Hot Diggety!

Today loomed over me like a grey sky threatening rain. Or a drunk man threatening trouble. Or an earache threatening the flu. But it threatened. I was not in the best of moods today, following on from the debacle that was my working day yesterday.

It sort of perked up though, in those ways that make it a better day than it could ever have promised to be.

Start of day - unofficial meeting of other poor souls who had been in the same meeting yesterday. Sat round, moaning, swearing & trying to outdo one another in just how bad we felt. In swear box terms, I personally am talking about a month's salary. Not mine, maybe Richard Branson.

Mid-morning - finished all work from yesterday, sent e-mail letting everyone know it was done, also to people who'd made the long journey to our office yesterday. I'd wondered of they felt as bad as we did. Maybe we are over-sensitive little flowers, too delicate for the cut & thrust business world. Received e-mail back from one of them almost immediately.

It said, simply:- 'I've smoked 78 fags today'

Lunch to mid-afternoon - intermittent moaning, almost constant swearing, managed a whole sentence composed entirely of swear words that included verbs, nouns & adjectives. A linguistic feat, I'm sure you'll agree. Felt much better for it. Started doing proper work again. Like shouting at team to work harder. Felt even better.

An e-mail from him. We're meeting for a coffee on Monday evening. Baby steps. Just to see if I'm even ready to begin allowing him back into my life, chaotic hovel that it is. But baby steps, nevertheless. I know he wants us to be friends again. I've said that I lost him & maybe I was trying to be kind to myself. I sent him away; let him go. He didn't want to go, but there were consequences to what had happened between us. I was hurt, heart-raw & I needed him, wanted him to see that my heart was broken. To show him how much I'd cared, how much I'd always cared.

But life is short & time without the ones you care about is long. And it's time to take baby steps to see if we can start mending what we had. And being friends again. Maybe not in the same way, but a new way. A way that doesn't hurt, for either of us.

The journey home. The pick up of my son from his home after school. The night falling around us, the chill in the air, the distant gunshot crack of fireworks late to the party. The dry leaves on the pavement, blown, stacked high against the verges. The rustle under our feet as we shuffled through them at speed & they flew into the air & tumbled around us.

'Hot Diggety!' he shouted, into the air.

And I laughed with him, into the air & off into the future.