09-01-18

My in-laws are kind, compact people who have now flown back to Iran and we miss them greatly.  So, foodwise, we should be back to some kind of routine.  No more Persian mystery cakes, or Turkish breakfasts.  I don't seem to have put on any weight since New Year's Eve, which is encouraging.  I haven't lost any either, despite two particularly demanding days at work, during which I have drunk only water, rather than Red Bull, sweetened coffee or Chinotto, so I'm a little disappointed at the same time.  It's not 1800hrs yet, though, so I could put on all the clothes I have and run around the flat to sweat some off before I hit the scales.  

We're not at that stage yet.  

I've had a cold for about a month which now seems to be shifting, slowly.  Grudgingly.  Like a teenager being woken on the morning of an exam.  Was thinking about hitting the allotment tomorrow for some cardio, while Nisha's at nursery, but it's supposed to piss down all night, so earth-moving of any description might prove hazardous.

While I was courting my first wife I met an American girl whose name was Carolyn, I think, who looked like Sigourney Weaver, people used to stop her in the street and remark on the resemblance, but she also had a kind of Sylvia Plath headscarf thing going on too.  Needless to say I fell completely in love with her, a love which for all I knew was hopeless and unreciprocated, like in that short Graves poem, and which anyway could never have come to anything because as mentioned above I was already seeing wife #1.  I split up with wife #1 subsequently but we reconciled and married and my wonderful eldest was born and grew up but before any of these other things happened, I got a love letter, posted from somewhere in the U.S.A. addressed in the vaguest, most optimistic terms (Carolyn didn't know where I lived or what my surname was) to my place of work "The Hardware Shop, Next to Christie's, South Kensington, London, UK".  Nowadays, of course she'd be able to go on Google Maps and so forth to find out the name of the establishment but this is comparatively new technology.  Anyway, the gist of the letter, written on strange indigo notepaper IIRC, was that she had in fact shared my hidden passion to some degree.  Enough at least for her to have written to me one lonely evening months later.  

I lost the letter, or destroyed it.  I know she's out there pining for me, but I'm happy now.  Happier than I ever recall being.  Just need to shift a few pounds, get a bit fitter, feel a bit more worthy of my beautiful wife.  Solid aims, I think.  Sorry Carolyn.