Water Babes

 

The older you get and the more you have compromised in your life (even if you only realise it in retrospect) the more you realise that it's often the little things that make you compatible with someone for the long haul. I have mentioned that according to several "personality tests" Highflyer and I could not be more different from each other, but theory apart, we get on so well and have still not had a single argument or situation where one of us was offended or sulking. One of the things I love about him in particular is that we can spend action-packed days (e.g. on the slopes, skiing) just as well as uneventful quiet days with him doing some thing or other in the garden (such as obsessing about the grass) and me pottering about in the kitchen or my "crafts room", or, case in point, also spending a whole day by the lake or pool. I have only once in my life (on vacation in France when I was very young) seen my father in swim trunks and not once has he accompanied my mother and me to the lake. I also have a "pool friend" in Vienna who has been in a happy relationship with a nice guy for decades and yet he has absolutely no interest in swimming and sunbathing. The fact that Highflyer (who by the way is a remarkable diver and morphs into a fish once he is in some body of water) is more than happy to come swimming with me is just the icing on an already perfect cake. We obviosuy have almost identical happy memories of spending childhood summer days by the pool/lake/sea and the joy of getting an occasional soft serve ice-cream or some fries and this makes me very happy.