Ah Saturdays, usually spent in the bar having a few beers and talking bollocks with my mates.

But not yesterday – yesterday I had another date with Marina (she’s Greek, gorgeous, and has the most amazing eyes) and we went to Trafalgar Square (there was an anti-war demonstration going on, so we stood and listened to George Galloway and Tariq Ali address the massive crowd there) to visit the National Gallery in London.

Now I like art, but have never visited this place before (oh, don’t worry – I WILL go back there – I only saw a tiny portion of the works there). Seeing these beautiful paintings in their original state is just astounding – some of them really do take your breathe away – Van Gogh’s Sunflowers is an example – it grabs your attention from everything else in the room – it glows and radiates such light 🙂

I’ve always been a fan of Monet, and saw a painting yesterday I’ve never seen before – Water Lilies at Sunset:

Again, this image is NOTHING like looking at the real thing, you just can’t see the reflections and the way from some angles it looks like the lilies are floating above the canvas 🙂 standing about 10 foot away from it, you expect so see a drop fall and ripple on the water.

We spent 4 hours in the museum and saw maybe 150 paintings – it was a truly awestruck snee that left when it closed…

We then went to a pub nearby (The Chandos) – absolutely packed and a great place to people watch. We found a window seat we could squeeze onto and had a drink, chatted, laughed (a lot) and discussed our fellow drinkers – who was with who, why this one guy in a group seemed to be completely estranged from it, how this one guy with a young girl seemed to be gay, but she looked like she was so into him…a couch became free, but before we could grab it, 3 people sat down, and gave us a new group to discuss. Marina asked me what I thought they were doing there (they seemed so out of place). I pondered it for a moment and came up with they were a couple into swinging, the third guy was their ‘date’ (Marina laughed so hard I thought she’d choke – I got her a coffee seeing as alcohol goes straight to her head, and fast). The third guy looked a bit uncomfortable – Marina noticed this too – I said it was because he was regretting wearing the rubber underpants 😉 then there was the guy in the corner drinking quietly while doing a crossword – while he was thinking about the clues, he was spinning the pen in his hand with such skill, we were both dumbstruck watching it. Another couple of hours spent happily there…

We wandered up to Leicester Square next, and had some dinner in a little place there, then walked around for a bit – it’s so nice to be able to just saunter along seeing all these great buildings, and it was reasonably warm, so a very enjoyable walk (might have had something to do with the company of a gorgeous woman).

We walked to Green Park, then got the tube back to Kings Cross – it’s quicker for me to travel 60 miles back home than for Marina to go 3 miles 🙂 The look of absolute delight on her face when she asked me if I wanted to go back to see her, and I replied ‘of course’ was so nice to see 🙂 she really likes me…

I got home and managed to make it to the pub for a last pint, then wandered home – and that’s where it all turned to shit.

Remember Maria? the mad Scot? yeah – THAT one…

Walking home, my phone rang – not recognising the number I picked it up – it was her 😐

Bleah, bleah, bleah, “I’m so sorry for how I treated you…I still love you, I’ve never stopped loving you…bleah, bleah, bleah” I was polite, listened to her, told her I didn’t accept her apology for the way she treated me, I still in fact hated her for the way she dismissed my grief for losing my dad and sister and constantly bombarded me with calls/texts at that time despite me begging her to give me some time to get over my grief…I told her I’d listened enough to her and was hanging up and not to contact me again.

After dropping 6 or 7 calls from her, and ignoring about 8 texts, I turned my phone off (something I never do). Turning it on this morning, I got an alert saying there’d been a further 10 calls and 4 texts from her – psycho bitch. I forwarded her number to Harriett (she managed to get rid of her for me before – diamond that she is), and hopefully that’s that…

I fancy Sunday lunch at the Royal Oak today – I’ll see if Harriett fancies coming 🙂