Conscious Uncoupling 2016

"While we still love and care about each other, we have decided to separate"  - (Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow).


"If 'A' is open to processing with 'B' then friendship with an ex will help to put a fullstop on a painful chapter." 

"Just because a romantic relationship ends doesn't mean that the other facets of your relationship have to end or, indeed, doesn't mean they can't get better" - (Chris Martin).

"People change. Feelings change. It doesn’t mean that the love once shared wasn’t true or real. It simply means that sometimes when people grow, they grow apart" (500 days of Summer).

"Our habits and energies did not align" - (unknown).

Love Letters of Great Men

Notable entries

I wake filled with thoughts of you. [...] the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart!

[...] I shall see you in three hours. Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.

Napoleon Bonaparte (December 1795).

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[...] write me a four page letter instantly made up from those delightful words which full my heart with emotion and joy. 

I hope to hold you in my arms before long, when I shall lavish upon you a million kisses, burning as the equatorial sun.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1797).

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Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confided to my life-long keeping.

You cannot see its intangible waves as they flow towards you, darling, but in these lines you will hear, as it were, the distant beating of the surf.

Mark Twain (May 1869)

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Don't write too legibly or intelligibly as I have no occupation so pleasantvas pondering for hours over your hieroglyphics, and for hours more trying to interpret your dark sayings.

A clearly written simply expressed letter is too like the lightening.

Cuff Cooper (June 1914)

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[...] You have set a crown of roses on my youth and fortified me against the disaster of our days.

Your courageous gaiety has inspired me with joy. Your tender faithfulness has been a rock of security and comfort. [...] You have intensified all colours, heightened all beauty, deepened all delight.

Cuff Cooper (August 1918)

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ever thine

ever mine

ever ours 

Ludwig van Beethoven (July 1806)

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* This anthology consisting of love letters written by great men throughout history was originally created as a prop for the film 'Sex and the City' *

The Dryer Sheets of My Heart

"I was living like half a man
Then I couldn't love but now I can

More soul than I ever had

I love the way you soften my life" - ('Darlin' by the Beach Boys, paraphrased by Sheldon Cooper, episode 9:10).

"A life is like floating

and being carried away by the Imjim River.

Love has no border;

Keep swimming to the end" - (Katagiri from Midnight Diner, Tokyo Stories).

Remember Remember

Significant holidays and activities 

2001 - Ely
2003 - Lake District (Grasmere and Windermere)
2004 - New York (Skyline Hotel)
2005 - Rome (Hotel Celio)
2006 - Paris (Hotel Le Senat)
2009 - Bath
2010 - Edinburgh
2012 - Cardiff
2014 - Brussels (Hotel Bloom)
2015 - Plymouth 

26 February 2000 - Royal Academy of Arts
31 March 2002 - London Eye
19 February 2005 - Mortlock Tsunami Appeal at the Fine Line, Canary Wharf

6 September 2005 - The Winter's Tale at Shakespeare's Globe
11 February 2006 - Les Miserable at the Queens Theatre
10 June 2008 - Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre
22 November 2008 - Monkey Journey to the West at O2

2 October 2011 - Cirque du Ciel Shanghai at the Cambridge Corn Exchange
3 March 2012 - Windsor Castle

9 June 2012 - The Tempest at the Roundhouse
15 February 2014 - Jeeves and Wooster at the Duke of York Theatre
7 November 2015 - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Musical at the Theatre Royal Drury's Lane

Cambridge Shakespeare Festival:
2011 A Midsummer Night's Dream
2012 King Lear
2013 Richard III
2014 Twelfth Night
2015 Macbeth

Pictures Drawn by Shadows of Phantoms of the Night Before

I'm surrounded by the girl I slept beside last night.
Her hot breath on my face.
Her light hand on my chest.
And our legs tangled like spaghetti.
Which is to say, I was not uncomfortable.

And this morning, when her lazy lids opened, the weak sun was sucked into her dark eyes.
Brown, like rich seas of melted chocolate.
Deep, like prehistoric tar-pits jealously holding the bones of lost behemoths.  
And black, like her heavy frame of hair.
Look, these eyes were dark okay? No two ways about it.

But now I'm down in the kitchen, hard at work, and the strangest thing...
She's all around me still.
The drab words on tins of food are now in her handwriting.
The songs on the radio are all sung by her.
It seems miraculous, that this whole fucking trashy world has been transformed into the girl.
Try to see it; not like, but exactly the same.
The pitch black interior of the oven is woven from her inky hair.
The harsh white tiles on the walls are her perfect teeth.
And these freshly baked rolls were made from the pale skin of her arms, the dark skin of her face.

I mean, beauty subverting the mundane, every line of every shape familiar and nothing but the best.

Except the blues and greens, this girl doesn't do blue or green you see.
Nope, they don't remind me of her, but of her absence.
The ripped empty space she leaves behind.
Which starts off small but grows every day till it fills every room.
Like a bear-cub kept in a council house, y'understand?

Okay, so the feeling fades and world creeps back over her facade.
And the buzz and whine of customers and workmates begins to wear at me.
The sun goes down and the shadows look nothing like hair.

But I can't help smiling at the idiots crawling all over me, because I know...
I'll see her again tonight.



(c) Written by Spider - November 1999

True Love

Dependable. Resilient. Unconditional.

To love someone is to support their passions; to be in love with someone is not only to back their passions, but also to admire them to the point that their hunger for them motivates you to be just as hungry for yours.

To love someone is to share all of your thoughts with them; to be in love with someone is to share all of your thoughts with them, and when you’re not with them, to see them in every place you go, think of them with every person you meet and feel them in every scent you smell.

To love someone is to feel warmer in their embrace; to be in love with someone is to feel warmer in their embrace and subsequently desire to please them any chance you get because you have just as much a fervor to physically express yourself with them as you do emotionally.


* Information borrowed from a forgotten online source *