The late late post.

More pandemic boredom and I've gone down a rabbit hole on YouTube watching old videos of Craig Ferguson interview people on the Late Late Show. It's been greatly entertaining. There are compilation videos on YouTube, so see if you can find your favourite celebrity being interviewed. As someone who's not really au fait with American late night talk shows, I really enjoyed his irreverent style and they provide some much-needed laughter.

Family/Affair

Another night, another weird dream. In this one, my Dad suddenly disappeared and we simply couldn't find him. He wouldn't answer his phone or emails etc. In the meantime, I started an affair with my next door neighbour. I don't know where her husband was in this dream, but he was never around. Months later my Dad walks in through the door, having taken himself off on a trip around Europe for reasons that never became clear.

Of course the dream is based on some subjects that I've been thinking about a lot recently: companionship and travel. And those have been on my mind this morning.

Smile.

I'd been feeling a little down. The isolation of the pandemic and lockdown was getting to me and I was feeling a little off with KfW2 as the last couple of times she's communicated with me have been work-related and very much asking for favours.

I've felt that we've been growing apart anyway for the past few years - her new job, her new commuting pattern, her kids going to school etc. have really meant that our contact and socialising has really dropped off in frequency despite efforts to get her out to the pub/my house for adult days/nights out.

And then today, she phoned, quite out of the blue. We spoke for nearly 45 minutes - a kind of conversation that we've not had in a long time - probably since the start of last summer, when she called in for a socially distanced cup of tea and we sat in my back garden.

It's proper made my day.

Random Access Memories Pt 2

A few days ago, I posted something about a memory and how my recollection of it didn't stack up to what should have been the actuality.

A similar thing happened this morning. I've posted about this memory before, I think. I'm lying in bed with FBS. I think it was the last time we slept together (in both meanings of the phrase). However, my memory of the evening ends after a rather explosive climax and I'm lying in bed, with FBS to my right, and we're chatting. We fall asleep.

My memory of the next morning is waking up, with FBS on my left, but I have no recollection of us swapping places during the night, and any time I'd stayed over previously, I'd always been on the same side of the bed... to FBS's right per my memory of the morning after.

Clearly both memories can't be accurate. One of them has to be wrong, and my money is on the immediate aftermath of us having sex.

Admittedly, this is also a long time ago, so I don't expect my memory to be perfect, but it is interesting how the mind works.

Targets

I don't live in England, but I'm pretty sure that our roadmap for vaccination and ending the lockdown will look a lot like England's roadmap. If that's the case then the last of the restrictions should be lifted by the end of June.

Pubs. I'm talking about pubs. That also means seeing friends and family, BBQs (if the weather's nice) and having a generally social summer.

Maybe it's a bit too early to be planning - I've not seen our roadmap after all, but I can't help but be excited and optimistic about it... as long as people aren't dicks and take the piss out of every little easing of every restriction. That's partly why we're still in this position.

Hopefully soon. The end of June is roughly 17 weeks away. That's something to aim for... to look forward to.

Random access memory.

A story on some of the sports websites I follow today prompted a memory of years ago. BW and I had been out shopping and popped into one of our then-favourite bars for a pint prior to going home. Grabbing our beers, we adjourned to our usual seats and found a discarded copy of The Guardian.

Usually, we'd not bother with it, but there was an advert for The Guardian's very own Fantasy Football competition. That piqued my interest and before long, BW and I were engrossed in the stats. It was a good few hours later when we finally had our squad together, ready to post. We'd only meant to be in the pub for about half an hour, just to kill a bit of time.

The thing is, my memory of this afternoon has it being a dark, wet, cold day in the middle of winter. But the timing of the fantasy football competition would have meant this this had to have been probably the middle of the summer - late July or some time in August - before the football season kicked off.

To be fair, it is probably 25 years ago

American Dreams

Another travel-related dream, this time, I'm spending an awful lot of time and money and just lounging around in NY, Manhattan to be precise. It's summer, the weather is fantastic and I just spend weeks, if not months, just trundling around the place, meeting people, drinking and generally having fun.

I don't have the time nor the money to indulge in something like that, but that would be a pretty fricking awesome summer, if you ask me.

Boredom stuff.

I don't know why I've continued to browse Tinder and other online dating apps over the past year... meeting people during lockdowns and a global pandemic isn't the world's greatest idea, but I need something and the fantasy of meeting someone new is at least a minor distraction.

I was messaging ES a few days ago, again just to break the monotony rather than for a specific reason when I noticed that she's Facebook friends with yet another local celebrity who pops up on Tinder from time to time. I always swipe right (or whatever the positive action is for the app in question) but we've never matched sadly.

And so, guess who pops up on Tinder today? Well, it's not ES so it has to be the brunette local celebrity. I doubt we'll match. We haven't until now, why would that change? Fingers crossed though!

Sigh.

I'm pretty sure that I've posted previously about not making a big thing of St Valentine's Day. I've never celebrated it, any girlfriends I've been dating at the time haven't made a big deal of it and I don't ever remember sending a proper, anonymous, Valentine's card.

I don't think I've ever received one, either, apart from a jokey one once, from AM and QC1.

Today has been different though. I've seen some posts on social media that have made me feel a little lonely, both in a general and a romantic way. I presume this has been brought on by lockdown, the pandemic and all that sort of stuff.

Ah well, let's get this out of the way and stuff our face full of pancakes on Tuesday, yeah?

Dreams, baby.

After a couple of nights of restless or no sleep, I did manage to sleep well last night. I woke this morning, only really remembering the tail end of the dream - I met a girl in a café, and we went back to my place. The girl in question, in the dream, was unknown to me, but physically resembled Kate Upton.

We ended up having sex, in the same room as my Dad weirdly, trying not to get caught on. I disappointed the poor girl terribly, though she tried to brush it off. We fell asleep and parted ways the next morning on good terms, never to see each other again... only to bump into each other a year later, with the unknown girl wheeling a pram.

And that's when I woke up.

Stares wistfully into the distance.

Fed up of the lockdown? Pandemic got you sick of staying indoors? Yup, me too. So I found this video on YouTube. Relaxing music and a change of scenery... for two hours. Thailand isn't anywhere I've wanted to travel, but the video makes me want to travel to sunny climes with high-end video equipment and make videos just like this.
 

Urgh.

Oh fuck. I think I dropped off to sleep last night/this morning about 5:55 and woke just over an hour ago. I managed to log on to work on time, but I am still in my pyjamas and haven't had a shower. 

I am absolutely hanging. There was no reason for the lack of sleep - no illness, stress, stomach issues or even company. It was just one of those nights that I seem to have a few times a year.

Lack of sleep does me in, so today at work is going to be a slog.

I predict lots and lots of coffee.

Dream a little dream.

I woke this morning after a dream that featured QC2, lots of sunny weather, possibly a foreign location and a bikini. In the dream, we were dating, though sex didn't feature.

Now, I had a MASSIVE crush on QC2 back in the day, but while I was appreciative of her figure (I think I posted before about how well she filled a pair of black 501s), it was very much a girlfriend crush rather than anything lusty/physical.

So, despite never really having thought of her sexually and not having actually seen or heard from her in, what, seven or eight years, dreaming about her last night, in that way was surprising. And frustrating.

And I have seen her in a swimsuit, when we were doing a charity thing together. And even then, no inappropriate thoughts crossed my mind.

So, I was frustrated today. And I do miss QC2/our semi-regular nights out. And a little confused about my dream.