Love in the Bogs and Surrounds

Oh poppy-cock! I've gone and lost The Husband again.  The poor man has been banished to the Northern Isles to earn his weight in fish and fish-related produce.

I should have been on the 11pm flight with him last night, the cheap KLM flight that was delayed for 3 hours and then still had a 2 hour stop over in Amsterdam.  That was the plan anyway - 6 months in South Africa and if neither of us is gainfully employed we use our return tickets and finance the next stage of Operation-Oh-Shit-Where-Are-The-Grownups?  But I couldn't do it, I bottled it at the last moment and told The Husband that I couldn't go back to Britain yet I was at a too crucial stage in getting my African back.

Of course now I wake up and the bed is rather empty - the section that should include a snoring, hirsute Scotsman is now occupied by his pillows. The same pillows we had territorial wars over a few months ago.  I don't even want them now, even though they are the two best downy ones, I'll cry my tears into the lumpy, orthopaedic one. (That's your cue to feel empathy & a smidgeon of pity for the author of this sad and sorry story).

It was of course my choice and now I've made it.  The thought of going back to Britain filled me with a cold, dread deep in the pit of my stomach and now perversely the absence of The Husband is producing a similar, bowel-loosening effect (strangely they don't wax on about that in 18th century love poetry).

There is a Rumi quote that says, “Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”  When I met the Husband I felt like I had known him all my life (a terrible cliche I know) and when we part, as we so often do, it is a physical pain in the pit of my belly and the only way to get on with living is to cauterise it.  I get hard, I make my own decisions, meals for one, back-to-back episodes of 'Girls' and beer and cornflakes for dinner.  There is no one but the chickens to judge me.  Of course then The Husband will come back in my life and the thought of opening my newly healed wound is too much too bear.  So we both rail against it, fighting all the little things that make a life together - the decisions and intimacies shared so callously by the always together couples.  Inevitably we fight, flinging horrible words at each other behind an armour of 'Me and I and you always'.  But somehow we always find our way back to each other because perhaps Rumi is right and we were in each other all along.
I know the course of true love never did run smooth and all that jazz, but does it have to be such a pain in the gut?  

Luckily in lieu of my husband I have my hilarious, glorious and downright dirty friends.  They truly understand my depraved humour and so to cheer you up, here is a story told by one of the funniest people I have the privilege to know, the Bowlzation (I'm only sorry that you don't have her facial expressions to truly illustrate this cautionary tale):

A friend was at a house party in England. Majority of the party was taking place downstairs in the glass-roofed conservatory which had been converted to a dance-floor for the occasion.  As is the way with parties during the course of the night boy meets girl, they hit it off and head upstairs for a little 'alone' time.  The girl slightly inebriated is in dire need of the loo so pops into the ensuite where she does a rather solid and unflushable defecation.  Afraid this might ruin her romantic chances she scoops it out of the loo (the exact details of this are a tad hazy) and flings it out of the window.

Downstairs on the dancefloor someone hears a thud and looks up to see a turd parked on the glass roof above them.  The Turd-gazer stares up in bewilderment, wondering softly to himself  "Is that a poo? I'm sure that's a poo? But who threw the poo?" Amazed by this turn of events he turns to the crowd and casting his finger into the air decries,  "Who threw the Poo?"  

Suddenly all eyes are on the suspicious heavenward turd.  As Turd-gazer leads the chant, "WHO THREW THE POO?" the party mobilises, and shouting in unison, raising their arms in protestation they head up the stairs to find out "WHO THREW THE POO?"

As the crowd is bottlenecking on the narrow staircase the poo-tosser in question has heard their shouts and abandoned her romantic liaison.  Realising that the only way out is down, she bursts out of the bedroom defiantly throwing her first in the air and declares in unison with the chanting crowd, "I THREW THE POO!"

The girl in this story has become a bit of a heroine to me, she reminds me that A) many people suffer for love and will go to extreme (insane) lengths in pursuit of it, so really I am so very lucky to have found it B) you should never be afraid to own up if you threw the poo.