Smell the flowers while you can

I take certain things for granted. That as soon as term ends I'll be on a plane to somewhere warmer; that I cannot ever tell what mood year 11 will be in; that when I go to sleep, that I will wake up.

However, on Friday night one of my friends went to sleep and she will never wake up. Aged just 38, with a little baby and a young son she just died in her sleep. She wasn't ill, there was no warning. It is utterly confusing. Her Facebook page is filling up with shocked eulogies saying what an amazing person she was. And she was.

It's at times like this that you take stock. You kiss your child fiercely. You look at old photos. And you look forward. On Saturday I met my ex husband's girlfriend and I was really friendly to her. I bear her no grudges and I have to admit she did me a favour. Maybe a year ago that first meeting would have been more fraught but now I know that life is going on for all of us. And, for me, life is far better now I am single. Today, I am going to smell the flowers whilst I can.

This song is a eulogy for Julie. Bless you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnXQS6oetQk&feature=fvst

History is not over

Hello, remember me? Single mother. Obsessive. Spends inordinate amounts of time online. Used to have a husband, now has an ex-husband and a boyfriend. Nice to see you again.

I was prompted into action by anonymous who asked, perfectly reasonably, whether this blog had ended. Mainly, I suspect, because I haven't written anything for nearly 6 weeks. I'm hoping the answer to that question is no, because I am immensely fond of this blog and like showing off. There are many reasons why I haven't written much recently: I have been busy with an actual human being on many evenings when otherwise I would be home alone loafing about the net, I have had a promotion at work and have been doing actual work, I had the dreaded school inspectors in a couple of weeks ago and I got an iPhone. Now that I have my iPhone I have very little reason to ever fire up my laptop as I can satiate my net addiction with virtually no effort and that gorgeous slidy interface makes typing seem, well, clunky.

But I think there's another reason that I haven't been blogging. And it's that I have something precious with my boyfriend that I worry about analysing. I don't really want him to see our relationship held up to the internet's light and checked for holes and stains. I enjoy the sense of being a new person with him and try not to allow to much of my previous life to sully that. I learnt the hard way with my ex about the dangers of being too upfront about one's past. I think the 'more than Princess Diana, fewer than Madonna' answer is the way to go. Forever my ex was haunted by the spectres of other men who, in his perception, I compared him to. I didn't. Well, not much. Ok, not every day. All right, I did.

And I do compare my new boyfriend to my ex. There are some similarities: I think people have a type, even if it's unconscious. For example, the first time we woke up together I had a jolt when I looked across and saw my ex-husband's tattoo - they both have the same football club tattooed in the same way on the same shoulder. There are differences: my boyfriend is taller than me and, whilst I didn't acknowledge it, I was self-conscious about being taller than my ex-husband. My boyfriend is part of a huge group of friends and my ex wasn't (this should have been a warning sign...) My boyfriend and I are about the same level of personal attractiveness and according to psychologists this is an important factor in human attraction. Finally, this time I've met someone secure and well-balanced and uncomplicated. And when you've got that you don't want to complicate matters by bleating on about it online.

Whoops, too late.