Got an email from our son on Thursday: ‘I'm probably coming home tomorrow, if that’s ok. My car is making some horrible noises so it might break on the way. Sounds like exhaust issues again.’
This wasn’t quite the first communication we’d had from him since Easter, but almost. I replied, asking if this was for the summer or a flying visit, how had his exams and project gone, is everything finished now, I’m cooking lasagne is that all right? (used to be his favourite, but he’s still on this low carb diet),don’t forget your AA card and make sure your phone’s charged up…
Hubby was sceptical when he got home at 7:15 last night and there’d been no more word. We ate our lasagne a deux and shared a bottle of wine, first meal we’ve eaten together since Sunday, which was the first one since... the previous Sunday.
Just after 8, the door bell rang. He couldn’t find his house key. Yes, he’s now home for the summer.
I played the CD yesterday that my friend from meditation lent me on Thursday night. Typical 60s/70s folk, brooding ballads of death and betrayal, but the guitar playing is pretty amazing. I’m just a sucker for an acoustic guitar played with real skill – partly because I failed miserably to learn it when I was a teenager. I have a memory of sitting in the back garden on a summer day hearing him practising in his own back garden a couple of doors away.
I had a look at his website, looked at the photos, tried to see if I could recognise the boy I knew. He’s a very good looking man, no doubt about that, and he was always a charmer – not that he often turned the charm on to me. I wondered about emailing him. He lives mostly in California now, but he does tour, maybe I’ll find out when he’s coming over here again and see if I can go and see him play.
That got me thinking about another never-quite-but-might-have-been boyfriend, from my student days, the one I think of as ‘the one who got away’. I tried googling him, but didn’t recognise any of the possibilities. Of course, my surname has changed (twice) since then, so no chance of him ever tracking me down, even if the thought ever crossed his mind.
My daughter came round yesterday lunchtime, she usually works in the village pub on Fridays, but wasn’t yesterday as the landlord is away on holiday, came round anyway just for a chat and to see my Paris photos. We have a meeting in Brussels in June, on a Monday/Tuesday, and I was planning to go on Friday and stay for the weekend, even if I’m on my own, it will still be fun, I can sit in cafes and write if nothing else. But I had this idea in the week of going to Paris on the Saturday and then getting the train from Paris to Brussels on Sunday. I went through a few days of thinking ‘no, I couldn’t possibly...’, yesterday I checked with the hotel in Paris and confirmed there would be a room for Friday and Saturday, then started to look at the Eurostar tickets. That’s when I found out that even though when you book your tickets, you pay separately for the outward and return parts of the journey, you can only get the cheap tickets if you are booking both ways, and two singles would be much, much more expensive. So, in a way it’s a relief because I don’t have to make that decision. But I have this card above my desk (well, it’s somewhere in that mess) with a picture of the Eiffel tower and the caption: ‘The only things I’ll regret are the things I don’t do’.