INTERNET DATING Part V

Bloggiana’s latest internet conquest PokeyMokey seems to have the bit between his teeth. He is the one who virtually winked at Bloggiana (aka SpankyDonkey) via the dating website the week before last, sent her a bunch of virtual flowers and a lewd remark last week; and this week, is now angling for an actual face-to-face encounter. When I tell Bloggiana the good news, for some strange reason she comes over all cool.

But Bloggiana, I tell her, he’s a Sagittarius. I know, she wails fearfully. But Bloggiana, I ask her, what’s wrong with that? I don’t know, she wails fearfully.

This morning, the PokeyMokey subject foremost in our minds, Bloggiana and I come together to engage in a heart to heart. We take up positions for once not in the tack room of our livery yard and not in the parlour of our house where there is more wind than light; but outside in Our Garden on the bench that faces south-southwest. All around us are leaves that have tumbled down from the prunuses we planted a decade ago, from the rowan tree, from the copper beeches, from the huge sycamore that towers over the beck. Twigs surround us too, blown off by last night’s gales, waiting now until the spring when the crows will come and find them or the jackdaws. Mud seeps up about our shoes, and in the border, the dying euphorbia is gold with death and the cerinthe long past its best.

Deep in thought and before either of us has uttered a word, we rise from our bench to take one last look at our 2008 garden. As we squelch by, the Prince of Wales feathers glance at us forlornly; the dogwood shivers in the autumn cold, its bare red legs bright among the brown; the stems of balsam that all summer rose up like American basketball players bend double, their bottoms way above their heads. We wander over a long summer of mowing and strimming and before that a spring of pruning and weeding and before that a winter of cold consolidation. In fact, our walk spans our time here, taking in the shrubs we planted from the very first, the drystone walls we had built, the borders we moulded, the nooks and crannies we filled with incidental splashes of colour from tulips or violas or nastertiums or grasses.

At last we return to our south-southwest facing bench, sit down and embark on the matter at hand. So old girl, I venture, my lips in the November sun turning a dim shade of cornflower blue, I mean you simply have to tell me. Why are you getting cold feet?

Bloggiana raises her young-looking hand to her mid- to dark-brown hair. She widens her deep to hazel brown eyes, curls up her 5’4”-6’1” frame through her average to curvaceous body type and moans aloud.

Oh I don’t know, she says, it’s just, I suppose, I never expected the whole thing to become so real.