Dies Bildnis ist Bezubernd Schön

Well, after having decided to write nothing further because the whole thing was clearly an insane figment of my fevered imagination, I now have to report that Indira and I have arranged to see "The Magic Flute" on Monday (three days time) at the Royal Opera House.

So something seems to be still in progress, although I'm no longer clear what it is. Quite an expensive way to find out at £80 a ticket, and embarrassing if she asks to pay her way, but as I've told her (truthfully) that I have a friend working at the opera house, I can suggest (untruthfully) that he got me the tickets cheap.

I responded to her e-mail about harassment with a comment that at my age any sort of attention was welcome, which I thought walked the line between flirtatiousness and self-deprecating humour, but didn't elicit a reply.

A couple more nudges about the opera thing however produced the response "I'm open to new adventures and I'd love to come", and we also went out to lunch at a new Indian place nearby and looked at the aquarium in the surrounding shopping centre, which she says she enjoyed very much. So this is where things are at the moment. Every chance that things will crash and burn, mainly because I have no idea at all whether we're just friends or embarking on an affair. It's very hard to express an interest while retaining plausible deniability. A slightly overlong touch on the back of the hand? A strand of hair gently brushed aside from the face? Sometimes the old songs are the best. Exciting though the frank declaration of sexual interest may be if it works, if you get it wrong you're in big trouble. If you're a man, that is.

I've also half-agreed to go and have riding lessons with her at some unspecified point in the future, which I may well come to regret. At least an outraged rebuff would get me out of that...

Madness

Things going in both directions at once today. On the one hand I've decided there's nothing going on and it doesn't matter, on the other I invited her to the opera, on impulse.

She came over to talk to me about another application form she wants me to help her with and we got talking about her phone bill (she got scammed by one of those trojan programmes that makes your computer dial a premium rate number), women's propensity to talk for hours on the phone, men's propensity to sit on the sofa and watch TV, housework obsession and a variety of other issues. I agreed to look over her form at the weekend and mentioned I was going to the opera on Saturday to see "Turandot" - she said she'd never been to the opera and I suggested that as it was generally full of singing dancing, colour, and drama, with ridiculous plots, it bore considerable resemblance to the Bollywood movies she likes. And furthermore, that she could come and see The Magic Flute with me if she played her cards right.

I didn't specify what playing her cards right would entail, and she didn't ask. Actually it consists of saying "yes" and turning up on the day, so nothing too onerous.

So that may have been way too much, or on the other hand perhaps not. I certainly felt better for having taken some sort of action rather than just sitting waiting.

And now I have an e-mail from her here on my home PC - I'm actually not sure whether this was sent before or after we spoke, but it's got a teasing sort of tone to it that certainly works for me. It started "I hope you don't think..." in the title, all I could see before opening it, before proceeding "...that I'm harassing you" in the body of the text. There's so many distressing ways that sentence could have ended - surely she's doing this on purpose?

Now I have to figure out how to reply to it. Damn.

Went to see "Dog Day Afternoon" with Mrs K at the NFT. What a good film! Nothing tricksy or arty about it, just a solid, gripping piece of work; plenty of laughs, and a lot to think about as well. Pacino seemed too pretty and charismatic for the role but apparently the real-life protagonist John Wojtowicz on whom the film is based looked strikingly similar, so there you have it.

Angst

At a conference today. I sent her an e-mail from home last night, just inconsequential stuff about things tangential to the office, checked my inbox this evening and no reply. The disappointment! Of course rationally I've told myself that she may not have been at work today, or she may have replied to my work e-mail. Irrationally on the other hand, I've had a bad feeling ever since the day after we went to the wine bar. A feeling that I've somehow blown it. The first e-mail she sent me seemed cooler, although a second one seemed more enthusiastic (although this was actually an answer to an e-mail I'd sent her after the Dim-Sum trip - which on the other hand shows that she saved that and referred back to it, and her reply did agree to dinner at the Cinnamon Club and two movie trips...). Was it my second glass of wine that did the damage? (she doesn't drink, and I'm not going to if we ever go out again). Or the 10-minute dissertation on grammatical errors made by other people at work? (to be fair it is part of my job to pick these up). Not exactly seductive, athough she didn't look bored at the time and I did apologise the next day... have I appeared too keen? Not keen enough? Is she just not in the mood at present? (Her online diary has some entries reading "medication" for the past few days, maybe she's ill or depressed, although no, I've seen her laughing with other people, with a twinge of envy...). Is she just waiting till pay day (next Tuesday)? Should I remind her or would that make me look too desperate? Or will saying nothing make me look insufficiently interested?

What a tangle.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, we tried out Jessica Rabbit last night to fairly spectacular effect. Didn't get to sleep until about 2am, which certainly didn't aid my alertness at the conference. Still, one has to make sacrifices...

Short haircut on the way home. Tibbles, Bim's ex, cancelled our movie date on the grounds that he'd forgotten it and doublebooked, so I'm home. Bit more decorating prep then I have to go & collect Madame from her mother's...

Forensics

It's a funny thing about getting older. You still have the same feelings, but they're kind of muted. In my 20's this infatuation would probably have brought me to a condition of utter despair, whereas these days I can take a more detached view. Not that I couldn't always be ironically amused by my own feelings, but it's the difference between watching someone get battered by waves and seeing them entirely swept away. Of course, already having a stable relationship elsewhere probably helps a great deal. Who knows what sorry state I'd be in if I was single?

Still whiling away the time, I'll just note down the external evidence I've gathered as opposed to the internal.

Perhaps 18 months back I saw her deep in conversation with a colleague, Ted, on the office stairs. I immediately had an intuition that there was something intimate going on and they'd gone out there to look for some privacy. (Incidentally, I found out just before Xmas that Ted's wife has recently left him) Then after our second lunch date I had a look at her online diary and found she'd been having lunch every few weeks with the Technical Manager, Bob. I have a feeling based on some years of observation that Bob is something of a ladies' man, and I suspect that lunch with him would be a prelude to something else. I checked his online diary and found the entry "Lunch with Indira - how about that!" which made me smile. Then there was the rather polished way she arranged to meet outside, and returned to the office through a separate door, the first time we went out for lunch. "She's done this before", I thought.

So I'm expecting any relationship which might develop to be considerably more important to me than it is to her. I can do that. I've had a certain amount of prior experience after all. Just so long as I know where I am it will be OK. Trouble only tends to arise when you think you're in one sort of relationship and it turns out to be another.

Having said all that, I'm finding it very hard to stop thinking about her, and this is probably best avoided. I can be distracted as long as I'm doing something involving, watching TV or whatever, but any time I'm in repose my thoughts turn back to her in a fashion which is very nearly obsessive. Perhaps I should take Madame's sister out to the opera again after all, to try and diffuse my interest a bit. If she'll come.

Back in the real world, it's Saturday, I'm about to start the final coat of paint on the spare room floor, after which I need to paint the skirting, the window frames, clean the walls of the smudges the heating installers made on them and then start moving my possessions from what will be my room into the spare room so that I can decorate my room.

I went to the National Film Theatre to see "Harry and Tonto" this week - a 70's film by Paul Mazursky about an old man and his cat travelling across the USA, with gentle shades of the Odyssey and King Lear. This was a real treat, relaxed, funny, and sentimental in a good way. The kind of film that Hollywood used to do so well before it got seduced into accountant-driven simple-minded blockbusters. The NFT is running a two month season of films from this period. While it's tempting to go and see "Taxi Driver" again for the umpteenth time, it's probably more interesting to explore films I've never seen before.

Waiting

Of course having put the ball in Indira's court by asking her to suggest a date I've now assigned myself the "waiting-by-the-phone" role more commonly associated with teenage girls. Or "waiting-in-front-of-the-PC-monitor" in this case as our communications regarding this matter (whatever the matter turns out to be) are by work e-mail, Bridget-Jones-style. It's driving me mad. I want the next beautiful, tentative, heartstopping, can-this-really-be-happening moment of contact to be now, not in the conditional future.

She's very good at the discretion thing, I have to say. Not only would no-one else ever guess there was something going on, I never would either. So perhaps there isn't in fact anything going on. That would certainly be par for the course. Always a good plan to depress one's expectations.

Anyway, tomorrow will be one week since our wine bar trip, Wednesdays are her only day off from the family, I would expect our next appointment to be in a week's time, perhaps two. We'll see.

I heard from an old schoolfriend for the first time in 24 years yesterday. I saw his name on the Friends Reunited website, after trying for years to track him down via web searches, and sent him a message. Apparently he's now an athletics statistician by trade, which seems eminently suitable given his interest in athletics, mathematics qualifications and somewhat obsessional nature - he used to memorise the pop charts back to the year dot when such things mattered to us, or indeed to anyone. He's sent me a list of key and not so key dates in his life (sample: "1985 - got very drunk while on holiday in Berlin"). I'll have to think of a suitable way to reply now, while what I should really be doing is painting a second topcoat on the spare room floor.

Actually given the time and my failed attempts to track down the paintbrushes it looks like the floor project will have to be deferred until another day. This evening has been a little fraught anyway - before I got home Mrs K tried to stop one teenage girl in the block beating up another and Girl 1's father and mother roundly abused her and threatened to throw a brick through our window. Girl 2 was taken off to hospital and the police came. Then the boy Muffin (actually a large lad of 20) got overexcited on hearing about the incident and when told repeatedly to calm down punched a small but noticeable dent in the kitchen wall. Which episode probably upset Madame K more than the contretemps with the neighbours.

Interestingly, Girl 2 is the daughter of the lady downstairs who dislikes us intensely because we flooded her twice during our renovation works. Perhaps she'll warm to us a little more now, although you never know with people round here. Mrs K has agreed to be a witness should the case come to court so I suppose we'll have to park the car round the corner and keep an eye out for retaliation. Mrs K isn't one to be intimidated anyway.

On the bright side the Jessica Rabbit vibrator I ordered from the ladies' erotic emporium finally arrived, so we have something to look forward to, or Madame does at any rate. She's also found the paintbrushes for me, although the fact that they were located precisely next to the paint pot has probably lost me an almost incalculable number of brownie points. I'll spend an hour scraping old paint off the stairs instead.

Bim has accepted an offer of alternative accommodation from the Council who are chucking him out of his "short-life" property after 20 years. Exchanging a view of the park and the lake for a view of the organic food co-op and close proximity to the Elephant and Castle isn't much of a swap to be honest, but at least it's a secure home and he should be in a position to buy a place of his own once the inheritance from his Mum's recent death comes through. Did I mention his brother was almost drowned in the South-East Asian Tsunami on Boxing Day? A bit of a difficult year for the family, all things considered.