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