Well, first off she's not French - doesn't even speak the lingo! (that should surely be a point in her favour, in your book
) ... and no, that's no why I've been away, but I should have been away chasing her all weekend. Only I wasn't. 
The plan was to get myself a month's contract over thataway, starting about now - so I could go to a festival in Strasbourg where we'd tentatively agreed (back in November) to try and meet up at the weekend; and then I'd have several weeks in which to try to arrange one or more old-style dates, like coffee after work or a walk in the woods or whatever.
But the cushy job I was hoping for didn't materialise, all the alternatives are multi-month offers with a view to permanency (feck that, I'm trying to retire
) and taking a week out of my renovation routine aswell as a big fistful of euros out of my renovation piggybank in the hope that yerwan would turn up in Strasbourg ... So I kept my dancing adventures very local, managed to pick up a bad dose of flu/covid/RSV at one of them and lost a week's renovation anyhow; but also decided that I need to thoroughly review both my salaried working arrangements and my too-numerous house-and-garden projects so that I can actually have time to go chasing after sexy Czech fiddlers.
Even if I don't get over to Alsace in the next few months, there's still a reasonable chance she'll turn up at my festival in July, by which time I should have put manners on my chaotic lifestyle and be in a better position to plan things more productively. After that, the next opportunity will be in October, back where it all began in a barn on the Swiss border!
