Wednesday's rubbish

It's been a typical week here, a bit of work, a bit of socialising and my builder finally came and did all the outstanding small work in less than a day in total. I can use Videoplus again after about 2 years as my video is now connected to an outside aerial.
Kendall is still on messenger every day, and (well, I was encouraged to post my progress so it has to be straight) I can see I am working through a number of her 'issues', appearing to myself at least that as a trained counsellor I am able to work on each issue as it arises and I really believe these will be sorted out as a lucky coincidence of our meeting. Our aims have been more equalised now, as having never met anyone from abroad before, I am not going to assume anything about anyone, even someone I'd watched on TV for 5 years, compared to really meeting them. Kendall had been of the impression (to me, at least) that meeting online and on the phone was as good as any other way, and could judge the future by that adequately (though she did finally admit her doubts, which were identical to mine!). This showed common sense is universal as I see a minefield, and risking a life in a foreign country, possibly on the basis of a week's visit seems a bit like the journeys of Indiana Jones... I will see.

Generally speaking, at 44 my caution is based on many past experiences where plans didn't turn out anything like I expected in reality. This included a trip to Israel, intended for a few months, where I spent 5 days sleeping on various floors before being told the family set up to stay with had had a bereavement and buggered off abroad, and I had to go home. I had been to Israel once before, was quite at home there and had no wish to leave at the time, and never got a chance to go anywhere longer than 4 weeks since.
Secondly I was hooked into buying a house because it was large and cheap. It backed onto a railway line and was in a nondescript and heartless area I didn't really know, and was depressed for over a year and a half and decided to bail out and move to an area I knew and liked. With women you normally get to know them for months and more before commitment, but in our position, though it's not compulsory, it's on the cards after a week. I hear alarm bells ring, plus it won't be me who's moving their whole life to a foreign country (though at least it's the best in the world!).
So there is some time before the trip can take place, but I try and tell Kendall everything more or less prior to posting it here, as I'm not intending to give her any surprises deliberately. I would welcome opinions though from neutral readers (do I still have any readers?) on transatlantic and similar relationships.

So that has been the week so far, my current binge on nostalgia (gleaned from the memory bins of my mind at random) have unearthed information on Nadia Cattouse (you either know who she is or not), Jeremy Taylor, the South African comedian who was often on the BBC, and a cult classic schools programme, an 8 episode series from 1973 called 'Joe and the sheep rustlers', part of the long running 'Look and read' series. This summed up childhood in the 70s for me, though it was a shame you had to be ill before you could watch most of these, as colour TV had only just arrived and it was still ten or more years before video recorders became affordable. If you visit look and read you can see all the programmes plus the words to the song about the Beasleys in my favourite. The good news is since CBBC they've been showing it twice a year from 2003, and I hope to see it if broadcast in 2005. The effort put into children's programmes has always impressed me far more than others, and I'm happy to admit I'd rather watch many of them than the cack the main 5 channels serves up nowadays. To think 'My family' is actually one of the better comedies of 2004, purely due to total lack of better competition. Plus James Hendrie, the writer, sat behind me at school. But as raised on Monty Python he could have done a little better...