I sit here, being paid for something else, not this. Of course, my ‘waiting’ thing is still going on, a little like ‘The Final Question’ – still not finalised.

I would prefer to be doing the thing I am paid for. It would stop me from thinking and would stop me from messing with my nose, which has developed a sore, at the base of one of the nostrils. It isn’t a true spot, since it is not raised nor does it have a head but it feels like an ‘inward spot’ if you know what I mean. And it is red in that point but not inflamed. It’s a lack of sleep, I know, not from last night but, rather, from the last few weeks.

The sore is just like the ‘waiting’ and ‘The Final Question’, both of which are not on any surface but mostly hidden, except from me and just like the sore in the nostril, they are annoying and irritating and sore.

And V has emailed again as we are due to meet up tonight.

He said: ‘I don’t have anywhere in Milan to stay (at the moment).’

I don’t answer straight away. I think it was the addition of ‘at the moment’. Worse was to come, I felt. I responded that I guessed he was living in the Hinterland.

I looked it up. It is even beyond the Hinterland! A long way from the centre of Milan. Anyway, we are still to meet up, it’s just that he must leave early. He adds, ‘if I stay in Milan obviously I can stay later but the apartment is still quite a way away. I’m not sure what he is asking or, even, if he is asking.

Either way, I studiously ignore it in my reply. I am good at that. At least, I say to myself, I am good at something.

Apparently he doesn’t like where he lives.

I took off the weeding ring a few days ago; the copy of his that we had specially made for our 10<^th anniversary. I must remember to put it back on. He notices these things whereas I always mean to but always forget. It’s one of those things one does as a couple. Taking roles. I fleetingly wonder if I became worse at noticing these things because I could rely on him to do it for me and tell me. However, I don’t want to shut any doors as one never knows and I still do love him and want him and…. well enough of this shit.

I get called to the Purchasing office. It means a walk outside and the chance of a cigarette. It is now so hot that it is like stepping into a furnace. The only creatures brave enough to be in this heat are me and the ants – the lizards, normally sunning themselves at every opportunity are hidden away in the coolness of the permanent shade – unless they have all died or something?

And I watch the ants, from some shade that I find, whilst I finish my cigarette. I watch them move from the shade to the open sun. In the shade they move at normal pace; in the sun they move at three times the speed and more erratically as if they were chickens with their heads ripped off and running around frantically hoping that they will find their heads and, as if by magic, become whole again; then they find the shade again and immediately go back to normal speed. It is funny to watch them do this. Funnier still when you see one that, apparently didn’t learn from the last time of being in the glaring sun and goes back to the madness the extreme heat induces.

It all seems so random and I think that we are the same. When we are in the comfort of the shade we move at a moderate pace, seemingly aimlessly (and almost certainly it is aimlessly, not matter how we tell ourselves it is different) and then we hit the sun and it makes us crazy, running faster and faster, still aimlessly, still with no plan as to how to get out of this shit. I think I may be in the sun. What is it they say? ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen……’

Oh enough already. Enough of the ‘waiting’, ‘The Final question’ and the bloody sore nose thing.

And, since I wrote this piece to be posted tonight, the ‘waiting’ has stopped and I cannot tell you how relieved I am.  And, excited or, maybe, that’s just the relief.  I could jump in the car right now and speed down there just to shake his hand and buy him a beer (that being a very blokish thing to do) and give him a hug (which is not a very blokish thing to do nor very English).