Back, back, as a matter of fact...

A lot of catching up to do here I guess. I've been in Egypt for a couple of weeks, taking a look at the Total Eclipse and scuba diving in Sharm el Sheikh.

I returned to find two voicemail messages and an e-mail from Indira and an e-mail from Roxana which started "Hey hey hey Gorgeous". Now that's what I call a welcome home.

Indira is a few weeks into her new job now and enjoying it immensely by all accounts. We had lunch today and she was looking very good. Apparently she's lost four pounds as a result of no longer being required to comfort eat to compensate for workplace stress. Hmm. Meanwhile I'm trying to sort out the chaos she's left in her wake at our office. Never mind...

We've made an arrangement to go out for dinner after work soon - probably at the Cinnamon Club, a smart Indian restaurant near the House of Commons, and there was some talk of bars afterward. Sounds OK to me. I have to wait for her to come up with a date though.

She gave me a kiss as we said goodbye on a street corner, I got the distinct impression she was aiming for my mouth but I turned my head just a little so as to kiss on the cheek. It was lunchtime after all, and very near our head office so discretion remains the better part of lust just at present. Plus it's good not to look too keen, isn't it? I envisage us walking along the riverbank after our Cinnamon Club outing and an attempt at a proper kiss then. We'll see.

What was interesting is that she claimed to know nothing about Bob and his legal troubles. I explained that our contractors had departed and the scandal in the pipeline probably had something to do with it; a few further hints about the precise nature of the scandal produced incomprehension and eventually I had to tell her. The interesting thing here is that she's perhaps the only person in the whole office who doesn't know about this, despite being the one who's been partaking of lunch with Bob over the months. I didn't let on that I knew about that but I did make it clear that I was extremely surprised she knew nothing, and took care to point out that it was common knowledge. I suppose that means any really intimate relationship can be ruled out - she didn't look totally devastated. In fact I'm beginning to think that perhaps she's just a nice Indian housewife with a slightly rebellious streak after all, and not a rampaging sex kitten.

Interestingly, Mr K my travelling companion in Egypt originates from the same region in India as her husband's family, in the vicinity of the same town. I need to do a bit more research on this, but I'm quite interested to pin it down exactly.

Roxana is doing well in her job - working very hard after years doing next to nothing at our place - and her home life seems to be going OK as well - not terribly pleased about that as her other half seems entirely unsuitable to me, not that it's any of my business... Another of my opposite numbers at a different office is leaving so I've suggested she apply for that job and if we combine our notes from her last unsuccessful interview and my original successful one we should be able to give her enough of an edge to walk into it...

OK, that's enough, off to bed, perhaps I'll try and write about Egypt next time...that and my Near Death Experience a few weeks back.

Three Quarters Crazy

Just back from visiting my friend Dee (see earlier posts) and her new boyfriend (well, I say "new", they've been going out for about 18 months, she's 7 months pregnant and they're moving in together shortly).

I wasn't sure how I would feel about this but I've met her boyfriends before so I didn't think it would be catastrophic - and indeed it was OK. He's rather good looking, intelligent, seemingly very nice, and significantly younger than her (which is what she seems to like).

But last night I had troubling dreams of loss and regret, I think. I feel a bit out of sorts today too. Maybe it's just a hangover from the single malt I indulged in before bed, but I really want to be asleep again and not have to put up with consciousness for a bit. Only 1-2 on a melancholia scale of 10 I think. I've had a lot of time to get used to the idea that Dee is not for me I guess. About 18 years probably...

Indira news - last Friday (6 Jan) she came to my desk and we had a long chat - she said I hadn't told her much about myself and I pointed out that I had in fact told her some fairly substantial things, but as she wanted further details I would see what I could do. Important not to spill all the beans at once and destroy one's mystery, I suggested. We had a talk about exercise and I suggested I could cycle over to her house before work and act as her personal trainer - take her running round the park. from this we went on to Bim's London Marathon run and how getting fit had improved his figure and landed him a new toyboy. She then suggested something sotto voce about how this would maybe work for me also and perhaps hinted at her own involvement - I didn't quite catch this so "what was that?" I asked and she wouldn't say. Hm - what a minx she is.

Anyway, research reveals an e-mail from Padraig that same day telling her he was off to Ireland for a week. Connection? Who knows...?

Then last Thursday she suggested next Friday (20 Jan) for lunch, which I accepted. So that's where we are presently. I shall try and revisit the exercise scenario and tell her I'd like to see her work up a bit of a sweat, also suggest that if I'm going to tell her a secret (I'll give her a choice between sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, politics, criminality or public sector housing I think) then she should tell me one. And then there's the matter of the postponed Xmas kiss, which I might mention if the occasion merits along with the delayed kiss for my birthday, her birthday, in celebration of her getting the new job, etc. "Shall I get the key to the stationery cupboard or would you prefer somewhere even more romantic?" I could essay.

Or not, as the case may be.

This blog has proved sadly reductionist I must say; at least there was a little bit of social comment at the start but it's morphed into a diary of romantic (or sexual) obsession and nothing else. Perhaps I'll try and retrieve the situation but I haven't the energy right now - and it's bedtime.

(Mrs K's sister agreed to visit me for lunch next week also but I know she won't turn up...)

...and the rest

Well, first of all I felt kind of guilty about this - or sleazy at any rate, but a few weeks back when Indy was out of the office I nobbled her computer so that I could access her e-mail inbox from my PC. Today I finally got round to taking advantage of this in an organised way, and I discovered that she's been flirting with yet another member of the technical team, in this case Padraig, starting I think back in early 2004.

Some banter about massages - she tried that same tack with me early on but I felt it best not to offer my services in an e-mail - lunch invitations and then in Sept this year a suggestion of a Bollywood movie or a picnic on Hampstead Heath "before the weather turns". Hmmmm.

I think this has actually rekindled something in me, a definite warm feeling where just this morning I was feeling cold and dead. I suppose the worst case scenario was that she was having an exclusive affair with Bob, and now I have to rethink that. It's not entirely clear what's been going on - there's nothing graphic, so it may well be just the same sort of mildly flirtatious friendship that I have with her. Not sure.

Also an e-mail from Bob himself, some time before his departure, asking "how soon is "soon"?", eliciting the reply "before very long" and finishing with him suggesting lunch "in the meantime". And something post-departure from Esther, one of the repairs caller centre people, saying that a mutual friend had been in touch and sent his best wishes. Esther seemed to be on rather good terms with her, actually.

In any event, she clearly has an even busier social life than I might have envisaged, even if I don't know quite what's involved in it. Perhaps she just likes attention? Perhaps once we're not working together a door will open. Who knows? Who cares?

Anyway, I sent her an e-mail welcoming her back to work and suggesting lunch some time soon, which she said would be "wonderful", so that all seems to be going OK. Her home life seems a little fraught though, still, one daughter still has this foot episode underway and another is ill. With four kids one of them's always going to have a problem at any given moment I guess.

Textin'

A bit of a hiatus, clearly.

Well, things are rolling along uneventfully and painlessly enough. We had lunch once, I think, I told her about the various information which had come my way regarding Tracey and The Libertines. Then she took some time off sick with what she's described to me as "a nervous breakdown" - text message 5 Dec in response to 'get well soon' enquiry "I am very ill an not coping well at all! I am bored at home, but cant come in to the office in the state that im in. Hope u r well an not misin me 2 much!"

On the day of her return, she managed to secure another job (thankfully after I gave her a bit of help with the app form) so she'll be leaving the office soon. Probably a good thing; I trust we'll be able to continue meeting occasionally and it'll remove the fear of discovery and that whole boss-worker thing which was making me kind of uncomfortable.

She's apparently on some sort of prescription drugs for whatever her condition is which have led her to put on quite a lot of weight in quite a short space of time. She seems chirpy enough, although maybe this is a cultural thing - keeping feelings hidden and all that.

Anyway, we're in the middle of our Christmas-and-New-Year break now. The day we left she sent me a text reading "Didnt get a chance 2 give u a xmas kiss or hug! Never mind, have a great chrstmas and a good new year. Luv Indira" to which I replied I'd take a raincheck. Yesterday I texted suggesting we meet for lunch over the holidays, to which she replied: "My daugter has burnt her feet so i am busy goin to an fro frm hosptl an carin 4 her. So meetin up wld be diffcult, althoug i cld do with adult company !"

Not bad, as excuses go.

I also sent Roxana (is that what I've called her here?) a greeting text on Christmas day to which she replied "Happy christmas sweetie, we have to catch up in the new year honey. x x x". Which is nice. I've also just had a call from Mrs K's tease of a sister asking me for a small favour; I've obliged and I'm shortly due to call her back. I'll ask her if she wants to come shopping and pick out a (small) Christmas present for me to buy her. Only giving that a 10% chance of success though.

Update

Very quickly - one thing about the E-Bay episode was that I suggested Ahmed our IT guy might have set the account up for her. I'd seen him talking with her once in a noticeably familiar fashion. I wondered if perhaps I shouldn't have said this as she seemed just a ittle put out by it. The next week Ahmed turned up at our office just before lunch and they both disappeared for two hours or so. So perhaps my intuition does work a bit after all.

Not sure what it makes of today though. The week before last I suggested it was time for another lunch - she agreed but we couldn't find a mutually convenient date last week so (after a reminder from me yesterday) agreed today. Today I got out of my morning meeting to find an e-mail saying she would like to cancel our lunch appointment "as I don't feel up to it. Sorry".

A little blunt, I thought. I caught up with her later in the day and asked if she was feeling poorly or just fed up. "A number of things", she said. I didn't probe. She seemed upset; perhaps it was something that happened at home, but who knows? She's seemed much less keen to be with me the last few times, perhaps she is embarassed after all...

It would be a shame to have lost our friendliness I think. I'd definitely prefer to be friends than acquaintances; while it's obviously necessary to watch one's step where emotions are concerned, I think I've managed to put enough distance between my state of mind two months ago and now that there needn't be more pain than pleasure involved. Anyway, I'll try and be friendly but not pushy.

lukewarm

Another weird thing about hotornot is that I posted a picture of my ex-girlfriend Nat (from the early 90's!) which I thought was very lovely and people only rated it 4.7 (it's since gone up to 5). What's going on there? She may not be the best looking woman in the world but she's a hell of a lot better looking than me. Maybe women are more generous in their marking than men, (although that's not been my experience in the real world). See what you think:- http://www.hotornot.com/r/?eid=ERNREYR&key=VQG . It seems that to get a score above 9 all that's necessary is long blonde hair and a bikini so maybe it's not entirely surprising. Perhaps I'll try and get a picture of Madame I and see how that fares.

I gave Indira a hand with her e-bay account on Thursday. She seemed to have it up and running already (Username "PrincessI2"!)so I created a sellers account for her and explained how to go about advertising items for sale. The weird thing here was that she thought I'd set the initial account up, while I thought she had. As it had her home address listed on it this begged certain questions - in fact I do know her address from a work form she filled in once but I certainly wasn't about to let her know I did. It's probably a bad sign that she assumed I knew it of course... In the end it transpired that one of her daughters had set the account up, although we didn't establish that till the next day. "PrincessI" though? Interesting.

She also asked if I could help her out with the loan of a laptop for a week as her home PC had crashed and her daughter needed to do a homework project. Achh. "Laptop for Mrs Khumari" was one of Mr Bob's calender entries. Well, of course I can refuse her nothing so the next day I packed the work laptop (kept at home) into my bike bag and delivered it to her (checking carefully first that there was nothing incriminating on it).

Well, that's it for now. Here we are several hours into the weekend and I don't have a plan yet - always a bad sign. Too easy to find yourself at the wrong end of Sunday night with nothing accomplished. Item 1 should really be a haircut; I think I'll shower and get a bus into town. Then on with the decorating, perhaps. At least I didn't wake up thinking of Indy today, rather of Petra, my ravishing Italian correspondent. Not that they inhabit the same area of head-space. I really don't think you can fall in love with anyone over the Internet, although clearly you can become interested.

all at sixes and sevens

So Monday seemed fine, I hardly saw her, we spoke briefly at the end of the day, probably about work - no, I met her at the tube station on the way home and we chatted a little about nothing much - she hadn't made it to see "The Lion King" musical with her kids as she'd planned, that sort of thing..

Tuesday, suddenly, Blam! She was dressed in white, bare arms, smelled heavenly, came and stood next to me to ask about work, I was just consumed with lust. I could barely concentrate. I was supposed to show her how to set up an e-bay sellers account but when I'd finished my work and went to look for her she'd gone home. And I got so depressed; I can't tell you. Got home and felt bad all evening, and for much of today. What's that all about?

Today she was away on a training course. I've researched the e-bay thing a bit - it's got to be easy hasn't it?

I tried to catch up with the gossip on Monday, talking to my immediate junior who'd also been away on leave and is probably the best person to acquire such information from. I don't normally concern myself with these matters at all, but now I have an interest. Bob, she said, apart from having a general air of disreputability about him, had questionable morals where women were concerned, had been going out with a woman from another department in the same building, and someone else as well at the same time. I thought I sensed a knowledge of who this someone else was, and a reluctance to tell me, which I attributed to an inkling at least that I've been spending time with the same person...

I also found out from her where he lives - just on the other side of the Heath as it turns out, not so far away from where Indira and I were walking the other day. I wonder if he's been walking there with her too? Anyway that would certainly make it easy enough for him to nip over and meet her for lunch in Dave's Diner.

Meanwhile in perhaps desperate attempts to unfocuss a bit I posted a photo of myself on the "hotornot" website. A very unflattering photo, I felt, but the only one I had available at the time. I also set up a "meet me" profile with a rather cantankerous message warning women who'd put "astrology" as an interest to stay the hell away from me. Not only did the picture acquire a 'hotness' rating of 7.4 out of 10 (but you should see some of the '8's - yechh!), but also the profile attracted a really strikingly attractive Italian woman from Turin who shares my liking for Leonard Cohen among many other things. We're now correspondeing by e-mail. What are the chances of that? Of course I'm really anxious that I'll be too boring and she'll lose interest, but there's not much I can do about that...nothing like finding the cloud to every silver lining, is there?