After yesterday’s excesses, we’ve had a quiet day (partly because we’re both nursing hangovers and partly just because it’s Saturday, we’ve got no pressing engagements and we can).

We’ve both been lounging on our new garden chairs reading. I have finished ‘The Other Woman’s Shoes’ and absolutely adored every last moment of it. I now almost feel as though I have been bereaved because that ‘friend’ that’s been with me for two or three days while I’ve read it has gone. I have sore eyes from crying through the ending and a happy heart because I know I will continue to appreciate the book for a long time to come. (Jude if you experience difficulties finding it because it’s a UK aurthor, let me know and I’ll post you a copy.)

DM is reading another Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. He reminds me of that line in the Pulp song that goes ‘she had a thirst for knowledge’ – it’s in Common People. That’s David, he eats up ‘information books’ while I’m reading emotional heart-wrenchers and crying, he’s improving his mind! He’s got his feet up on the new table and is taking all the information about our genetic make-up in and amazing me with facts.

I looked over at him and saw this photo in my mind’s eye and decided to grab my camera and do it. Why? Well I suppose I’m feeling a bit sentimental because of my book. I’m also feeling overwhelmed with love for this man too after a really shocking conversation that we had last night while Bondy and Sarah were getting in the fifth round (groan – DM always says that it’s after the third drink that things start to go horribly wrong and he’s right).

It’s funny – people always claim that alcohol makes them do and say things they don’t really want to do or don’t really mean but I must say, although I do see why that’s an urban myth, I actually think most of the time it makes people say the things they really mean and behave in the way they’d probably like to but in the normal run of things feel too inhibited to do.

Anyway, we were having this heart-to-heart and he remarked that right from the first days of our relationship, all he’d wanted was to be with me. Now that came as a complete surprise to me, (Miss Low Self-Esteem) – I’d always believed he’d been perplexed and irritated by the fact that he kept wanting to see me again – that it was more like an addiction than a desire. My heart sang and my spirits soared to hear this news and later, as we walked along the riverbank back to Waterloo holding hands, I felt as though the only tiny imperfection in my life was having to hurry to get the train and not to be able to soak up the beauty of St Paul’s Cathedral and the other buildings that make up that familiar and loved London skyline floodlit on the opposite bank of the Thames.

So I sit here this evening, having had this Eureka moment yesterday all because of that book (the conversation had started when I’d asked him to promise to tell me straight away if he fell out of love with me, rather than letting it fester), having spent the day today just quietly revelling in the warmth of being loved and I feel truly contented and just plain thrilled to know this man.