Part of what I do now is all about expectation management. I call up people and I say TV and ears prick up. Mention money and heads spin. There's a skill to talking to people and getting permission to film, or just logging their interest without causing undue over-excitement.
You'd have thought, then, that I could manage my own expectations well. Before this job, I learned the lesson again and again in Japan: things were never as I expected they'd be and sometimes I was disappointed, sometimes surprised to the good.
But now I work managing expectation every day, so I should be better at it. I should.
6 years separate me and the latest ex I met up with, Danielle, who wore short skirts to sell magazines at Edinburgh Festival while I lost the job because I didn't sell any.
One dinner turned to a second dinner and I got excited. Japanese, and then Chinese in Soho a few weeks later, around the corner from Carnaby Street and a line of pink reindeer helium inflatables strung up. I didn't want to think it might a proper date second time round, but I did anyway.
We talked and talked and then we talked about ex-boyfriends and girlfriends who couldn't deal with meeting up just as friends. By this point it had become clear what kind of a meeting ours was.
Meeting an old flame to just check they're doing ok, because you were once close with them, doesn't seem to be such an altruistic thing to do any more, in spite of what me and Danielle agreed last night. It seems almost a little self-serving, like you want to satisfy an inclination without thinking about what effect it has in the end. I realized I'd done exactly the same thing to another old girlfriend, a month or two ago, but with a more dramatic end to the night. Which makes me feel like a big fat hypocrite really.
So I woke up today and thought, 'I knew this was going to happen and now it has, what do I do?'
Being heartbroken by the same girl twice seems beyond cliche, so it's time to get on, again.
I ran in the rain and mud, and hoovered.
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