Oh, hello.

My new next door neighbour has been around to apologise in advance if there is a racket tonight, moving furniture in. The house has been Let, it seems.

I've no idea where the family who owns the house has gone. In fact, I've probably already spoken more to my new next door neighbour than I did to either the bloke (don't even know his name) or Claire.

The new neighbour is not an attractive, single woman.

Sigh.

Well, well!

Imagine my surprise when I received a message on Facebook Messenger last night from none other than CH. The message itself was a little confusing - one sentence, but the picture that accompanied it told another story. It was a picture of a birthday card that I'd gotten her a few years ago, the night of the weirdly toned text messages (see this post)

I think it's the most personal thing that CH has done/said to me since we reconciled just before she left work around 18 months ago... and that was after she'd not spoken to me in almost 9 months because of some perceived sleight because of mild criticism about her reliability.

Of course, I offered to buy her a drink/coffee seeing as it is/was her birthday around now. I'd love it if she accepted.

Sigh. Here we go again. (Again)

As I had guessed from this post, the comments from my "proper" boss have come in and they feel very "made up" to me. That's not to say that there aren't seeds of truth in there - I'm not going to pretend to be the world's greatest employee. I have had a couple of issues this year, but I would maintain that there are extenuating circumstances that should absolve me of most of the blame and show that it's not just plain carelessness. There are also a couple of things that he's credited to me that are simply incorrect and are not my fault or responsibility.

There are a couple of other things mentioned that are, in my opinion, differences of opinion, rather than me doing anything wrong per se. He's angry because I don't do things his way rather than me not following any official process.

None of this should reflect the numerical score that he's provided. I've forwarded his comments on to my immediate managers for reference and will be following up with my "proper" boss after I come back from a few days of well-earned annual leave. The problem with subjective criticism is that it can't really be proven wrong except in some instances, but his lack of objective marking should be held against him.

Sigh. Here we go again.

I thought that the issues with my boss had been put to bed, but he gave me a surprise mid-year appraisal last week and it was, to be blunt, fucking appalling. There are several things wrong here. The first is that we're meant to be doing ongoing assessment, so it shouldn't have taken this long to communicate the scores. The second is that the score is far too low. The third is that I believe the score's subjective rather than objective.

I don't know the exact details as yet, I just know the numerical value and a couple of comments.

However, I can guess that the numerical value has been guessed rather than calculated and that his reasoning for such a poor mark will undoubtedly come from a couple of incidents where he was unhappy with my performance. Not that my performance has been bad this year, just that I haven't delivered exactly what my boss wants or needs on one or two occasions... but often he doesn't vocalise these things until he doesn't get what he wants.

As I've no doubt mentioned before, he has over-reacted to half a dozen minor incidents that seem to anger him a lot more than they should.

So my assumption at this stage is that my mark is mostly personal - subjective rather than objective.

I don't think my relationship with him is going to get any better when I pretty much challenge him on everything - asking how he worked out the figures, what the formulae were that he used, how different grades are compared against each other etc.

He won't have answers to any of these.

I will ask why I wasn't given a goal setting meeting, despite asking for one. I will ask how I am meant to achieve targets and goals when they are not given to me nor is their method of measurement.

My email will run into hundreds, if not thousands of words showing him that I have given my scores for this year much more thought than he has.

I had the same issue with my old boss last year around the objective vs subjective scoring, but at least he didn't have anything personal against me.

Talking.

I kinda cracked and sent screenshots of the Facebook conversation to KfW2 via Whatsapp. I'd rather have spoken to her in person, but it kinda came up in our chat conversation, so it seemed appropriate to share.

KfW2 called me and told me she had a feeling that IG was feeling something. I told her that I kinda knew that already and was carefully trying not to give her any ideas. She asked if I were going to go for it. I said that I'd not. KfW2 suggested that I should... if only to "get back on the horse".

"She's seems quite funny", said KfW2.

"She's a lovely girl" I replied.

"So?"

"So?" I echoed. "There's just no attraction there of any kind"

"You're gonna need to address that", she warned.

"I had thought that it had been sorted"

"What did you say?"

I can't remember the exact words, but I do remember talking to IG one night about who and what I was looking for. At least physically, I was describing the complete opposite of IG. Age-wise, too, she was not ticking any boxes. She's probably six or seven years younger than the youngest girl I'd consider dating (at least on paper/ticking criteria on a dating site).

"I can't remember... I was probably talking around it rather than tackling it head on."

"Yeah, I guessed as much" teased KfW2.

We left it at that and moved on to other topics.

Grrrr...

The frustration from the IG text messages on Saturday night/Sunday morning have not lessened. While I can't say that sex was 100% on offer, it really did seem like that.

The frustration is that it wasn't someone that I would have agreed to call over. I'm struggling to think who that actually might be, mind you. I was going to suggest E3, given that she has/used to have a crush on me and still lives in the same city, but that's it and even that's tenuous at best.

I'm interested to find out what KfW2 has to say about it. I've not yet had a chance to talk to her and I won't see her in person for a couple of days.

Oh dear.

Within seconds of me getting into bed last night, IG sent a message on Facebook.

Was I out?

I replied that I wasn't.

Did I want some company?

I said that I was in bed.

She reiterated her question.

I reiterated that I was in bed.

I put down the phone and went to sleep. When I woke this morning, IG had continued sending messages, calling me a disaster and implying, I think, that my inflexibility was why I was still single. She also made comments about me not being attracted to her.

None of this is news to me. I already know that once I am settled for the evening, that it's almost impossible to get me out the door, even if that's at 8 PM (rather than after midnight like the above conversation). I've turned down nights out with GM and S, for example, because they didn't call until well after 9 PM and I was watching a film.

And while I like IG, I am not attracted to her in any physical or romantic way. She's good fun, but there's nothing more there. That's the second time that she's implied something more than platonic friendship directly to me. Next time, I will have to say something.

And there's frustration, too. If I am reading the messages correctly, IG was offering a booty call. Why couldn't that have been someone I was even mildly attracted to?

T-t-t-t-t-t-touch me.

A chance meeting with Friction Guy at lunch prompted a quick conversation about meeting for drinks soon. FBS quickly replied. For some reason that reminded me of the last time we were out and my perception of FBS being overly tactile as well as an added kiss at the end of the night.

Kisses on the lips from female friends are not unusual. I've had them off CH (though I've wondered how platonic those were as well), Sports Girl and KfW2,as a few examples. Getting one from FBS is out of the ordinary - I've spoken about how our friendship has been over the past 20 years, mainly due to my immaturity/privacy issues. I don't see D, Friction Guy or Opinionated Guy getting them, hence the confusion.

That sent my imagination into overdrive which, while the thoughts themselves were very pleasant, it was frustrating enough when I was in a training course all afternoon.

Here we go again.

Sports Girl sent a message last weekend.

"We haven't had a night out in ages. We should go out next weekend! FC is on-board. Let's go dancing."

I agreed. She talked about where to go and once tentative plans had been made, it all went quiet.

KfW2 was incredulous when I told her, but that was a misunderstanding on her part about our friendship. She had assumed that SG was only introduced to us as GM's girlfriend, not realising or remembering that there was 18 months of supposed platonic friendship between them beforehand.

KfW2 sent a text message of her own yesterday morning.

"If SG's night out doesn't happen, come down to ours"

I was pretty sure the SG night out wouldn't happen. I'd already said as much to KfW2 on Thursday. SG is flaky, as I've no doubt mentioned before.

I declined KfW2's offer saying that I was going to head to my sister's if SG didn't come through. Sadly, that didn't happen either, so I sat in with a few beers and watched some TV and played some video games.

Ideas Girl also messaged me. There didn't seem to be any point to the conversation, and it pretty much halted when I went to bed at midnight. That's happened before - late night messaging for seemingly no reason that just halts when one of us goes to bed.

Things that make you go "hmmm".

I struck gold with Bumble earlier this week. A stunningly attractive blonde girl matched with me and even messaged too! But that stopped as soon as it started.

Plus she's 5000 miles away, so I've no idea how we matched in the first place. Nor do I think her photos make her look in her early forties as she claims. She looks early twenties.

Along similar lines, a friend of CC's who I've matched with on Tinder before (who closed her account before I had a chance to message) is also back on. While kids and distance are a problem (to me), she gives off a vibe that would make me pursue something if we do end up matching.

In addition, KfW2 and I were out with her kids. We had both taken some personal time from work. We do this reasonably frequently, but today, while looking after her ankle biters at an outdoor play park, she was doing a lot of bending over and giving me a right eyeful down her baggy top.

While my non-platonic feelings for KfW2 are gone or buried really deep, this sight, along with the recent online dating experience has brought certain frustrations to the surface.

In addition, the hair loss that I noticed a few weeks back seems to be a lot more advanced/prominent than I had realised, thanks to a photo that KfW2 took today. While I'm not particularly vain, this has caused a bit of a funk, assuming that it is going to continue and isn't a temporary side-effect of this year's stress.

Bah (updated).

I have a good GP. When I called on Monday morning at 10 AM for an appointment, I was in the surgery at 3 PM.

It's an inflammation of the shoulder joint, something my brother-in-law suffered from a year or so back. The pain is excruciating. During my twenty-odd years of playing sports and the various injuries I've picked up, nothing has caused pain this bad. Luckily, it only happens when I move my arm a certain way and my GP has given me a prescription for anti-inflammatory medication which is already working.

I have two weeks worth of pills to take, so hopefully within a week or so, once those are done, I'll be back to normal.