Finally, I have time to do an entry. Last night before dinner with my dad to discuss our Ireland jaunt and afterwards unexpectedly being invited to the pub and shouted three pints (not bad for someone with $0.00 to his name by the end of the day before payday), I had time at home to work on a couple of second-tier-urgency tasks. It’s going to be mayhem all the way until I go overseas on the 15th of September. I just counted six performances of various levels of intensity plus their rehearsals, four dinner parties (being part of a couple has made me into quite the social butterfly) and four million things to organise. I sit at the computer and the thought of writing an entry that even remotely does justice to everthing that’s been going on seems daunting. Anyway, here goes...

I’ve been hanging around Melbourne University a bit recently, being a convenient place to meet Marion when I have the day off. It seems that Melbourne Uni (like Diaryland of course) is still Hot-Babe-Central, especially the geeky slightly older postgrads. Although this is an academic (pun intended) question for the new Josquin, I sometimes wish my brain wasn’t hard-wired to appreciate pretty girls. Given that reacting to the average hot nineteen-year-old uses roughly 92% of my brain for at least three seconds (involuntarily), and that the prospect of getting together with said girl would be less likely than winning the lotto, even if I wasn’t with Marion, it would make my life easier if girls didn’t become hot until they were twenty-five or so. Eric, Melanie’s fiancé, said that his father once remarked on the subject of pretty girls that “It only gets harder as you get older”- probably to do with an increasing æthetic sensibility. Yeah, that’s something to look forward to... Anyway, that very long preamble was to introduce a bit of wisdom on the wall of a toilet at Melbourne Uni (the source of much dross and the odd gem) that coincidently is about aging: “A shit never used to feel so good- the benefits of growing old”. Thus spake the toilet wall, and a truer word was never said.

Marion and I have been having a great time. Friday night was dancing (a bit like in March but a lot dirtier). The merengue is indeed a sexy dance, but it becomes a little impractical when you’re holding each other like siamese twins joined at the... well, pretty much everywhere. On Saturday it was Carolyn’s 30th birthday party. She and Thomas are a prime example of the May-September choir romance still going strong ten years and two children later. Three or four glasses of wine into the meal, Melanie asked me about when I went to Guvano beach with Henry last year. I was tipsy enough to say that since swimming naked in the warm, salty (which gives you floatation) Mediterranean last year, swimming with bathers (Melbourne term for swimming costume) at the local pool has never been quite the same. I said all the beaches at the Cinque Terre were nice with lots of Italian boys in skimpy bathers, but she really wanted to swim naked at Guvano beach. I wasn’t tipsy enough to mention that Melbourne has a perfectly good clothing optional beach, even if the weather isn’t as consistently good as in Italy in summer. All this didn’t seem to worry Marion too much, which can only be a good thing.

On Sunday after choir and a long lunch, I invited Marion back to my place for dinner (yes, it was a long lunch). We snogged, I made a mean Napolitana, we snogged, we watched Pride and Prejudice, we snogged & more. To use the awful baseball analogy, we didn’t hit a home run, but the bases are loaded. Yuck! The analogy that is, not us two... that was rather nice. When Marion went back to her worrying, protective mother, she seemed quite emotional as we walked to her car. When I asked if she was OK she said she was fine, really good. So I have to be really gentle with her, even if she doesn’t show much emotion normally. She’s a bit like me in that way.

We had lunch yesterday and walking and smooching in the park. It’s a bit risky smooching in a nearly empty park if one wants to be a little naughty, as you have no vision, and people appear out of nowhere. Fortunately we managed to stay decent, if a little sickening...

I’m not accustomed to things going this well. Earlier in the year I was thinking to myself that maybe I’m ready to settle down (at last!). Has this made me unconsciously eschew red-headed temptresses and the like for someone not as glamourous but ultimately more rewarding? Maybe not: I always fancied Marion, but didn’t know how I would approach the whole thing. I did have an inkling that it would be a long (if rewarding) process. And rewarding it is indeed!

Here’s an interesting entry I’ve been reading by .

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