The last 4 weeks have been crazy for me with a ton of stuff going on.
At the beginning of the month I left to spend a week and an half in the UK. As some of you may remember I work for a company that is based there. I have been to England twice before (the first half of 2012) and have written about those trips in the blog. Both those trips were of questionable value both personally and professionally.
Professionally those trip were kind of a bad because I was very new to the company. I did not know anyone and I did not really understand the job they wanted me to do. Neither did anyone else, since it was a new position. I didn’t really know what questions to ask and no one there knew what to do with me.
Fast forward 2 years and I am really integrated into the company. It is a small company and the work I do is mission critical. This trip I was able to build a lot of professional relationships and that was really great.
Personally I got so spend a bunch of time with 2 guys who are a gay couple. Let’s call them “Alister and Mark”. For a while Alister was my direct supervisor, even though he was based in England and I was in the US. We developed a good working relationship, mostly because he left me alone to get on with my work. But we also developed a personal friendship. It came out in conversation once that we are both gay, so that was another thing we had in common.
When Alister started dating Mark, he told me about it. Alister was pretty excited about it, seeing at Mark was 22 to Alister’s 40. Eventually, Alister got Mark a job as the same company we work for. I got to know Mark a little bit through my interactions at work. But on this trip I got to spend a lot of time with them.
They live in a city about an hour train ride from the office, but a few days after work we would stop into a pub for a few drinks before they went home. Seeing them together was really good. I made me think of the kind of relationship that I want for myself. What I wanted with T and what I am hoping for with the Chef.
My trip spanned a weekend and they invited me out to their town for the weekend. I had been to London and this town was a mix of modern and old. They met me at the train station, took me back to their apartment before we headed out to for the pub crawl they had planned for me.
Another thing about them, I found inspiring was they way they dealt with their age difference. Or more accurately they didn’t deal with it at all. It really was a non-issue for them. It was clear they were in love with each other, they were making a life together and that was all that mattered to them.
It was really nice to see, but I have to admit to being more than a little jealous.
