Send My Conscience Home in a Taxi

So I'm so behind in my blogging, that I have yet to relate the events that lead to me being engaged!

First off, some history.

How I Met Deb

It was the end of 2007, and I had nothing to do on New Year's Eve. I've often found NYE to be a bit of a drag, I've frequently had a not entirely fun evening. For example, I spent the end of 2006 in a Goth night club, where everyone was way too cool to actually count down to midnight. And then we had the train ride from hell home at 3AM...

So at the end of 2007, I called up my old friend Geoff, and he said "Borrow a bike and come on a ride to see some fireworks!" So I did. The meet-up for the ride was outside the museum, in the Carlton Gardens. Right about here.

Long story short, that's where I met Deb, although it was a good month later before we got involved.

(I've just been poking around my old LJ entries and found one that appears to have a picture of Deb the first night she stayed over. He he!)

Fast Forward to December 31st 2011

Somewhat secretly, I acquired a pair of Lego rings from somewhere. Simply googling "Lego Ring" turned up lots of places to buy them. Then I looked for a good time to ask the question. This took months, it never seemed to be quite the right time or place. I was looking for for a romantic moment, but they never seemed right. Finally I resolved to ask on our fourth anniversary. We were on our way to what turned out to be a great night with Amanda Palmer, and I "subtly" suggested to Deb that since it was the 4th anniversary of us meeting, we should go to the spot where we met and take a picture.

We parked ourselves on one of the cement bollards outside the IMAX and took some pictures:

(Did I mention we were also all dressed up? Deb does this better than anyone with the exception possibly of RuPaul!)

And... I pulled from my pocket a Lego ring and handed it up to Deb. We had the following exchange:

Deb: What's this?
Me: It's a present!
Deb: What a lovely Lego ring!
Me: Well, it's a present and a question in the form of a present.
Deb: What do you mean?
Me: Well, what do men usually mean when they give a woman a ring?
Deb: Are you proposing????
Me: Yes!
Deb: Yes!
Me: Yes!
Deb: Yes!
Me: Wait... are you saying "yes I see your proposing" or "yes" to my proposal?
Deb: Yes!
Me: What, just like that? No if's or buts or...
Deb: What were you expecting?
Me: I don't know! Anything from a lecture about the patriarchy through to you running away screaming to a grudging acceptance with some caveats... Somehow this hadn't entered my mind as a possibility!

There followed a great deal of kissing... When who should ride up but Deb's ex Alex and his wife. They were looking for the now-traditional NYE bike ride that started from that spot - which was long departed. So... we got him to take a picture of us!



After that, I confess I spazzed out a bit. I wasn't quite expecting this outcome, Deb had stated a quite vehement dislike for marriage in the past. And then suddenly I was engaged!

Here's me spazzing:

(Note blue lipstick which Deb has transferred to my lips!)

After that we went off to see Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman over in Kensington, you can see the whole of our evening in this set of pictures.

My beautiful girlfriend Deb has a pony called Presto. He is ancient, in fact he's older than Deb - thirty three, which is about 70-something in human years. Which is very old for a horse.

In the last few months, he's been behaving oddly. Recently when Deb tried to ride him, he wouldn't turn left and had forgotten how to stop. More recently, he's been walking into fences, and getting stopped still by tiny twigs in his way. And has forgotten all his training.

Deb had a trainer out to work with him, but she struggled for an hour and a half to get him to do anything, and then he forgot it straight away.

All of which suggests that this old pony has had a stroke in the last few months, and is ailing much in the way a frail old grandmother might.

So Deb has to make some hard decisions soon. She's going to get the vet out to give him a proper look over. It's really hard because she's had this pony since she was thirteen.

Hey, time for some real news. After four years and eight months, I'm moving out of this flat of mine - the famed Batchelor Pad.

As mentioned previously, me and my extremely silly girlfriend are moving in together.

I moved in here back in February of 2005(!), when I was breaking up with my then fiancée. I'd moved in with her - first time I'd ever lived with a partner - down in the southern suburbs. North Caulfield in fact. The southern suburbs didn't take, nor did the engagement for that matter!

So I needed a place, rather quickly, to move to. The rental market then wasn't as fucked as it is now, and I found this place on the internet on a Sunday, viewed it on the Monday, and then rented it on the Tuesday!

I always thought of this place as being temporary, until I found another partner and got on with my life. But... it didn't quite work that way. This is in fact the longest I've lived in one place since I moved out of home in 1993.

And of course who can forget the ill-advised two and a half year relationship with a certain bassoonist - that didn't really help the plan along.

Anyway, I've moved all my books, my stereo and various other random shit to the new place. I'll be out of here finally just after my birthday.

One of the main reasons for this trip was to meet up with friends o' mine who are scattered all over the planet. So along these lines I met my friend Julia, current UK resident, at Charring Cross Station on Saturday. We had vague plans to make it to the National Portrait Gallery, on the proviso that if it was a lovely sunny day, we'd go for a walk instead.

As luck would have it, it was a lovely sunny day... In fact, of the maybe seventeen days I've spent in the UK, most of them have been lovely and sunny - which the locals tell me is very unusual. But to me it's just what the UK is like! I'm in for a rude shock if I'm ever there in Winter. There were stories in the free newspapers they give away on the tube about the unseasonably warm weather and how people were "sweltering" in 26 degree heat! I wanted to tell them about the 47 degree day we had in Melbourne back in February...

Anyway, Julia dragged me to a lovely French-themed cafe place, just across the river from Charring Cross. It being French-ish, I had a croissant with lots of cheese in it, and quiche, just to keep the Frenchness going! We chased this down with a very creamy pavlova - an Aussie dish, although its actual origions are lost in the mists of time, and an early version might actually have originated in New Zealand. I took a couple of very amusing pictures of Julia about the eat the pavlova, she had to be forcibly restrained from eating it for twenty seconds so I could take a picture!

And I am so going home from this trip heavier than I arrived. Although I have been walking for six to ten hours a day...

After that, we went on the aforementioned walk. Julia took me along the Thames a way, downstream, and then we crossed back to the other (northern?) bank near St. Paul's Cathedral. Or should I say, my cathedral :-)

We wandered around a bit in "The City", the square mile of London which is, officially, the city of London. It's almost dead on a weekend, most of the shops are shut, which surprised me. I've been told that it's so very business oriented that it really shuts down completely on a weekend.

We walked inland for a bit, until we encountered one edge of the Tower of London. I was a bit disappointed by said tower, it was a lot lower than I expected, although it turns out that what I had in mind was in fact the central White Tower, which is indeed an impressive building, and looks far less like one could scale it with a decent ladder. Oh, and I also found out that the some of the areas I was looking at had once been the moat, long since filled in, since yucky stuff from the Thames tended to collect there!

And then it was time to race out to Heathrow, for Cathy Pacific flight CX257, bearing mah Girlfriend! The plane was due to land at 4PM, but I figured it could be anything up to two hours before she emerged from the gates.

This time I knew what I was doing with the trains, so I hopped on at the Tower of London station, and changed at Green Park (I think) for the Piccadilly Line out to Terminal Three of Heathrow.

I got there at about 4.40PM, and made my way through a bewildering series of tunnels and corridors - I guess the worlds busiest airport takes up lots of space - until I found the arrivals area for Terminal three. It was surrounded by the usual throng of anxious families, and limo drivers holding signs with people's names on them.

The doors from the actually arrival area were more or less constantly open, disgorging what must have been hundreds of people into the airport. I was all worried that I wouldn't spot Deb in the throng, and kept on half recognising her in the distance - my brain doing stupid things with people with the barest resemblance. I remember thinking "well, that could be Deb, in certain lights, if she got a haircut and wore glasses!" I also worried that she'd already arrived and was sitting forelornly in some part of the terminal.

Eventually, after what seemed like ages - well, it didn't seem like it, it was - she emerged pushing a trolley from the doors. I managed to make it almost up to her before she saw me, and we exchanged a big hug.

She looked very bedraggled, like a tired kitten. It had been a shit flight, it sounded like - Melbourne to Hong Kong (coincidently on the same plane as my aunt who was off to Norway!). Then Hong Kong to London. The seats on her plane didn't recline as such, the base just sort of moved a bit, thus jamming your knees up against the seat in front. Then they messed up her order of a gluten free meal - bread rolls and things with oats on them are NOT gluten free! And they'd brought her maybe every third one of the drinks she'd has for. So it was no wonder she was looking a bit lots and dazed by the time I found her!

I bought her a litre bottle of water, most of which she drank straight away, and we began the long trudge back to Blackheath. Which meant walking to the train terminal, hopping on a Piccadilly train, hopping from that onto a Jubilee line train to London Bridge, then on a train out to Blackheath - which ended up being very crowded, not least because there was me with Deb's backpack, and another lady with a suitcase. Then we trudged all the way to Zoya's place, a good ten minute walk. And finally Deb was officially in London with me. Poor baby. She had a shower and then slept for about eleven hours....

Deb the Girlfriend came to visit me at my office this evening. She was at a conference which finished early, and couldn't drag me away from my desk early. So she turned up in my lobby!

Today she decided need to demonstrate just how much she liked me, which consisted of jumping in circles, like a wallaby, around me, singing "I like Pauly!". Then she decided I might have got dizzy from this, so she decided to jump around me in the opposite direction, this time going "Nom nom nom!!!"

Just what I like in a GF, enthusiastic lunacy :-)

And for some reason, here's a video:

Ah bugger, they've disabled embedding. So Push It!

Deb the aforementioned GF has a pony. Well, in fact, he's a horse, but he's a little horse, not much taller than a pony. I have a theory that pony's are really just like large grass-eating cats, and mostly today's visit bore this out.
( Pony Picture Spam )

I was downloading pictures off my phone the other night, and I realised they give a pretty good summary of my month. So here goes.
( Pictures In Here )

My evildoom_bunny is a goofball, and I can prove it...

( Goofball under here )