...or There's More to Life Than Wheeliebins....

Had a very nice time with my lover and due to lack of circumstances (so to speak)we were not well behaved at all
It's just lovely to have privacy. And while the usual Lover/Mistress activities areobviously very nice (putting it mildly)it's also lovely to just laze around, cook, eat together, feed the birds, swap news and ideas, tell him about the bump in the car (I hit my wall while navigating around the new wheeliebins!), show him how to do borders in a word doc, have him put up pictures and put things up attic for me, doze and a million other things...

I obviously need to get out more, but great excitement came to my street this week as we got wheelie bins! They were delivered with much clattering and supporting information on Tuesday (to be emptied on Wednesdays, our old day for bag collection)and I got quite excited about being able to recycle without having to go to local dump. I also liked idea of not having to put my binbag out anymore - Just dump in my nice new wheelie bin (having put recycling stuff in green bag and cardboard and garden waste in my lovely green wheelie bin)whenever I want to do so. Yup! I definitely need to get out more...

I was therefore astonished to notice that lare that day most of my neighbours had as usual put out their binbags.They did get collected, but why did people bother? Not sure whether it's them or me out of synch with this world.

Among the 'bumph' on being green, like Nutshell I was given info on composting bin and got quite excited by the idea(I've already admitted to a life that is sometimes dull!). I felt very virtuous today washing out my plastic bottles and tomato tin and putting in my green bag. I wonder if my new fascination with refuse is worthy of a video diary...(and if the tag will be picked up by Gareth at the BBC...)

As I was eating my evening meal I saw flames shoot up from the garden that backs onto mine. Being nosey, I went upstairs for a better look and discovered it was actually in the garden next-door-but-one. I saw the householder playing a hose on the seriously blazing bonfire, very close to the fence separating her garden from my neighbour's. I assumed she'd realised it was out of control. And then I saw her feed the bonfire with what looked like straw and watched it flare even more. She then continued to alternately feed the bonfire and hose it down... Two hours later it's still burning, but no longer appears to be threatening the fence next to it.
It probably makes sense to her - she seemed to be having fun...

I was delighted to find Dexy's wonderful blog and now saddened that she has decided to leave and I wish her well.
I received the following comments which I think contains wonderful advice for anyone in my situation.

youre welcome polly,

be happy

youre riding high and risky so take out a private insurance; dont forget to keep at least one thing totally yours. if your other life should ever fade, you will have a place to retreat to that is untouched and not imprinted with memories.

wishing you lots of chocolate kisses with you know who, (try chocolate buttons, they are small enough to be fun . .)

hugs

dexy x

Saw my lover today. Very well-behaved due to circumstances and me being very tired due to work, but just lovely to see each other. I'll see him tomorrow as well and we may even get some privacy And we have a 'date' on Friday
The joys of delayed gratification....

I thought people may like this little tale - interspecies stuff is central to many a twee tale, but the language thing is facinating.

A baby hippo rescued after floods in Kenya in January befriended a 100-year-old tortoise in Kenya. The one-year-old hippo calf christened Owen was found alone and dehydrated by wildlife rangers near the Indian Ocean. He was placed in an enclosure at a wildlife sanctuary in the coastal city of Mombassa and befriended a male tortoise of a similar colour. According to a park official, they sleep together, eat together and "have become inseparable".

"Since Owen arrived on the 27 December, the tortoise behaves like a mother to it," Haller Park tourism manager Pauline Kimoti told the BBC News website.
"The hippo follows the tortoise around and licks his face," she said.

The tortoise is named Mzee, which is Swahili for old man.

In an extraordinary update to this news story it seems that there is a surprising level of communication between the two animals. They have been heard ‘speaking’ to each other. There is a ‘whine’ that is made by hippos but has been rarely heard by observers. It is thought to be a sound made by young hippos to their mothers or used as sign of submission. Both Owen and Mzee have been heard to make this sound and it is beautifully replicated in the news story:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/worldtoday/news/story/2006/02/060212_wt_select_week_7.shtml
As well as this astonishing example of inter-species oral communication, Owen and Mzee have been observed communicating a desire for a stroll through a series of nudges and bites to Owen’s tail and guidance of direction through nips of Mzee’s left or right feet.

Unsurprisingly, scientists are showing a great deal of interest towards this pair.

I've seen my lover two days running which was lovely, but face a separation until next week. Feeling slightly blue, but also know that I still get more 'quality time'with him than many others do with partners legitimate or other. I know I'm relatively lucky, but feeling sad.

I was surfing earlier and saw issue of whether blogging is form of 'vanity' printing/writing - Well I am not only a blogger but I have a Friends Reunited entry and am unrepentant- it made my ex and sister feel quite superior...
Last time I visited Friends Reunited they'd added some categories to the profile so I thought I'd fill them in - I know nothing about sport and admit to lack of musical taste, but love idea of favourite words.

My favourite music:
I have no taste I'm afraid! I love 'Bat Out of Hell' and have a soft spot for Rod Stewart... I'm also one of those awful people who buys compilation albums... I like anything from Matt Monroe to the Eagles via The Beatles and Stones (of course!), Cream, Pentangle, The Beach Boys, 10cc, ELO, Fleetwood Mac and all the usual suspects. I also think it's impossible to be human and stay stationary to Bowie's 'Let's Dance', Mick growling about lack of satisfaction or Eddie Grant refusing to dance...

My favourite sports:
None whatsoever! I vaguely supported Man U when George Best played for them, and Chelsea when they played leeds in the FA cup final in the year dot, but nothing since. I don't watch and certainly don't play anything.

My favourite words:
Interesting idea....OK...soporific, parturition, ambivalence, contiguous/non-contiguous, ante-penultimate, happenstance, slovenly, jurastriction, Lilith, transubstantiation, execrable, scandalous, fop, recalcitrant, serendipity, seductive, asinine, jasmine, scintilla, syncopation, oleaginous - of course if I'm asked tomorrow I'd have an entirely different list....

A Google picture search on 'mistress' is facinating! it's funny how the word encompasses both power and passivity, rather like the high-heeled shoe that features in a few pics. I've chosen a few pics that interested or entertained me. I felt the 'legs' fits a stereotype of passive woman awaiting lover, but it is cover of book about dominating men - Interesting, but a different take on the word mistress and one I found throughout my search. I loved the dangerous and ridiculous 50s type pics of gangster moll and gorilla.

Before I became a mistress in the general vernacular I have played with the word by swapping with 'master' and it doesn't really work. Calling myself a 'Mistress of Science' or making mistresscopies of documents just sounds weird. It seems to emphasise the ambiguity of what exactly is a French Mistress or Mistress of the House or Mistress of anything...

I've been trying to get stuff onto blog for days and finally succeeded. Delighted to have link to my friend, tags and comments as well as silly pic out there.

I watched the Linda Smith stuff only. I'd forgotten how waspish 'Have I Got news For You' is and how spiteful. Neil Kinnock was awful, but he was also set up and it felt like a group-bullying. And Will Self is just so arrogant, but allowed to be so because Kinnock was the target. Much as I loved LS the nastiness of show was what lingered.

Just had a quick phonecall from my lover [sigh] Any contact makes us miss each other, but so lovely to hear each others' voice... I told him I'd been blogging about him (Stuff on DT)and had little chat. Not much news as we were together yesterday, just nice to talk...

Note for pedants/advice please - Is it others' or other's voice? Can't make up my mind whether each other is singular or plural....

Nutshell's blog and ideas has set me off on my own little diversion. The idea of reading the Radio Times instead of watching the TV amused me and echoed my own experience. Yesterday I was in the pub and my friend and I spent ages discussing 'Shameless'. I've never seen it and he caught about ten minutes of it while in a hotel bedroom at a conference! I knew background stuff from RT and TV crits. He'd assumed it would be another drama patronising the working class/underclass so had avoided it deliberately. We both decided it was probably worth watching but neither of us would, as we didn't want to get hooked into another TV programme!
We then got onto 'The Sopranos' which I watched avidly from the beginning, but stopped after series two as I was having a TV-free period. He started watching when first series was repeated and has been following ever since. We decided that Adrianna(not sure of spelling) was 'best-ever throwing up scene' award contender.

I've read RT and thought of lots of progs I might watch - or not - today. The're doing something on exercising your brain which sounds interesting despite populist slant. Then there's 'Mickey Blue Eyes' which sounds fun. There's also a couple of tribute reruns featuring Linda Smith and I loved her wit and humour. And I've always meant to watch 'Get Shorty' and 'To Catch a Thief'; and 'The Breakfast Club' would be interesting to revisit, and then there's Mark Steel....

I've decided these 'Will I/Won't I' dithers are like perusing catalogues and window shopping - Quite fun and somehow as pleasurable and less effort than the real thing!

I just love this!
Link copied from revruth via suzeemoon:
http://www.snapshirts.com/

I am the one, the open, the original, the passive - Polly Garter! Except of course there was the one Dylan Thomas invented with the babies, dead Little Willie and inappropriate footwear... Still, I love my wordcloud.

Just started this again following thoughts brought up by nutshell's comments about it.
Thanks!

Having a very nice week because I'm getting to see my lover three times this week after a long separation. Also looking forward to the pleasure of his company two days running at the beginning of next week, but will be aware that that is only because of another separation looming as I'll be away on business most of next week...

I've attended a couple of meetings today and was in a 'Dress smart' mood but had forgotten how restricting certain styles of skirt can be. I would find the 'hobbling' of a straight skirt and heels frustrating and intolerable as everyday occurence, but find them quite feminine and surprisingly fun occassionally. My meetings were with women and I'm heterosexual, but I still get a buzz from feeling more overtly feminine due to dress every now and then. And this is despite knowing that femininity and gender are social constructs...I guess I am a product of my times and imprinting.

I've just done analysis based on link on Wulfweard's site and I'm more good than evil

Had an exchange of emails with my lover as usual. One of the advantages of not being together more is the regular writing and phonecalls as well as time together in private and public. It means we communicate at many levels.

Although I am quite an open person and can talk about sex generally quite happily, I am more reticent about the personal stuff, especially within a relationship. As writng has become an erotic art at times (between the trivia and emotional stuff) we have become quite frank in a way I've not known before - Nothing crude - but honest and reflective. it's nice to say what we enjoyed and how as well as fantasies triggered and future plans...

Of course we miss each other, but there are compensations.

…but Polly didn’t!

I trustingly wrote directly here and lost the lot. It’s a bit disheartening to start again. This does happen to me in emails as well, so I should have learnt but I obviously haven’t. Oh well.

I got a “Goodnight” email from my lover this morning:D – Sent at 1.20 as he fell asleep downstairs. He usually sends one and I do tend to wait for them. We usually exchange a few emails a day and see each other two or three times a week. Because of circumstances we meet in the week so are used to being separated over the weekend. We’ve talked about active and passive missing of each other – The passive is the background “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were together” and the “S/he’d like that/be amused by the other etc”. Active is when it is harder to bear and interferes with everyday life making us gloomy rather than nostalgic – more bitter and less sweet. And this has interestingly gone off in another direction from the original posting I lost!

I’m not sure how in original posting I got onto sex, but I did and more or less said that sex is important to us (and wonderful) as it probably is to others in our position but it isn’t the main thing. This was brought home to me when we split up.

He had tried to give his marriage a fair chance so ended our illicit relationship. He also hated not having me in his life. After I’d recovered enough we thought we could be friends. We have so much commonality and really do see ourselves as soul mates, despite the cringing that even writing that causes me! We were looking at the sea, eating ice-cream and I knew he was utterly contented. And when I crudely challenged he’d rather be doing just that with me, than having the most amazing sex with anyone else he agreed!

And so we are back to being lovers, but we have a lovely time wandering around Ikea or B&Q as well as being in the bedroom! And the bedroom is also about being “peaceful and easy” (as per “Eagles” song), chatting, chilling and just “being” as well as eroticism.

I shall write more of our history again. But for now suffice to say I enjoy life and my own company and I love being with my lover. I would prefer to have a 'legitimate' relationship, but as I can't I'm settling for the stars and not asking for the moon (Have I got that the right way round)

I am surprised how despite the drawbacks and the knowledge of deceit, being a mistress seems to fit in with my life. It is not something I ever imagined nyself doing. I am not a commitment-phobe and have a history of serial-monogomy. I've not actually been unfaithful and find it strange to be party to infidelity. I would be lying if I did not admit to the intensity and drama that I have discovered in my situation. And despite being a co-respondent I am usually reasonably honest. I do not need such intensity and drama, but I do enjoy them.

I am also struck by the amount of 'quality time' (hate the expression, but it's a useful shorthand)we have together. I have friends in more open relationships who seem to have far less uninterrupted time with each other than we do.

I thought a blog would be a way of thinking about my current situation. I have just been informed I have no friends! Luckily, in real life I do and they help keep me sane. But friendship and the right to such is an interesting place as any to start...

Mistresses unsurprisingly have a very dubious reputation and understandably so. I do not claim moral neutrality for myself or other mistresses, but life is rarely simple. I like many before and since happen to have fallen in love with someone who has made a commitment to somebody else.

And like so many others, my lover and I were friends who had no wicked intentions. We had simply found a friend with whom communication was easy and found ourselves more and more drawn to each other.

Enough for my first entry I think. More anon.