left, he’d not be too upset.  Yeah, I don’t see them together much and maybe I’m totally wrong, but I don’t see it, at least returned.  Does she love him?  I don’t know.  I think she thinks she does.  I think she thinks she should.  I think he’s the kind of person she sees in the street and quite fancies and so she thinks she has hit gold with this one.  I don’t think she really does, deep down.  And I wish she would see that, but I think she is too trusting and forgiving to realise that the strange second thoughts she gets from time are grounded in some kind of truth and that sooner or later are really going to cause a problem.

Yes, it’s 8.44am and I’m on the train, just past Rugby, on my way to Lancaster.  The plan was always to get the 6.04 train from Aldershot into London and I did wonder if the early morning was worth it just to get in to Lancaster a bit earlier, but I think I made the right choice — I could hardly breathe in my flat with all the paint fumes around so wasn’t exactly sleeping well anyway.

Talking of paint, the decorators should be busily working by now, and I’ve had no phone calls from them so I guess they got into the flat alright.  That or they are giving today a miss.  I did ensure there was a suitable stone jammed in the main door as I left the building this morning, but I wasn’t sure it would last the course from half five through until eight.

We’ve just gone past a school with all the kids getting ready to start their day.  I was thinking about this yesterday: given my timing and sleeping habbits now, I really don’t know how I managed to make it up for school every day.  We used to all meet up at Ben’s house and do something (watch TV for a bit, play on the N64 or Playstation, etc) before wandering up the hill at about 8.30.  I suppose school days were only six and a half hours long with an hour for lunch, not the 8 hours I’m supposed to work every day now (though usually end up working more), and I did get into the habbit of napping when I got home from my paper round for an hour or so, and I do remeber almost falling asleep in English from time to time.  Maybe that’s how I managed it, maybe it’s not such a mystery.

I’m trying to get into the habbit of sleeping when I get in from work – I really like it, it makes me feel refreshed and then I can stay up that bit later when I have things to work on.  I guess my schedule is a little strange now, but I think I might struggle with going back to working and living ‘normal’ hours.

With all this talk of sleep I’m feeling even more tired.  Maybe I should try to get some sleep while I’m just sitting here, I don’t think I’m going to get much else done and there’s another hour and a half before we get to Lancaster (not to mention the 15 or so hours before I’ll end up getting any more real sleep).  If I get another hour now that’ll take me up to around 7 hours in the last 48 hours.  That’s 41 hours of being awake and what do I have to show for it?  A theatre programme and this blog entry.  Well done me for being so productive.

You know, now I’m hungry.  I guess it is just about breakfast time.