I have been away

No, not literally. (I wish). Just away from my blog. I feel peculiarly guilt-ridden not to have written a single sentence for several weeks (to add to the long, long list of things I already feel guilty about) and I feel equally guilt-ridden (no, actually more so) not to have read/commented on the blogs that I follow and care about. It has been an impossibly busy few weeks. I don't understand how other bloggers do it: they manage to sound so wonderfully well-informed about world affairs etc. and are also so wonderfully articulate about their own lives, too. Plus they find the time to read/post comments on eachothers blogs. How do they do it?

I never seem to have a minute to spare (and I'm not even working full-time). I guess I just have to face the fact that my time-management skills are pretty rubbish and perhaps I'm just not as switched-on or efficient as I like to think I am. I often don't know which day of the week it is and, a few days ago, when attempting to book a single-parent holiday for my girls and I (perhaps more of which later) I was unable to remember whether Youngest Daughter was eleven or twelve. How bad is that?

Have had my Sad South African Brother visiting for the past three weeks which has meant:

1. Ludicrous amounts of adult beverages consumed on a daily basis
2. Late-night conversations re. what a sh*t our father was/is/always will be (emotionally repressed, distant, unable to parent us in a way that we BOTH still need/want him to ... even though SSAB and I are in our forties and should by now - as parents ourselves - have outgrown the need for parenting, surely?)
3. ACDC at Wembley (too loud)
4. Bruce Springsteen in Hyde Park (incredibly good)
5. Madonna at the O2 (impressively energetic but sooooo out of tune)
6. Late-late-night conversations re. why both our lives are such a mess/whether we can really blame our father for absolutely everything/the best way to peel a mango/if you could only ever shag one more person in your life, who would it be?

So, I have been otherwise occupied. But SSAB departs for Johannesburg tomorrow (I will be both heartsore and happy to see him go) and then my intention is to write more. Hopefully.

The good thing is, I've been so, so busy that I've barely had time to think about Brixton Man.

I only thought about him a few weeks ago, when we both should have been at a friend's engagement party at a pub in Wandsworth. He went, I didn't. Well, not technically anyway. I did, however, end up outside the pub just before closing time (having had dinner dangerously nearby with my gorgeous girlfriends and having consumed an above-average amount of Pinot Grigio) and I watched his bald head and pink t-shirt through the upstairs window. (Which technically makes me a stalker. I know, I know. I'm not proud.)

I lurked in the shadows, smoked a Marlboro Light and felt like a lovesick fifteen-year-old. I questioned my sanity (not for the first time). I deliberated over whether or not I should make a dramatic last-minute appearance. But I'm happy to say (there is a God!) that I managed to restrain myself. At closing time, I watched him leave and it broke my heart. He exited the pub in a group and for one dreadful, horrible moment I thought that a girl, barefoot and in a black dress, was going to leave with him. But he walked alone to his motorbike, put on his helmet, climbed on and roared off right past me, without her.

I only thought about him the other day when I heard the news that Michael Jackson had died and I wondered what he would make of it and whether he would be sad (not likely).

And I only thought about him again last night at the O2 as I watched a bald man dancing (terribly, terribly badly) to the tuneless ex-Mrs Ritchie, just a few rows in front of me. Although I knew it couldn't possibly be him (too tall, plus Brixton Man knows how to throw some mean shapes, plus he wouln't be seen dead at a Madonna concert) my heart still skipped a beat.

I miss him. I don't want to miss him. It's making me crazy.