Disaster has struck. My monitor has given up the ghost. The timing was interesting. At the end of 2004 I started working on a long essay against global warming...or rather against the conventional wisdom surrounding the hype about global warming. I got up at four this morning intent on revisiting my last draft and spending a day or two preparing my long essay for restricted distribution.

It was at this point that my monitor refused to crank up. It has now gone to the skip. I spent the day vainly trying to locate a ten pound replacement to tide me over for a couple of weeks until I have the money to splash out £109 at KC Computers in St. Leonard’s on the flat screen I have had my eye on since I bought my Apple Mac Mini in May last year. To add insult to injury Tony, the owner of PC Hut on Ferry Road where I pay ten pounds for five hours on the net...had to choose this week to take his annual holiday. The Internet Cafe is closed until next Monday.

I purchased a train ticket from Rye to Bexhill and back and got the most out of it by breaking my journey in Hastings for a free internet hour at the Public Library and in St. Leonard’s to buy a replacement for my 128 Mb USB dongle. My circuit then takes me along Bohemia Road to Lidl’s for restocking and then laden with shopping bags down the road into Hastings City Centre. At Rother District Council’s offices there were promises that all the calculations ever made about my housing benefit would be posted to me next day so I could scrutinise and plead for more.

Disasters come in threes. The second one started yesterday when Heidi and I were at Jempsons and then went to East Street Antiques (which was closed) so we went upstairs at the coffee house in the Custom House a few feet from where I spent ten years of my life between 1990 and 2000. The row erupted over the subject of Valentines Day.

I had arrived back in Rye on the Saturday evening five weeks after we had parted at Narberth Station. I had really enjoyed the ten day living together and I thought Heidi had enjoyed her time in Wales too. So I was already irritated that Heidi had not met me on my return. Her reason…that her daughter Ruth and her two grandchildren were staying with her for the weekend…just made matters worse. I know her family. They like me and I like them.

So for me the decision to exclude me and make sure I didn’t meet them was intentional and sent a pretty clear message that Heidi was retreating from the relationship. This might not have been true and Heidi often accuses me of thinking the worst of her…one of the accusations I accept…but one can’t block out these feelings. They well up from below and are driven by any insecurities in the relationship. I was very insecure after a six weeks barrage of criticism that would have destroyed most men’s self-esteem.

Anyway Heidi then got up to go in somewhat of a rush without attempting to arrange a next get-together or to discuss what we would do the next day which was Valentine’s Day…quite important to both of us. The next day Heidi explained that she suddenly realised her car parking was running out. Fair enough. But all she needed to say to me was: ‘Goodness! Is that the time! My parking! I’ll phone this evening.’ That is what anyone else would have done. It would have completely transformed the situation and the mood that followed.

Instead, quite angry now after the emotional ambush of Heidi suddenly disappearing when I was hoping to be invited back to spend the evening together so that we could then wake up together the next morning for a Valentines Day breakfast, I was in no fit emotional state to respond well to Heidi’s suggestion that we go out together on the evening of Valentine’s Day. So I hesitated for a long time and was clearly rather reluctant as I tried to regain some sort of emotional equilibrium.

Into this emotional brew Heidi threw in a remark that she had expected me to ask her out and that this is what normal people do. At this I exploded and told her (in my ugliest tone of voice) that normal girlfriends would have met me, asked me round to dinner with the family on Sunday or after they had left and asked me back on Valentine Eve…adding for good measure that this…and not what she had proposed…was actually normal.

We were both furious by this stage. As Heidi disappeared down the stairs my parting shot. ‘What’s more you’re on probation after your behaviour towards me ever since you left Wales. Every letter email and text from you contained some nasty remark. Instead of a nice thank you letter all I got from you was five weeks or unremitting personal criticism. None of it justified. And all of it well-nigh impossible to respond to because it so misrepresented or exaggerated my view or my actions.’

There was no contact on Valentine’s Day. A dialogue started up today when Heidi thanked me for the Valentine Day card…brought in by a neighbour. ‘I understand that it’s hard to stop you feeling jerked around,’ she told me, ‘But I can’t be what you want me to be and I fear we are being destructive to each other and that is not good.’ Oy vey!