Baby I
Want to be
In your loving arms again
Feel you near to me
Baby, ah can’t you see
So much
Romance in the air
And all I really want
Is to be with you

Baby I – Joan Armatrading

We speak several times a day.  And text.  It’s what one does.  Like everything else, it fades in time, the messages only becoming those that explain why you’re late or asking for help or so on.

I was asleep, needing more sleep than I’ve been getting.  He phones.  I knew he would.  He could tell he’d woken me but, as I explained, if I didn’t want him to phone, I would have texted and told him that.

He doesn’t know if everything will be finished today but really hopes so.  He is still talking about, maybe, me going over on Thursday night.  As well as Friday and Saturday?  He knows that I will come on whatever day(s)/night(s) he says.  We shall see.  I’m not certain about Thursday because it is work the next day – obviously, for me, that makes no bloody difference, although I could be in later on Friday…….it’s a kind of hope I have.

I’m sure it’s why Italians look older than they should – just not enough sleep – never having dinner until after 8.30 or 9 or, in some cases, after 9.30!  So never in bed before midnight.  Anyway, I’ve said this before.

I don’t know, quite, how I will manage the dogs.  But I will.  Maybe, leaving for a few hours or so will be good for us.  If this is to work anyway, then he has to understand the dogs although, with Dino, going round to his flat is a little, shall we say, precarious.

He tells me that S, his ex, left the flat and has gone back to the States.  He is happy, I can tell.  It means he can get everything back to the way he wants it and, maybe, also that now I can come round.

Of course, this thing that I do is like a game.  It’s an important game but there are rules.  I know, you may say about the fact that I should let myself go a bit, but I can’t.  Everything I do is leading up to the thing that I want – although, on the way, I give him the things that he wants.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m no ‘player’ but it’s the way I am.  Even things done on the spur of the moment are not really so.

So, it’s important that he knows that I will come when he calls – but then I don’t push that.  Now, it is up to him to tell me when.  In the meantime, even by phone, I must do everything I can to enable him to want Thursday.  Considering that he isn’t mother-tongue English, it seems to be working quite well.  Obviously, it would be better if we were together physically, since then I can use my hands which seem to have some sort of magic properties and, for which, I am very grateful.

Even when he says ‘I will see you on Friday night’, I just say something like ‘That would be nice’.  Don’t seem like you’re desperate – even if I may be

This Englishness of holding back – stiff upper lip and all that, proves useful.  I am grateful that I am English even if I don’t want to live in the UK.

I had said, after Ily got out of the car and had entered her building, ‘I’m sorry but I couldn’t speak Italian with Ily there’.  He told me not to worry, that it was OK speaking English.  He didn’t say but it was the thought that counted.  However, I must/will speak more Italian with him – we’re in his country and he hasn’t picked me because I’m English, well, not exactly even if that was, almost, a criteria.

So, I guess Thursday night somewhat depends on whether he comes home tonight or not.  He says that he needs to tidy the place up.  Of course, I laughed because his version of untidy and mine will be so very different.  Still, I know he will want it to be perfect.  He told me he also wants to be ‘clean’.  I understand that too.  I should imagine he is always like that.  Let’s say that it would be interesting living with him but, maybe, we get to try it, sort of, this weekend.

Still, I wouldn’t want him any different.