Apart from being extremely soppy...

I'm not doing too badly.

Much to my continued amusement, the ex (who is henceforth to be known as Butthead - how extremely fitting that I bought him a Butthead figurine, then, for his 30th birthday back in April), keeps contacting me and asking whether he can buy me a meal. 'Eight years is a long time to decide you don't want to be with someone any more', bleats he. 'Why don't you crawl back under your rock and leave me alone?', thinks I. Although of course I am too damn nice to say that to his face.

I did have to tell him that yeah, I'm seeing someone new and we're very happy. I didn't tell him that actually, I love him and he says that he loves me and all the rest of it. Though he does know that I'm spending Christmas and New Year with him. He says that he's still seeing Gemma, who he picked up off some internet dating agency or other.

I suppose I have an advantage there, given that I already knew D and have done to one degree or another for over three years. True, we haven't known each other well for all of that time, but we'd seen enough of each other around the place to move on from nodding acquaintances to occasional mailroom visitors to friends and so on to where we are now. I wouldn't ever say I know everything there is to know - can anyone ever truly say that of another human being? I know that I know enough to know that I like him very much.

Work is as ever hectic. A couple of new care cases have come along in the last two months, which will nicely plug the gap left by the two that are due to finish in a couple of months' time. The existing ones are mainly plodding along nicely, but there is one or two that will occasionally flare into life and require all hands on deck. One of the new ones is presently in crisis, which is great fun. The Official Solicitor needs to come on board for my client as she is mentally incapable so cannot provide me with instructions. I haven't run my own case with the OS before, so that will be a good experience for me.

Christmas is fast approaching - I am off to hit Thorntons to get some odds and ends for various people. Chocolate and the aunts sounds like a good idea to me, and Mando and Liz will always eat it, so that as a backup to the wine is a winner. Not at all in any way original, but I cannot be arrised!

My brother is a little bit miffed I am not going home for Christmas, but given that it has been a hit and miss affair since I left home umpteen years ago I don't think he can really complain. And he has the wife and the stepkids and all their family around him, not to mention tons of mates. It will be the first Christmas without Dad's presence, but with the senility as it was in his last few years, his presence wasn't really there anyway. We're I think dealing pretty well with the loss of the physical person now, having really done our grieving for the man himself a couple of years ago when pretty much all trace of him was lost.

I expect I will be a little bit sad on Christmas day itself, but not for long. It's more of a bittersweet sadness nowadays. I know they're still watching over me, and that's a huge comfort to me. And I will be with someone I love on the day itself, without having to worry about not upsetting his family. At least so far as I know it will be just the two of us. And the cats. Mustn't forget the furbabies!

This afternoon is the funeral and cremation service for my cousin Lynn, who died while I was away the other weekend. I don't think I'd seen her since I was maybe 13 or so...I don't recall her being at her grandfather's funeral in 2000 or 2001 because I'm sure I'd remember that, having not seen her for so very long. She can't have been much more than 40, I wouldn't have said, and had at least one relatively young child from her second marriage. Poor cow - she really picked them. A diabetic alcoholic who by the time their divorce was finalised had had both his legs amputated and was dead within a year of that (I do remember him at Uncle Dick's funeral because he had two false legs and walked with the aid of crutches - I just don't recall Lynn, or her kids). And the second one doesn't sound to have been much better.

She had a romance with a guy from home...Al reports that he was absolutely beside himself when he heard she'd gone. Seems he really loved her, but when she went home to Telford that summer, her mum destroyed his letters. So, she married Alun and that was the end of that. I never realised he'd liked her so much.

I seem to recall snogging him on a couple of occasions the summer before I went to law school...that was years after he and Lynn. I must have been all of 13 when they were an item, so that would have been a good 13 or 14 years before we kissed.

I'm too swamped in work to head off to the funeral. Al and I have sent flowers, well I've sent them from both of us. I feel mean for not going. It's all excuses, really. I can't face it. Don't want to. My mum would have given me a right old flea in the ear were she here, but then I'd have been going with her, not representing our end of the line.

So. There you have it. Pretty much a year of my life is recorded in this blog. I've moved jobs. I've moved geographical location. I've made it through the death of my father. I've seen my relationship of some 8 and a half years finally flounder. And here I am, falling it seems quite happily in love with someone new. Quite a year...I wonder what the next year holds?