blow blow thou winter wind

one of this winter's new pleasures is cycling home in brilliant sunshine past battersea power station, with its attending yapping dogs home, along the riverbank in the park past the peace pagoda, infested with joggers, across the lovely albert bridge to the chelsea embankment, with its egyptian-throne style benches beseiged by house-boats, etc, etc

however, it seems that not everything in the loved-one's conciousness is fully illuminated ... i said that if she really loved me, then she'd have anticipated my imminent arrival & been waiting on the doorstep in her best underwear

she made no comment

then i found the thorntons oriental ginger chocolate bar she had left for me next to the keyboard

but if she really loved me, she'd have bought three, then remembered my weight problem, put one back, & brought home two ! Q.E.D!

one way of maintaining contact

"If you knew how sensitive i am, you would have e-mailed me months ago !"

Saturday at dawn, I suggested to The Loved One that she might be having difficulty getting to sleep at nights if she was trying to make a mental list my virtues.

She said that she had indeed struggled to get up from zero to one, but would possibly make it from one to two, if only I could

i) get out of bed right now

& ii) brew her a cup of Earl Grey.

joe bialik says ...

the best two low-down dirty emotional blackmailers cliches he can think of, after a fine education, are:

"you've really let us ( the school, the headmaster, the staff, the caretaker & cleaners, society in general ) down rather badly"

and

"now look what you've gone & made me do"

which is probably out of the original laurel & hardy primer

day one between sneezes

"There are seven deadly sins ... & the eighth & worst is EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL"

I began our early conversation on Sunday morning, baking-hot beneath two duvets, before we had opened our eyes, with this gambit:

“If you really loved me, you’d have taken my bicycle before dawn, & cycled, still in your pyjamas, with a machete clenched between your teeth, to the tropical hot-house at Kew Gardens to shin up a palm tree & bring me a fresh coconut.”

The Loved One, obviously fully alert, but sounding very bored;

“I think I’ll have to eat those last two astonishingly delicious Anton Berg strawberry & champagne chocolates myself this morning.”

Myself, badly deflated by her expert counter-punching;

“You’ll miss me when I’ve joined the Foreign Legion.”