Months pass. Long complicated months with sinister overtones. But I took Ted for a walk in the woods today and there was a suggestion of Spring: snowdrops, catkins, pale sunshine and hello? what's this? well bugger me, its a tiny clump of fresh hope.

I saw a shy woodland flower and so of course my thoughts turned to love. (Groans). I thought hard about LOVE and now I am ready to reveal the TRUTH about LOVE.

In my experience love is not a sweet warm safe meeting of minds and bodies. It is a bitter grisly painful battle with the opponents alternately lashing out and whimpering pathetically. Sometimes there is a glorious truce, kisses, kindness, exhileration, angels sing, a golden beam of light illuminates the perfect couple, it seems an understanding has been reached and everything will be OK forever. But it won't. Any minute now, someone will feel slighted for no reason at all and it all goes wrong again.

Sorry to bring geometry, music and physics into this, if you run parallel to someone you may well form a lovely harmonious chord with them, but you will never connect, except at infinity which is a long way to walk. To connect, you have to come at them from an angle. Its a collision, and that means jarring, glancing, poking, crashing, bouncing violently off each other but at least you have a faint chance of fusing if there's enough heat.

That's a bit abstract, so here's a few concrete examples:

You wander the streets looking everywhere for their car and their hair, and your heart stops every time you mistakenly believe you have caught a glimpse. Then suddenly you are walking towards them on the pavement, and you look at your feet and ignore them. That is love.

You look forward to seeing them all day and rehearse the words you want to say to them "I love you so much". Then you open the door to them and what you hear coming out of your mouth is "You look like a cabbage in that shirt". That, sadly, is love.

Your friends say that you are made for each other and you deny it, saying that you actually fail to communicate on any level whatsoever. Your friends say that you are unsuited and you punch your friends. That is love.

Your heart is torn to shreds and you consider suicide because your lover is not listening to you blah-ing on about the thing that happened to you in the Post Office. That is love.

You take it in turns to be desperately hurt because the other one is subconsciously demonstrating that they are not quite as keen on you as they were yesterday. That is love.

Your eyes meet in the middle of a bitter argument about, say, whether gin makes you more depressed than vodka, and a little smile plays over your lips and you lose your advantage. That is love.

I could go on, and I probably will some other day. But right now, I have to go and thank my lucky stars.

Cheers
xx