Stuck.

The room is still save for the slight rattle of window panes in their frames as another truck thunders past outside. Endless traffic, the distant boom of planes overhead, and somewhere a solitary bird trills, out of tune with the urban symphony.

The smug carriage clock ticks away the tiresome minutes and the laptop hushes quietly like the sound of heavy rain or a distant ocean. I think my head would sound like that if you held it to your ear.

Staring at a blank screen. Blank screen stares back.

Little Gifts.

All three clocks say 11:11, a lucky time according to Skippy - but then what does he know. A lot apparently.

Had our last proper evening together tonight, if together is the right word. He bugs the ass off me. He's pedantic, logical, sensible, predictable. Hasn't a spontaneous bone in his body, runs a mile at questions any more personal than 'can I borrow a pen?'. But he's logical, sensible, driven and all those other things I lack. Being around him 'completes' me in some roundabout way because he's everything I'm not but wish I was. Once again I've left him without asking all the questions that occupy the space in my mind where my thesis should be right now. Maybe I'll send him an email, and then I'll never have to deal with the inevitable pregnant silences and awkward body language that I just can't bear the thought of.

I almost trod on a snail tonight. It was the oddest thing, I just felt the slight crunch beneath my heel and managed to adjust my balance just in time to save him. Good thing too, I hate killing snails. I turn to a barefoot Skippy to warn him about our little mollusk friend. "That's no snail, it's a lizard" he says. He's a pedantic git to the end. Looking closer though I see right next to my little snail there is indeed a little lizard. It's striking for so many reasons, not least for the fact that for once we were both right. Wild lizards are almost unheard of here in England - in fact I've never ever seen one here before - and to see one next to a snail for me just seemed poignant given my strange affection for, nay, fixation with, the two species. Sometimes it's like the world sends me little gifts just when I need them most.

Sounds silly but I think I'm the snail - it's one of the creatures I identify with most, an armour plated mobile home. The lizard is only too apt for Skippy; not meant for this country, and sensible enough to make painful sacrifices when he knows it's for the best. (At least thought to be painful - the tail thing has never been proven, neither has the cutting me loose thing).

I look at it as nature's way of telling me that we're incompatible. Completely different creatures who find themselves at close quarters, despite the fact that the two should never have met. I'm glad we did.

I am Miserable.

Lots of grumbling and sulking.