An email from my LA correspondent set me off on a train of thought. She had visited Las Vegas with her partner and child, and sent photographs - of the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Arc de Triomphe. So was Las Vegas full of wonders of the modern world, I asked? What about the ancient world, does that figure too? I was minded to tell her that the most impressive modern landscape I had seen was Canary Wharf, where the Cuban and I stayed when she came on her first visit to England. That was in May 98.

    What an AWFUL trip that was! I was already worn out with entertaining her, she had to be taken somewhere every day and would not go home until she had spent at least a hundred pounds. Mindful of my own experiences when travelling abroad, I tried to make sure that she understood that pounds were not dollars. She told me not to worry, her husband had plenty of money and wanted her to get the most from her trip. She was not going to pass up on anything. In the end I stopped saying,

    "Do you know how many dollars that is", like when she bought the crusader sword as tall as herself in York for £350. Almost everything she did made her laugh like a hyena, and she could barely walk through the streets with it, exploding with mirth as she staggered along. On the road (she was driving, as neither of us are able) if something amused her, and most things did, she would throw back her head at an angle of 145 degrees in order to get out a proper guffaw. When she wasn't cracking up she was usually applying lipstick - which Cubans do every ten minutes - or swigging Coca Cola from a crate under the seat. Part of the copious instructions she sent prior to her arrival concerned this beverage, which she said was the only thing she drank, and which must be properly chilled. She had heard, she wrote, that the English did not have ice cubes. Was this true? She was sending an ice cube making kit plus instructions in case we were not skilled in the art of pressing little cubes out of plastic cases. My husband had the bright idea of filling up our spare chest freezer with water then handing her an ice axe to cut her own. Alternatively, he said, she could stand the drink outside for ten minutes when it would probably be chilled enough. Another of her questions concerned air conditioning, which she also heard the Brits did not have. Did the temperature fall below 75 at night? If not, she would be unable to sleep. Husband said,

    But I digress. Back to Canary Wharf. Being American, of course, she must visit London. Neither of us had any money, living on state benefits, and all jollies were being paid for by her. She was perfectly willing to pay for all three of us in London, but knowing how expensive that would be, I could not feel easy allowing that, so I said I would accompany her alone, having talked her out of driving there, persuading her she would see more of the glorious countryside by train. I could not have stood the nervous strain. Picking her up at the airport, she had immediately hired a car and driven the WRONG way onto the motorway - both of us narrowly escaping death - I could not go through that again.

    My darling husband and I had never been apart in the twelve years we had been married, and he was very upset at the prospect. So was I, but I told him I could not see any way out of it. She HAD to see London, and we could not expect her to pay for three. I did not know, at the time, I was playing right into her Lesbian fantasies.

    I cannot say I enjoyed the London trip. In the room, the beds were so close together that it might as well have been a double. I like my privacy, but the room was so arranged that they could not be moved without major furniture shifting, the pieces were oldfashioned and heavy, and anyway it would have looked rude. I decided I would have to put up with it. I slept uneasily that first night, waking frequently. The first time I woke, I opened my eyes and looked straight into a pair of huge brown ones - she was lying awake watching me. I shut my eyes tight again, and every time I woke after that, I took jolly good care to keep them shut!

    I was very unhappy away from my life-partner. Every morning I got up early and crept down to the lobby where I phoned him. I was lovesick and counting the days.

    On the last night, we had been out to an Italian restaurant and drunk a bottle of wine, nothing unusual about that, but when we got back to the room she pretended to be drunk, and flopped down onto my side of the bed, thus preventing me getting in without having some form of contact with her. I wondered what to do, then, reasoning that there was no decree of whose bed was which, got in the other one, and prepared for sleep. It wasn't very long before an arm was stretched over and began gently stroking mine. I shook her off. She sat up then, and said in a voice I never heard before or since, "Don't you think I've been patient long enough?" Enraged at this,

    "I'm going to sleep," I said, "and I advise you to do the same. Good night." I rolled myself in my blanket and wondered what to do. I wasn't going to stay awake all night. If she tried anything on, I would bat her one. I fell asleep and in the morning we went home. Being British, of course, I acted like it had never happened and it was never referred to again.

    When the day of her departure came, I could not get her on the plane fast enough. Thank God that was over! And yet, by August she was back, and living with us. Am I mad, or what?

Since I managed to upset the second of my two American "politically correct" correspondents - the showdown with the first was over a year ago - no one is writing to me - since I binned the ass-grabber, and the Irishman with the strong sex drive turned out to be into sado-masochism (no, no, the wrong way round dear, he wanted me to be the Maquis) and inverted lesbianism (work that one out yourself, explaining it would get me banned.) So what now? Leaves me more time to write this blog I suppose.

I do have one correspondent, in LA, but she is mostly too busy to write, having a high pressure job, a man whose past keeps trying to catch up with him, and a small adorable child, whom she loves more than life itself. Having first made her acquaintance in 1995, I know just how much this child means to her. There has been a break of many years between us, and we only got back on track a few months ago. She found me on the internet, in spite of having changed my name (completely, both first and last) and also found that my dear husband, with whom she had chatted and laughed on the phone, and who had sent her many musical compilation tapes, was no longer on the planet. It was comforting to once more take up what had started as a very intense correspondence - for both of us, it was our first email pal, and her life was in considerable flux at the time. Part Mexican part Korean, she was the child of her mother's first partner, and all subsequent children in the family were racially different. She always felt a misfit. Our hearts would go out to her as we learned of her struggles to hold down a job, put herself through school, maintain her old truck, and battle with the men friends who never turned out the way she wanted. Now she has the child she says, "At least there is one person in the world who looks like me."

Last night, after about five hours hard work relaying paths and digging weeds in the allotment, I put everything away, changed back into the clean clothes I had arrived in, locked the sheds, then sat on the terrace with a bottle of beer. This was my time, just for me. It was already dark, and I had hitched the trailer to the bike, ready packed, so that I did not have to scrabble around in the dark looking for things. When I was ready to go, so was he (bicycles have sex too you know).

As I made my way through the cool grass and overflowing beds to the terrace, frogs sprang everywhere from beneath my feet, their dark glossy backs shining in the little light left. I never saw so many at once. Do they all leave the ponds at dusk, encouraged by the cool moist air? I could sense their excitement as they set out, running and jumping for joy, on the nightly slug hunt. They made me smile.

On the terrace, with my feet on the low stone wall, looking out over the vast beauty that is all mine, the result of twenty years' devoted care, soil so deep you could bury your arms in it, fifty percent of it mine and my husband's sweat and toil, yes and later, tears, as after our parting we met here, in what had been our paradise - I felt great love entering my heart, love that I have felt before, here and in other wild places, the love that is of the universe, that comes when we connect to the source of everything, the Great Spirit who creates all living and non-living things, binding them together in an embrace that never will let go, so long as we remember to connect to it.

And then as the last late blackbird flew low over the grass, home to her nest, the bats came out. There is something magical about bats. Hardly seen, just a shade darker than the twilight, they flit across the vision and out again, leaving only a memory of their shape behind. The great happiness within me threatened to overwhelm me. I drank some more beer. I thought of the ass-grabber. He had been a nice man really. I took up my mobile phone. What with the beer and the dusk, I could hardly see a thing. I hope I sent the text to the right place. "Am in lot ment having a beer. Quite drunk. Still don't fancy you though!"

Then, laughing like a drain, I set off home, when a sudden grief for my dead husband overwhelmed me, and for the first time resenting his passing, the words broke out of me, "Why did you have to leave when you were my anchor, when I need you so much, when we were trying to get it right."

Cycling up the road, tears falling fast, I heard his reply, "We are getting it right, and when we are together again, think how happy we are going to be." After all, he always did know best.

When the last time you changed partners was 21 years ago, it's pretty difficult to get used to a new man. You keep wishing for the old one back, your mind can't cope with the fact that this man speaks, thinks and behaves differently, you forgot they make them in different flavours and varieties. What you are really looking for is an understudy, but unfortunately you forgot to train one up. Or perhaps you should have arranged to have him cloned, if only that were possible.

I joined an internet dating site, and, thinking I would be more comfortable with someone in my age group, entered 55-75 as age range. One of them seemed nice, looked reasonable, we got on well on email then spoke on the phone. I liked his voice. But when he turned up he was old! yes I knew he was 64, what I hadn't realised was that I had never been to bed with an old man. All my lovers and husbands (yes, I had four) had been young. When I fell in love with the last one he was 32. So I was totally unprepared for this age thing.

I tried to be reasonable. I am old too. How would I feel if someone said to me they could not fancy me because I had a tortoise neck? (I don't, but I surely will one day). Wouldn't I be hurt, wouldn't I say, "I am more than just a neck!"

This man, assuredly, was crass. He did not pay me any compliments. He said that he "thought it best to get sex out of the way first" as though it were an unpleasant medicine. I dismissed him. I told him I would never go to bed with him, so did not wish to waste his time, since it was clearly all he thought about. He said that any two people who spent any time together would end up in bed sooner or later. I don't agree. I have had many men friends in the past who never made it past the bed post, and I thought no less of them for that, nor they of me. When I asked him, in email, why he had not paid me any compliments, he said, "all I could think of was I wanted to grab your ass." Hmm.

So now I have altered my criteria to read "45-55". Let us stay within the parameters of firm flesh, of bodies not in the process of decay. I joined another site, "inter-racial dating" and advertised for "an African man - to drum up a storm". A guy wrote me, "would an Irish man do?"

Would he do! I would love an Irish man! Since my husband died in Killarney, I fell in love with the wonderful Irish people I met there, and who still want me, a year later, to go and live among them. So I wrote back enthusiastically. He enquired, how was my sex drive? as his was very strong. I replied that, if I fancied the pants off someone, it was bang on, but if I did not, unfortunately it closed its doors and put up the 'shut' sign. However, I said, if we arranged to meet strictly for the purpose of having sex, something I had never done, I could probably manage to role play. He inquired what I meant by that, and invited me to tell him my sexual fantasies, so that he could help me. Hmm. Obliging sort of chappy. Reminds me of a slogan I read, "please try to solve your problems before you arrive, in order that I can help you more."

I am writing a book, in which the characters will not stop having sex with each other. I had not intended this when starting the book, but now they are out of control and at it all the time. They have even made me draw a flow chart indicating who has sex with whom, and how frequently. What help this will be I do not know. They are in my head all day asking me to write more, but I am sending them to Coventry until they learn a proper way to behave. I sought help on this from a friend, as I wondered if it indicated that I was sexually frustrated - but she said she did not see why mythical people should not have sex as much as anyone else - as much! they have cornered the market in it and there is none left over for anyone else.

Maybe role playing with the Irish guy will help me understand my characters more. Haha!

And so to bed.