Relegation.

I said before it's important only to know the overall direction of the current in someone else's heart - whether it is flowing with you or against you.

The separate components which make up the flow are interesting in themselves, but even a diligent partner does not have the time to assess each one of them. In the same way that we're aware that individual molecules of gas add to the temperature and pressure of the whole but we still overlook them in favour of the macroscopic view, so it is when I try to ascertain when Bluefish's current changed from flowing with me, to flowing against me.

I've sat thinking about it for most of Monday, and now Monday has bled inevitably into the early hours of Tuesday, but I have now identified the moment when I began to lose her. As seems to be the case with most crises, its roots are innocuous enough, but its long-term impact is significant enough to scar a person forever.

We were walking down one of the innumberable roads named something-üt in Budapest, and we'd found conversation hard going that morning. There were reasons for that other than the conclusion there was no longer anything worth saying. I'm a notoriously slow starter, and the low temperature meant I would be even less inclined to offer much in the way of diversion. (I seem to remember this was the day I'd gone out into an eastern European city in November wearing just a t-shirt and a coat, and expected to be anything other than frozen.)

Our conversation had just begun to pick up, and Bluefish was telling me something about her past, when I was distracted by a man handing out fliers for something or other - I know not what? Was it a nightclub? Something relating to the nearby Opera House? An instrument of political protest? I'd not got the faintest idea, and I began to 'read' the document in the hope of getting the gist of its content.

It was a faint hope indeed, as the only word of Hungarian I'd picked up was the equivalent of 'exit' - 'kijárat,' plastered over many buildings across the city. I tried to read the leaflet, though, looking for terms that might be similar to English or Spanish ones. This made Bluefish as angry and disappointed as I had ever seen her, and it is this moment I symbolically identify as the one where her heart stopped beating for me, even if it has never subsequently started to pulse against me.

She intimated I was ignoring her in favour of slavishly trying to get to grips with a language I had no prospect of understanding, and her logic is so clear that I offer up no defence. Relationships are more likely to turn on issues of money or infidelity, but in this case a printed note offered to all passers-by on that morning was enough to relegate us from the firmament.

Losing a partner in this manner is the equivalent of slipping on a banana skin located precariously close to the edge of a cliff, and falling to one's death. It is the equivalent of running a marathon, and dropping dead when walking to the shop for a pint of milk. It has a comedic element which would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious, but because it is so serious I can only conclude that it is tragic.