The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Hello dear readers,

Still feeling a bit down. Fed up of being fed up, etc. Still need to cry out the past month's stress and disappointment, but still oddly detached from it all.

Had an informal chat with my new consultant at one of my best agencies this morning. Bright and early at 9am. It took me nearly an hour and a half to get to Sloane Square from Harrow on the Hill. I spent so long in the train I felt a bit sick...that's a new one. I now dread daily commutes from here. Every creak and lurch of that damn Metropolitan line, and the way it lurks and hides in dark tunnels, and stops in the middle of nowhere for minutes on end...ugh.

So, 75 minutes en route for a 15 minute conversation, which fortunately looks like it will bear fruit, as she had some good permanent positions in mind. Plus after lunch, another called to reserve me for a company that asked for me specifically. Took a bit of reminding, but I remember who they are! How flattering. It's the insurance company where I was handing them back the completed work five minutes before they gave it to me.

So I had two hours to kill before my last lunch with American Boy. I walked slooooowly up Sloane Street, up Knightsbridge to Hyde Park Corner, then along Park Lane, shunning the memory of walking with him there on a couple of warm June evenings; from there down a side street, I was following my nose and ended up, ironically, on Grosvenor Square (America haunts me!). So, I decided to park myself on a bench and rest for a while, respond to some texts from friends, enjoy the sunshine, and watch people. Never tire of watching people; it is good therapy. After a while I popped into Selfridges for the loo, went to L'Occitane en Provence for a sniff of lavender to steady my nerves, and then met him for a quiet lunch.

Gosh, did I mention I miss his voice and that lovely accent already? And the way he says "lovely"? And how he is the perfect height and walks at just the right speed for me?

He is going to be a tough habit to break. I never said that about the others because they were not so intense, and frankly bear no comparison. In fact, the bar has been raised, which is something I thought impossible - having dated a posh, polished near-aristocrat and then having that knocked way out of place by a manly and cultured Southerner. Ha! Take that, English public schoolboys! Captain America was just what I needed [to put some hair on my chest, as he would say] and as I said before, he never judged me for being myself.

Obviously, I am not as sad as I was when I posted last Friday. Thank you all for your encouragement, by the way. Sure I will have my moments, but I think I will recover quicker [or more quickly ;) ] this time than I did 3 years ago. My old Texanisms may never go away now, hm? Oh, I've got the public schoolgirl accent for that Christies crowd anytime, but there is always a little unidentifiable twang that people can't quite figure out, developed when I was 12 and trying hard to lose my proper English accent.

As I said, America haunts me now. Everywhere I turn, she is there. I was going to launch into a diatribe about my building reasons for wanting to go back, but I won't offend you Brits or upset my local friends who read this blog. "You Brits", hehe, I have often noticed that I can disown both sides at will. Ah, but most of you know which side I stand up for every time...always have...

Instead, but still not so far off topic *rolls eyes* I want to share with you my most spectacular Freudian Slip to date, from Moody Minstrel's post about driving into the mountains of Japan for a musical weekend:

Pandabonium said...

Moody said, "forsake riding the bus in favor of driving up myself in my BLUE RAV4"

You can take the American out of the US, but you can't take the US out of some Americans. ;^)

Enjoy the music camp.

7:36 PM

Olivia said...

LOL @ Pandabonium

You can also take the English girl out of America but you can't take the American out of the English girl!

9:11 AM

...Followed immediately by my embarrassed retraction. But then I was rather proud of its greatness and decided not to delete it. :)

There, see? Light at the end of the tunnel. Pretty soon I'll be having you all engaged in witty banter once more.