Sole

Kim sent me a postcard, thanking me for "a truly wonderful time". It'll have a privileged place on my bedroom wall.

Yesterday, Trina and I coated the air with the fishy smell of kippers and lemon sole, then went for a drink before this month's wine tasting. It was the Veneto region, and I had some of the blandest whites I have ever tasted. "Wedding wine", someone said. "Hen party wine," she added. The reds were excellent though.

At the end of the evening I stood up to announce my next Belgian Beer Tasting, and my plans for an Anglo-French cider taste-off in July. Out of the corner of my eye, as I circulated and tried to gather people's email addresses, I could see Trina sitting sullenly.

In the pub afterwards, it all turned sour. She was annoyed that I was running the beer tasting on an evening I'd told her I'd be getting ready for my France holiday. "You told me you weren't going to do it that night, so I've made other plans." "I know darling--believe me, until half an hour ago, I didn't think I was doing it either. It was just with all those people there and people asking me about the last one, I decided to reinstate it."

What had up to then been a most enjoyable evening, descended into me fencing off her familiar riff, of how I constantly indicate I am not ready for any kind of commitment, about how I exclude her. "I just don't think about 'the relationship' very much, or as deeply as you do," I said--which irritated her even further.

Back here, I laid out my bed downstairs, to which I repair because of her snoring, before going back up to the bedroom. I started getting ready to get into bed with her. "No," she said. "You may as well go now."

I got up this morning and went upstairs to see if we could kiss and make up. She had gone, leaving a farewell note on the pillow, saying that she is "finishing this often lovely and often difficult relationship." A couple of weeks ago we booked a few days away in Strasbourg. "Take Kim," she said. "She'd love it," something which was said unenviously, with her customary generosity.

But on the substantive issue I think she's right: I'm unable to agree to what eventually I would find a stifling, conventional, dreary relationship. The thought of marriage repels me, and I had felt us drifting towards it, without the certificate.