bastid.....you got it all......very nice ogri,your a lucky man 
red98, it would be nice if that were true ( though undeserved in my case) but it's not mate. Married at 27, with a mortgage for 40k( oh the good old days huh), I worked days on site, then evenings and weekends on private jobs, two years into my marriage I'd halved the mortgage and my missus turned into an absolute Cnut. So I left taking nothing but my dog, van, tools and bike. We had a baby daughter ( now 25), so i signed the house over to her and paid maintenance for the next eighteen years. A yearafterwesplit I met a lovely divorcee, we livedtogetherfrten years before tying the knot,and again I was sensible,did the right thing, workedhard paid off the mortgage. Ten years later we are like brother and sister, no sexlife, she wants nothing to do with bikes so every year I holiday on my own with mates, or I am ashamed to say, with a girl whowasbynow more than a friend.two years of that and I'm so sick of the charade that my life has come I leave my wife and stop seeing my lady friend. Stay on my own. I play in a popular pub band in Peterborough, know lots of people from that scene so if the nights get too lonely there are options, there's lots of lonely women it there too, but it's as shallow a life as the one I walked away from leaving all I had except my bikes, again. So I quit the band, bury myself in work until my worn out and injured shoulder gives up altogether at the end of last summer, just finishing a two storey extension for a mate as the last big tendon snaps.by November it's my birthday, I wake up on my own, bleeding from my arse with severe bowel pain as I have been doing for four weeks ( I know it's gotta be summat bad, but I'm honestly not cared anymore so ignoring it) with a text from my ex. Is it "happy birthday, come around to watch a film or summat if you'd like, I'll cook us a meal" lol..is it bollocks. It's actually " I'm struggling this month, do you think you can tax my car?" Exactly what I deserved I'm guessing. So I tax the fucking car (always do right to those who have loved you or you loved) and with the 300 quid I have left in the bank to show for a lifetime of hard building work and a worn out body go to a seventies weekend at Yarmouth with my seriously sad married mates who go there every year just to stick their knobs in summat different no matter how old or what she looks like( brutal but true)their on the pull. I'm at the bar getting good and proper drunk when I notice penny standing next to me waiting to get served. She stands out from everybody else in the room. I stutter " err..hello" she smiles,and starts talking to me. She's herewith her mate, just for the dancing. And just so I know where I stand, she's not available, she's got a really nice boyfriend back in her home town who treats her really well after the last couple of arseholes before, she's very happy, but I look like somebody who isn't eyeing every women in the room up so she'll talk to me."great" I say " coz the last thing in the world I want right now is another woman" so we dance, drink, talk.i walk her back to her caravan. She invites me in, just for coffee.we put a film on, and it's the most natural thing in the world to sit together, just relaxing, my arm over her shoulder, no funny business. Another film . Then another.we aren't talking now, just quiet, both of us nothing to say. It's six am, and I look at her and say " I gotta go. I'm not even going to kiss you goodbye, because I don't want you going away from here l
Feeling you had let your bloke down" and that's it, I'm off the couch and outta the caravan like a cork out of the bottle. Back to my mates, and I'm not even tired, just feel weird and wired. Next day we meet again. It feels like I've known her a thousand years.its the same for her. Again, denial is the way forward. We are inseparable all night but again nothing other than friends. This time back to my caravan with the others, we are laughing and joking, get the guitar out, singsong, toast, all good clean fun. Gradually everybody goes to bed and it's just me and her. I play one more song to her, noël gallaghers " if I had a gun" and that's it. I can't ignore this massive sense of belonging to each other anymore, and nor can she.i know now that thing that people say " found my soulmate" is true. A day later she finished with nice guy Charlie, I took her out for the day on Tuesday to make sure it was real, moved in together on Friday. I pulled some favours, blagged a job doing remedial building work for 180 a day( the mate who got me the job didn't let on I only had one good arm by then) and penny convinced me to get the op sorted to try to repair my shoulder, and have cancer tests etc once that had been done. Guess I realised I wanted one more shot. Worked up until shoulder surgery, then she looked after me as it healed. Tests are still ongoing, and as of yet inconclusive. Now three or four months on, we live for today. Our collective earnings and money go on the things we have always wanted to do. I could get another mortgage and worry about trying to pay it off so the government can steal it off my kids while I'm shuffling off my mortal coil sitting in my own piss in some nursing home if I do live to be old, or I could make the most of every second I have penny, and live.hence today I paid 200 quid for a private boat and scuba gear to go and look at coral reefs and fish I've only ever seen in photos. One more ticked off the list. Next month, we are going to auschwitz, somewerei havealways wanted to see, ashas penny.
There's a great line at the end of "blade runner" , when Harrison ford and the replicant who he has fallen in love with, doomed to die by a doomsday bug in her DNA at any time, run off together.
" I didn't know how long we would have together. But then again, who does...."
Sorry for the novel blokes. I'll keep em shorter and far less personnel in future...
