8 June - Travel agents & misrepresentations

Shit shit shit shit shit, we're going in a couple of days - Zanzibar won out - and Toph who's just emerged from work hell and got on with his part of the deal ie. booking hotel for at least first night or two, rings to say that the ones he tried (my beloved likes top end) say they're still closed and will open next week or later. I know it's low season but I didn't realise it meant a half functioning country. Toph also asked the locals what's the weather like and they say it's raining. My websites visited give the rain fall as averaging a total drop in June compared to May and actually similar to high-season July. I now realise the extent of my stupidity by consulting weather report of Zanzibar tourist office website. Of course it's positive! It's in their best interest to attract people as early as possible and to get the season going. Gosh, could the travel advisor at Trailfinders also be part of this optimistic let's get them out there misleading operation? Toph asks 'Shoud we really go to the other side of the world to find rain and sunsets at 6pm when it's about to be hot in Europe and you can stay out in the light till 10pm?' I know it's a perfectly sensible question to ask but... there's only one response. I burst into floods of tears. As we can't get a refund ... we're going. It's going to be fine. I never had a bad holiday. Yet.

5 June - Winding country roads a distant memory

Back in London, grey skies after the gulf stream tropical climate in southern Ireland. Or maybe it's not the gulf stream that causes it but something else. You know what I mean? I truly cannot go look it up and spend ten mins on the correct thing just for the sake of checking facts. Tired... Went well, but will write about it some other time. Too much sun goes to your head. Am amazed anyone wants to live permanently there though ... on my drive back to Cork airport I was alone and the car radio only gave me boring stations, so I was looking around as you do and there was nobody! I know it's a bank holiday there but at 7pm on a Sunday where were they all? I barely passed a petrol station. I never saw any shops of note in an 80 mins drive. I'd go mad there.

29 May - His new fuck buddy & Me

But before I go to the tropical island, let’s go to another one nearby. Land at Cork and they’re having a mini heat wave. Delightful. Pick up hired car and wait for others for drive Bantry way. Dear John arrives on flight after mine with Dear Sophie and we await his new/old flame Steph. Weirdly enough I’m not that bothered or curious.
We chat about his party in London last night which was notable for having the former Colony bar top barman Simon, making our cocktails in the flat with the terrace overlooking the Thames at St Paul’s. And for a leather jumpsuit clad female Elvis impersonator serenading the b’day boy (a year previously I’d organised a surprise do for him in the same flat and purchased the Elvis cake. For all that he says he’s not that into Elvis, all his friends seem to think he is). The party adjourned to the real Colony but as predicted by my own deep self knowledge…. I left them to it around 2am and that’s with a gap on 1 hour during which I foolishly attempted to find a parking space in Soho. Toph was gracious both in participating – I know these will never be ‘his’ people’ and not making any comments re. Dear John who looks so different from him in looks and personality. A woman in same circumstances would not have resisted passing some opinions. But my boy is a model of gentlemanliness. I mean, he must have wondered whether a year ago I was b’day boy’s sex cherry on the cake. Actually I think I went home but once again memory fails. I probably didn’t even detail it in this blog.
In any case when this year’s model arrives I only register she’s younger than me and the fifties type if any, or maybe that’s what I think every time i see a dyed black hairstyle. Actually as she’s blue eyed Irish perhaps she really is black haired? Mmmh, no. ‘s funny how I keep telling him I do see him with a local girl and he vehemently denies wanting to live in Ireland ever. He’s described her to me as a fuck buddy he’s known a while but clearly to other friends she’s the new girlfriend. Oh no, I must have equally been the subject of discussion with his other multiple-exes. I wonder if they even lay bets on how long one is meant to last. I mean, I’m driving, Dear Sophie (also an ex) is in the passenger seat and we ought to feel like old aunts looking at him in the mirror and knowing he’s squeezing her hand as we chat.
Sophie quickly distracts me as her voice is calibrated for open spaces or stages and in a small car it has nowhere to go but right in my ear. I do like her diction and I'm new to her family stories. She’s the daughter of certified bohemians and they’re not all they’re cracked up to be. She mentions an article her mother wrote in which she apologised to her daughters for being a bad mother (artist = alcoholic haze?) and that when she was a teenager the parents uprooted to an artistic commune in the middle of nowhere in dead boring Cornwall thus consigning her and sister to being the up their arses Londoners who had nothing but nothing in common with the local kids. She did manage to catch most punk bands in Falmouth though. And that dad left them to go live with his gay lover and has been gay ever since. I mentally add up the ways in which my parents are ‘odd’ and can come up with absolutely nothing. What’s strange is that Sophie has not rebelled against her background by going normal but in fact shares mother’s artistic field (both are writers) and though not so eccentrically dressed, she also wears signature hats like Sophie’s senior. I’ll think about this some other time. Can’t wait to see our holiday home for the weekend and grab a decent room or bed away from the boy’s quarters. I’m fine with all of this but have no wish to hear his 'getting down to it sounds'. That would make me too much of an alien if I didn’t care. Then again a certain Nick and g/friend are also on their way to stay us and they look like a loud couple too. Oh no!

25 May - Hemingway where are thou?

Something must be wrong. Here I am in London town and can't be arsed with movies, exhibitions, events and the like. Neither am I ready for a retreat to the country but surely this is an unusual state. Can't wait for Dear John to land back in town from work exile in Dublin and start his b'day shenaningans on Friday. Bet he'll stay up all night prior to catchinga flight back to southern Ireland. I badly want an all-nighter too but the reality is that I can't hack them. Somewhere around hour 4 of any given party evening, I will think that they are interesting enough but not mind blowingly so and I'll make my excuses and leave. Clearly what I'm failing to do is imbibe enough stimulants to get a different perspective, but... I can't physically drink more than 4 glasses of anything. Had I lived in Hemingway's time and sphere of action, I'd probably never have met him as would have left Harry's bar long before he arrived for the night... It's like when people come back with tales of extreme drinking/fun in countries where they literally go mad on the stuff, like Iceland and all I can recall from one of my visits there is nothing of the sort. Having been sober doesn't serve my memory any better either as couldn't remember a name of anyone met on that trip. What's the point of going anywhere if you can't really recall it unless you look at the photos?

21 May - Suitcases & Packing

Ok, the suitcase is on the bedroom floor and already contains some items. Including a new and shiny bendy vibrator or do you call it something else when it doesn't have batteries? I got it in a not so large size so can be used for any orifice, male or female (the straight boys don't like them big at all, they get scared just looking at them). I think it's a good addition to the travel kit as I figure that it's entirely possible that Toph and I may fall out. Am having first holiday nerves clearly, but we're going to a small island probably and I don't know if there's any substitute local talent to pick up or indeed other tourists, should we not get on. If instead all goes swimmingly well, the purple toy can be an addition to the fun. Though it's kind of hard to introduce that in the conversation. If you say 'I'd like this up my butt whilst you're f kking me' you're possibly conveying the message that you'd love to have two guys at your disposal and your lover kind of feels a bit dejected but the way to look at it is 'darling I don't require two guys, but I like it this way and rubber toy here really is no competition. Plus... you get a great sensation too finding your cock in a tighter spot than usual no?' But it's truly kind of awkward to bring up. The best possible scenario is finding he's brought along something too, but am doubtful.
Ok, next the usual stuff that's ready to go, goes in: the medicines bag, the assortment of sunglasses, the bikini drawer... I really don't get those people that say to you 'I have to go home and pack for tomorrow' type thing. Surely my method is the best? Chuck everything into the case or pile as days go by and you think of items. Then the day before you simply remove half of it (reluctantly of course but by now even I know that shoes take up so much space and I'll be in flip flops most of the time. You can't do JLo or Mariah in high heels on sand unless you're in St Tropez) and you're done. Why stress? Toph travels a lot and like an organised bloke he has 'the checklist' . I just have small bags marked 'extreme backpacking' or 'god knows what facilities' and therein are the relevant items. Clearly this time we don't need the mosquito net, but the headlamp might be good? For reading at night in bed?

19 May - Visas & Jabs

Forgot what it's like to plan trips and why many people (my father in his nearing dotage for example, but some younger specimen too) believe you save yourself an awful lot of hassle if you don't stray far from home. You start reading about jabs, visas and logistics and you think you haven't got time for all of that, and the order in which you have to do stuff and the sodding cost! I mean, what exactly do governments of third world countries do with my visa fee? Improve the state of their roads? I don't think so. Never mind donating to charity, my visa money goes to repaying their debts. What a pain.
With Toph busy during the day and barely functioning at night as result of exhausting day, and my well defined gap in which this trip has to take place, I can see the onus falling on me to do all necessary research. What a massive drag. To make it more galling Toph says that previously he was the organiser of his trips a' deux. Yeah, and he probably paid for them too to get busy/tired g/friend away from her desk. Sucker! Hats off to women like that though, they get them to run around and thent they dump them, how do they do it. Is there a course I can sign up for?
Anyway, the lovely folks at Trailfinders recommend Bali or Zanzibar for June sunshine. The start and the end of the alphabet but both on similar equatorial line no? A friend recommends Oman or some other place that Toph rules out on account of kidnapping of tourists and so on. No, it was not Rwanda or Somalia, and didn't have him down as a worrier to this kind of Foreign office warning. Turns out also he didn't know how militantly opposed to visiting Saudi Arabian states I am. I have a thing about Dubai for example, I just don't want to go there. The fact that it's some poor bastard from somewhere else who has to build six star hotels in a place where nothing existed before jars with something deep down. Then again, probably most of any city is built with the underpaid work of some immigrant, perhaps even the Four Seasons in Canary Wharf!
Ok, am turning into a bore. Let's talk about something else. Oh, there isn't. But let's leave this and think instead about Dear John's 40th bash in Co. Cork in a couple of weeks. Bash starts in London on a Friday, then we all decamp to Ireland. Yes, proof that some failed relationships don't hurt that much and that if you like his friends, you make an effort not to cut yourself off 'him'.

17 May - Madagascar & miles away

Toph is a little distracted by his work. I found my lovely excel spreadsheet had not been perused properly. You can tell by the questions they ask you! Admittedly should have broken it down into something simpler but what's simpler than a couple of columns? And I have to believe my boy is intelligent. Am proposing Madagascar, the only thing to consider is which side! It appears that the island is much much larger than I thought. Admittedly am not remotely interested in lemurs and much of nature, but it has a ring to it. Toph points out that the time we're considering will be the height of summer here and why not go to Spain or some such?
I bristle at the suggestion. Spain is for daddies. Well, not really, but you know what I mean. I'll only do it in a top performance & top down car or snazzy bike, both of which Toph does not own. Plus there is no Glastonbury this year to hold me back. I didn't go last year so it follows I would want to go this year but ... it's not on.
There are all sorts of unresolved scheduling issues with Toph's work, but I get him to agree that mid-June the darn project surely has to be over, dead, buried, done with or else! But he's saying let's keep it to two weeks (this from the man who said 'I do not want to work all summer'), which sort of rules out Madagascar, we need three for that one. I can see my long trip disappearing into a mere holiday... but am learning to compromise for the sake of love. You could ask 'but why doesn't your man want to make you happy and accommodate his beloved's wishes?' Well, don't ask, as therein lies a reality I do not want to face. I doubt I'm that beloved - yet. But even two weeks should suffice to change my status.
Frankly it's such a shame Thailand is out in June for the rains... it's always perfect but I mustn't forget certain associations. For him, negative (the ex nearly died in Tsunami blah blah, wish she had, at least he'd have a real reason to cry over that one... ok am allowed uncharitable thoughts on my blog ok!) and for me super positive and therefore to be avoided too. Wouldn't want to have to measure this one - or anyone - against the yardstick of my fairy tale time spent there with my mythical & gorgeous Craig. We're getting on for 6 years since it burnt bright, and it's not been topped. Oh, there I go off into a reverie again. Must remember that when Craig changed his email address a while back, I did not receive further updates... Am a dreamer, but never a deluded one!

15 May - Travel & Strife

It's that time of the year again for people like me who never ever ripped and saved the cookery pages of the Sunday supplements or the property abroad pages of same or even the interior decorating ones. But I have a bulging file of the Escape or Travel pages. I don't do food porn but I'm addicted to travel porn. Constantly thinking 'But there simply isn't enough time in the holidays allowed to regular employees of any company in the world ie. your standard 25 days + w/ends to go everywhere I want'.
As a friend pointed out, sure thing is that it wasn't that long ago I was in India but now, there's 3 to 4 weeks coming up free due to change in employment and so what if the month w/o salary and plus cost of eventual trip will nullify any wage increase which I'm citing as the motive for switching employer.... The darn thing is that it's the wrong time of the year for so much of earth. South America, Australia/Oz, most of Asia. It's winter and cold cold cold. The Med is out for the simple reason that Spain/Italy/Greece and so on are to be saved for when I have to travel with a guided tour due to age and disability. A further complication is this time I may not be travelling solo... But Toph has covered much of the Earth that I haven't. He's not been to Viet/Cambodia for example and would like to visit, but I have. I have hardly scratched Morocco and Turkey, but he has. Not going to be simple this one. But what a lovely problem to have. Have devised clear excel document listing our respective trips so we can cross reference. He'll probably think am mad or have too much time on my hands, but as usual men don't realise/acknowledge how quick off the mark most women are and how well organised. For me the excel spreadsheet took a mere half hour or so. He, no doubt, will imagine I spent all day on this and therefore that I place undue importance to the trip. I think this is nothing compared to the wedding ideas scrapbook that most women dump on fiance's lap at the mere mention of nuptials. A great example was Monica from Friends. Hers was the size of a chest.