My Third Is In Promise...

As I write this, at 1.30, without internet access, I'm sitting on a train which is about to take me from one city to another city. This second city is a very famous city which has been in films and everything. And I love trains. It's all very exciting.

Something else which is very exciting is the effect the news of the imminent release of a book has on people. I say people. I mean women. I say women. I mean woman. One woman.

So I mentioned yesterday that my friend was trying to set me up with a lady. With this in mind, he arranged a gathering last night - a bunch of his friends, all of whom were extraordinarily friendly and foreign and consequently rather difficult to understand. A few of them spoke English though, with varying degrees of success, so we managed to muddle through somehow.

Now, the lady in question is way out of my league. Obviously. Plus, a fact my friend forgot to mention until the last minute, she is engaged to be married. However, my friend doesn't have a great deal of faith in the union. For one thing, the lady - oh, alright, let's give her a name, let's give her a good nation-neutral name, let's call her Pea. For one thing, Pea is planning to move to London for a year in September, and is planning to do so without her betrothed. Which doesn't sound enormously promising for him, I must agree.

So. Pea. The exciting news is, we clicked. Pea works in PR for a company which provides sports equipment to the richest people in the world. But, thankfully, she also writes, and reads, and understands acutely that the essential thrill of human existence resides in getting to know oneself through the experience of getting to know other people. And she has dark brown eyes, which are my favourite kind of eyes. And she was very excited that I have a book coming out tomorrow. And she didn't mention her fiancé once. And - and this is the real zinger - I'm going to see her again next week when I return to her city before coming back to England.

I'm trying not to get too excited though, because that's what I tend to do, and it's terribly counter-productive. Plus, there's every chance that she's reading this. So maybe I shouldn't have written all of the above.

Oh, well. It's too late now.

Now, I have two and a half hours of this train journey left. I think it's time to see how Omar's getting on.

Until soon!