Relating 1

Well, there you are. I am pleased to see you haven't disappeared while I have been visiting a loved one, at 34c in my scarlet swimming costume. He is there to work so we could not spend all that much time together. He joined me for breakfast on his day off announcing there were not many people he would be up for at 10 o'clock in the morning on his day off. There are not many people I would tolerate 34c for, on my day off or any other day come to that, so we agreed we were 'ad idem' in the fondness stakes, though, I suspect , secretly he did see his as the greater sacrifice. It got me thinking about relationships. Now, I don't want to mislead you: I spend most of my life thinking about relationships, professionally and for pleasure. Gossip and curiosity have been my hobbies throughout my whole life. Perhaps , what I should have said is that it prompted more thinking about relationships when I should have been on holiday and giving my brain a good rest. Anyway, it is, actually, very simple: there are people for whom we would gladly over-heat or for whom we would happily lose sleep , and there are people who make us boil and who annoy us in to losing sleep!
I do get rather over-heated on the subject of the Estate Agent who has been handling the sale of my sea-side studio. (See 'Demandingness') An accepted offer has now fallen through and I am not sanguine about the quality of his interest in selling it with its bath in the living room "not to everybody's taste". At the time we accepted the offer my instinct told me it should not be counted on and I asked him not to take it off the market. I don't know, and he did'nt explain whether this was ethical, or even legal, or not, but he did not do as I asked and made no effort to find another buyer. So we are back to the begining in an appalling state of the market. I was reminded of this when a dear friend was talking about a rather glamorous new boy-friend she has acquired. In the first flush of the relationship he seemed to be everything a girl could wish for, good-looking, gifted, kind, thoughtful, sensitive, not in the least competitive - she is quite something in the glamour/achievement stakes herself - and altogether good news. No grown-up would really expect this to go on being an unadulterated account of the state of the affair and, gradually, the picture has had to be modified; not much, I have to say, but modified, nevertheless. The principal addendum is that he doesn't do long-term committment. My dear friend sees that this, as it happens, suits her, too and they are having a lovely time enjoying the here and now: enjoying living. What amused me was the link with the Estate Agent: although she is, as it were, under offer, that need'nt mean she should come off the market. These agreements do fall through and other prospects could be kept on the books. What do you think? The question of ethics remains relevant, but the point of telling you was more about the parallel with house selling, which amused me, than about the question of right and wrong.

I have just added a 1 to the title. Relating could easily run to 101, but that's as far as we can go to-day. See you soon.