Mahinda’s Little World

It’s 12.30am, and I’ve just got home. The usual shooting malarkey, except that Adrian, Clare and I headed to the pub afterwards.

So, I ended up in Tesco’s a bit later than usual. I’m usually there sometime between 9pm and 11pm, with the actual shopping taking about an hour. I like to browse!

This time, I got there at about 11.30pm. It was very different - many of the usual staff finish at 11pm, so they weren’t there. It was also a very different crowd of shoppers, although that might just be because it was February 13th.

There were A LOT of blokes wandering around, clearly on the way home from t’pub, clutching bunches of flowers. Others were perusing the Valentine’s Day cards, and still others were taking advantage of the "20% off all boxed chocolate" offer…going by the vast stacks of confectionery still on the shelves, there’ll be rich pickings tomorrow for the sweet of tooth.

Of course, I have no-one to be all Valentiney with. In fact, it’s been a VERY long time since I’ve had a date on Feb 14th…the last time was seven years ago, back in 1999. I was 20, and still at university. In fact, even back then, Josephine and I were in different cities, and we never took the whole Valentine thing very seriously, so the chances are that we didn’t do anything then, either.

Right. I’m off to bed. Will finish this one off during my lunch break. I _might_ even search through my email archive and find out what I’ve been up to on Feb 14th over the years!

*saves to pen drive*

Valentines Past and Present

I’ve just looked through my email archives…

• Feb 14th 1999
  Probably did something with Josephine.
• Feb 14th 2000
  I knackered my knee playing badminton, and spent the evening in casualty. And agony. Nice.
• Feb 14th 2001
  I seem to have been ill. Wednesday was my free evening back then, and emails allude to a long phone call with Josephine, in which I sounded quite sad. We were probably comparing singleness.
• Feb 14th 2002
  Would have been a MUGSS rehearsal. That was just before the MUGSS Tarts’ Party where I had the Kates (Dr. and Scottish) staying over.
• Feb 14th 2003
  I’d been cruelly dumped by Catherine the week before so, thankfully, I didn’t have to come up with anything special. Every cloud has a silver lining! I’ve just read a HUGE email thread between Jo and me, all about singledom and sex and stuff. I don’t think Jo’s featured at all on this blog, but she’s an old friend from my university days, who I really don’t see very often
• Feb 14th 2004
  Over to Leeds for Kate’s birthday. I think. Possibly. I started going out with Sarah a mere five days later!
• Feb 14th 2005
  I donated some blood! ‘Twas a Monday, so I probably just went shooting in the evening.
• Feb 14th 2006
  Nothing planned. Depends on what Dr.Kate’s doing for her birthday. Failing that, it’ll be hockey training. If my sore legs feel up to it.
  EDIT: Kate’s celebrating on Saturday, and my legs still hadn’t recovered, so I ended up sitting in on my lonesome, watching Liverpool beat Arsenal. Yay! I also made myself a LOVELY bit of rump steak, smothered in rosemary and black pepper, with a mushroom, onion and peppercorn cream sauce, sugar snap peas and sautéed potatoes. Mmmmmmm.

…that was really quite something, turning up lots of old emails from people I haven’t seen in years. And should probably contact! Plenty of blasts from the past, too.

I think this is something I should do more often - maybe pick a day and transcribe the best email from that day on each year, 2000 onwards.

Of course, I’ve got my university emails all saved to some floppies in a box at home somewhere…but that really would be going too far!

History Lesson

St. Valentine seems to have been a martyr who got his head chopped off by the Romans. Nice. And highly romantic, of course. As usual, Wikipedia has an interesting history of St. Valentine’s Day…but, in this day and age, you’d probably be better just going here.