Filthy has its advantages

I've walked into shops wearing my bumbag (arguably the most unfashionable item in existence) containing poop bags, keys and dog treats.

I've walked into shops still wearing my mud-encrusted wellies.

But today I took it one step further and walked into the supermarket splattered head to toe in mud. Who knows what the people around me were thinking. Maybe that I'd just walked off a building site? But that wouldn't explain the blue embroidered paw prints on my t-shirt. To be honest it doesn't really matter, I love my job and wouldn't change it for the world. Nevertheless, walking around covered in inexplicable mud in a public place has an unrivalled way of ensuring people give you a wide berth. Maybe next time I'll keep my wellies on too...

Life imitating art imitating life

Recently, we have settled down to the box sets of How I Met Your Mother. Before now, I dipped in and out of it and would watch it when I saw it on but never really watched it consistently. I think part of the reason is that it was largely shown whilst I was living in Singapore but I digress...

Now whilst it cannot remotely be classed as a real-life type show (it's more Friends meets Family Guy, what with all the cutaways and all) yet it's strange how frequently it touches on issues that I can relate to. The Bro Code... to a certain extent. The Play Book... not even a little.

Yet it's two specific episodes in Season 2 I refer to (it remains to be seen whether other episodes will do the same). The episodes in question are Episodes 7 and 12 entitled Swarley and First Time In New York respectively.

Swarley features Chloe - the girl with the crazy eyes and then Ted and Barney both relate their own experiences of girls they have met with the same crazy-eyes. Unfortunately I've known three and all in relatively short succession.

The first was a girl I met on a night out at the start of teacher training. The fact that she had taken her shoes off in the club should have been the first indication that all was not quite right, yet I managed to overlook it. To cut a long story short, the signs of craziness appeared very quickly and the next day I soon realised my mistake when I got a text reading "Is it weird that I miss you?". Yes, it was weird. I quickly ended it before anything properly got started. Or so I thought I did. The girl wouldn't take no for an answer and weeks followed of endless texts and voicemail messages getting steadily more abusive about why I no longer replied and why was I ignoring her. I thought it was pretty obvious why I was. Even after having a female friend pose as my girlfriend and speak to her didn't put her off. She left a final message stating that she had quit university and was going home to France. She was English.

The second case actually overlapped with the first. A girl messaged me through Myspace - the precursor to Facebook (all those years ago...). A short time later the same girl accosted me during the day in the Student Union, berating me for being so distant in my replies. Up until that point I had never met her and it took me a few minutes of having her scream in my face until I realised who she actually was. She then stormed off only to sit down next to me without me knowing several minutes later. My friend pointed out that she was back, at which point the berating began anew before she again stormed off. When I arrived home I found a long message via Myspace apologising for shouting but still wanting to know why I had been so "distant". I never replied.

The third notable case came a year later with another woman who could not take no for an answer. What made this one even more uncomfortable was that she worked in the same school that I just started working at. After a night out with colleagues, admittedly after a few too many to drink, I fell asleep in a colleague's lounge. I awoke with this crazy woman (not the owner of the house) stroking my hair. She then tried to kiss me. I ran. My mate was due to be staying over on my couch that night - "Grab your coat," I told him, "we have to leave - NOW!" Still she didn't get the hint and jumped in the same taxi with us. "I live nearby - I'll get out here," she announced as we pulled up outside my flat. "No you won't!" my mate replied and closed the car door before she had a chance to get out. For weeks after she tried to friend me on Facebook. Each time I declined, only to receive another request mere minutes later. I am not exaggerating.

The other episode of How I Met Your Mother I relate to is First Time In New York where Robin has trouble telling Ted that she loves him. I know this well. Tammy is the only girl that I have ever said this to and I had real trouble early on in telling her. Just as I had had the Thunderbolt moment when I first met her, I was expecting the same sort of earth-shattering sign to tell her how I felt. The truth was that I didn't need anything. Not everything has to have big monumental signs. Sometimes you have to make the moment monumental yourself. I had always been afraid of saying those three words, fearing that it would make me vulnerable. And in saying them it does make you vulnerable... in the best way. You can never move things to the next level until you say "I love you" and will never be as close as once you have said them.

Admitting how I knew I felt was the best thing I could have done and we've never looked back since. Now we say "I love you" multiple times a day yet it never ever loses its meaning, worth or validity.

So once more for the record... Tammy, I love you.

It's been a while...

My, how things have changed...

I haven't posted any new blogs in six years and just comparing who I am now to who I was then, I am literally worlds apart. Well half a world at least...

When I last posted I was living in Singapore. Now I'm back in the UK, a place where I never then believed I would come back to live. I loved living in a big city, loved the hustle and bustle of it all. Now I avoid all that like the Plague and am living in a semi-rural town in Cheshire.

Back then I had just started a new teaching job and was earning more money than I had ever earned before. Sure I still had an element of that new job excitement, but I wasn't enjoying the stress, pressure or workload being put on me. Skip forward 6 years and I'm earning significantly less, not particularly utilising any of my qualifications and spending my days picking up dog shit. But I'm my own boss, working with animals of all kinds on a day-to-day basis and have never been happier in the work I'm doing. Setting up the business was an uphill struggle and brought about its own tribulations and stresses but ultimately it seems to have paid off for the better.

But the most significant change over all is I am now a happily married man. 6 years ago, Tammy and I were dating but we didn't even live together (that came but a month and a half after my last post). We travelled together, got engaged by the Taj Mahal then a year after marrying made the decision to move to the UK. More stress was involved, including the shipping of two pet cats, which although expensive and emotionally stressful was actually one of the more straightforward aspects of relocating one's life across the globe. We went through the whole "this move was a terrible, terrible mistake phase" and came out the other side. In our four years married together it feels like we've dealt with more setbacks as a couple than others have to deal with in a lifetime together, but we've persevered and survived and are that much stronger for it.

I can only imagine what the next six years hold in store, but perhaps I'll document it a bit more frequently this time at least...