Another surprise visit

Today I got a pleasant surprise. I answered a knock on my door to find Anne there.  We had discussed meeting today but Anne had a busy day ahead so it was not arranged.  But a gap came up in her schedule during the day so there she was on my doorstep at 12 noon.  The opportunity to see me came up suddenly so she just got into her car and came over straight away.  I gave her some lunch and we spent a couple of hours together  which I greatly  enjoyed

So I  am rather pleased to be someone whom at least some ladies feel free to visit at will

Come to think about it, another lovely lady called on me unannounced a few months ago.  Also a very pleasant surprise.  I will not mention her name but she is a very old friend

Boxing Day reflections

A very quiet day for me so plenty of time for reflections. The torrential weather prevented anyone from visiting me so I for once spent the day with no company at any time.

Now that I am 80,I tend to look back on my life and think about its ups and downs. Thanks to a series of kind ladies however it has mostly been a happy life with very few downs. My one big regret is that I am not married. I have had 4 marriages so that has clearly always been my aspiration. So I have failed at that goal. My compensations have been large, however. I have had some remarkably good relationships and still do. I have in my life at the moment 4 very kind women. I say something about each of them in my annual personal report but I think I might add to that here.

Jenny and I met 40 years ago, married shortly after that and split up 30 years ago. But we have always remained in close touch and have in recent years ended up in close to a married state again. We dine together four nights a week and she accompanies me to all my medical appointments. And that has been a big emotional support to me. She does love someone else in a very platonic way but he loves his ex-wife so I come an honourable second. I am grateful for that. The man she loves is also an old friend of mine so there are no hard feelings about it.

And as well as an ex-wife in my life I have an ex-girlfriend: Anne. We have known one another since Sept 1, 2005 and were an item for 14 years after that. She now has a good quasi-marriage with another man. They live together. Unusually, however, she insisted from the first in her new reltionship that she would continue to see me regularly. Her new man did not like that at all but she gave him no choice. To save his feelings she normally sees me on Saturday mornings only, while he is attending his Seventh Day Adventist church. So the surprising thing is that she still wants to see me and that I want still to see her. But we do. There are still loving feelings between us so it is a romance, though now a very unusual one. So our relationship remains an important emotional support to me.

I am however not done with an ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend. I also have a close female friend to help keep me happy. My current girlfriend is Zoe, a native of Srbia who left that place aged 45 thirty years ago. We are hugely incompatible in all sorts of ways but from our first meeting we liked one another and the relationship rapidly develped. We have been seeing one-another for two years now. She lives out Ipswich way so that is a long way from where I live, making it around a 40 minute drive every time she wants to see me. So for a long time she would would see me only 2 or 3 times a week. Lately, however, she has been seeing me more frequently than that. There is no doubt of her feelings for me now. Our incompatibilities are still an occasional source of friction but they don't disrupt the pleasure we have in seeing one-another for long.

So I may not be married but I still do pretty well for companionship and I am profoundly grateful for that.

I have seen and experienced a huge number of things in my 80 years, including big changes in almost everything, from gramophones to DVDs. I am very pleased and satisfied to have been there -- to have seen and experienced it all. I probably have a few years left to me but I can already say, in the words of a famous Bach cantata, Ich habe genug

A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL WHO COME BY HERE TODAY

I gave both Anne and Zoe bouquets of flowers as Christmas presents. See below. The one for Anne was Christmas-coloured gerberas, quite unusual. But Anne helped me to pick it. I did not give Jenny flowers as she is getting other things.


For Anne


For Zoe

Our Christmas lunch was between 12 and 3pm. It was a quiet affair, principally due to the absence of kids and grand kids overseas. Present were Jenny, Joe, myself and a couple who are good friends of Jenny. The principal food was ham off an actual ham and roast pork. Dessert was Pavlova. Neither Joe nor I talked much but others made up for that

Zoe paid me a visit between about 5pm and 8pm. Neither of us were hungry so we mostly just lay about. So I got some Christmas kisses and cuddles, which I enjoyed

Vego Persian

Zoe has noted the praise I wrote about the "Saffron" Persian restaurant and felt that I should take her there. I pointed out that the place is best known for grilled meat so that might not suit her -- as she is an extreme Vegan. She was very keen to see what I saw however so I took her there. They did have two vegetarian offerings so we ordered those. She was not really happy with those items but it ended up as a reasonable lunch

The lady with the bosom waited on us again -- dressed this time in close-fitting clothes. The bosom could therefore be evaluated. I guessed DD

A very social day

Around noon my old friend John H. brought me over some lunch, a mild curry his wfe had cooked. It was very good.

We mainly talked about church matters, out of deference to his conversion from Anglo-Catholicism to Roman Catholicism. He has walked the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. So he takes ceremonial religion seriously. He Left about 1pm

Then at around 2pm, Zoe arrived bearing a salad lunch, of which I had only a small part. After lunch we just lay down cuddled up in bed, which I always like. She left about 4pm

Then at at round 6pm, Jenny arrived, bringing a dinner of some excellent chicken kebabs and salad. She stayed to around 7:30pm

The modern marvels of food delivery

Uber Eats began food delivery in August 2014 with the launch of the UberFRESH service in Santa Monica, California. It set off a revolution. There are now food delivery services worldwide with a number of organizations offering similar services. The one I use is DoorDash, also of American origin but now well entrenched in Australia.

Now that I no longer drive I have become a regular user of their services and greatly appreciate them. For $20 I can have a freshly cooked meal delivered to my door as soon as half an hour after ordering it. And the charge for delivery included in that $20 is only about $3, which I regard as a bargain. Compared to getting in my car and driving to the source restaurant it saves me a lot of time and probably money. And I get a very wide choice of restaurants, ones I mostly was previously unaware of. I even use them to give me cooked breakfasts on occasions

So it is not as big a deal as the invention of the steam engine but it is a modern marvel nonetheless. And it is all the work of profit-seeking companies with no government involvement: Capitalism at its best. I shudder to think what a government-provided service would cost.

She's back

A certain person who no longer wants me to mention her on this blog materialized at my place this afternoon. It was good to see her after a 3 week gap.