I am not the sort of girl who lives her life with any sense of danger. I don't do drugs, haven't shoplifted since 1991, haven't bungy jumped or snow boarded or jumped out of a plane or taken the day off to lie in bed all day with a lover. I've been doing the same corporate routine for eight years, in various cities and for various companies (same shit, different set). I go in, take on far too much work because I lack the assertiveness to say no, drown in work, feel sorry for myself, and lap up all the accolades when my bosses thank me for sacrificing all the extra hours. (Last Christmas Eve I arrived in Sydney after 24 hours in the air, went home to my mum's place, logged on and worked til 4.30a.m. That's typical of me. I procrastinate for England but then I always pull out the stops and do the right thing, the safe thing, the conscientious thing.)

Then I met Daniel. Daniel told me I wouldn't lie on my death bed and wished I'd worked harder on the progamme, produced more documents, updated more spreadsheets. I'd lie there and wished I'd skived off to Hampstead Heath on sunny afternoons more often. He encouraged me to live in the moment, he sent me photos of himself posing as a mannequin in the window at Gap, he told me the weather was fine outside and we should eat in the sun down by the quay, and that it really was ok to take an hour off for lunch. Or three, for that matter.

So we did, although by the time I was ready to be reckless and give in to him, the sun had gone and London was misty and damp with late summer rain. We met by the National Portrait Gallery on a Friday morning. It wasn't open. That didn't matter. We ended up at the Trocadero, playing air hockey and taking photos of ourselves and having dance-offs like we were 15. It was one of the best mornings of my life.

Why we're blogging
I want to share this blog with Dan not just because I want to record the events of the past year, but because I want us to continue being part of each other's lives, to share something small together now that we are separated by our circumstances and our commitments.

Dan's married and has a life and a persona and a world I don't know a whole lot about, in Wales. It's not like it sounds (and I know how it sounds, because I made the mistake once of mentioning him to my girlfriends). We didn't sleep together, but our souls connected. I met him in the office, in a grotty old former warehouse down by West India Quay, in London's Docklands. In our wharf. He was my physical ideal (tall dark and gorgeous) so of course I noticed him, but I also noticed his wedding ring, and respected it, and dismissed him, even while I noticed him watching me and blushing around me and shaking when he sat down with me to run through some work.

Actually, I loved him for all of those things but it was an innocent and distant feeling - I would never go near another woman's husband. But it's impossible not to feel flattered when someone blushes in your presence.

Still, he emailed me once, and we got to writing. We wrote reams and reams of emails to each other, and that's how we got to know each other. He made me laugh out loud at my desk, he encouraged me to live in the moment for once in my life, and he liked me. He said something to me not so long ago that made me realise how important I was to him.

He said there had been three significant women in his life (other than blood relatives). His first lover, who'd broken his heart when she turned out to be a lesbian. His wife (of 12 years Dan?). And me. In 34 years, only three.

Knowing Dan has changed my life. It's reminded me that life is complicated, and that we have a lot of impossible choices to make. That it's crazy, and beautiful, and fragile, and is full of moments that you will remember forever but that these moments don't come along very often, and there really aren't that many people out there in the world with whom we truly, properly connect. There aren't many people you'll meet in your whole life who will adore you, not because they're supposed to but because they just do.

Tamed Hearts
When I was in my final year of high school, I watched a film called Untamed Heart. I haven't seen it in 14 years and I have a bad memory for films but I remembered this from the film: Marisa Tomei's character walks home every night after work and Christian Slater's character follows her from a safe distance every night, without her knowledge, just to make sure she gets home safely. One night she gets attacked by a gang of thugs and he is able to rescue her. As an awkward 16 year old girl growing up in small town Australia I remembered thinking that was the most romantic thing I'd ever seen and wondered if anyone would ever follow me home to make sure *I* made it home ok. Nobody ever did. Until last week, the last time I saw Dan. I had a knee injury and even though I shouldn't have been out socialising when I was struggling to get around on my crutches, I wasn't going to miss out on seeing Dan for what will be the last time in a long time. So we met up at a bar in Fulham, near where I live in south west London. We said goodbye out the front and I hugged him. Then I hobbled away, ungracefully, and he went towards the underground. By the I time I'd finally made it to the crosswalk, crossed the road and turned into my street, Dan called out from ten yards behind me. He told me later that he'd have walked me home but didn't think I'd want to be seen with him in my street (I now have a boyfriend who lives with me). He told me on the night that he'd followed from a safe distance to make sure I was ok, but hadn't wanted me to see him in case I'd thought he was stalking me. It was my Untamed Heart moment - that moment when you realise that someone adores you. Above and beyond circumstance and possibility, with full knowledge that you can't have somebody you want to be with and who wants to be with you, that feeling alone is so rare and special that the rest of it doesn't matter.

I told him too, when he caught me up, that I'd never feel unloved again because of him. And I won't. One of our earlier conversations on MSN was me having a self-indulgent moan about the fact that nobody would ever love me (just because I'd had my heart bruised by a waste of space that we'd both worked with). Part of me is still the 16 year old girl that thinks nobody will ever love her, and that only the beautiful people know that feeling. But it was a moment of clarity for me, realising that I had found someone who thought I *was* beautiful, even on crutches.

So even though I know I can never have him, I'll always carry him with me, in my heart and my thoughts, until I'm lying on my deathbed thinking about all those wasted afternoons where I should have skived off to Hampstead Heath. And we'll always have our blog, to remind us in years to come of how we got to where we are now.