Brookes Owen

2009-11-19T12:57:00.002Z

I rather thought only about 30 people had ever read this, certainly not her. It was far beyond any Google search list page anyone would actually get to and I thought I had set the permissions to lock most people out most of the time. It would seem after the exchange of weapons the survivors must now face the poisons fall out.

Of those I redirected to it, most seem to have then given up rather than been smothered in it. It is heavy, sticky, badly written and hard work. Then, if they got through the first page, their anger dissipated when they realised they were just kicking the fat kid who came to school in second hand clothes and was too slow to snap back. It really wasn’t sport, there really are better things to do, I mean, isn’t X factor coming on soon, is that not the kettle just boiled?

This is my life but surely for you this is just a storm in a tea cup?

I totally admit, and am pretty sure I have said, that this is just another side of the story. It’s very subjective. You will probably even see other aspects to further confuse you soon. But I hope not, I spent last night telling old friends that I still loved her regardless and they are not helping me by telling anyone what they saw. You already know I cry too much, it must be boring you by now.

Serious stuff. I am not aware I have bulled anyone. I think I was offering the man that was secretly sleeping with my girlfriend the chance to meet me in his chosen environment. Mock me properly. I am older and now no doubt considerably smaller than he is. It is probably suicide (mine) but I didn’t think he would meet me for a Gilbert and Sullivan sing off whilst playing chess. May be we could compromise on a skiing or sailing race?

If he didn’t want to meet me in his favourite gym ring then all he had to do so was say so. I rather thought he would actually want to, would probably have his mates cheering him on. I would finally have some sense knocked into me and some stubbornness knocked out. Seeing her rushing to sponge his brow and not mine would probably be the reality check I needed to stop loving her.

To me the set of rules specified means quite legal, wearing gum shields and gloves. I thought I would be teased for still, even now, being too formal and forgiving. Showing myself as the obsolete dinosaur I am. I was expecting to be laughed at not punished legally.

This was the intended as the gauntlet thrown down at his feet, not a surprise rumble in a dark car park. It’s happened to me before, I wouldn’t wish it on any one else. Yes, not even “my worst enemy”.

What I was stubbornly insisting on was that he tells me so and doesn’t just ignore me so I am never sure.

And yes I was cross. I honestly don’t think either of them have fully realised what outing us all has done. Her ability to see what she wants to see, forget what she doesn’t want to remember, is commendable and I even encouraged it, self believe is a powerful healing balm. But it’s very local. In the wider world other people, like the ones I asked to take the glass out of my eye or stitch me back up, knew that it was her and now know who she is now. Some of this is even filmed and I didn’t get it all despite all my efforts.

To recap. If I came across as threatening, I am sorry. I didn’t think I could. I am seen as a salty, spineless jellyfish washed up on the beach and drying out under the baking sun of reality. Yes I am stung but I am doing it to myself.

On that note, please spend at least five minuets thinking what my week, year and then last 8 years have been like before you condemn me. Which is not to say that if you still think im awful by the sixth minute im not. I probably am. I did get very upset on Sunday and have said a few things since that I shouldn’t have. I do make lots of mistakes. I am in a waking nightmare; which is ironic because I haven’t really slept in a year. This was not the year I planned for, I am out of my depth.

To sum up. I am sorry if appeared to threaten, I am sorry if I seemed to bully. I will, as I said before, reply to any questions and if that includes the police then so be it. I knew this was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

Sigh. Once again this is silly, out of hand, tragic to me and hilarious to everyone else looking in and pointing.

2009-11-19T00:45:00.002Z

Brookes Owen, not the Belle de Jours’ Boy.

Changed and unlocked because although still desperately proud and devoted to Brooke, I never read the books and very rarely met the Belle. Only a hand full actually ever did.

From what I have been told/asked/threatened by you lot these last few years I hope you find Owen a bit nicer than the “Boy” (but yes, probably a lot “wetter” to, so its swings and roundabouts, really, ho hum). I can assure you that Brooke is dazzlingly more beautiful, cute, sweet and lovable than Belle. They’re as clever as each other but, keeping it very simple and innocent, my Brooke would also dance, sing, draw and potter round the house in woolly stripy bed socks, not stilettos. I’m glad I met her instead; I love her and miss her everyday and everynight.

For all our ups and downs, misunderstandings and mutual mistakes. The burnt bridges and the scorched black glass earth of an atomic retaliation, escalated by unnecessary hurt and tearful frustration. All because we could simply never talk about anything negative to each other. O lass, Why did you have to do this? You don’t know it yet but you have destroyed us all. But even so, in the end, as I face it coming for me, all I can do is still wish you were here to simply smile at me. it would make it all better instantly. I can not even find it in me to be cross at you.

Goodnight and goodbye little lass, sweetdreams and take care.

2009-11-18T23:12:00.001Z

Another day of reading horrid articles and snowballing lies. This is getting out of hand. Even saying it’s all true, was it really so bad for you? I suspect most of you secretly enjoyed it all and it helped/stopped you thinking/talking about house prices and reality TV for a little while, which can surely be no bad thing. You bought into “it” and the books willingly and it was healthier/cheaper than many a vice. A “little of what you fancy” for some on the way to work and a salacious sugar coated pill that made you accidentally read some excellent writing (from a very clever person you would otherwise never have bothered with) for others. You actually had the opportunity to read her other stuff first and you didn’t. You were the ones who decided stilettos and whips were more worthy of your time than the fascinating workings of your own body, as carefully written by a stunningly clever but fully dressed Dr. And yes, it still had the wit, spark and literary quotes. It was in fact the same style but the meat on show was just colder, and you do seem to prefer it hot, don’t you? I’m afraid you really are your own worst enemies, “Sex sells” but you made it so. You gave her the money willingly; it wasn’t taxed and spirited from your pocket against your will.

The answer to today’s big question: Anyone who reads it and decides to take up prostitution because of it has much deeper issues. Her blog and books were merely the litmus paper that indicated/highlighted it, not the cause.

For example, having watched Twilight you don’t just then fall for the next moody, pale adolescent you see. He might be a ravishingly intriguing vampire who can unlock the door to an exciting world, allowing you to escape your rather mundane one. However he might also just be quiet because he has nothing to say and pale because the world he will show you hidden in his bedroom is the Online Gaming forum he inhabits everyday when he should be out in the sun kite surfing every now and again as well. He will be fat, spotty and myopic by 30, not eternally youthful with good cheek bones. There is nothing wrong with the former, but don’t be surprised and berate him for it when it happens.
“It does what it says on the tin” you just misread the label or looked at the picture instead of the ingredients.

Anyway, I rather thought this entertainment versus reality debate was already covered long ago with Pretty Woman and Julia Roberts? Or is that now too long ago and the youth of today are doomed to repeat the previous generations mistakes because they wont watch old DVDs? Do we now need a reimagining of the film with bigger explosions and yet younger, pretty actors? (Sorry Mrs Roberts)

And seeing as I am on my soap box anyway, please let me turn the sanctimonious dial all the way up to 11. Everything is relative ladies and gentleman. If society is a sinking ship, having a go at Brooke is like demanding someone polish the brass on the titanic as the icy dark waters surge over your feet. I could give you a hundred things more important to chatter about by the water cooler today. Ok….honestly off the top of my head…. As I cycled to work this morning I was passed by a car and noticed the driver, perhaps the mother, was struggling to light her cigarette as she went round corner. Beside her was a toddler about to filter out the particulates with his little pink trusting lungs. He probably won’t taste the tar though because he was elbow deep into his third packet of Monosodium Glutamate enriched maze based crisp snack and was washing it down with his Tartrazine laced fizzy pop in a teated bottle. This is everyday stuff in the real world with real people living out real lives. Like it or not, it is all about free will and free choice in a relatively free democracy. I defend it and even I can’t say it’s perfect. Sorry.

Before you have a go at Brooke, someone who has actually worked long into the night trying to improve the lives of dying children (or attempting to stop others following their fate) please look long, deep and hard at what you yourself have done today to help the world before you then become so judgemental on others. Fight the urge to become the podgy pub armchair sports pundit who “coulda been a contender”. You don’t have to be a Dr or a soldier to know of duty and service, it’s everywhere and easy. So please think if, over the course of your day today, did you save a life? And im big on team work and patience to, did you even help someone else do so, even far away and sometime next week? When was the last time you even smelled the metallic tang of blood?

Please, I know you don’t really know who I am, but you actually still don’t know who she is either. She deserves so much more, and certainly not your scorn. My life is duty, faith and service, as are the generations before me and all those around me; I can recognise it in others. I have more reason to dislike and recoil from her than any of you, for reasons you cant even yet imagine, yet I still love her. I am not actually that stupid, I am not a sadomasochist. Even though I now concede I might be “blinded by love” I was still “normal” and knew and observed her rationally before I became so. In doing so I saw a side of her that, although I seem unable to convey it, I will try to sum up again. Despite all that the world has thrown at her she is still fragile, beautiful and sweet. There is a goodness shinning out of her just trying to get past the ever thickening skin. You are forcing her to harden, making her what you want her to be whilst criticising her for being so. Please, please leave her alone.

Pause

On a more serious note, and upon reflection after being quite caught out by the last e-mail of the day. I can see both sides of the coin with this. I can most things, the shades of grey between black and white. Goodness knows there is only so far faith and optimism can take you when your eyes are showing just how unfair and illogical life can be.
So yes, for that one person in however many million that might, just possibly, now mull such a “career” over and do something before anyone can talk to you. Please don’t. I am very sorry, we were very very poor, as poor as you are now. Find your own way to rustle up a few extra pennies. There are other ways to be unconventional and prove you are not shy. Safer ways to earn money if you don’t mind getting hands dirty. I know it’s not easy, we have both had to start again career wise many times and I do sympathise. Or to compromise and be realistic, if you must, just make it your 50th option and not your first. She worked in a book shop, kitchen and the circus. Was both a cleaner and a Dr. Wore uniforms you cant even imagine (and I won’t reveal, despite my “big mouth”). Whatever you believe she did, it simply wasn’t her first choice, don’t let it be yours.

Look, what im trying to say is, don’t read the books as a manual, let alone believe them as gospel. This is all just words said by strangers. You, sitting there in your own skin with real smells, sights and sounds all around are infinity more alive and precious. Don’t let the unimportant faddish former effect the desperately important and irreplaceable latter without a jolly good long hard think about it first. Good luck.

2009-11-17T17:49:00.014Z

And for what it’s worth my parents did also not phone me up “shocked”. On Sunday we went for a long and lonely walk up on the hills under that eye wateringly bright winter sun shine. It was lovely and as we were picking Chanterelles, something we all loved doing with her in that very same forest, her name (as ever and again) cropped up quite happily and naturally. I told them about it and, after admittedly a bit of thinking and questioning, they were happy and fine with it. My family are old fashioned, yes, but in the “lets just crack on shall we” kind of Blitz Sprit way. The “?” is left out of that intentionally, its rhetorical. It’s all “Overcome and adapt”, “no point crying over spilt milk” etc (and many more “chipper”, no doubt annoying, but sound expressions no other family has used for 50 years) philosophy of life thing.

I know, Cue chorus line of singling zebras and surging Disney anthem form Mr Elton John, it’s our own families’ cycle/circle of life type of thing. Sorry for the home-spun wisdom. We just happen to believe it.

They believe that life is complicated and as you struggle through it you make mistakes and that it’s how you then apologise and try to change that defines you as a person. I agree, of course. Being deliberately, cautiously delicate here, they had already seen both extremes of her personality many times before. They, like me, had decided that any imperfections were just specks of dust on an otherwise dazzling 7000 carat diamond. Keeping this very genteel and again, innocently humorous, that she wiped her nose on her sleeve and ate peas off her knife whilst discussing advanced astronomy etc at the dinner table was actually all rather part of her charm and endearingly human. Who wants a Vulcan for a daughter in law? We have both been called “eclectic” but that doesn’t really do it justice, it was closer to Hybrid Vigour. This was/is why she fitted into my family, we all have a dozen specialties each, all have our own mannerisms and foibles. Round the dinner table it was a case of “Let he who is without sin” cast the first freshly backed scone. But it was a lot more fun than that probably sounds.

To leave nothing out; although, like me, they have their own ideas on which bits and how much of the blog is true, they take and believe the basic premise, that she was an escort, and they still love her. If she was to turn up tomorrow and help roll pastry and sip rare blends with my father whilst wiping the flour from her fingers on her jeans as she went, no one would think it odd or remark on anything after about five mins in. She will be greatly missed this Christmas; she was again invited and was much appreciated at the last one. At the very least and most pragmatic she has a good singing voice for the carols and her expertise and appetite in the kitchen will be missed. Mother still has some treats for her in the pantry “just in case”. It seems I inherited my blinding optimism. Broaching the indelicate core of it though, my bed, let alone my heart, will be far colder without her to cuddle up to this time twelve months on.

Seven years is a lot of time anyway, but our time during that span was more intense than you could possibly imagine. It felt longer. It was my life. We could do more in one weekend than many would do in a week. If we did sit down to watch the telly it was whilst knitting, making sure the jam didn’t boil over, the fire go out, fussing the cat and talking/trying out Appellation banjo music whilst supping that afore mentioned rare blend and penning an article/thesis or Google earth mapping where we would sail tomorrow.

They know her very very well. No they didn’t know she was the Belle de Jour but they had felt/seen the near exact shape of the space that was discreetly left. That “negative space” I have tried to describe. Without being told they knew she wrote a blog and articles for the papers, had written a few books etc. It was all just slightly more science or scone based.

As it stands they still miss her, they still think she would make a cracking (but not cracked) daughter in law and they (critically) know and appreciate that I love her very much. The only comments since Sunday are to hope we are both OK and can see this through with a smile and a “ho hum” shrug of the shoulders. They are a bit concerned about her family, but that’s probably just a mother/mother family thing.

And that is it. That is all you need know of my family. Please leave it now. You can not imagine how badly it will go if you turn up at any of our work gates.

So as not to end on too dark a note:

I think all the references to me listening to her typing were because I quoted Virginia Woolf; probably a mistake. I said that all I wanted was to provide her a little “money and a room of her own”. As it happens I did help build the table, supply the software/hardware etc etc. but I didn’t tell her that. This was really her place, built for, and by, her. Brookes’ inner sanctum, her inner sub micro nest and escape pod. I did indeed glow to see her so happily ensconced there. I was so proud of her and so happy to help.

Yes, and I definitely think the horrid crushing rabbits Mail reference is an “Of Mice and Men” misquote. I mentioned Steinbeck after saying I now spent my weekends tending to “our” land and stroking/fussing her cat. Or have I really been called, or come across, as a Lennie in the books? What was with the "country mouse thing"? Yes I can catch, kill and cook my dinner off the land but so can most children now, after being reared by their TV and Ray Mears. I’v also been banned form more capital city night clubs for over moshing the mosh pit than most. So the whole Tarzan's New York Adventure thing is a bit unfair, or was it actually more like the Clampetts?

(If I told you that I have been referred to as a “the very model of a modern major general” because “I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,” …etc, etc, that probably wouldn’t help would it? I go from duffus to expensively educated duffus? Blurs Archetypal “Charmless Man”. Actually it was mostly state school but i was let in "poor" on a busary after being measured as at the right of the bell curve. I have spark enough to help invent and design things you could see around your very home).

Ho hum.

If so, if you are brave enough to meet me and I beat you at a game of chess could you be graceful enough to ignore that I could then perhaps beat you in an arm wrestle? Is it too awkward/close to the bone to ask you “not to judge a book by its cover”? (or even prehaps to write your own text inside?) I have already hit my cliché quota, sorry, but whilst I’m at it “don’t believe everything you read in the papers” either.

Please feel free to ask those questions direct instead. Remember how I like to reward the enquiring mind? Just also please remember how I respond and like fare and friendly. Perhaps I really am that simple a beast. Cross or content, exhausted or alert. I stick to everything I say, come what may, for better or for worse.

On that note, I’m off to the weights bay now for the first time in a very long time. Wish me luck and when I get back up to fighting weight I promise to talk Quarks and The Higgs boson whilst playing that game of chess to compensate. To accentuate the cerebral and distract from my clearly distasteful bulk. Sigh.

2009-11-17T12:44:00.008Z

Highly confidential. Exclusively and urgently for Mr Patrick Walsh regarding exposure of the Belle de Jour by the Daily Mail‏
From: Owen
Sent: 01 November 2009 21:34:47
To: info@convilleandwalsh.com

Dear Mr Walsh

It is very important that you read this. It concerns the absolute love of my life and someone that (although I hope you also like her personally as well) I believe with certainty you have a duty of care over professionally. She certainly spoke of you in such terms and I know she both respects and trusts you.

Because I do not know if you will be the only person to read this I will refer to her as “BM” from now on.

For the sake of this e-mail you would know her as the Belle de Jour, a blogger that stood outside your London office all those years ago as I reassured and soothed her, to then wait patiently round the corner as she signed the contracts you offered within.

Do you know who I am though? Let me elaborate, I apologise if I get emotional whilst doing so. For all my IQ, education and training I admit that I suffer from a surfeit of sentimentality. Sorry. This is not pleasant for me either but time does not allow me to be coy or aloof. My pride has cost me dear these last few years and I vowed to her last spring I would abandon it no matter how foolish or childish I then looked.

I do, however, have nothing to hide. Or rather if I did (and have done these years past), to protect her, it all seems rather pointless now. The cat is very much out of that bag and off down the road to london. I am however, despite all the horrors and heartache, still very proud to say that I was what would be referred to as her loyal and loving boyfriend for over seven years.

You can have my name, my picture. I will even come down to be interviewed if you wish.

It is of course more complicated than that, we are both passionate people and although we both loved each other very much the course of such things rarely runs true. In the end we floundered and drowned under a bitter sea of misunderstandings and their subsequent silly, pointless wake. Suffice to say that I suspect you (and indeed, as I am beginning to see, most of the world) do not know any where near the full story. Even though it has now been eight months since we shared a bed or a bath, laughed and sung as we helped each other struggle our way through the world, literally hand in hand, what is important now, what you must grasp, is that I am still completely and unconditionally in love with her and am still desperately trying to help her-come what may. Even if I didn’t do so gladly almost every day, I have little choice.

She asked me to commit to her completely many times, to start again, to leave all the hurt and horrors behind, “to stop making lists” of it all. I never had “lists” of her mistakes but I got the message and closed my diary and started again several times. She was right of course and she was simply helping me to acknowledge what was obvious to her, myself and indeed all of my workmates, family and friends. That I loved her above all else and that really was all that mattered.

Last spring, on a Northumbrian beach, as I asked if she could spend the rest of her life with me, and she said yes, I gladly, joyfully did so. I have never broken a promise in my entire life and I find that can not do so even now. I am aware that events have since rather moved on without me, how could I not, but it doesn’t matter that I still cry myself to sleep every night.

I attempt to write this in the little forested coastal house I bought for her this time last year for her last birthday, having just spent the night walking back from the special lonely beach where the rings I smelted and forged by hand last year are buried in the sand. Her little cat is currently sitting on my feet attempting to warm them and my hot tears will hopefully warm my still wind raw cheeks. But looking on the bright side, the storm will at least water the cherry trees I planted for her in her forest.

Do you know who I am yet?

In a cherished and precious moment of complete honesty and inclusiveness she once told me that yes, I was in her books, and that yes, I was referred to as “The Boy”. It took me some time to know for sure but late last year she told me that they showed the world how much she loved me and so, suitably reassured and full of faith and belief in her, I have not yet read them. My life is rapidly becoming untenable and I will allow myself the real treat of reading them soon, fortifying myself at a moment of utter despair when all else seems lost. When the stench of X, X and X fills the air, which I have now been informed will unfortunately be next year. That is important for you to know to. That is half the reason I am finally being forced to write this, why you will have to now take over. Or if I may be so forward, tighten up the slack.

So you hopefully now know my motives? Silly or mellowdramatic though they no doubt seem to you i can assure you iam infact resolute and ernest. But enough of me, what matters is that of course many many other people have read the books and also wondered who I am, and with envious eyes aimed at her, have slowly, surely, drawn their plans against me.

I am actually, when the pseudonyms, post-nominal’s and rank are stripped away, merely X Owen X X, born in X X X. Still almost 6ft and 16 stone but now very much in decline. Although I have had to change my profession and start again from scratch several times to be with her, to better support and protect her, I am currently proud to be X X X X. Though in my heart I am still the optimistic, gregarious and creative designer she met eight years ago in Sheffield.

My current location is why I have been forced to write this as an e-mail. Time is very short and I am currently unable to visit your office in person to request an interview. I also couldn’t trust the mail in its current militant state. Please do not think this an indication of indifference or incompetence on my part. Last weekend I, with only a days notice, drove the length of the country through floods to defend her, and the weekend before that. Indeed this has been happening at such a rate, increasing over the last year, that I now do something like this roughly every other weekend. Money has never been an issue regards her, I would, have and do put her happiness and safety above my own life and future, certainly above my remaining funds, but what’s less easy to ignore is I also have duties and obligations to my work which, x x x x.

In short, I apologise for the e-mail, I hope it will be read by you and you alone. You are then very welcome to contact me to flesh the details if you wish.

Ok, the meat of it, though still the abridged version. Last week (20th Oct) I was phoned out of the blue by a Miss Laura Topham, who transpired to be a reporter for The Daily Mail. If I include the man from the “lad’s mag”, she is the fifth journalist to contact me over the last two years. In case you are curious that makes her roughly the seventeenth person to contact me about BM in that time. I can not be sure because after the first Trojan I found I deleted many e-mails without opening them, fleeing from facebook also. Only their title, as seen sitting inert and safe in my inbox, indicated others were about her. More importantly I have also met, discussed, debated, begged and (on one horrific occasion) battled people up and down the country in an effort to protect her. I have also driven out to proactively track down those who were about to; those I had been tipped off were trying to, "out" her. I stopped doing this this spring after BM told me not to. I responded in good grace that I would gladly allow you, her paid professional, to take over, to lay my now much tarnished and dented armour aside. Resigned, beaten and obsolete. But it doesn’t seem to have worked, does it?

As I have let go I am sorry to say that you do not seem to have taken up quite all of the slack.

Becoming merely reactive has made my life much harder since, but I have always done everything, literally everything, she has ever asked/told me to do and I in turn have done everything, really everything, I have every told her I would do. It’s all part of me never breaking a promise.

The bulk of these depressing events would take too long to go into here so I will focus on the most recent. Miss Topham is also the most important and alarming to date. First, she knew my mobile number. In fact, bugger that, she knew absolutely everything about me. My title, work, X X X X. Many hundreds of people have known how much I love BM, everyone at my current, and indeed last three, work places, multiple professions and places the length and breadth of the country. Many knew I had bought her a house, knew about the rings. But Ms Topham knew more, much much more. I have been sold out, I felt violated. But it, of course, got worse.

I am not a violent person in anyway, am too stuborn to threaten or except blackmail and all my money has been spent on her. This has left me with a limited bargaining position. So as well as offering myself (my time, talents or even just the strength of my back) in such situations I have also subsequently let myself be trained as, among other things, a x. She phoned two Tuesdays ago and told me that the story was going to run that Saturday (24th Oct), so finalised to be printed on Friday. She knew everything about BM, everything. She had photos of her leaving her work, knew her families names and addresses, exotic real origin etc etc. And she asked, as I had repeatedly been linked to her as “The Boy”, did I have anything to say before the article was went to print in the two days i had left?

So I did what I always do. I begged her to let me come down to speak to her before she did so. I am a “can-do” optimist but am not naive. In the past this has been a trap, and I now travel to such things, despite the time, effort and expense, in an unmarked white hire van with sleeping bag and first aid kit hidden in the windowless back. I park along way off and approach in neat clean clothes; those and running shoes.

We met and I spent the night arguing everything from how BM deserves her anonymity (not an easy sell to a journalist) to the morality of prostitution. Which, Mr Walsh, I was forced to defend for fear of giving her quite the scoop. Mr Walsh, I love BM despite her being the Belle, not because of it. I loved her poor, skinny, scarred and under appreciated. For just who she was inside, her smile and her sparkle. This morning I went to church in a X granite X circled overhead by ospreys. My Minister makes Dr Ian Paisley look like a Guardian reading hippy. My most loving memories of BM involve picking flowers or fruit for jam and the smell of her sun warmed hair, watching the milky way from the top of hay bails in the middle of a quite, dark field of stubble. Or again being cuddled up to her on the sofa as she wore stripy knee length bed socks and hugged a thread bare but much loved soft toy from her child hood. Yes I have a high libido; yes I loved making love to her, but that’s not why I love her.

Although I always did my best to support her, to defend her against the lashings from the critics, to celebrate her success with a bottle of something bubbly, I never actually agreed to be a part of these books. I always wished that BM could re-launch her medical career or write about some of the other things she spoke about. Where as I love to talk about BM, am so proud to extol her virtues to any and all, have done so everywhere from Westminster to West Point only this year alone, I never thought I would find myself defending prostitution to a representative of the Daily Mail at two in the morning after a ten hour drive through floods and after not sleeping for three days. Well, i had to do those two days of lost work before going somehow.

And this is when I fear I will sound petulant rather than earnest and exhausted. Sorry Mr Walsh, and I am aware you probably dislike me already, but Is this not instead part of your remit?

In the end we only ground each other down to a stand still. In the end I realised she knew absolutely everything about both of us. In the end I was forced to use my profession, the profession I only took on, for better or for worse, because of BM. A profession I have then adapted to better suit and protect her although I find it far from what I wanted to do in my life. I used my Post X X knowledge. My time spent lobbying at County Courts as a X X or as an X or X or X etc etc. when all other avenues had been exhausted I laid it out. I said that if she went ahead with this, if she outed BM as utterly and completely as she was going to, complete down to family home and work address, she would do irreparable harm to BM. I will not quote various legal statutes at you but to sum up tomorrow I will forwrd an e-mail covering that I was forced to repeat the Friday just gone as it appeared it was all about to be published again the second weekend in a row.

For what its worth, and this isn’t just Stockholm syndrome, I think Miss Topham genuinely does now want to pursue the “ethical” approach. She has worked long and hard gathering all this but, with some encouragement form me, will (if offered something else in exchange) not “out” the real BM. I admit I can not be completely sure of this and I believe she is in turn being directed by various editors much further up the food chain who were only scared off by me quoting legalities at them. They are the ones to convince.

Please Mr Walsh. Please contact Miss Topham and encourage her do the honorable thing. Let her interview BM or yourself. We need to defuse this and fast, probably by next weekend. For them it will be third time lucky, I don’t think I can stop them a third weekend in a row. But you are the expert in this field, this is your profession and I am merely a reluctant tourist in a foreign land. Do you have other ideas? Have you in fact dealt with her or her type many times before?

Note regarding tomorrows e-mail: This was a last ditch effort. That is why I sent it X X, which I really shouldn’t have done, but Miss Topham was right at BMs work door, actually in the building and I had to try and stop her in with only minutes to spare. I would infact hate to give anyone any of my precious pictures of us together. These are very almost all I have left to give the vast bulk of my adult life any meaning. No. I would hate to have something innocently and sweetly taken then given to the press to tarnish and desecrate but I don’t think I have much choice. It would be the only way to ensure that they portrayed BM in a positive light. Sweetness and smiles not, well, you must ask her what pictures Miss Topham already has. Ask her. I think some are from around Bristol, leaving her work, drinking with various people in pubs and clubs etc. but there is also the very real fear that she has been given others. She alluded to knpwing of “X” of a horrifically intimate and deeply embarrassing nature that I was only made aware of myself over Christmas. I did my very best to track them down through red raw eyes, delete or subdue them up until May even though it cost me any chance of ever talking to the love of my life ever again. But that is another conversation and one I would really rather avoid. I find it deeply upsetting and BM will just hate me yet further for it. Guilt by association even though I have tried to help her find and hide the hideous things.

The vast majority of the things I have tried to do to prove my love for her just backfired and drove her away. My presents seen as poison. Its my own fault, my own ineptitude. Again and again I stubbornly tried to be practical and fix things like the ex engineer I am, but instead I now realise I should have just have given her more of the standard Tescos flowers, chocolates and an off-the-shelf glib pleasantry about her hair. It would be a comedy of errors if I could only just stop being devastated about it all. This very letter will, rather than being seen as something to help her, a bespoke if somewhat utilitarian birthday present, just probably enrage and horrify her.

The final thing is of course the source of this leak. There is no point just curing the symptoms. The gaps in Miss Tophams’ extensive knowledge might actually give it away. She knew my name and X X but not X. My name and location are unusual and misleading in that regards. This and other things leads me to believe that the person (and I believe it be persons) who are selling us out have seen me at close range but never heard me speak. Once again, this is another conversation and one I am too terrified to have. The first time I told BM how she had given herself away, to a quite different enemy last summer, with exact details and even the names and paper I had intercepted it going to, it became part of the horror that eventually tore us apart. Both of us were very upset and it was my fault. The second time I tried to tell her about someone who was gathering information about her, again, both her identities, she stopped talking to me completely. I always knew this is how she would react, I was not surprised, its why I have always kept it quite.

I have paid a terrible price for all this and even if i deserve some of it I can not now be the one who tells her. I offered that in a one off amnesty in May, all my gathered e-mails and reports providing she didn’t just shoot the messenger. Even examples of the x though they made me gag and writhe just to be near the disk. It was a terrible time for me, she had only just admitted him to me after telling me he didnt exist all winter and I was crashing around wracked with insomnia and the loss of her. I lost all finesse and pushed my X X X too far. X X X X X.

So I have paid the ultimate price to find out who these people are and I don’t want to waste that, but this has to be for you to investigate and establish. I cannot lead you to them or she will see it as flawed and fake. It cannot come from me. Trust me, I know her better than anyone else on earth, she will both ignore it and merely hate me for it all over again.

Mr Walsh, there is a lot here and a lot more if you wanted it but I can see that this is now too long and I admit I am “tired and emotional”. If you have got this far thank you for your patience and professionalism. In so many ways you are now the better man to run with this. Loving her compltly whilst in turn being uterly hated by her makes me the worst possible man in the world to do this. I cannot win, i will always be, and cause, upset.

To sum up. Please can you deal with the Daily Mail, although I would regard them the natural predator of the Belle de Jour I believe Miss laura Topham to be the friendliest of all those who have come knocking at (or kicking down) my door so far. I think she can be made to leave the real BM alone, encouraged to do the decent thing if met half way. Considering she was outside BMs actual office last week I rather think this snatching victory from the jaws of exposed defeat. And I am sure a man of your talents could even turn this to your advantage? Miss Topham gets some sort of story (she has clearly spent weeks on the research, it’s a Karma thing. Fairness is the very heart of my beliefs and how I operate and think. Sorry to be so Old Testament about it. Tit for tat is not very modern or attractive) and BM gets some controlled publicity.

Please may I also ask you to acknowledge that you received this e-mail? I have no idea at the filters you have set on both your browser or even just your outer office. I can well imagine that you also get unsuitable emails regarding BM on a weekly basis and you to might have adapted to simply delete them as well.

I do not need you to say you agree, believe or intend to do anything with this but I do need to know you at least know it, that you got this. To this end I am afraid I will have to keep sending this by letter, courier, blog etc etc until I know it got through and i dont want everyone in your office reading this. Also, quite frankly I am not sure we have the time. They will have the story ready to print by Friday if it is not infact already done so.

Although a very odd and awkward way to finally meet Mr Walsh, I have great faith in your abilities. Thank you, in hope, for your help and consideration in this matter.

Yours sincerely,

Owen

2009-11-17T12:20:00.003Z

09 November 2009 01:40:11
To:

Dear Mr Walsh.

Still no word from you or anyone authorised to stand in your stead.

This is obviously not the time for reproach but I am obviously disappointed. I am afraid that, even allowing for the bad timing, I was hoping for rather more. But we both hopefully want the same thing, her happiness, and if you can help me achieve that I will forgive any and all things. I have done so in the past any and every time.

In an effort to help you hit the ground running upon your return I have forwarded you some of my recent correspondence with the Daily Mail. That and the referred attachment I sent along with it. You don’t have to read it, infact I would rather you didn’t, but its important you at least have the option to. Not only will I not lie but I will try to no longer allow misunderstandings to spring up like weeds amongst the cracks in between. Or worse, those shades of grey that creep in around the edges of a solid “yes” or “no” truth.

It seems I managed to stall them for at least another weekend, which critically included her birthday week, so whatever it cost me I deem it to be worth it.

It has been another week of me being both horrified and impressed with the Mails sources. I am beginning to suspect that aspects of this current incursion started long ago and I mistook them for others, perhaps some of the non specified e-mails or facebook prompts last year or even beyond. Or rather I have run across some of their sources, in person, before. Before they got frustrated and then went to the Mail. In which case my failure is compounded.

Anyway, in your absence it went down to the wire but I have a victory of sorts. Not as complete as other times with other papers, this will still (critically) probably come out, and no matter how de-fanged (i hope) she will know of this and probably hate me for it in time for my own birthday.

However, considering these people were outside her home and even inside her work three weeks in a row I think this is, in all honesty, not such a bad result. Or so I hope, this is obviously subjective and I admit that despite all my openness and capitulation I still don’t know the whole story here. But in case you can piece it together, have the necessary skill and contacts, here are the facts from my end.

In their last e-mail (in reply to what is forwarded below this) they said, regarding what’s to come sometime in the next fortnight:

“identifying you would be identifying her you see as so many people know you were together and she would soon be fully exposed elsewhere because other papers would not restrain themselves. … you would probably lose your job if that happened and given the fact that your family has been in the Forces for generations I imagine that is something you don't want to do, so I have kept your name out of the piece.”

This rather caught me out. As I said before, my family love her and are as proud of her as I am but to have her kept safe purely because otherwise it would have offend my families’ service history is a bit odd and rather lovely really.
Maybe the Daily Mail really isn’t that bad? Maybe I really do have Stockholm Syndrome?
It’s not what I was aiming for but, as someone often described as an Edwardian relic, I can at least and at last fully agree with something the Mail has done regards this. If my being mobilised out after my brothers next year serves to help her again, and for a more noble reason, then it will stiffen my resolve that little bit more whilst doing so.

So I have won the battle regards the Mail, but not the war. There will be other, less understanding "family focused", papers. New e-mails and surprise weekend “withheld” phone calls to make the blood freeze as I find I quite place to tensely answer.

This one paper has taken all my time, effort, leave and money for a whole month. Reduced me to tears and wasted the flesh from my bones as I once again struggle to eat or sleep. Let alone continue to do the real damage deep inside, to dim my once blazing optimism and sense of fair play.

(Some of the things they have said to provoke me into saying nasty things about her are beyond upsetting Mr Walsh. Would have enraged me if I was that sort of chap or didn’t love her completely ((both things it seems they weren’t expecting)), but they have still eviscerated me regardless. Mr Walsh, its too late to be of any good now, I never said it to her face when it might, and any attached anger and desire to was washed away when I committed to her last year ((that’s the beauty and test of compete and unconditional love I suppose)) but I have never been unfaithful to anyone in my life. Let alone her, the only woman I ever wanted to marry and was trying to for all those years. Keeping this very very short, the hideous mistakes i did make were after, among other things, catching her with someone else and then being utterly dumped and cast out because of it. Four times, of which I almost then gave up on her three. The one time I didn't, this last time, which was after I had forgiven and committed completely last spring, it was too late and I will now be single and celibate forever more.

People said of me when they saw the rings, house and invitations to a years worth of parties and balls last year, “better late than never”, but now they are not so sure.
But I admit it’s more complex than that of course (those insidious, subjective shades of grey again) or rather it was, it’s now instead merely much more simple. It simply doesn’t matter.

The reason I say this is to you now is because it’s the kind of thing they “ask” and will not let lie, hour after hour of asking me when I am trying to tell them something nice about her. And I will not lie; I promised her last autumn that I would be as I was when she first met me, before the horrors, from here on in. No, but nor will i aggravate the situation neither. At the moment i face down that question in stolid silence. They tend stop asking when the first hot tears start rolling down my cheeks, it’s an honest and obvious response I suppose, but at my age it’s not much of reply, and it completely lacks as a defence, they dont give up for long)

And like those others, it is not over yet. They never truly go away and I can’t believe that they won’t try to collect on some of the other things I promised them.

Please Mr Walsh do you have any ideas? I am sorry to Quid pro quo but ether I talk to you impassioned and desperate (which has thus far returned few results) or I talk to you as the professional you would probably prefer to be approached as. Mr Walsh, i am sorry to lower the tone and raise the subject, but i am desperate now and it is increasingly clear to me that you have profited on my misery these last few years. Please, can I now ask for your help with this in return?

I have left this long enough to ensure her happiness, i made terrible mistakes, paid a terrible price and then in turn have gone on to try and atone for it all the only way i know how. I have given up everything to allow her the time to take root and flourish in her new life, make new friends at her new work and yes, even love someone who might not perhaps be as new as I would have liked, and then pushed on a few more months further still just in case. But it has cost me everything I know and now I have run out of time. Who will stand sentinel and sacrificial anode in my absence if not you?

Please Mr Walsh, i deserve my decaying life. Sitting alone on the beach or in "our" little house like Lady Haversham, surrounded with our invites and her treats. I am not asking you keep these mice and carrion crows off me, no, its my family. Much as i am grateful for the Daily Mails deference to them, they were never part of my original deal, i have never mentioned them to anyone before this and don't know why the press is so always keen involve them. Can you help? They are as i was before it all went wrong and i lost my way, blinded by my own stupid tears. Like me they still love her and are proud of her, still talk of and respect her, but they are also still innocent as well as ernest. They deserve better.

________________________________________
From: owen
Subject: FW:
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 19:24:44 +0000

________________________________________

From: owen
To: laurartopham@hotmail.com; lauratopham@googlemail.com
Subject: FW:
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 10:37:27 +0000

Good morning Laura.

In short. Hopefully I have been open and honest enough for you to know how I feel about this. That although I will give you what you require (as agreed) you will also know for sure that I am also still desperately loyal to her and stubborn as a personality type. Sorry, although she relied on the former the latter bothered her as well.

To sum up, I will happily tell you it all in exchange for her but I am not "selling" myself too cheaply.

Please Laura. Before anything goes forward can you please contact me via phone or e-mail to say what your plans are? Or even when it is going out? What you won’t reveal of her in exchange for something you will off/of me. I am aware that me hovering around looking hurt and frustrated like a kicked puppy is probably not helping but the stakes are so high and I am now so tired. Please believe me that I keep all my promises (as i have shown you so far) so, in exchange for you making the piece as positive towards her as possible, yes, I will ignore the others.

In return I do trust you, but I admit I am not so sure about your editors. I was really rather taken aback when you went to her work and even home. Whoever made you do that will think very little of upsetting us both again.

You then said that this didn't now have to mention her employers specifically, that this could instead be personality led (and/so there is more than enough here to write a Physiology thesis!)

If you are mentioning my work however, which I really really hope you don't, I will have to notify some people here officially to warn them about the imminent bad PR, its standard policy. And then goodness knows what happens next regards me, "light blue touch paper and retire to a safe distance....".

Regards another phone interview this morning, I am afraid I was really busy at work today, I am most days, and I really shouldn't be taking time out of it to talk to you. Sorry. I have to compensate by working late into the nights. But that's one of the reasons I have managed to take next week off. So we can talk at leisure (and without fear of me getting too upset in front of people I cant).

But to show how keen I am to help/allow you do the "right thing", and as an act of faith, I am instead giving you some diary entries I tweaked to make comprehensible late last night. They are only the gentle stuff. More the feelings than the facts. But my feelings are easily strong enough to steer me to make those said facts so. It is feelings not facts that broke us up and have left me where I am, alone and broken but still stolid and loyal. When you interviewed me that stormy night you kept asking me why I did or didn't do such a thing, so I think it will be useful to you to. At the time I just burst into tears and couldn't explain myself (sorry).

There are only so many ways you can say "because I love her".

(Note: Additional upon return)

The pages cover some of the times you asked about, some of the times you seem to have found the evidence of me trying to help her secretly in the background. You are not quite the first, sorry, but most of it she never knew about, it was a secret after all, (sadly she only instead saw how busy and frazzled I became whilst doing it) so I admire your investigative skills in finding it. Without detracting from the effort, I have made it my business to know how other people have done so in the past. Is it just dependent on what you want to see? What you expect to find and are used to looking for? "Seek and you shall find", or the next logical step beyond Schrodinger's cat? Its just because you read the blog and books afterwards? Well done, honestly, but part of my price (I am afraid) is that she must still never know. If I can live with it, I know you can.

Most of it was meant to be hidden forever and must remain so. I will also not talk of the details of what you already know from these other sources. Most of them I regard as enemies of her and I will not give them the satisfaction of my confession/confirmation even if the story they sold you was me doing something positive to help her. I would only look vain or foolish. More pathetic than pathos.

These entries will just cover why I did a few of these things you found and why I thought she was worth it.

For what it was worth, I still think she was worth it but the price was as high as anything I could ever have imagined. Not my life, that is worthless now, a devalued currency, (and as she once told me, no one lives for ever anyway) but that it was all wrapped up in her hating me forever and I will face such dangers alone and knowing so (because she was wrong when she said everyone dies alone). But the one thing that I am sure of is that if it afforded her a summer of peace and happiness, allowed her to find herself and forgive him, then it was worth it.

It was not how I would have chosen it I admit, another man reaping the fruits of my efforts, but when I came to my moment of "transcendence" last year (with her help), rose above what I pettily perceived as “unfair” (even that last little stubborn pathetic niggly bit that flared up like a cancer after every new upset) and I realised that it really was all about loving her, which in turn really was all about making her happy, then I still have my main aim. She is happy now.

I cant explain it, I know its sounds stupid, i hope the attached may attempt to.

Once I know your intentions for sure, that she is safe, I will happily give you plenty more to make it worth it. It's no boast, it is infact quite sad and i am far from proud of it. Aspects of my fall and hounding, the losing of myself and soul, that you haven't even waited for the full answer. That and what I intend to do next.

Owen

RE: Highly confidential. Exclusively and urgently for Mr Patrick Walsh regarding exposure of the Belle de Jour by the Daily Mail‏‏
From: Owen
Sent: 04 November 2009 20:44:24
To: jake@convilleandwalsh.com; patrick@convilleandwalsh.com
1 attachment
image001.png (7.7 KB)

Dear Mr Smith-Bosanquet

I am sorry to contravene your previous advice but I am afraid I have not yet heard from Mr Walsh.

I appreciate that the timing is highly unfortunate, it is indeed so for all concerned, but may I enquire what manner of holiday he might have embarked on?

If he is sailing the med or hiking the Andes, for example, and unable to access or correspond via the web please may I implore you to go to “Plan B”? That second in command with the authority to bargain/reason with them or simply/merely to whisk her to that pre prepared bolt hole to hide out the encroaching media fire storm. This is not a time for top trumps but I know I always had one prepared for her at all times and I was just the keen amateur at this, you are the professionals.

I appreciate that it is possible that a multitude of things are going on behind the scenes out of my sight, but from my current vantage point it doesn’t look good. I have been informed that this story is still coming out. Although at least not now in its rawest most unrefined tabloid form, and just maybe I have gained yet another weekends grace, this is still going to be highly upsetting for her.

I have given up my life for the protection of her, the love of my live, even to the point of being hated by her, and I can not sit idly by as the sands run out on her. My actions are becoming increasing desperate, my options running out. I have been stalling them for weeks, trying desperately to keep her birthday clean, but it’s rather a Faustian pact and they will want me to pay up soon. They always do.

Of all the years, all our ups and hideous downs, even with me streaked in my own blood and tears, the only thing that has ever angered me these last eight years (and arguably my life) is seeing her put in danger.

I am aware that I am coming over as such right now, and I am very sorry. I’m afraid I am indeed frustrated. I don’t believe it took a Machiavellian tactician to realise that they would ensnare me eventually, or that they would try to out her roughly now. In brief sir, where are your contingency plans?

Please, is anything going on at your end? Is this even being taken seriously? I will gladly offer myself to them to save her but I can’t pretend that it would be my preferred option. It will really upset my family. They loved her as a daughter in law, they still do. There is still not a day goes by without her name cropping up naturally and happily in conversation. She will be heartbroken to see her hounded so. All in all not a great Christmas line up for anyone really.

2009-11-17T12:06:00.001Z

RE: Highly confidential. Exclusively and urgently for Mr Patrick Walsh regarding exposure of the Belle de Jour by the Daily Mail‏‏

Sent: 13 November 2009 22:24:03
To: jake@convilleandwalsh.com; patrick@convilleandwalsh.com; info@convilleandwalsh.com

1 attachment

To whom it may concern and further to last.

I sit here late Friday eve, like many before, not actually knowing if I might wake to find her, my family or myself (in descending order of importance) exposed and exploited in a national paper tomorrow morning. Who will find the story first, myself, her or one of my blissfully ignorant and innocent family?

I know, like every time before, that I really have done everything legally possible to prevent it, but like every other time before, it all ultimately boils down to my faith, their compassion and various “gentleman’s agreements”. Despite all the time, money and effort I have again sunk into this I have very little written down to show for it. I am an optimist by nature but the engineer and officer in me also finds this cavalier.

I work in a security conscious environment were my appearance is regularly summarised and recorded. Up until last year I was regularly reported as appearing roughly 8 years younger than I actually am, now I am reported as considerably over. This is not vanity, I am instead merely aware that this is symptomatic of the deeper effects and damage of long term stress, the failing of my once rude health. I manifest other more vulgar symptoms but I won’t go into them here, suffice to say that I am not enjoying this and was hoping for slightly more off your organisation.

I appreciate that me contacting you was probably unexpected, unwanted and unfortunately timed but (from my perspective) I really honestly don’t think it took a Machiavellian tactician or the Wisdom of Solomon to know it would happen one day or even roughly now.

Regardless, you have now had enough time to research and confirm my identity. Contact the Daily Mail and establish their searching out and subsequent identification and interviewing of me.

I appreciate that you answered my initial e-mail promptly, thank you, but I really do now need to know you are doing something with this. That it wasn’t all just filed/dumped in the “too much hassle” folder. All I have asked for since is when I might expect Mr Walsh to read and reply to this. If that reply is simply “don’t dare darken our door again” then so be it, I will continue to soldier on as best I can regardless for what little time I have left.

All I actually asked was that he warns/helps her and/or gives the Mail something above and beyond what I have to mollify them and reward them for holding off with the real stuff.

I believe inaction is in itself an action, taken consciously and with understanding of the consequences.

Please, I try to do unto others as I would have done unto myself. To this end, to you, I have been open and honest, friendly and fair (considering that you have profited off my misery without my consent, perhaps to the point of ingratiating subservience).

I do not know what tomorrow will bring, whether the story will break this weekend or next, but I do need to hear from at least a representative of your company well before next Friday either way.

I am an optimist, not naive. Forgiving not weak. Sympathetic, not stupid; but yes, these are easy mistakes to make and are often made.

So let me sum up in terms you might appreciate and understand. Your silence and apparent inaction is putting two of the most important things in my life at risk. I am desperate and exhausted and my next step will, regrettably, be litigation.

Yours sincerely

Owen

RE: Highly confidential. Exclusively and urgently for Mr Patrick Walsh regarding exposure of the Belle de Jour by the Daily Mail‏‏
From: Owen

Sent: 09 November 2009 09:43:09
To: jake@convilleandwalsh.com

Good morning Mr Smith-Bosanquet.

It would seem that, utilising an unusual source of luck (and even then only just) the Daily Mail might keep off her for another week. Seeing as that week, last week, included her birthday I deem that whatever I paid to be a cost worth paying.

The current crisis has passed and there should now be more time, at least a few more days, for Mr Walsh to now step in and take over. Not to worry, I think the story is now considerably curtailed and what is left will be much easer to deal with and manage. Mr Walsh might even enjoy having such a paper somewhere safely in plain sight and keen to do the right thing in such a formal fashion. I will certainly leave it for him to garner any praise.

So without trying to sound reproachful, in fact instead apologetic for sounding frustrated and frantic the last time, please may I enquire when he actually gets back from his current holiday?

Yours sincerely

Owen

________________________________________
Subject: RE: Highly confidential. Exclusively and urgently for Mr Patrick Walsh regarding exposure of the Belle de Jour by the Daily Mail‏
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 10:03:44 +0000
From: Jake@convilleandwalsh.com

Dear Owen,

Thank you for your emails. We have forwarded them on to Patrick, who will deal with them in due course as soon as he can.

Please may I ask that from now onwards all correspondence goes directly to him: Patrick@convilleandwalsh.com

Thank you very much.

Kind regards,

Jake Smith-Bosanquet

2 Ganton Street, London W1F 7QL, United Kingdom
T: +44 (0) 20 7287 3030 F: +44 (0) 20 7287 4545

From: Info
Sent: 03 November 2009 09:55
To: Jake Smith-Bosanquet
Subject: FW: Highly confidential. Exclusively and urgently for Mr Patrick Walsh regarding exposure of the Belle de Jour by the Daily Mail‏

________________________________________
From: Owen
Sent: 02 November 2009 17:25
To: Info
Subject: RE: Highly confidential. Exclusively and urgently for Mr Patrick Walsh regarding exposure of the Belle de Jour by the Daily Mail‏

A sincere and heartfelt thank you for your quick reply. I hope you also got the afore mentioned forwarded e-mail to the Daily Mail I sent this morning?

The timing is however, of course, rather awkward.

I trust, as consummate professionals, there is a contingency plan ready to be pulled from the shelf and implemented? That you have “Actions on” regarding such a situation now the Sword of Damocles’ thread has finally snapped?

Or at least Mr Walsh has a trusted Lieutenant ready to step forward to fill the breach in his absence?

There are no lies here, and although admittedly uncertain, I have been led to believe that this story is ready to run, to break this weekend. But I have stopped it the last two so nothing is certain and I will not give up.

OK, in the absence of any kind of unifying scheme I will continue to operate independently.

My plan is to continue to delay and steer them as much as manners, honesty and current location allow. I will continue to offer them myself in return for her anonymity and trust in their conscience. Failing that continue to quote statute and insist they interview her as the Belle formally (and hopefully online) rather than traumatise her by knocking on her actual home or workplace door.

I wish you luck at your end.

________________________________________
Subject: RE: Highly confidential. Exclusively and urgently for Mr Patrick Walsh regarding exposure of the Belle de Jour by the Daily Mail‏
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 14:52:28 +0000
From: Info@convilleandwalsh.com

Dear Owen,

Patrick is on holiday this week and will be in touch upon his return.

Thanks

Conville and Walsh Ltd.

________________________

________________
From: Owen
Sent: 02 November 2009 11:38
To: Info
Subject: Highly confidential. Exclusively and urgently for Mr Patrick Walsh regarding exposure of the Belle de Jour by the Daily Mail‏

Good morning Mr walsh.

Last night i sent you an e-mail informing you of the imminent exposure of the Belle de jour by the Daily Mail. i informed you that you would regard me as "The Boy" and some on the things i have been doing to try and protect the real girl behind the blog. The real lass i still happen to still love very much and am still completely committed to.

This is the aforementioned e-mail i sent to the reporter last friday as she was sitting in a cafe having just been in BMs actual work and possibly about to go to her very home.

Although i think Miss Topham can be reasoned with regards ethics and had indeed been reasuingly friendly, understanding and “human” i believe it is her editors that are pushing for the full exposure. Only by repeating the warning i had laid out the weekend before, to be relayed up her chain of command, do i feel i got her to return to london.

Please Mr Walsh. Please tell me that you are getting these and that you intend to do something to save her.

____________________________

____________
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 09:19:54 +0000

______________________________________________

To whom it may concern

Further to a phone conversation with Laura Topham just (at 11.00hrs, 30 Oct 09) I was told the following would help her.

I, X Owen X X, here by swear that I was what would be termed the boyfriend of the woman you know as the Belle de Jour Blogger.

I will stand up in court and swear this under oath, I will allow people to meet me and interview me. Whatever test you care to conduct, from reading our letters, my diaries or looking through seven plus years of photos of us living our lives together. I can produce many members of my family or multiple friends to back me up.

In short, I still love this woman completely and unconditionally. She is still the most important thing in my life and I will do anything to protect her. When Miss Topham first contacted me out of the blue last week I offered to offer her myself in exchange for exposing the person you would call the Belle. This still stands.

Her "real" job is far more important and beneficial to the common good than you can imagine and exposing her will destroy it all.

As a person she is also far more fragile and worthy than you might imagine and does not deserve the media firestorm that will descend on her. She has never courted the photographers and I believe is allowed her anonymity. This will hurt and upset her more than you can possibly imagine, professionally, mentally and even physically.

Yes, let me be very clear on this, you will do her long term physical damage.

In short, exposing her will destroy her and is morally wrong. Please take me instead

2009-11-17T12:03:00.004Z

Last night was for her, this is for me. Yes how selfish, sorry. Yes I am still cross, and yes, because this is not a normal emotion for me, I am no doubt making more bad decisions (which my stubbornness and inability to adapt and learn to break a promise will hold me to forever more). You seem to think me capable of every other vice and sin without ever meeting me, please allow me this one extra.

I still very much mean last night and the following is also all true. But why believe me? You don’t know me and have not heard more than a few of my actual accurate words and even then the context, meaning and inflection were changed to make me seem “more normal”. Thank you for that the Mail. I get that you genuinely were trying to help me “get over her” and I appreciate all that in the end you stuck to your promises to try and help us both. I even understand why the article was rushed, strained and sounded stung. But don’t make me sound stung as well, your words through my mouth. I am pathetic, not petulant. For better or very much for worse I know I am not normal. I don’t need a paper to make me sound angry just to fit a comforting/classic jilted boyfriend stereotype. Yes I am very hurt, no I don’t show it like that, yes maybe If I had I might not be so hopelessly alone right now, im not saying it’s a better way. Turning the other check so often that your head unscrews and falls off. That’s the whole point of this whole Belle thing. Neither of us are off-the-shelf, neither of us are as expected. We are too eclectic to conform. But this is not arrogance; by blazing my own path I have indeed got lost, damned myself and have make my own unique mistakes without people trying to do it for me. I admit that and having accepted it have tried very hard to take her advice and improve.

Today I again read “my” story in various different papers. Things I never said being repeated until they become received wisdom, then truth.

This is why she outed herself in that way. Because it was her words from her mouth with almost no flavouring or spin from any third party. I instead tried to evade and say very little and I actually came out much worse, with my supposedly dignified silences filled with other people’s agendas and pre conceived misconceptions.

It was bad enough with the books but yes, I love her and yes, I really do and have forgiven her everything, so it doesn’t matter so much. Believe what you want but I would ask you to do your own research first. Don’t be lazy. Now so much of it has been dug up and disturbed it’s probably easier to find the real stuff now. It goes back over eight years and you will now know the cities to look at now. Suffice to say I didn’t “blab” anything. I was again phoned up out of the blue and told, over a month ago, that this story was coming out anyway. (The fact that you never knew about those other times is proof enough but in the very likely event that they, these other papers, start printing follow up stories, it will all no doubt be confirmed and come out soon enough anyway). All the details where known (a lot more than you currently know) and it would print in three days. As the reporter had found evidence of me trying to help her, Brooke, in the past, would I like to do so again now? A chance to moderate and justify someone I clearly still loved very much. I did, I do and they did.

They started off very badly, I told them that in no uncertain terms, it was awful that they turned up at her door, but they swung around and were heading back toward forgiveness by the end. They held the story for well over a month whilst they weighed up what I said. the following e-mails were only half of it. They asked Mr Walsh for a private “official” interview instead and then were about to drop it and join the others.

So the following is to give you a head start. It's some of what has happened the last month plus. It is 99% complete and I am very sorry to take out the occasional line, but, as I said, this is far from all out there yet and aggravating those who have so far helped and hold this stuff will not help Brooke. You already think me “devious” here is, I admit, yet more proof. I know how damaging a 99% truth can be and that to some this is worse than a 100% lie. I can again see no way round it without hurting her further and I admit that I am now coming very close to having done this almost ten times in my life. She hated me for the other times; she will rightly hate me for this.

Read this (and the attached e-mails) and try reassembling the bones of it to find the middle ground between the press, her, me and of course what you want to believe. Come to your own conclusions, ask me questions and if you fancy a bit of a drive you are welcome to meet me. Her full name and title was still down as my guest up until the Summer Ball just gone. She knew I had invited her to the Burns supper this spring when I waved her goodbye with a kiss and she promised to come back up for her things and further treats soon. She knows this. My work, friends and family are still sacrosanct but I am very much out. Maybe by talking to me face to face you will come to your own conclusions. Yes I will happily talk about how awful I am and if you still hate me afterwards I will respect that and I will take your wrath on the chin (in some cases it would seem probably quite literally, but please, seriously, no hammers or large groups).

2009-11-17T00:55:00.008Z

Gosh, what a lot of you today. Ho hum. Thank you for letting yourself be redirected here. I am afraid that even outed I will still not open or reply to your e-mails directly. If you are new, please read the old stuff to catch up. Every one of you has something relevant to say or ask and I am sorry to do this group reply but it’s just a time ‘n’ tears thing. I have not enough of the former and too much of a tendency regards her for the latter. I’m sorry if being ignored offends or aggravates, I will try to answer your individual questions ASAP. It has however been my experience that you will find your answer in here somewhere. To save time, 99% of your questions can probably be answered right now. Ready?
Because I didn’t do half of the horrid things she thinks I did or even most of the things she seems to have written I did. However, it was my stubborn/cowardly fault that she thought these things and I am very very sorry for the things I did do. They were, in their own way, equally as stupid and terrible, maybe more so because I did them and I really should have known better. I was better and yet I just fell further, still succumbing to the grinding, bleeding despair and losing myself. I became unrecognisable to everyone, but mostly her, just when she needed me the most. And finally, ultimately, the umbrella over it all, because I still love her very very much, as she once did me. Like in a way you won’t get and I just can’t seem to explain if you have not felt it yourself. Sorry to disappoint. It wasn’t sex or money or whips and stilettos. It was cuddles on cold days on the beach with “fish ‘n’ chimps” and “sweet dreams” kisses on the forehead as she slept murmuring and meeping in my arms under fluffy duvets. If that disappoints, disgusts and enrages then turn away now. You are in control here, it’s your choice.

pause

Second. This is the very rare. This is only about the 5th time I have been cross this year, and it has been a very bad year for me. Very easily the worst in my life so far. if she ever reads this it will be the third time she has ever seen evidence of me being cross and I know she didn’t recognise or like those two times either. I know I shouldn’t be writing this while being so. Not just upset (tearful and pathetic like I so often am regards her) but actually trembling with frustration. The one thing that did and will do this to me has happened again, she is in danger. It doesn’t matter how or why or if she knows or cares. Despite the passage of a year I still can’t seem to break my first promise. Yes I know this will infuriate her yet further but what’s one more drop in such a bitter ocean.

This spring, when she told me to stop tracking and then sallying forth to “meet” our tormentors, that she had professionals to do that sort of thing for her, that it was patronising (I must admit I cant remember her exact words, we were both very upset) I of course did so.

I stopped looking for them but, of course, that didn’t stop them looking for either of us. I have found that these people fall roughly into two camps. The “fans”, the ones that follow and fully believe the blog and books are actually thankfully much less successful. They pick the wrong hand and easily lose their shiny coin. The ones that instead think it through, sift out the bones of the facts for themselves and then reassemble it to fit reality, saw what wasn’t actually written but was there to “see” none the less. That sadly the Iguanodons’ terrible horn was actually the much less impressive herbivores thumb.

These people did not read the books for pleasure and they did not intend to be forgiving. They tended to be journalists. Yet I still prefer them because although fully armed with the real stuff they were, in all but one instance, relatively honest and up front. Having found and contacted me they then allowed us to meet and hear me out. I was able to plea bargain. If any of you ever read this again. Thank you again. The details aren’t important now but as a whole I have found you actually quite a decent lot. Real “confirming my faith in humanity” types helping me dispel/drain the “bah humbug” bile that has poisoned me off late. Some of them had really quite awkward (and real) things on her and so far they have stuck to whatever specific barging we made. I will try to get in touch with all of you soon, please continue to be patient.

Decades ago in art I was told about “negative space”, more recently as an adult not to hide in the only piece of cover around no matter how tempting and concealing. It’s already been targeted and marked on a Fire Support map somewhere. The bush/ditch is a trap. So it seems I have been particularly and unforgivably stupid (again). The people who found me seem to have done so by finding the holes around her. The gravitational lens that shows the hidden supper massive but hidden black hole. The missing, “tweaked” or surprisingly forgiving records, police files, CCTV footage, NHS reports and sentry write ups in the gate guards “occurrence book”.

(Nothing to do with the Belle at all,, nothing to do with blogs, Sunday supplements and the urban chattering classes. These people looked for and found the real mistakes made by a real flesh, blood and bile person. Very beautiful, precious and special but still so very human. To me, however, these are exactly why she deserves your forgiveness. The very things you found show you her fragility. This has worked with every professional so far. I was told on Sunday that the Daily Mail was not actually, ultimately, going to print the story. That, after weighing up my pleas, they didn’t want to ruin her job. But don’t ask me, ask them).

These were not Easter Eggs, not some cryptic or arcane trail of clues to the Knights Templar tomb. Most of it was hurried, done whilst very upset and typically far outside my remit and pay scale, but it was meant to stay hidden. It was meant to stay a secret. That they have been found is my failure. For those of you that have and know the rest of it, please please do the decent thing. For those that I have met, everything still stands, surely by now you know I keep my promises; I implore you to still do so to. For those that have only now put it together, that last piece, this weekend, please contact me first. If you were looking for the front of the box, the picture of the whole of the finished jig saw, you have gone from famine to feast, which paper to choose from? I understand your “eureka” feeling. (So for all those of you that think, like her, that it was me that gave her away, I suppose it was. I have made yet another terrible mistake I will forever hate myself for. Like most of the things you think you know about me, it’s not the actual thing you thought I did, but yes, I regard it as at the same level and will take the same measure of punishment.)

Then there is the other lot. The reason why I prefer the journalists, the professionals. I say “fans” but I mean it from the original “fanatical”. They have not been open to reason and even if it was in jest they have threatened me with terrible things. If I am really as awful as I have just been told I appear in the books I deserve most of it. Back then though, this didn’t bother me so so much purely because I have risked life and limb for her before, I have more than my fare share of scars, but a further subset of fans were really upsetting. Fans in the way that John Lennon or Harry Houdini finally met fanatical fans. They are the people I have either ignored or had to write this blog for. Yes, it was a mistake, fighting fire with fire just got me burnt. It’s an emotional mess. I prefer to reason with professionals every time. It’s not that im not passionate, it’s the exact opposite, I get so upset I get caught in the back blast of my own attack/defence. I don’t let go of the grenades. I shut it down months ago and was never going to open it up again.

Pause

There were sadly many errors in “my” interview today, from both sides, there were only about three lines that I actually said, llike i said them. But i understand why, they had lost most of their material and needed to publish something the very next day.

(they could not know, of course, how much this upsets me. How I hate it when people put words into my mouth, I was looking for her forgiveness, not offering her mine, she knows I love her, that comes with it. I was not deceived?! What a rushed article, and the Steinbeck reference seems to have been gone astray. I would never allow mention of my current work and I would never allow photos of her if i knew they had had them. That was one of the things i asked of them, not to show her. Again with the bloody "" above something i never said. Everyone’s desperate to talk to me but then when they realise that I still love her and don't want to slag her off they just say their own thing instead. Is love really so boring?! I am not going to be a passive pawn to be manipulated by others any more. I never actually promised I would.)

But I did learn something from them. Between different journalists i have seen different parts of a different jig saw. I have been able to piece a few things together. First, I know that the people who sold us out have read this blog, which means (as I have always made sure it has remained hidden a dozen pages into any Google search list and was until recently blocked from anyone reading it three days after every new tormentor has been directed to it) that they are probably one of the ones that came looking for me and I actually directed them to it. They might not, but if so I know that by writing this they will probably read it.

I don’t know this of course, what I do know however is still quite enough. Today, in “my story” the Mail, understandably desperate to reveal something after having their thunder stolen, let slip something they probably weren’t supposed to. Something that rather sounded like spite was instead ment to help, and they couldn’t actually lie about for fear of the storm of litigation they know would come.

“The Mail can reveal that a more recent boyfriend bragged to his mates that he was sleeping with the real Belle de Jour and it was one of those friends who passed on her name to the newspapers”.

I think you, the “friends” at least, are reading this now. I think that you are currently spending your 30 pieces of silver wondering what im going to do about it. Wondering if you are going to dare sell the other stuff the mail alluded to you trying to sell on but they didn’t want because they were a “family paper”. You know where this went before when I had everything to lose. You know I have much less to lose now. Do you still not get it?

But that’s later. Let me show you what’s now.

Tell your friend, tell “T” that I know it was him now. I believe no one is perfect and everyone is allowed mistakes but its how they fix them that merits subsequent forgiveness. He has not done that. He shagged my lass on my bed under my duvet god knows how many times last year. Tempted her away and stole my future even as I put down the deposit on our dream house. I gather he thinks himself very much the younger, fitter version of me. That he rates himself a heavy weight boxer and is quite the gymer. Well even a shadow of myself, even after a year of insomnia, stress and weight loss I still have some strength in my back. Strength enough to sally forth one last time. This spring just gone, as I cuddled up in front of the fire and then bath and bed with her, she stroked my arm and purred that I really should take up boxing again, that she could help train me to be stronger still. Well this is it. This is that time. Tell your “friend”, tell “T”, he failed her and he needs to be a lot stronger to protect her from here on in. Tell him that his first test, trial and proof of his love is to meet me. I know about him, he must certainly know about me now. Every one else does. Tell him to meet me, just I was going to him in February before Brooke stopped me. Meet me with a Second and a Referee. I will come with my own and a medic. I know several in Bristol. Its nine months later than expected but they are good stout fellows and will agree to it again. I can move quickly on this.

Let me recap. I am deadly serious on this. Tell “T” that Owen will meet him Marquis of Queensberry rules (this means legaly in a gym ring, not some car park) Owen will meet him and I will let him prove to her that he can take what is to come when the rest of this comes out. She deserves this, I am sure he will love the opportunity to prove his worth to her. Especially with someone he no doubt loathes in turn. This will be his Christmas and birthday come early. I will not back down depite the poor odds. She knows how stubborn I am on this type of thing. I will start training tomorrow. I will be back to 16 stone soon enough. The longer he leaves it the harder it will be for him to beat me. If he doesn’t come to me I will simply contact him. She has made it very easy for the world to find us both. It is in his own best interests to be quick and choose the venue. He can try to beat me but until then I will not back down. He deserves this as much as I do.

2009-08-02T05:51:00.010+01:00

In the cold sober light of day, which is not the one I originally woke to, it’s probably best I "tweak” this by deleting it. To condense it down to its essence instead.

I made a terrible, awful mistake and spent the spring wishing with all my heart that she, if not able to forgive me in turn, could have perhaps allowed me to say goodbye after the near year, last year, I then spent tiding it (and everything else, our mutual mistakes) up.

Now even that is gone and faded. What is left now is simply that I am sorry for everything.

Do your worst, I will not perform or squirm for your pleasure anymore. I realise now that even as I was filtering my old diary to take out everything that might implicate or upset her, in an effort to be free of you, I was in fact still working late into yet another summers night for you. I am just far too tired and busy for that anymore. Why am I rushing to do this, franticly trying to fit this in before matters of life and death? Before travelling to see one friend’s baby whilst on the way to another’s desperately untimely funeral?
So you do it. You take me to the press. You expose me. You do the leg work.

So the last thing I will say is this. This sums up everything I have tried to say to you over the last few months as I have tried to reason, bargain or appease your demands and threats.

I deserve this hollow, frozen life but that doesn't stop me still wishing I could see or talk to her every day and night no matter what I do or where I travel. I simply love her and miss her very very much.

Sisyphus

2009-07-30T23:15:00.015+01:00

I have just got back. My You did not make it easy but as luck would have it my years of living simply, diverting and saving the pennies for a certain someone very precious to me, have developed in me the habit of paying for things with favours and work in lieu. This is not meant to be some tax dodge wheeze but it does have its advantages, even ultimately becoming a cheering experience. It’s lovely to see how friendly people (even strangers) can be if you just do them the courtesy of being friendly, open and honest to them. Something I have always believed myself and tried to “Do unto to others” etc. The pessimist is rarely disappointed and the optimist is often, but thankfully not always.

Even as the romantic optimist I cant pretend that going on your own engagement/honeymoon round the world celebratory trip-of-a-life-time uber treat by yourself was a chuckle a minute, but it had it moments. I’m sure it was character building and hey, it took all of last year to set up and I only paid off the last favour/instalment at Christmas just. I never ever said I wasn’t stubborn.

Besides, I got to bang the rust off several languages I haven’t tried in a while (but its amazing how far German will get you through Europe, to say anymore will make me sound like Basil Fawlty), got to pick olives, churn cheese and fix the wooden main drive axel on a windmill. This was very much a first. I built an extra floor/sail loft/observatory etc with all the accompanying oar/paddle/ski and sledge racks on pulleys in the family barn after Christmas (to keep me busy whilst I eagerly, patiently waited for her to come back up as promised. I was thinking about all the cool things we were going to do come the summer, its possible I went a bit OTT. At least I stopped short of a widow’s walk though!) so I’m not shy of a few splinters but this was different and difficult. All dry joints and not a single nail or screw. It wasn’t quite Israelites building Giza but the most modern thing I could find was a spokeshave. These are all things she would have loved to see and do as well and it made me feel close to her in spirit.

But now it’s back with a bump. That was the first time in years I have let go and turned away completely and it really rather seems that whilst the cats away the mice will play. I can see now what you did and how you did it. You must have been desperate for me to get somewhere civilised (in the modern, not classical sense) enough to notice. What a mess, but what do you actually think you found? Was it really worth it? Not one penny actually went anywhere you could use it and you still don’t know where I, let alone her, live now. Also, although I have never bought her books I don’t resent the money going to her at all, that’s not who I am and it’s merely drops in the ocean to what has gone before. It’s farcical really. Just keeping it simple, silly and recent do you know how much chartering a seaplane costs with the price of Avgas at the moment!? You are a petty person thinking small thoughts. No, I have toasted her success in the best seller lists cuddled up with her on the sofa surrounded by “Hurrah” treats before. I will toast her again with her favourite tipple at the beach I have spoken of before. If not with her in my arms this time then still very much with her in my heart. Its not how I would have chosen to help her but the end state is still the same.

Anything you found out about me will devalue to nothing once I put it out there for free anyway. Its simple supply and demand.

Ever since I found the first Trojan attached to something I thought she had sent me and could not (in all conscious) not open, I have saved my diary onto an external and typically unplugged hard drive. The content itself is written with most of the pertinent person specific details removed, or at least the innocent and places that were precious to us removed. Critically names, address and dates and (because I’m sentimental) some silly intimate (but to me cute) stuff. These exist somewhere separate but no, of course I’m not going to tell you and no, I’m not saying this is particularly original or Bletchley Park. However, it’s not all I do. As it happens I have done the full crypto custodian course at a similar establishment and know a lot more about this sort of thing and IT in general than a lot of you seem to have given me credit for. When she met me I was building the hardware and writing the software for things that are only now hitting the shelves. But why am I sparing again? Sigh. I’m not doing that anymore and we both know how you got to me in the end. It was cruelness rather than cleverness. Knowing I would risk it all to save her again is pretty obvious and simple, hardly the work of Professor Moriarty. No, and you are no White Hat Hacker nore Black Hat Cracker neither. She did tell me she had said she read my 2000ADs and if I have made a mistake in this particular instance (to add to all the others to do with others) it was, with the silly glow of feeling included and referenced (you would no doubt call it “needy”), subsequently not changing certain code prompts and passwords later. Even with the nagging knowledge that that was covered on day three of the still remembered course. Ho hum. Proof, if proof were needed, that I am indeed in decline. Despite all the imposed hardening these last seven years my heart is still my weak point.
Still, looking on the bright side, I don’t regret keeping a little bit of the real me she met and loved hidden safe under the frosted surface, deep tap roots to grow back and bud again come some future spring, and it makes me smile to think how long you must have been trying those character combinations!?
Anyway, suffice to say that any and all storage devices that I dispose of, even and especially personal ones, are run through a comprehensive process that starts with a binary scrubber on my desk and ends with them being immersed in a molten ingot of steel many miles south.
In short I was already happy to admit the weakness you found in me, it was never a secret to most who met me and all who actually knew me, but now you have now shown me yours. If you didn’t take my last entries warning seriously you rather have to now.

So it is late now, and feeling hours later for me. Its off to bed with all the familiar things of hers around me making me realise that I am exactly back where I was almost three months ago when this all started and I set off so purposely wearing the now unwashed and unironed kit sitting reproachfully in the corner. O dear, even exhausted I realise I love her just as much now as I did then and yet for her she is just another three months into her amazing new fresh-from-the-packet life and three months further from ever thinking of complicated us or worn away me ever again. Ho hum indeed. I’m leaving this for now but tomorrow I will start digging it out and doing what I said I would. I didn’t promise but I still said I would and should and that’s enough to feel committed. I know im Father Mckenzie writing words no one will hear.

This is another, or the same, classic me head-heart disconnect. I know with my head that I will never see her again, know that if she thinks of me at all it is to hate me, yet my heart just doesn’t get it. She appealed directly to my heart so many times, told me to stop thinking of her with my “but that’s not fair” logical head and follow my “but so what, you love her” heart. She was right, so I did, but now i still do. Where is the off button? How do I decommission the reactor core that still burns within me all these months later?

I’m suddenly very tired, my eyes are blurring but I can still see that I’m rambeling. I will post this now and perhaps break a little silly unnecessary rule ofmine on the weeekend, to not revisit, reread, tweak and tidy up an existing post. These were only ment to be reliable rather than readable, factual not fun. This is not finished but Im not saving this off line either. I’m not digging out that harddrive now. It’s hidden wrapped insomething of hers and im not in the mood todeal with that just yett. far too tierd.

Goodnight. To sleep perchance to dream of happier times when all this was still in our christmas cottage and (after years of work/play, struggle/cuddles, tears/laughter and soul searching/just knowing it was so for sure) just for a month or two it all converged and teetered on the cusp of a decision on a blasted heath near Forres six months ago. I held my breath and put all my faith in her, hoping against all hope that she might just be as divine as I believe her to be at heart even now. To accept my desperate apologies and her list of my proudly completed promises and forgive me. Forgive me for what I had first and also twice forgiven in her when she simply took my hand and smiled at me a year ago on a beach. O well, O dear. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…this really suddenly strikes me as so pointless. All of it, my life, hollow without her. Sweet dreams indeed, not misery but not Morpheus neither. I can’t truly despair, not knowing how much I love her, it still raises a weak smile and spark of warmth in my heart no matter how bleak it gets, but I’m just so tired inside and lonely without her. O god. Is this me now, my reward for beliving in and committing to her, my life?

Aegean Escort

2009-07-23T22:00:00.002+01:00

Because someone, just one of you, actually told me something nice and asked me for something innocent. Is this not exactly what you asked for? I’m aware that it might just have been for proof (sorry to sound paranoid) but it might also just have been for simple curiosity and interest. Despite everything I still class myself as an optimist and will (and always have) go a lot further for someone being friendly.

What I now have to do stays the same but that didn’t mean I had to tar you all with same brush. Sorry. I had just had to sell something very special that I had got for her to pay for the ticket. Even if it was now unbearably obsolete I gave up some of my preccious last summer with her for it. It’s all o so ironic and becomes the little twist of the knife at the end of a tiring day. A symbolically sad end to something lovely, both this last month and indeed the most important span of my adult life so far.

Please, I never said that I wasn’t sentimental and silly and it rung midnight a while ago here.

2009-07-23T14:12:00.013+01:00

Ha bloody ha. As previously said, I have just made landfall (having run out of sea) and having had such an amazing time I went to see about going a little further east.
But I can’t, can I.

For the rest of you. I understand that inquisitiveness is an integral part of being human, as fundamental as the opposable thumb or the highly developed frontal lobes and gluteus maximus that allowed us to utilise them. I understand the physiology and psychology of it. I have sought, developed and celebrated it in others and have in turn been lucky enough to have it done so with me. There are probably several things in your home right now that I have invented, styled, engineered, manufactured and marketed. I hope you enjoyed using them, I enjoyed designing them.
So sitting with my head in the sand is not my default position. It took someone very special to make me disengage my curiosity (and perhaps pride) and, when she told me to, stop asking questions. You are not her.

So I understand your curiosity and I have set up this Blog as a way of channelling it. You will forgive me for taking so long to do so. Some of you have been sods, real nasty vindictive buggers, and I happened to be trying to protect the woman I loved. Trying to settle her and our surroundings to the point we could get married, have children and spend the rest of our lives together. The down payment on her dream cottage in her favourite village went in on her last birthday. I moved my entire life the hundreds of miles to be there myself a month later on mine roughly eight months ago. I swept and laid the ancient range myself, laid out the Le Creuset pots full of her favourite treats on the big driftwood kitchen table I had just made. We sat not more than 150 feet from it all as we watched the sunset over the sea in tears together at Christmas when she came up for cuddles and carols. I’m sure you can understand how that was rather the priority at the time.
Since the spring and rather finding myself suddenly, horrifically, free to be more open about this I have even tried to be fare and realistic, “rewarding” some of you by answering some of your politer questions. Explaining and elaborating on my lame feelings so you didn’t just ask me the next day and make me run the risk of opening an attachment. Prostrating myself in such an undignified manner as I have tied to accommodate and adjust to your demands.

But this is too much. I know I am sounding naive but this is just getting nasty again. Even worse than before. There is no need to do this, no sport in hounding me further. I am no longer sallying forth to do battle and spar with you. This is not sport but vindictive. I have given up and this is just kicking a man who is very much down so he stays down.
I didn’t think there was much point it talking to Gerry Adams, showering him with ministerial perks and pay if the “Real IRA” etc just cut off the head and did its own thing regardless, especially if the venom is in the tail not the teeth. A scorpion not a snake. So why talk to you when some of you will continue to do these things? I have obviously deluded myself into thinking this could be done with a modicum of decorum, not for me of course, the wailings of a cornudo don’t allow that, but at least for my family and friends.

I have blanked you, fought you, soiled my soul brokering dirty deals with you, lost precious time (and then everything of value in my life) to you and finally pleaded with you. I have tried everything, but I now realise that’s the problem. It’s all “I” have. This year is the complete reverse of the last few. Even though I now have all the time in the world for this, i now don’t have the heart or stomach for it. “I” was told to stop it and I have. From here on in I will leave this to other professionals who instead specialise in this.
Because I can see that you are not really the types for Transactional Analysis. Talking to you calmly and fairly means nothing to you. So I am now having to resort to something far cruder that I suspect will. What you are doing is illegal. There has only ever been one person I tolerated hacking into my various online accounts (and that was only just and only because I very much wanted her to know she meant more to me than anything else) and once again you are very much not her. Besides, I don’t think even she tampered with my bank account, which even though I’m sure you would argue you haven’t, I think you have. The only way to be sure I suppose is to take it to the courts? The thing with the bulk shipment of books was also crude and unnecessary. At the risk of coming over all Donald Rumsfeld, I know its you; you know I know that you know who I am. Shall we move on now? Lets

So that means that I will have to come clean. I was anyway but this just underlines and accelerates it. As long as you know im not going to explain this all to a legal third party you know you can carry on doing this.

I have had a lovely, lifting month. I have thought of her gently and calmly, I have seen and done amazing things. Swam with dolphins in the deep bottomless sunbeam streaked mid ocean (a lot more frightening than you might imagine) and caught and grilled my lunch on deserted islands amongst the scattered shards of ancient amphora (cephalopodes are far cleverer than you might imagine, its almost a shame to eat them in the end).

But what’s the point if you are just going to be there, always out there for as long as she keeps churning out the books or whenever you get board. I hope at least you now know that just being short of funds wont work. Yes, It was actually closer to tens of thousands of pounds supporting and feeding her these last 7 years, and yes then thousands more again either side of Christmas ticking off her “lets make this work” promises to her. I drive past the empty, hollow mocking cottage every weekend; it’s hard to forget. But I am not going to give you a penny. For the third time, just because I would for her, she could to me, why on earth do you think I will for you or you can to me? Where are you getting this from? Why do you think what a man does for the love of his life simply, directly translates out onto others? That she was not unique, special and specific? Some of it does indicate a wider life philosophy yes, but just because I help little old ladies across the road to church doesn’t mean I im trying to marry one?! There are obvious limits and differences. Do you think I had smelted a ring for you to? That that I had built you another bed in the spare bedroom? It was living wood, even Ulysses didn’t manage that! And what little I have done for you, that has perhaps encouraged you, has now stopped. I am spending no more time money or effort on you.

Or is this just all part of the wind up? You want to be seen as some rapier wit with the power of the Sword of Damocles but you are actually just a cruel and crude cudual. You are simply bully. You think you are being careful but to me you are beginning to stray over the line and becoming a base blackmailer.

I find it very hard to hate anyone; it’s just not in my nature. I like to fix and mend, make everyone happy. I have still just spent more of my life beating Swords into Ploughshares than I have cutting lumps out of things with them. But I resent and loathe you. For every evening and weekend you took from me, every evening or weekend you added even a nanosecond of delay to a smile or a hug between us. The stress and frustration you sowed through both of us (particularly her, I hate you for the tears she shed, the hardening of her heart) and throughout the last few years. Your part in our eventual downfall and the end of my life as I had worked and dreamed of it for all these years.

So it looks like I am coming home to rejoin the rat race after all. Despite your efforts I have just enough money about my person to book the flight and my new friends will let me forage off the land for tonight. When I get back I am going to start digging out and then dumping my life on the net in bulk. Diaries and letters and whatever else is quick and lying around. it might take a bit of time to remove anything that will leed you to her but i will somehow find the time to do it. that is the one aspect of the last near 8 years that i will hold on to. I love her and i can not be any part of something that will harm or expose her. i will also continue to try and keep my family and work out of it if possable, they are innocent, decent and deserve better than this. however once it’s obvious it is me and I have nothing of my actual self left to hide, I will then take your next violation straight to the police. I understand that some people don’t listen to threats, everyone who knows me knows that I don’t, so yes this would have been hypercritical if I was still ignoring yours and still strapping on my now very rusty and dented armour (or blindfold of simplistic stubbornness) and dealing with you myself. I’m not doing that anymore, I am now going to do this like any normal (passive and boring but perhaps ultimately more effective) person and this was your very last warning.

2009-07-22T23:54:00.002+01:00

You little vindictive evil sod

2009-07-22T18:23:00.008+01:00

Further to my last: I have had to come back to this. I can see and admit that I need to expand and explain this further. It seems you simply wont leave it be until it is broached. Some of you are even crying foul and saying i have back tracked on the deal. Ok, yes, all my adult life I have been teased for my high libido and some people are just not going to get that I wasn’t just enjoying the infamous Belle de jour’s company just for the simplistic and salacious. The waters are muddied yet further because yes, sex was indeed desperately important to us. I was ever aware and aroused by her little lithe body. But its not actually what I drove all those thousands of miles for, or made me climb to the tops of mountains in the rain alone and in the dark just to get the reception I needed so I could talk to her every single day for seven years. What kept me going was the hope of the simple smile and cuddle at the end of that journey. The simple sweet follow up “x” text in reply to mine every morning, to show that she was out there somewhere still thinking of me, just as I was her. This was not a dichotomy but instead just indicative of the breadth and depth of our life and love for each other. In short, I loved her long before and despite her being the Belle De Jour, not because of it.

But that probably won’t be enough for you will it?

So yes, the unvarnished honest truth. For all my ceaseless and raging desire, for all her alluring, scented sensual femininity in lace and silk forever etched into my mind by the thousands of times we took each other, her new bed now as splintered as my last. Me holding her, having her, her tiny wrists easily held together in one of my hands, leaving the other free for whatever her gasps allowed. For all that and even a lot of what you have tried to prompt me to say here, that and so much more, what I actually longed for then and now, what you wont believe as adamantly as I insist I’m not ashamed to admit it, the mental image that makes me miss her near to tears every night as I try to force myself to sleep and what makes me reach for her subconsciously every morning before I wake, is instead the vision of her swaddled up in bed right up to her nose. Her curled up in her now bobbly (once fluffy) cutely patterned petite pyjamas. That and her knee length cheerful stripped hand knitted bed socks. Something very silly but sweet that, if she wasn’t hugging it, she used as a pillow when she felt lonely or sad (I can’t and won’t tell you what it was for fear of tainting it) and the look on her face when she was. The absent-minded little innocent thing she used to do to with its tail as she got lost in her melancholy thoughts. The achingly cute face she used to pull when she noticed I was looking at her and wanted, but wouldn’t say, a big cuddle to make it better. How my heart used to break every single time and I used to rush though my ablutions and dive in after her, still wiping the toothpaste off my teeth with my tongue, hoping my still damp hair wouldn’t make her squeal or tut. Snuggling up after her under my duvet and then again under her ever-present almost threadbare baby blanket that kept her warm more from sentiment than from physics. Both of which, the blanket and the pillow substitute, were made all the more precious again because she had had them since she was a child. Rare and precious scraps from her past that have survived house fires, personal horrors, family tragedies and endless epic moves. Real “starting from scratch” new starts with just a suit case or two in tow. Even now I would run into a burning building just to save those two fluff and fondness keep sakes. Sentiment as sacrosanct as any icon or relic. I in turn would blaze hotter still in fury if anyone dared to mock her for them. She was far more complex and eclectic than you could ever imagine or grasp from a book. Real in four dimensions, from past lonely child to future aging women. Yes she was sexy and you might moderate that down to “girly cute”, but more than that, she was also far more fragile than she would let people imagine. Still professional and powerful but behind closed doors also underpinned with pathos. These memories and many more overflow my heart and flood me each and every night. I find myself awash with the unbidden memories of her tucking in behind me deep in the winters night, especially the Christmas just gone, squirming and seeking the warmth and comfort of my bulk. Nuzzling into the crease of my spine between the muscles of my back. Her gentle breath on my skin. Murmuring and meeping in her sleep as I now fight the urge to roll over as I used to do, trying not to wake her as I then faced her and held her in my arms, enfolding, surrounding and protecting her. Tucking my hot feet under hers and then, after gently brushing aside her fringe to kiss her forehead and smooth away her fretful dream frown. Tucking her tiny, precious head under my unbreakable jaw. The smell of her hair became then (and still is now) the only thing that can make me sleep peacefully at night and let me wake content in the morning.
So for those that asked, I could never know if my ardour for her would ever wane, I would never know if I could ever have enough sex. I doubt it but I also didn’t care. I did instead know that my love for her didn’t flare and flicker like my surging passion. It was instead a steady, unwavering, blazing fire that illuminated and enveloped everything in my life with its sustaining warmth. This heat was infact ever rising as the red-hot glowing coals of our memories built and banked beneath the furnace of the present above. The convection caused by one feeding the other so it blazed and roared all the more in a virtuous cycle. This was, and would, increase with each and every year that passed. I knew that I would love her forever more no matter how old and frail we got or however much our lives and the world around us changed. I obviously would rather have not tested that theory with what has happened this year, but it still seems to be holding true regardless.

And that’s it, that’s all I can say on the matter here and now with the salt stained picture of her smiling up at me from a very different beach many miles away and now even further gone and lost in time. I’m afraid I have now been talking about her to you for longer than those four minutes I mentioned before and for all the fact that I have had an amazing time this last month, laughing and toasting her name with all those that were hoping to see her, it wouldn’t do to sit here with tears rolling down my face. The whole 16 stone scarred and burnt bugger silently striding out of a stormy sea (in nothing but a pair of dripping rugby shorts and a dry bag clenched in his teeth) and then sitting sobbing in the corner of the cafe "look" is not one to put the locals at ease. So I’m sorry that this has all been so crudely and clumsily put down. The sentiments I feel are not done justice by the time and skill at my disposal. I have many talents and abilities but it is infuriatingly, painfully obvious that writing isn’t one of them, especially in the hour or so a month I allow myself to write this blog. Over planning and taking too long to make it perfect used to be a failing of mine up until Nov 08. Although I admit the new improved impetuous “now with the passion released” me doesn’t look much better. No notes, drafts or reflection, just log on and type from the heart from scratch. Yes I can see it’s distorted and drowned out by the back ground hiss of white noise, the underlying agitation and emotion. I find it helps if I try not to read any of this again once it’s up and I’m counting off the days and obligations until I can take it all down. I’m afraid that in the interim you will have to settle for factual rather than grammatically accurate. Earnest rather than elegant and entertaining prose. Yes, it’s also intimate and excruciatingly awkward for all those concerned; but do you get it yet? Please, do you understand the crux of it?

2009-06-28T01:48:00.018+01:00

I can see I will have to try harder, change tack even. I knew this was going to be difficult and upsetting for me so I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised or disappointed. As ever I will try to get through this by focusing on the positive, my very centre and raison d'etre. My love for her. Yes, I know this is exactly what and why it is so hard to grasp, I know you don’t believe or understand it. Yes, “Bitter-sweet” perhaps, but no, not at all “conflicted”. It is a warming unwavering light I carry in my heart at all times. It has taken (and been like this for) years of profound life altering moments and irreversible decisions for me to arrive at this point. You probably just can’t understand it in much less. It is in my very heart and fills my every waking thought or sleepless night, and yet even I don’t fully understand the workings of it; but the fact remains, when all is said and done, I do love her, utterly and completely. Let me count the ways and attempt to show you why.

I see I will also have to show you both the ups and the downs. So you can better see that this is not a “fair weather” thing, that I can not be shaken so easily by your “revelations”. It is also the honest way of doing it, it would be silly and dishonest to pretend that it was all smiles and sunshine. Besides, I believe you can’t really prove how much something means to you until it becomes hard to attain and achieve and you must work and strive for it. The helicopter ride to the summit of a mountain is fun, flashy even, but makes it too easy. The mountain becomes irrelevant, its all about the ride. For me it detracts from the ability to say you where there, even cheapens it for those who took the time to climb every step. Would you have bothered if you had had to take the time, make the effort?
To love her was easy and near instant, but to live with her was not, and for me the former obviously demanded the latter. So ultimately I did not love her because it was always easy or convenient, yet love and adore her I did and do. I have fought for that privilege.

Fought and lost. I suppose I must also tell you why this has happened, why I am finally doing this. The point is that although I am, i have to, I still love her. This is as gentle a letting go as I can manage. The Sands of our time together running out and away through open fingers, not a fist.

I will also deal with a few of your questions along the way. The recent realisation that your knowing is probably just less painful than your crude probing, less of a violation. Just. Providing that you then leave it be.

Read, please try to understand. Or bugger empathy and compassion, if it’s all just too stupid, pointless and pathetic to you, fair enough, but with all due respect, it is what I believe and who I am. Have your fun and your fill of it, but after that move on and leave me in peace. Whichever course you take, whatever type you are, I will not and cannot betray that which I love.

(Note: This is concurrent activity. A whole flock of carrion crows clipped with a single shot. But that from a blunderbuss with its barrel frantically filled with whatever came to hand. Miscellaneous but multiple munitions. So for the person who contacted me about the film, I consider this to also answer your questions; and in the manner stipulated. The “real stuff” and not just lines of “dry details like reading a shopping list” as from before when I was stupidly still trying to answer e-mails individually and endlessly repeating myself in clipped "robotic" tones.
You asked a fare question, politely, and seem to be sticking to the reasonable deal offered so far. I am a big fan of fairness and this is for that. As it stands though I consider this the end of it, the rest of my diary is out of bounds.I just don't have the time or heart for it. sorry.)

For/from diary 3rd May 09

For a series of reasons that were profoundly symbolic for us, but will no doubt just seem silly to you, this is the month I was going to propose to her. I had learnt long ago of her fear and loathing of all surprises, even ones I would consider fun or lovely, and had done my best to change my mind set and manner accordingly. To curb my “tiring” enthusiasm, be more paced, less proactive.

(Which I admit I came to love, I had always felt so happy, relaxed and “bonded” cuddled up on the sofa with her anyway, but that was nothing to just spending most of the day reading the “fresh from the packet” Sunday supplements in bed with her. Not much in the way of talking but with communication of a sort via our intertwined limbs, typically with her warming her feet on my flank. It was still a compromise of sorts though, the best of both worlds, she still needed me to retain just enough energy to leave our warm sanctuary and set off into the morning drizzle to fetch her choice papers from the garage for her, or further still if we had got distracted/delayed and they had sold out. Then of course, seeing as I was up and all, perhaps cook her her favourite treat breakfast so she had something to munch whilst she contentedly meeped and thumbed through her prised glossies with now buttery fingers. I knew so at the time, said so repeatedly even, but for all the nights of passion, the hours sweaty rutting till the dawn, what was always the best part of any day was “merely” waking beside her and simply cuddling up together. I’m aware of course that those two scenarios, that night and that morn, are not mutually exclusive, but because of each other. So perhaps the better example of how I know the difference between love and lust, how I felt for her, is acknowledging the longer lasting warmth from the latter. No, not a greater thrill, but still heat and passion of a sort. Pride, love and joy still raising the pulse, just from watching her enjoy your cooking and shyly asking for seconds. Me in turn making a big fuss of her and promising that the butter will do her no harm on a cold day such as this, the contentment in just watching her absentmindedly drink your tea even though she said that she didn’t want another when you asked, but you knew her so well that you made yourself extra anyway to compensate. Rolling your eyes and smiling, but as you turn away in mock indignation she just responds by wiggling her cold toes unannounced somewhere warm.

To this end, after much stiffening of sinews and summoning of the blood, I had got her blessing on a sunny beach last spring. But mostly it was by disengaging the logical brain and finally allowing myself to follow the passionate surging heart. Realising that principals could actually be poisonous. To do as she had pleaded and advised and just let it go. I wish I had done it much much sooner and eagerly, threw myself into it. Even now, after all the subsequent horrors and hardship, the thought of that day still fills me with such happiness. Literally an actual tight but tingly feeling of joy in my chest that lifts and swells me. Once the decision was made (or rather, of course, once she held my earnest yet terrified gaze, and with tears in her eyes said yes. Yes she wanted to live with me, yes she wanted to marry and have our children. Grow old with me even) I obviously, ecstatically, committed completely.

I am a passionate dynamic chap, often being used to start projects from scratch, or lend impetus and practical solutions to any number of dispirit daunting jobs or situations. To “Jolly things along” with a smile. Failing that, rouse or carry the broken, obtuse, unable or just plain apathetic with the strength of my own back, leading from the front. All the normal clichés apply, to get “amongst it”, get “it gripped” and to “crack on”. I was happily doing so long before I got paid to do so and it became a duty. Normally this attitude is considered an attribute and has brought royalties, rank and riches, but in this instance (particularly as I was of course so uniquely driven and motivated, not constrained by a clients or committees time or finances and therefore allowed to at last do a “proper job”, to make it so special) it has proved quite disastrous. I have built up quite a head of steam and the resulting derailment is quite the train crash, even if my slow and stupid heart has taken a while to fully realise and the resulting carnage has been played out in slow motion. Or, of course, with some of you lot in mind, dear reader, perhaps that (i) should instead be seen like a vast lumbering leviathan that, although mortally wounded, its entrails rent asunder and being fought over by the surrounding pack, still longs for its mate and sanctuary with its tiny dull and physically distant brain. Not comprehending that it is already dead.

Any way. Even though still doing my best to keep my chin up and all that, to remain the light and soul of the party, ball, expedition even I find, in quite moments when I can not keep myself distracted anymore, I am quite hollowed out and heart broken. Yes, eviscerated even, but it is only that, not anger. There is still such a surfeit of now untapped (and unwanted) emotion and passion welling up from within me. To talk about her in whatever company, from cheerful family to gruff peers for more than about 4 minutes, is to run the risk of finding myself suddenly grinning and flushed or with huge hot tears running down my cheeks. The latter is in itself upsetting as I have no control over it and can’t feel it coming, it infact follows the former. I’m usually animated and happy when it happens, laughing, beaming, extolling her virtues, praising her talents. Feeling my heart glow with the pride and love of her. No, to talk of her to others is to toast her, as has been done on land, sea and air, all the points of the compass and from the edge of space to fathoms down this last year or more. It is all positive, amazing things and many a fine port has been dusted off and sunk in her name by the great and the good these last few months, from West Point to Westminster.
A silly but hopefully not too trite and obvious an observation. Love is such an over used word. It fills a hundred songs on any given radio station on any given day, is said so casually to conveniently fill any number of conversational gaps when you actually only meant liked their company, an affection or friendship for. It has perhaps become devalued with over use. Yes, all these things do indeed come with love, but it’s at the other end of the same spectrum, or just a few facets on a much larger dazzling diamond. What I mean when I say I love her is beyond these clunking adolescent attempts to express it verbally, or even my many month long efforts to demonstrate it physically, but to keep it simple, to try, she was the one true love of my life, my soul mate. The very heart and centre of my remembered past and my future hopes, dreams and life. She has been so for years past and will be so forever more.

I had crafted the ring for her myself, refined the design and the materials, smelted them in the workshops I had daydreamed of her every weekend these last two years when apart and was moonlighting to earn the extra money to pay for it all. Not just the exotic materials, but her infinitely more precious future safety and happiness. The cuts, bruises and red eyes came from more than the forge. I finished its tiny form with eye watering care with the big hands she so recently held, kissed and said she admired so. It was not to be the most amazing, expensive or complex gift I had presented to her, nor could it match the hundreds of little day-to-day (often silly) treats I had presented to her over the years for whimsy or cuteness. But it was meant to be like her, unique, tiny and precious. More “her” than anything a lifetime of looking in all the bazaars of the world could have found (and I have tried), wrapped up in so many other meanings and symbology. The most obvious of which was that the fizzing, successful designer she once was so thrilled to meet and praise was still here and had summoned up the courage to return for her, to her. Here beneath the scars, calluses and armour that had built up as I have tried to both accommodate and protect her, to safeguard and build our future together.

It’s all now buried in the sand in a little enamel and glass jar she once gave me at a pick nick she had personally prepared, potted and packed. Where I was to present it all to her in return with a life times of accrued interest. It is filled with her favourite flowers, treats and something silly but very very precious that she gave me as an uber cute and thoughtful token of love. It is one half of a pair of something very silly and very precious that she made for me by her own tiny hand and presented to me to keep me company no matter how far I had to roam, no matter how long we were forced apart. I took them, and still do, everywhere I go and she said last summer that seeing me so happily doing so made her feel very cared for and happy, made her laugh even. One of the little fellows I will continue to keep about my person at all times, the other will sit sentinel in and over the rest of that little time capsule, not entombed but sleeping in the dark under the rumble of surf and the hiss of the warm wind in the maron grass. The two will forever link my heart to that place, to my thoughts, to her and everything that could have been. A distant beautiful place that was already so special to us but was to have become infinitely more so with the summer lease and keys (front door, window shutters, well, generator and the fence to the bun proof vegetable garden) in a watertight folder tucked in my day sack.

The carefully planned “once in a life time” holiday (not that it was particularly epic by our standards, but that im only every going to propose once, and for all her “modern” urban veneer she also surprisingly, reassuringly, old fashioned at heart. She only ever wanted to marry once as well) I had organised to mark the event will be starting without us by the time this is posted. It’s possible I will still fly and sail some of the med without her, it’s all arranged and mostly paid for now, island hopping along Sicily and the southern Greek islands etc, independent and well away from the maddening crowd. I could swim the sunken temples and climb the sharp weathered pumice cliff top battlements without her, but I just don’t think I have the heart to face the further legs without her inquisitive beaming presence beside me. I know it’s pathetic and “needy” but it’s been years since I have been able to watch the northern lights, a shooting star or even a sunset without missing her terribly and wanting to share it with her. Almost to the point of even looking away if I couldn’t. Still, I know the further frozen wind blasted sites scraping the roof of the world or buried deep in steamy jungles will no doubt keep their inscrutable lonely vigils for millennia more without us. We were inconsequential mayfly at best and interfering tourists yet further wearing down the steps at worst.
The family and work gatherings she was invited to, would had been so keen to go on only a few months ago, where we to have celebrated our long overdue announcement, will be happening the length and breadth of the country (and others) over this summer regardless. I will instead continue to go to these friends and family engagement parties single and alone. Alone in that way you can only really feel in a crowded, heaving party full of friends and family all having an amazing time. Couples holding hands or unaware that they are mirroring each other, young flushed families holding out beaming blue eyed babies for you to dutifully admire, not realising that your smile is not forced because of disinterest, but because of the pang of brooding loss. Especially as they excitedly ask were she is, as they offer or indicate a sample of her favourite tipple or morsel of food, keen that she try it and give her expert opinion. Or worse still, pointedly, politely, not asking where she is. Not commenting on why this odd and exotic whisky or wine happened to be stocked in the cellar. Even if it stays this glorious all summer, there is only so much talking about the weather even an outdoor chap like me can muster.

Pause.

After a huge journey, we have just been only a few miles apart. After all those thousands of times I wished with all my heart I could have been so close, or expended a fortune in time, energy and money to be so, I instead had to again pass right past her, ignored at best, but actually much much worse. I tried to console myself that I was helping her one last time. I had to untangle and tidy up something horrible that should have made me, me above all other men, furious with jealously or cruelly smug with schadenfreude. At the very least make me appreciate the truth of it, the repeated reality of her. Instead it just broke my heart and I realised for the hundredth time the even bigger more encompassing truth of it, not the elephant in the room at all, but the bloody room itself. The repeated reality of it is that I still love her very very much, and if I still do now, will probably do so forever more. This is a horrible way to find out, to be so absolutely sure, but it would seem that something truly glorious, has happened. Touching on the divine even.
I really do love her completely and unconditionally. Much kudos to all those around me who knew so years ago, and of course her, who repeatedly pointed out or even remind me so.

Also, I say “Had to” untangle, I didn’t. I had nothing to do with it really and she did not ask me to do it, in fact she would have instead been horrified if I had offered her directly, and was of course furious when she found out I had, so it’s entirely my own fault for putting myself in that situation. A rod for my own back that I deserve no (and know I will get no) sympathy for, but I knew I was also the only person who knew and cared about her enough to sacrifice the things required to fix it. To give her back (at the very least) her peace of mind, slow them down. Again exchanged my pride, career and dignity for hers. And i don’t regret it.
Unfortunately, catch 22, it was also this very private, intimate and personal knowledge and care for her that made dealing with this specific horrid mess so uniquely upsetting to me, me above any other man. I now know I cannot now keep doing this, the honour of protecting her must now pass to someone else. I would have been very proud to be her silent and stolid champion forever more but not now she hates me for doing it, has told me to stop. And I admit that I have become tarnished and smeared by the very enemy I was keeping at bay. In any protracted conflict there is always the danger that, in tired desperation, you start to resemble your enemy. No matter how hard you try to hold onto your cherished ideals and beliefs. In the grime and the gore she has looked up and been unable to tell who is who and who. Or worse, knew that it was me but not that she was180 deg out on why and what I was doing. The end and obvious result was to recoil from both. Turning my final victory in her name to a soul numbing defeat with nothing but her memory to keep me going on here all alone.

It is with these recent events, dates and demands fresh in my heart and mind, adding to all the others that now engulf me, that are still indeed welling up new and fresh and painful every fortnight or so, yet with the absolute sureness that I still love her but we are never now going to get back together, and it was all, all for nothing. All the try and struggle wasted and pointless, that I am doing this. I know that to keep her dear and precious in my heart will only mean that I will make all the same mistakes all over again, but I don’t care, I am so far, years past, were my once cherished common sense and practical logic said stop. But I am also now too tired, heavy and old, to cry myself to sleep anymore, fighting unseen and uncared for for a dream of a person who is forever gone from me and hates me for doing it, tragically did so because I was doing it.
In short, I am giving myself, and indeed it all, up. I must be left to deal with this alone and in isolation and that means that certain “people” have to now leave me alone and this is the only way they will. But yes, it is probably going to get alot worse before it gets better and I admit I am deeply anxious of what comes next.
But none of the above, any of my thoughts and feelings, really matters now. Ultimately she simply just told me to, and I have always done everything (really, honestly everything) she has ever asked me to. And I inturn told her that I would, and I have done everything (really everything) that I have ever told her I would do.

So, the above is the present, the following is the past, and by nailing it down so, and dating it, it will remain so.

Ok. What to say? After all that has happened, our huge ups and downs, I find it amazing that I never thought I would have to think, let alone articulate this. I find it a testament to optimism and love that I am quite so unprepared now.

I will try to break this down.

Everything here and anything that might follow will be the truth and will be demonstrated as such soon enough. To that end I must start with something that will probably disappoint and anger you. Sorry. I am not truly “the Boy”, or rather, I doubt very much I am. For various reasons I have not yet read the books. Up until a few months ago she said that they showed how much she loved me, so I didn’t need to. Also, we both got nervous when we showed the other our creative efforts, from cooking to portfolios, so I didn’t want to add yet another stress straw on to that already overloaded camels back. Being with her was all about faith, so I resisted the desperate temptation as a show of trust. I trust that it was as positive and glowing as when I talk about her to others in her absence, or as she did about me to others when we were at parties or round friends even at the christmas just gone? I haven’t really read the Blog since she first started and I stumbled over my words, phrases and anecdotes on the Internet. My private musings, secrets and conversations, our most intimate passions or silliest treats laid out for all to read, let alone in the context in which I found it. But that is all much more than I will go into here, half a diary’s worth infact, but yes, I will always vividly remember the moment I realised it all. Then all that day, as I sat by the river near her house thinking what to do, what it meant, I realised I was humming “centrefold “ by the J. Geils Band. I was obviously in shock but I can see the funny side of it to.

(I have since also learned to look at the positive side of this, it would have been far odder and sadder if two intellectual, enquiring and passionate people, who spent so much of their lives wrapped round each other both physically and mentally, had not taken on aspects of the other. I could easily, honestly give 50 examples of such cross pollination in the next 15 mins, but to keep it simple and innocent, why does a lass from where she comes from say “lass” and love white pudding, and why does a chap from where I come from now like hummus and halva!?)

In short, I admitted to myself it was just too upsetting reading it and stopped. This from someone who always thought ignorance was not bliss and only fools or the lazy didn’t look ahead to check all the angles. Repeated professions and pastimes have taught me that forewarned is forearmed and I have been rewarded by returning from the rapids, storm, boardroom or battle relatively unscathed.
So I’m not sure “he” is “me”, but I suspect (knowing many of the sad misunderstandings that plagued us) that “he” is only aspects of the real “me”. But as far as she (and therefore you) are concerned, I am The Boy. Hello.

So who am I really then? Simply, as some of you have been only to keen to find and point out, I was the chap who has loved, adored and (at the very least) been the boyfriend of the woman you call the “Belle de jour” for the last seven years, a bit longer infact. I am the man that has held her tight and safe in the night as she cried in frustration as the world pushed its way in, or in ecstasy if we were able to hide from it all and be ourselves for (and with) each other. I am the man who repeatedly risked and lost it all to keep the police and paparazzi off her. Silently and often secretly made the best of it and cleaned up the blood, bile and broken glass. I have repeatedly, physically and figuratively, carried her to safety when she stumbled, failed and “fell”. Sitting by her side to nurse her until the morning. We have climbed mountains and found hidden places to sit and eat our treats in the quite, scented air. We have sailed around headlands fighting storms and currents off a lee shore to shelter in deserted inlets. We have sampled the finest foods found all the word (excitedly offering the choice bites to each other off our own plates) yet nothing was as honest and delicious as that simple hot buttered tea cake we then held in our cold hands. Huddled in the hot spice scented gas lit galley as we felt the anchor finally bite home, taking the strain against the spring tide and the wind wailing in the shrouds. We have explored the road less travelled, left it entirely even, and walked far off empty shores and deserted forests with out pockets full or Penny Buns and chanterelles or our fingers sticky with foraged tiny wild fruit. We have rummaged through exotic, heaving markets, her sheltering from the thronging masses as they parted around me. Her being sucked along behind me in my lee, like a cork bobbing in the wake of my broad back, her little hand held safe in mine. My rucksack full of her freshly found prizes, be it a little silver Tiffin box from India or the equally gleaming Apple laptop from the USA. The latter being on what she has written so much of what you have read, whilst nibbling her lunch out of the former. The pride in bargaining, buying and carrying it all the way home for her, the happiness to see her contentedly busy herself as she has used them, and all the other things, every time since. We have stood beside each other and beamed in pride as the other excelled in their field and received the plaudits up on the podium or the parade square. We have discussed Nietzscher over nachos and/or drank the finest vintage bottled Sicilian wine whilst cuddled up on the sofa (watching the very latest Battle Star Glactiga DVD freshly flown over). I have built her prized garden shed in the freezing sleet, helped her buy her garden gate and put up shelves and curtain rails whilst praising her sewing as she expertly trimmed and stitched the hems to fit. I have been so proud to help find, build and feather her nest, to keep her safe there. I have buzzed with professional excitement and pride as I we have helped each other network at some far off foreign conference or government installation/institution, or even just here in the UK. I will never forget last autumn, even as we walked down cold wet streets I felt a glow as she hugged my arm and beamed up at me, saying that we were quite the “power couple”. We had slipped out of a conference of hers and as we walked back to her hotel we popped into a random but salubrious club for a nightcap. Without looking for it, or trying to, we went from being star struck to becoming the centre of a group of the great and the good, swapping business cards and amazing and outclassing the famous with honest and underplayed anecdotes of our life together. Each animatedly explaining and expanding on any gaps the other took when they paused for breath. Complimenting and encouraging each other if one of us modestly brushed over a detail, from the silly to the sublime. We glowed in each other’s company and as yet another extortionately expensive round was bought for our table purely off the back of our recommendations. Or quite the other end of the spectrum, the equal contentment and pride just sitting at some little fire lit stone pub as one of us met some old friends of the others for the first time. And much, much more, from the mundane to the magnificent. From spoon-feeding her medicine in her fever soaked blankets to being stunned speechless by her elegant, effortless beauty in some breathtaking dress she had created Sipping the champagne I had offered as she joins me on the ball room dance floor.
I love her dearly with all my heart and despite my obvious inability to adequately express it. Despite my hectic personal and heavy work life hindering me from demonstrating it. Truly not 5 minuets of any day goes by (or any evening, morning, sunset, walk, meal or party etc etc) without me missing her, loving her and feeling utterly lost without her. I will call her B from now on.

And that is the first really important thing here. This is not a kiss and tell. I am going out not with a bang but a whimper. My hand has been forced on this but I am still far too stubborn and loyal and in love to give them (you) what they want. I still care for her more than you can possibly imagine, have had a life with her more intense and encompassing than I suspect any book, no matter brilliantly written, could do justice to.
If you are waiting for the big reveal than you will remain disappointed and should go now. In fact if you found this by accident who on earth are you? Why are you here? I am surprised you have managed and bothered to get this far. I cant see how anyone but those few who insisted on this will ever read this, and it will remain lost, unreferenced, unlinked, dismissed and forgotten to all but a few who necessitated it and the few others they subsequently told about it. The point is though, who those few are. You will know who you are and you will know that your leverage is slipping and, at the end of this process, gone. If you are reading this you see that I did it, you see that I keep all my promises and vows. It is not just that I am giving myself away but that I am also dismantling everything you could use to keep your hold over me, every thing right up to, but not including, her. And by doing so she is safe a while longer. I am not a spiteful person and this is no Russian retreat from Moscow, I am scorching only the earth beneath my own feet. This is to show you that not only do I still love her regardless, but I will never tell you who she is. I will no longer be threatened by you endlessly hacking and searching for me. In short, your recent threats will be as obsolete and useless as your initial efforts to bribe.

Pause

I have just spent a fortnight working overseas with her countrymen. Despite what the official paperwork said (I wrote it), it was basically set up late last year as an exchange, payment in lieu, for me being able to take her back home. Her home, but somewhere very special and unusual. Somewhere she might have had the authority to go to if she had not so radically changed the course of her career years past. I felt (and those I informed of the facts) she had more than earned said right with blood, sweat and tears. Literally. It was all years before I met her, but it would have been such a honour to have been the one to at last correct that injustice. To finally allow her to taste the trappings of that privilege, all that she had fiercly fought for and was still obviously so proud of. All that still fired her eyes and voice and straightened her back when she spoke of it. And this in turn was as a huge thank you for when she invited me there. An event that will for me always remain one of the most special and wondrous months in my life. Somewhere I return to in my thoughts and dreams when I think of how much a love her or just simply need cheering up. I have never scrimped on the pennies regards treating her but there are still a few places on earth that need more than mere brute cash to enter. Access must be earnt by deeds. Which is how I think it should be really, its quite reassuring even.. It makes the world a bigger, more interesting place.
Sometimes you can’t just pay to have that helicopter ride to the top of the mountain, no matter how rich and flash. If it’s in restricted airspace you will just be shot down.

To hear them chatting and sharing anecdotes about it all, all the names and places she has told me about, the accents even, made me very wistful. Even though most of them are not paid for their empathy they realised pretty early on it was not a good idea to ask where this “brainy babe” of mine had got to, where she would be meeting us over there. But the conversation still swung back to it in the end. We have just spent two days in the back of a crowded transport and on the last night, last night, we were deemed sufficiently close to Blighty that, someone, somehow, produced an acoustic guitar and some gifts for me to pass on to her. Honestly, how many ways have people devised to distil alcohol from grain? Still, it was gratefully accepted and like a magic penny, I promptly returned it with interest by cracking it open. We sat around singing Johnny Cash and, as a reward for me doing a surprisingly passable “ring of Fire” (if I do say so myself, but it’s easy to do when the whole place was vibrating and accentuated/drowned out my rumble. And my voice was already suitably gravely from days of over use) they reciprocated with a Tom Jones. So, full of good cheer and a not inconsiderable amount of “Jeremiah Weed”, talk turned to what we were looking forward to back home, what had been keeping us going. What was it actually all for?

I of course told them about her, without hesitation or caveat. As I have done easily and effortlessly in many such similar situations over the years. Her as my B of course, not your Belle. And even though I included the terrible fall at the end, they all agreed that it was still "damn fine" to love someone so much, to be "powered" and "protected" by it when all around has turned to "crap and chaos".
And it is. I have thought so for some time now. I am, and I will, continue to live my life in her spirit and honour. Seizing the moment and leading the dance, charge, assent or race. It’s who I was when she met me, who I am again now and what she asked of me right before the end. One of the very last times she spoke to me, and I recognised her as, my lovely Lass. Perhaps the last time our hearts were still just open to each other. Full of churning confusion and regret, but equally still aflame with love and passion. Every day since February, these five months since, I have woken and resolved to follow that plea, to keep my vow. To be worthy of her and her memory and all that it was and all that it could have been. To that end I am writing this last bit hurriedly after only a few hours turn around and even less sleep. Tired but happy and chilled I am setting off to catch a light aircraft south. The Pillars of Hercules beckon and this evening I will be washing off the filth and fury of one continent with the sparkling sea of another. Walking on hot sand with bare feet, a rare and relished luxury. There is little room to take much and I will be travelling ludicrously lightly. Swapping bulging burgans and boots for really not much more than a cotton shirt and shorts with some decent pockets and some sandals. However I will still take the treats I was going to give her and some of the keepsakes she gave me. She will be in my head and my heart and at the centre of every good thing I do and great thing I see, always and forever. I love her.

Good bye, I’m not sure how far I will go but I will be gone at least the best part of a month, I very much doubt there will be internet access were I’m going, that’s several thousand years later than anywhere I will visit, so there really is no point sending me anything else.

2009-06-22T08:28:00.012+01:00

So you have found me again then? But this time it is more of a matched and moderated meeting. Sorry to deprive you of your sport, I will stand up for my principals, and of course her, any time you care to mention, but I will not be ambushed again. Especially in such overwhelming numbers. You also didn’t seem the types to believe in Seconds or a referee; I hope you learnt as much from the encounter as I did. This is neither cowardice nor a challenge but “Fairness” is critically important to me and underpins everything I think, say or do. To me it’s very simple and allows anyone who knows me to instantly understand and interact with me, and yet you would seem to be one of the many that just (sadly, bizarrely) does not get it. I don’t know if you do now, it certainly wasn’t my blood, but I do know you are bullies and thugs. I have spent most of my life fighting both on behalf of others and, now I no longer have no reason to keep under the radar, or even strive for a future at all, I will no longer be so restrained. I will now defend myself as well as her. More lance and less her passive lightning rod.

So which lot are you exactly? Tacking into account that you found this, unlinked, unreferenced, unlooked for and ungoogled you probably are the ones who wanted to break my ribs. Well I kept my side of the bargain, here I am, now you must keep yours. It must all be deleated, all. She must not be harmed or hindered in any way. I will know if you do. You have seen fist hand how far I will go to make this so, to keep her safe. I will go further by trying to show you and your ilk why I will. But because you seem so incapable of understanding this, let me spell it out. Because I love her. Besides, don’t rage so, better late than never, you have a prize. My death by a thousand cuts, my life and career in exchange for hers. But yes, I know you are not stupid, yes, I am dragging it out. I hope the extra time I afforded her allows her to escape you forever. You really have no moral authority from which to criticise the delay or depleted content. You are lucky I did this at all, I didn’t promise anything. You were so busy putting words into my mouth (which unfortunately for you is a real pet peeve of mine) that you never even listened to what I was saying, or for that matter that I said very little at all. Rather a shame when you had made all that effort to try and learn something new. By the by, for future reference, to me anything forced under extreme threat of violence, if combined with no chance of defence, even if it is just a futile, near ceremonial, last stand for prides sake, is intrinsically unsound. Even ignoring the moral aspects, which I suspect will mean little to you, I do not believe evidence gained from “water boarding” is, or should be, thought reliable. I do instead think it allows, deserves even, a lie in reply. It is perhaps the only time I think something so undignified is, it is the only time I have.

Moving on from your petty threats though, do you think any more of the “weird sensei shit” now you know where the two quotes come from? And on the previous note, if it is you, what was the third thing I said at the end? That you thought so infuriating and inspired you to attempt the same fate on me? Roughly even, I acknowledge that none of us were free to take notes. You had insufficient, and failed as, muscle; now attempt to use your minds.

Either way, whichever ones you are, don’t send anything ever again to any of my online accounts, which yes, I’m starting to use again. I am using this as a drop box and painted it bright red to save you the effort of crashing around elsewhere. A sacrificial anode which, to be fair, to reward said fairness, I will reply to as long as I said I would. I know many of you will think I have ruined your sport, spoiled the hunt by dragging reeking bait across the scent trail but this is still a successful result for you of sorts. For me, I admit, it is a cyst or boil free from the main body (my life) and easily lanced or amputated, so everyone gets something. So I repeat, do not hack into, or corrupt in the attempt, or alter, my Hot Mail, Facebook, online phone, film, Amazon, etc etc accounts. You must know by now that I will not open any attachments no matter how you label them. I love her completely and unconditionally and moved beyond jealousy a long time ago. You will not understand this, I certainly don’t, but that love and faith remains as pure and immutable as gold and diamond, even when the trust that fuelled the magma hot fire that forged it has been severed.

Do not attempt to contact or find my work, friends or family. I suspect that you don’t really know my character, and am beginning to suspect why that is, but if you haven’t already guessed by your unfiltered first-hand experiences with/of me you should know that I am extremely loyal to all those around me, and her above all and anything else. I have put her above family, friends, career and personal saftey many times. Those that know me, or her through me, are fellows loyal to me in turn. They thought, hoped, we would marry and she was afforded all the rights and respect of a daughter in-law by my family and, as the light and love of my life, the very real protection of my workmates and friends. Its all terribly old fashioned and stolid I know, I am nether a Crichton nor a Shackleton, but I admit I have been independently reported as an Edwardian relic on several occasions with both warmth and frustration. Failing all that, understand this, she is still everything to me, I think of and miss her literally, honestly, every 5 minutes of every day, and dream of her at night. I will not do any of the things you ask, especially that which you threaten or demand. Even if my loyalty and love could be eroded by the (yes) pointless, “pathetic” “crushing loss” and sorrow of it all you will find my innate stubbornness and pride will just kick in to cover any momentary lapse. My failings look a lot like my virtues, overlap even, depending on your own. It annoyed her to and took years of life changing, all encompassing and wide spectrum love to modify and correct. You really don’t have a chance.

Besides, you really can’t imagine the true horror of it all, most of your taunts are actually old news or rather tame and reassuring. The reality of it is far more hurtful, ‘’unfair” and destabilising, yet I push on regardless still very much thinking the best of her.

How can you get this? Many years ago I saw some painting of a lone Roman sentinel still resolutely standing guard at the Herculaneum Gate, “Faithful unto Death”, whilst Pompeii was engulfed in sulphurous ash and flame behind him. Although I, with my head, agreed with all those around me who thought that it was a sentimental, mawkish turn of the century “biscuit tin lid weepy”, my heart actually thought it quite romantic and dutiful. Well, I have been led by my heart this last year or more, I am very very aware of the charnel house stench and ash settling all around me. You will gain nothing by pointing it out and lose more by deriding and taunting me for it.

You will excuse me now, you would not recognise where I sit right now as an office (one of the reasons I know I am safe from your searches) and time is, as ever, precious. I am in a far off foreign field very much open to the elements, and anything else that should come my way, and having watched the dawn burn off the mornings mists as I type this, work beckons with a bang. Good-bye and good day to you.

2009-06-14T18:07:00.000+01:00

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

2009-06-14T18:00:00.000+01:00

"I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinte in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Man delights not me,—no, nor woman neither."

2009-05-25T02:02:00.003+01:00

time lag test. new one

2009-05-24T16:32:00.003+01:00

Belle de jour’s Boy remote routing test