unexpected phone call

One, I'm still bloody dying for a cigarette. I think that EVV1's run-prone healthy influence on me had me jonesing less for fags than the removal of all nicotine from my system would otherwise indicate. I haven't caved yet - I think 6 months clean will be required before I attempt that holy grail of holy grails: the social smoker.

To get ahead of myself, YCT just called. From the University Parks in Oxford, no less. It's difficult to explain how pivotal a place the parks were in my years there. They kept me sane my first year there, the daily walk across them, around them, through them, with them. The benches and the willow tree and the duck pond and the river. YCT called, totally unexpectedly, from the near the pond, wondering which Oxford was mine. Interesting that she should call, unknowingly, from one of the centres of my Oxford. She was wandering, wondering what Oxford was when there were no ties, no obligations, no responsibilities, when Oxford's eternal neglect of "its own" doesn't actually matter. I'll never be there, as I'll always have the books, the Bodleian, some one thing to do. Yet another bizarre reminder, though, of what it might have been like to be in Oxford with someone, rather than in Oxford apart from someone. YCT touched something deep and resonant with an unexpected dusk phone call from the parks. I wonder how much she's playing me, playing the obviously reverberant strings...