Being Apart

Do two lovers really miss the tranquility of solitude? I'm not usually given to questioning the wisdom of Paul Weller's lyrics, but I only ask because it's awfully quiet around here without my husband-to-be. Perhaps too quiet. After much agonising he decided to accept a three month contract doing something technical for a gambling company in Gibraltar. Within days of saying yes to the post he'd flown around 1080 miles to the other side of Europe and left me here. So I'm living alone for the first time in around a decade.

The changes have been quite dramatic, as one would expect. There's less washing and ironing piling up and the flat seems to be maintaining a higher level of tidiness than usual. I have also received a number of invitations to dinner from friends and neighbours. This amuses me greatly as we never received even half as many invitations as a couple! Actually, I think I should start inviting other people over to eat as I'm finding it difficult to scale back portion sizes. I made enough rice for two the other night, but ate it anyway. If I carry on like this I shall be enormous August.

Together my absent love and I have discovered the wonders of Skype, which enables me to see if he is looking tired or suffering from sore hayfever eyes from the comfort of the kitchen while I'm cooking my gargantuan feasts for one. The laptop lets me make a fuss of him from afar and he gets the dubious pleasure of seeing my ugly mug every night. I'm trying to choose a variety of locations around the flat to host our chats, changing the props and backdrops for each video call so that he doesn't get bored. He likes to play with extreme close up shots. So far a carton of orange juice (because the Spanish for juice is "zuma" or something similar, and that's a funny word), some sparkling mineral water (because it had gas in it, and that was apparently funny too) and a jumbo sized heel blister (because he wore the wrong socks with the wrong shoes) have loomed up at me from my screen. I get the feeling that our chats will soon be stage-managed, epic productions on the scale of "Lawrence of Arabia".

I'm not really totally alone, of course. Thanks to his mad panic trying to find some scales to check that his hold baggage wasn't over the weight limit the night before he flew out, everyone in our building knows that he's gone and I'm still here. Apparently the chap downstairs knows Gibraltar well as he used to live there. His dad used to be an air traffic controller there, which is nice. Neighbours, friends and the internet don't necessarily make this whole process a lot easier, though. I think this is by far the hardest thing we've ever done as a couple. He's only a wee fella, but it's amazing how much space there is around here when he's gone. Still, three months is nothing. He'll be popping back and forth - in fact he should be here later tonight as we're off to see the registrar and complete our legal preliminaries for marriage on Tuesday. Then come October we'll be married and he'll be mine forever. I shall try my best never to let him go again, but I suspect he'll have other ideas. He's full of surprises. He may take a new contract with a yurt manufacturer in Outer Mongolia, or something similar. Or maybe I could get my own back and become a seasonal sheep shearer on Mull. His unpredictable nature can cause a lot of grief, but it's one of the reasons I love him. It doesn't do to make life too predictable, does it?