E Visits
Monday was fun because E came down from Banbury.
I haven't seen E in a long, long time, although I talk to her every week at least once. I met her in a club in Birmingham ages ago, right at the start, when I was a complete mess and, for reasons I still don't understand, patiently took me under her wing. At the beginning, I found it really hard to talk to her and other people at all, and lots of time would elapse between seeing her and talking to her. When I moved to London, I lost contact for a bit, but she'd always patiently text me every six months or so to see if I was alive when any lesser person would have decided that I must not want to talk to them. I was not easy to talk to back then either.
Then, a year or two ago, something changed and suddenly I found I could talk to her more easily. So I did, and made sure to phone her once a week. Eventually, it got to the stage where I stopped phoning once a week religiously, but I feel a bit... wobbly if I don't catch up, so it tends to happen anyway. If I'm a lot saner than I was, she is a good part of the reason why.
She was the one who introduced me to Thucydides and Roman history and is now trying to introduce me to Wagner and the Ring Cycle. Apparently, talking to me stretches her mentally, which is why she likes doing it, which is nice to know.
Anyway, so it was really, really good to see this person in the flesh for the first time in ages. I also got to give her a book I mentioned and some small Christmas presents that were sitting in my house until we would meet. She also came with her friend H, who is just lovely. She was also getting over having a kidney removed so she could give it to her niece, which made walking around trickier.
I was kinda worried that, with how I'd been feeling for the last few days, I'd burst into tears massively when I first saw her, because I've been feeling really delicate since I wrote the sensitive post at the start of the week, but that didn't happen and had cried down the phone about it earlier. But that didn't happen, for reasons I might talk about later. Instead, I took my role of guide around London seriously and made sure we got on all the right tube trains, since E wanted to go shopping. We had a nice time in HMV, talking about Wagner (what is it about Wagnerians, don't they talk about anything else? It's like Wagner was the Second Coming of the Messiah in music and music stopped existing after that), music in general and various other things, and E bought some Tom Lehrer, so I could demonstrate how much of his songs I know (answer: too much) and encourage her in this.
We also crawled along some shops looking for nail varnish, only to find they'd changed the layouts of all the shops and it was impossible to find anything. We ate at an American dinner place around the back of Boots, which was nice, and then proceeded to a bookshop, where I convinced E to try David Weber. Or rather the blurb did, which had a particularly humorous description of the plot. The plot's not as funny as the blurb makes out, so I hope she still enjoys it anyway. Well, actually I think she will, especially as she works for the military.
H had to go, so I stayed with E while she went to see Richard Curtis, which was the whole reason for her coming down into London. It was interesting to see the private side of gender treatment in action.
I was worn out by this stage from all the walking we'd done. This is getting to be a familiar refrain. Anyway, we walked back to Euston, where I said goodbye and went home to collapse.
I haven't seen E in a long, long time, although I talk to her every week at least once. I met her in a club in Birmingham ages ago, right at the start, when I was a complete mess and, for reasons I still don't understand, patiently took me under her wing. At the beginning, I found it really hard to talk to her and other people at all, and lots of time would elapse between seeing her and talking to her. When I moved to London, I lost contact for a bit, but she'd always patiently text me every six months or so to see if I was alive when any lesser person would have decided that I must not want to talk to them. I was not easy to talk to back then either.
Then, a year or two ago, something changed and suddenly I found I could talk to her more easily. So I did, and made sure to phone her once a week. Eventually, it got to the stage where I stopped phoning once a week religiously, but I feel a bit... wobbly if I don't catch up, so it tends to happen anyway. If I'm a lot saner than I was, she is a good part of the reason why.
She was the one who introduced me to Thucydides and Roman history and is now trying to introduce me to Wagner and the Ring Cycle. Apparently, talking to me stretches her mentally, which is why she likes doing it, which is nice to know.
Anyway, so it was really, really good to see this person in the flesh for the first time in ages. I also got to give her a book I mentioned and some small Christmas presents that were sitting in my house until we would meet. She also came with her friend H, who is just lovely. She was also getting over having a kidney removed so she could give it to her niece, which made walking around trickier.
I was kinda worried that, with how I'd been feeling for the last few days, I'd burst into tears massively when I first saw her, because I've been feeling really delicate since I wrote the sensitive post at the start of the week, but that didn't happen and had cried down the phone about it earlier. But that didn't happen, for reasons I might talk about later. Instead, I took my role of guide around London seriously and made sure we got on all the right tube trains, since E wanted to go shopping. We had a nice time in HMV, talking about Wagner (what is it about Wagnerians, don't they talk about anything else? It's like Wagner was the Second Coming of the Messiah in music and music stopped existing after that), music in general and various other things, and E bought some Tom Lehrer, so I could demonstrate how much of his songs I know (answer: too much) and encourage her in this.
We also crawled along some shops looking for nail varnish, only to find they'd changed the layouts of all the shops and it was impossible to find anything. We ate at an American dinner place around the back of Boots, which was nice, and then proceeded to a bookshop, where I convinced E to try David Weber. Or rather the blurb did, which had a particularly humorous description of the plot. The plot's not as funny as the blurb makes out, so I hope she still enjoys it anyway. Well, actually I think she will, especially as she works for the military.
H had to go, so I stayed with E while she went to see Richard Curtis, which was the whole reason for her coming down into London. It was interesting to see the private side of gender treatment in action.
I was worn out by this stage from all the walking we'd done. This is getting to be a familiar refrain. Anyway, we walked back to Euston, where I said goodbye and went home to collapse.