Advanced diplomacy

For once, my boyfriend Simon is not coming over this evening. The flat feels a little empty and while watching TV I find myself missing him. Amazing how quickly I have got used to having someone around to make me tea, pop my favourite CD in the stereo and generally carry out my smallest, yet highly important wishes.

On the other hand a little 'me' time is always welcome. Firstly, I am completely in control of the remote, which suits me just fine. It stops me from having to watch the BBCs antique road show (Simon's can't get enough of the antique road show despite the program format is as old as some of the junk they are showing off!)

Also, I don't have to worry about the toilet seat being left up. It constantly catches me out. One minute I am happily minding my own business, the next I am having a freezing cold ring of porcelain pressed against my backside. As girls do, I first scream loudly, then I swear for a few minutes at Simon, while letting him know that if he really loved me he would surely be putting the bloody toilet seat down. (Yes, I know I could have checked, but it is far easier blaming Simon!)


While I am busy blaming Simon on behalf of all women, I of cause forget that the toilet seat is up. Hence, when I am finally ready to get back to business, I get the now famous cold-porcelain-on-naked-bum treatment a second time :( That should teach me!

Having settled down with a good book, the phone rings. It is Tracy. She is crying and from what I can hear, calling from a cake tin with bad reception. It turns out she is sitting in her car, having minutes earlier left the flat she share with her long-term boyfriend Steve after a heated argument.
"Tracy," I start, "what is happening? Are you okay?"
"Yes, we had a big fight! A really bad one," she sobs.
"Pure Tracy," I say, "tell me what happened."

An hour later we have to hang up. Tracey's phone is running out of battery and I am on my second ear, the left one fell off after 45 minutes.

In the end Tracy decided that driving around Bristol all night was not the way forward, and she returned reluctantly to the flat to speak to Steve. I write reluctantly, because my dear friend Tracy did have a lot of explaining and apologising to do. Explaining because she apparently had been receiving txt-messages from another man, and apologising because she, before leaving the flat, had told Steve to - and I quote - "get used to making out with himself and when finished he could always go fry his fat face."

As you may have guessed, Tracy is not much of a diplomat. If everyone followed the 'Tracy' approach to world peace, a few of us might be lucky enough to eke out a bleak existence in a post nuclear apocalyptic world inhabited by mainly rats and other beings capable of withstanding high levels of radiation.

And I thought Simon and I had issue! We practically look like an old couple, who have been married happily for 40 years! 

Simon, I miss you!