Introducing...

The frequency and content of my blogging seem to have become increasingly scattered of late. While that is partly due to the fact that I have jumped headlong into my new job and am still very much trying to re-organise my private life around this new situation, that is not the whole story...

These last two months have heralded the arrival of a different level of distraction entirely. It presented itself in a highly compact, dangerously spiky and tremendously vibrant packaging. And I've taken the last two months to slowly unwrap it and figure out what place to give it in my life.

Frequent visitors to this blog undoubtedly know that I have been single for pretty much 19 months now. About a year and a half ago, I made the conscious decision to take some proper solo time for a change. It was time well spent on thesis-writing, travelling, re-establishing old connections, making new ones, physical and emotional recovery, finding a job and buying a flat. It seems odd, if not a little indulgent then, that one would find oneself at a point in life where things seem to fall perfectly into place, and to feel utterly contented with what one has and where one is in life... only to be presented with some unexpected icing on the proverbial cake.

I've taken some time to let things sink in and have refrained (as much as I could without exploding of eagerness to shout it over the rooftops) from recounting the events leading up to this point. But it seems fairly obvious to me now that this is the right time to introduce "the icing", as she'll undoubtedly feature in more than one of my future blogposts, if I continue the level of personal-account blogging I've accustomed these last two years. I don't feel very comfortable holding stuff back, and I'm sure you've all picked up on the fact that my posts have been less coherent as well as more impersonal, and I've just about stretched the limits of self-containment anyway...

So, ladies and gentlereaders, voila ma petite-amie: Jo.

Ye can't really tell from her picture (what with her being uncharacteristically pretty for a Scot *ONLY JOKING*... *not*), but she is in fact Scottish. Sexy accent included. And yes, yes, I KNOW I have just bought a flat and landed myself a fantastic job here in Belgium, but then I like the road less travelled. More than that... the combination of those various elements in my life seems to make perfect sense just now.

I could quite easily list a thousand things about her that make me go all mushy, but then I would like to keep my readership and it would seriously interfere with the high standard of blogging you're all accustomed to *cough*

Actually, sod that. She's fab. She's got bump 'n grind dancemoves that make MC Hammer look like a wallflower in comparison, her funky hair would turn even the most well-endowed hedgehog envious and when she smiles, it totally tugs at my heartstrings. She's in my system and it feels like that's exactly where she was meant to be. So yes, Jo's likely to feature on this blog in future. By association.

And now that I've managed to get this all out on "paper", I've cleared the path for my blogging to regain its natural flow...