500 days of summer....

Last week I watched '500 Days of Summer' a sweet but underwhelming movie that has been over hyped to it's detriment. A joy to watch but sadly not memorable - perhaps because the leading lady was so cold and unlikeable that we never really got why wonderful boy fell for her Arctic charms in the first place.

The reason I enjoyed it so much was it took me back, waaay back to all those tentative fumblings and messy pronouncements: the stomach churning baby steps towards the holy grail that is love. How far I fell and how badly I was burned. Would I change it? Not a bit of it.

It made me yearn for the moments where a silent phone is the most devastating of all objects; where you change three times before you venture out on a date and then ruin everything by getting plastered before the mains arrive - elbows slipping off the table, yes waiter we'll have another bottle...; where you wax weekly; paint your toes to match your nails in vivid happy colours; pour over your stars for the week convinced that Mystic Meg will predict that your courtship is destined last and when first kisses were better than than the sex to follow.

Drunk with lust, how your rose tinted glasses disguised the unfunny jokes or the dirty nails because they were so fucking hot you didn't care - you would simply die if you didn't lick the sweat off their neck or hold their bare flesh next to yours for a whole blissful elicit night. Waiting for that oh-so-casual call to invite you for the next date; debating when to shag them, deciding 5 dates minimum and only making it to date no.2... Fifth date how their white sports socks would be the deal breaker that had you deleting their number from your mobile and failing to return their calls.

Oh the merry-go-round that is love or lust or just getting out there. I miss the unwrapping of another's body, discovering hidden secrets in their smiles and raised eyebrows, touching for the first time, letting them discover you as if you were virginal again. Heart flutterings, unable to concentrate, talking all night, morning sex, feeling alive, high, unlike you have ever felt before. The tumble into the darkness when they fail to call, or give the old 'it's not you, it's me' or simply continue the dance with you until you are so broken you can't see what is right in front of you anymore and it takes all of your supreme strength to shout 'enough!' and start again once more.

The escasty of newness can turn to dust in a heartbeat. Which is why I am happier where I am these days. Oh I know that Husband and I can't go back and have that first kiss which set him on fire - literally - he was leaning over a table in a dirty underground smoky bar and didn't see his sleeve was hanging into the romantic table candle. I can't return home from a great movie (for the record a little Swedish gem called 'Together') to find him waiting on my doorstep, smoking a cigarette on a hot humid night, where I sucked in my breath as I'd forgotten how jaw droppingly handsome he was and thanked my lucky stars that he was staying the night... I can't go to Venice with him on our first break away, where we ran through the narrow spooky streets, took a speed boat along the winding canals and drank prosecco until dawn.

I can't go back. Some days I wish I could. It was all so intoxicating.

We go to Sardinia for 10 days on Monday, as a family. Italy again. Different place, with our addition of Sproglet. And as the sun sets and we drink our sundowner beers and listen to crickets sing their cheerful chorus, he is still that boy on the stoop and I'll still get excited.