Monday came and went in a flash,  Hollys morning constitutional seemed to stretch through the afternoon and before I knew it the girls arrived home from their first day back at school and Harriet arrived for dinner, it was lovely to be back in the swing of Monday night's open house until Looby had a huge teen meltdown overhearing someone chewing (she has misophonia) and went screaming to bed and that was the last I saw of her, she did briefly make an appearance but only to tell me how much she hated me, everyone and the world entire.

My usual Monday night Skype dates have returned with Mr France after a couple of weeks of having to move them around to accommodate Christmas etc, I like Monday nights with Mr F, it gets my week off to a brilliant start and he usually manages to inspire blog posts throughout the week, he is very much my muse, I write better, more consistently and with more passion than I ever did before we bumped into each other across the internet.  Apparently, he still doesn't think I'm real, though, I'm just the lovely lady who lives in his phone and his laptop, I've told him he can pinch me to check that I'm real at the end of the month when we're both together at a lovely luxury hotel in Chiswick.  I've also mentioned I might be just a little over-excited about this!

Tonight we went shopping together and although I can't tell you what for because I was helping him with a blog thing what I can tell you is that, there was a certain amount of magicalness and serendipity to the evening just as there always is, I'm not sure how it happens but I think it's probably just that we're the same kind of crazy, bonkers and we get each other, we really are 'just us'.

Somewhere during the shopping, we were chatting about our upcoming weekend away and blog things leading up to that and we thought it might be quite a nice idea to interview him for my blog so dear readers, I'm wondering what kind of things we should ask him, I'm going to write some questions but is there anything that you the reader want to know?  Before you ask "Who are you?" I can promise you will find out but he's going to blog about that after our weekend away, once he's checked I really am a living breathing actual person and not just a projection of his consciousness that appears online whenever he's around.

So here and now, what can we ask him to get to know him better?  He really is a very interesting guy and very much multifaceted with lots of tales to tell.  But what do you want to know about this darling, diminutive dad who has captured my heart?  I am so delighted that he's not only agreed to do this but he might have been the one who suggested it although I think I mentioned it in passing, I guess that's one of the wonderful things about us, the collaboration, the fantastical ideas, life is pretty stupendous.

What I will say is that 3 weeks isn't so long to wait and yet every hour of the day seems to be creeping by so slowly, testament to the fact of just how excited I actually am, I guess these moments of wonder just don't happen that often and even less so when you are a woman in her fourth decade, I do keep joking about the fact that I'm a cougar being a little over 8 years older than him but everyone knows that women in their 40's well, we really have got our heads, lives and hearts in check and under control, we are forthright, confident and not ageing too badly (thankfully), my body may be a bit of a write off but my mind is still fully intact and the last time I looked my face hadn't fallen off just yet.

There is just one thing, when Mr F and I chat on Skype on Mondays, he always appears a little dark, shadowy and sometimes just a little blurry, I apparently am usually just out of sync leading him to laugh hilariously when my mouth doesn't match with my voice and despite reassuring him that I'm not actually the same in real life, I guess he just wants to make extra sure  before coming out of the French armoire!

Leave your suggestions for questions below and I'll post his interview next week hopefully!

I have a big dilemma Mr France

Last night, Skype date number 3 and Mr France had put himself on a curfew because he was shattered and had to be up super early today for his children, it's quite endearing as I don't think I've ever put myself on a curfew before but perhaps I should start?

Of course, Skyping Mr France before bed always keeps me awake, I usually remember all of the things I was going to tell him but forgot whilst we were actually Skyping, sometimes our conversations are so whimsical and ludicrous that I can't even remember them, we do throw some serious stuff in there for good measure but I love that he's as whimsical as I am, in fact I would go so far as to say that he's sometimes more whimsical and that's what you have to love about him, there's literally no one else in the whole world like him, I could search the planet for the rest of my life and there's no way I would find someone even vaguely similar, he's just the right kind of crazy bonkers for me!

Something kept me awake last night though and yes, I realise I'm not exactly sleeper of the year at the moment but bear with me, you see we were talking and I think anyone who knows me probably knows who Mr France is but it's not the same for him, he said he can't blog about me because he's unable to be even slightly subtle and would end up just talking about me, Mandy!  This is all fine but it got me thinking, maybe I should just reveal who he is now because it's not just my story anymore, it's our story and by keeping his identity secret maybe I am inhibiting his story and he's someone who blogs with passion and has the same view as me, that his blog is his story, his log of who he was for his descendants (sorry for paraphrasing Mr France, if you're reading).

The reason I called Mr France by not his real name was that it was easier to write about him without calling him by his true identity and also there was always the chance that once we got to our Skype date that we wouldn't have got on etc but I really don't see anyone in my future now apart from him, it's almost certainly got to be long term and at a slow pace because of our lives and the distance we live apart but that's kind of the best bit, I said to him last night that I have no intention of ever getting in the way of how is life is, I just want to add to it, enhance it, I guess I want to be like the best kind of buttercream icing on the perfect cake or the glorious soft pink sponge in a Battenberg (that's the only part I like actually but Ssh).

There's not a day goes by where I don't speak to Mr France and in each day that I have known him he's brought me happiness and laughter, I said last night that if we went too long without Skyping that I would miss his face and it's true, this small, sensitive pocket-sized man has found the empty space in my heart and I think just nestled himself in there, there's no denying that if I was a kitten I would be smitten!

You know, we're grown-ups, we both have life and complications, neither of us is entirely perfect but as I've found in the past, perfection is unattainable and not what it's cracked up to be, being good enough, that's where it is and I am definitely good enough and Mr France, well he's way more than good enough for me because he might not be perfect but for me he's perfect.

So maybe now I will just tell you all, I'd love to be able to introduce you all, maybe you'll all start reading his blog too, it's different to mine and he's way more successful in the blogging world than I am but as these things go, I need to collect my own thoughts and I need to ask him what he thinks about that because whilst it's my story and our story, it's not my place to out him in any sense of the word so let's just say, watch this space...

Who Is Mr France? | #whoismrfrance

I have to admit that I wasn't going to write about Mr France again so soon after last week but we were talking last night and he said that if I didn't write about him everyone would wonder, where is Mr France rather than #whoismrfrance, where has he gone, has he disappeared?  The truth is of course that Mr France has become so much part of my everyday life that surely no one could possibly think he's vanished, I talk about him all the time, to anyone who'll listen for long enough and even with the people who know who Mr France is I still call him Mr France, even when I talk to the kids about him, as I told him last night, it doesn't matter what happens now, he'll always be my Mr France!

Today, I am tired, I haven't slept since around November, I'm always affected by the approaching equinox and I know that in January I will want to sleep forever, I will find new powers of sleep, until then I am very much surviving on a nightly lack of sleep and last night after spending 4 hours Skyping Mr France once again I was so happy and bouncy when I got into bed that by the time I woke up at half seven this morning I'd had, I reckon, around 4 hours sleep, yay me! 

You know what's brilliant about Mr France?  That I can be completely and totally myself when I'm with him and even though it's Skype and not touchable 3D real life it does feel like we're together when we're Skyping, I love that I can be all of the crazy, the good crazy, the things I usually have to try and hide away inside, I just don't have to do that, although that is perhaps testament to the fact that he is also slightly crazy bonkers.

So if we were in the US we would no doubt plan to meet at the top of the Empire State building sometime in February, sadly though, this is rainy old england and also, February is a long, long time away.  Being that we're in rainy old England and we both love musicals our plan is set to meet in London and go to see a musical, we're just not sure which musical, his favourite is Phantom, mine is Wicked but we both agreed we should maybe go to see something we hadn't seen already.  I am though super excited to meet him in touchable 3D technicolour.  On Skype, we don't have any set pattern and we have the most bizarre conversations which go from serious life changing opinions down to crazy stories about the strangest things and it all just seems to fit, so much so that I'm always a little sad when I realise the time has once again flown.

I'm not ashamed to say that I am smitten and there have been times when I didn't think I would ever have that feeling about anyone, the best thing is that it definitely feels mutual, for the first time I never ever find myself being over analytical or second guessing myself, I'm not worrying about things, I'm simply having fun and enjoying the adventure and to the naysayers, a small but vocal minority, I want to say something, to the people who say, you shouldn't be talking about this, well I wouldn't be, I could have kept it all in, I could have said nothing but Mr France is fully aware of it all and he's encouraging and supportive and it's part of my story, my story that started right here, on this blog nearly eleven years ago.  And to those who say "That's not dating, don't be ridiculous" let me say this, lots of people meet other people in bars or clubs, they get drunk, they take them home, they spend the night with them, some of them can't even remember their names the next day, with Mr France it's not like that, we can't be physically near to each other right now so we talk, we get to know each other, being connected to someones minds or thoughts is so much deeper so don't knock it until you've tried it.

Last night with the help of a website called Whats Halfway we worked out that Newark is smack bang in the middle of us so that's a consideration for the future as we're both only 2.5 hours away apparently, to be honest though I think I'd rather be on the train for an extra half hour and meet up in London, it's just a little more exciting.

This morning someone said to me, "I know who Mr France is" well I can tell you, it's one of the worst kept secrets on the internet, especially if you use Twitter but I'm not quite ready to reveal his secret identity just yet, in fact I can tell you this, last night he wasn't bespectacled as he usually is so he did kind of reveal his own secret identity, not that he looks all that different with or without spectacles but then again, neither did Clark Kent and he kept the entire planet guessing...