I counted the changes on the journey before I wrote to her

Both of the arrangements I have had died of transport rather than of anything to do with each other. Not rows. Just ninety minutes each way and the slow arrival of the thought, on a wet Wednesday in January, that neither of us was going to say it first.

So now, before I write to anybody, I work out the journey. Door to door, on a weekday evening, with the changes counted rather than guessed. If it comes to more than about seventy minutes I do not write, and I have not written to a great many people I would have liked to.

Forty five, out west of the city on the line, nine years in. This is the only thing about me that is at all unusual and I am aware it makes me sound like a man with a spreadsheet. There is a spreadsheet. I am not proud of it.

What I want is one evening a week that reliably happens and a set of expectations that run through the other six days. Reliability is the whole of my offer. I have never once been late for anything and I have never cancelled on somebody for a better offer, because there are no better offers.

I do not want to be told the distance will be fine because we get on well. It was fine for the first eleven weeks on both previous occasions. It is the twelfth week that decides, and I would rather build for the twelfth week now.