I live in Edinburgh, Scotland in a flat that I bought with a friend (the house prices there are outrageously high so we pretended to be a couple to get a mortgage otherwise we'd never have got anywhere) but mostly I sleep at the house of my boyfriend, whom I will call Fox. I met him a year and a half ago.
Fox is short and blond and stocky and has a sunny nature. He has big blue eyes and broad shoulders. He's disorganized and has an appalling memory. He constantly forgets things that we've organized to do together and we spend a lot of time with each other arguing pointlessly about politics and economics. When we're not doing that, usually because he's tired from his very stressful job, we curl up on the sofa and watch old movies like "Rope" and "Rebecca" and "Some Like it Hot" and "Murder on the Orient Express". And when we're not doing THAT, we go out and Do Things, like visit the Scottish Islands, or go the cinema, or make dinner for friends (which we love to do), or go paragliding or go out for drives or go to one of the shows at the famous Edinburgh Festival, when it's on. We do things separately as well, I drum at festivals and do a lot of photography and writing and Fox helps with the IT side of an ethical office-space lease company called The Melting Pot, which is under development and does cinema based night classes (currently he's doing one about the political subtexts of various Westerns) and likes motorbikes and toys with various business ideas...
We are inventing a board game! It's a complicated board game with expansion packs. All our friends are into board games too, and would very much like to see us succeed. We are unlikely to make a huge amount of money out of it, says my flatmate, because board games are *the* most difficult thing to make succeed in the marketplace. But I don't mind, it'll be tons of fun! We haven't done much about it recently because we're both exhausted from a summer of hard work at our respective jobs and we both mostly just want to sleep these days... but that will change.
Fox dresses like one of the Hardy Boys. He has no sense of fashion at all, and no real interest in acquiring one. I love this about him. He's slightly preppy. He loves Italy and Lake Garda and Italian food, and Frank Sinatra, and Dinah Washington (..."I've got a crush on youuuuuuuu.... Sweeetie-PIIIIIEEEEE..."...) and Ella Fitzgerald and Carole Kidd, and Eartha Kitt and Marylin Monroe. When he agrees with something, he says: "My name is Nuff, and I'm a Fairy. Fairy Nuff!" He tells appalling jokes, he has a particular fondness for really bad puns, and he laughs at them. However, I am just as bad as he is at laughing at my own jokes, so I can't really complain...
Sometimes he drives me nuts! He has a nasty habit in conversations of listening to your opinion and instead of discussing it, simply comparing it to his own and seeing whether or not it's the same, and if it isn't he just reiterates his own opinion in new words! ARG! He's a fuzzy old liberal Tory from the 1920s, really. He doesn't really get angry about politics and THAT annoys ME. But he's possibly right about it. Taking it easy, that is. He's NOT very good at expressing his emotions constructively, however, he over analyzes them and tris to explain them in terms of models, and this often comes out as pretty offensive. Luckily, I am patient mouse. Also he gets bogged down in the minutiae of procedures. He's also very forgetful, and loses interest in things.
If I buy a packet of biscuits or chocolate and leave them in his house he eats them *all*! I've said MANY TIMES that I find this very annoying as I don't have very much money and he has lots, but he just laughs and says "oooOOOooo", which of course, makes me even more infuriated. I am happy to SHARE, of course, but that means me getting some too! He also talks constantly about losing weight but never does anything about it. He embarks on diets that never last for more than a couple of weeks because I keep thrusting poached fish and scrambled eggs under his nose (I shouldn't, really, but I love to feed him. My family brought me up to sit down and eat dinner at a table, and cooking and having dinner with Fox is one of my greatest pleasures) and he always scoffs 2 helpings. I'm always cooking enough for the plan of us both to take in some the next day to work in picnic boxes to save money, but he has no will power at all and just eats the lot! Usually there isn't enough left for lunch, so I end up helping him after the demolishing has past the point of no return. It's annoying but he loves eating and I love to see him happy.
Soon I will have to start INSISTING that we both go the gym.
He loves stories and being read to. He's very good at word games, and we've also invented a couple of variations of Scrabble and Kan-U-Go. We're planning (or have been, for AGES now...) to make a giant Scrabble board in the garden out of mexican hand-painted tiles. He's also very good at pointing out when I'm conflating things and falling into logical traps.
Recently he told me I should read more so I want to a charity shop and found and bought the 1001 Arabian Nights, the full on adult version! The WHOLE THING for £12.50. It's enormous! 3,200 pages long and will probably take several months to read. I sit in the evenings after a bath in front of the fire and read out bits for him. Its pretty racy! Also it's slightly ridiculous, every time one of the characters is ins some kind of peril they interrupt their persecutor and say: "You know, you might very well *think* you want to chop my head off, but this whole situation reminds of the story of So-and-So and the Thing, which of course, you will know intimately, being an educated Jinn," and the Jinn will say: "No, I've never heard of it. What is this story?" whereupon the protagonist will relate it in full, and it will contain ANOTHER persecuted character who relates a DIFFERENT story to somebody else, who will tell another story back containing several layers of story telling, and so on. You should see the contents page, it looks like Windows Explorer.
Fox and I find this very amusing.
He makes mincemeat flapjacks for Christmas and bakes excellent cakes. Often I will make dinner, as although he's good at baking, he doesn't do other cooking very well and *I'm* a VERY good cook. I like to watch him stuff himself on my roast chicken! He tells me I spoil him rotten, which I do, because I love him. I mix cheddar with the mashed potatoes and sweeten the roast peppers with honey and vinegar and pine nuts, which he adores. On occasion I have attempted to teach him to teach him to play the guitar, but he just giggles when he gets things wrong and doesn't concentrate! I am a reasonable guitarist but have to learn things properly before I can play them. I can't jam at all, but I love to write things for the guitar. I have a website that I will put my music and photography on at the beginning of next year.
He keeps telling me I should do more things with my prodigious talents. I've had exhibitions of my photography before and he thinks I should go professional (I do have a diploma in photography). This is a bone of contention between us, because in my life I have spent considerable efforts in pursuing my dreams, and some of them have come spectacularly true, but a lot of them haven't at all, and I don't want to waste any more time or money on things that haven't necessarily a reasonable chance of success (see my recent comments on the impeachment threads...).
We watch CSI lots and try to guess whodunit. He usually wins... My solutions are always too fantastic and way-out-there.
What types are these people?
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