The Accidental Boyfriend

It’s been a very long time since I’ve been sat across a table from a man who’s telling me I’m wonderful.  I suppose I can blame being out of practice for my pfft!-eye roll combo response.  Accepting compliments has never been a strong suit of mine but it’s made even more awkward when you’re supposed to be enjoying a post work drink with a friend, not a date.

I’ve known Socially Awkward Boy has liked me as something more than a friend and colleague since the work Christmas do, when he told me so but it still doesn’t make it any easier to know how to react when he compliments me.

Do I just say thank you?  Do I try to nip the whole thing in the bud at that point and tell him – again – that I’m not interested.  The problem with that tack is that I’m not 100% certain that I actually am not interested.

I like him a lot, we get on really well.  He is easily one of my favourite people.  If we bump into each other in the kitchen at work I usually end up sidling back in half an hour later, hoping no one noticed how long it took me to make a cup of tea.  We hang out after work on a Friday night quite often.  Mostly as part of a group but this week it was just me and him and one drink turned into a few, which turned into dinner, which led to a missed train and staying out drinking until half 3.

He’s lovely, he makes me laugh, he’s intelligent, he cares about grammar but I just don’t want to have sex with him.  If we didn’t work together and there wasn’t the potential for a whole bunch of awkward I would possibly just chance a drunken snog and see if there were tingles.  If there was no spark I’d still have to see him almost every day and I don’t think he’d be happy to just forget anything had happened.  He’s the sort of boy who if I kissed him, he’d think we were Going Steady.

I’m not entirely certain he doesn’t think we’re dating as it is.  We talk a lot, we have text conversations most days and now there are the unaccompanied trips to the pub, there’s been one or two lunches and we have plans to go see The Cabin in the Woods together.  I don’t know what I’m doing.  I’m being very foolish because I know this is giving him the idea that something relationship shaped might develop.

Every time we discover something new in common or a similar viewpoint on a particular topic I can see him jotting it down on his mental list of reasons we’re “made for each other” – this is an actual thing he has said, I’m not just being flippant.  Months ago he said that we were made for each other because we both like Day of the Dead more than Dawn of the Dead.  Zombie film preference is THAT important.

I’m really worried I’m going to one day find myself in a relationship I had no intention of being in just because I’m too much of a wuss to have a conversation about what the hell is going on and too selfish to stop hanging out with him so much.  I seem to be using him as my proxy boyfriend.  It’s nice having someone who wants to spend time with you, someone who can be relied on to always say yes to invites to the pub and reply to inane texts.

And he’s such a lovely proxy boyfriend that I do wonder if it would be such a terrible thing if he was to become a real boyfriend.  He’s intellectually stimulating and he makes me laugh, surely that should be more important than the fact he’s skinnier than me and I couldn’t imagine him pinning me to a bed in a million years.  Aren’t shared values more meaningful than ticking every box on the physical wishlist?  Then why can’t I get over the fact that I like stubbly boys with muscles and hair I can thread my fingers through and he has none of these things?

Mr What If becomes Mr So What

Once upon a time I fell for a boy who had a girlfriend, we’ll call him Mr What If. We used to flirt and there was a definite connection between us but nothing actually happened (well apart from one or two misguided kisses when we were drunk – I know, but I was young) until he got dumped by his girlfriend before she was moved away to go back to Uni. Then the flirting turned into stolen kisses in the stairwell of our shared office building and phone calls that only ended when the lightening sky gave away just how long we’d been talking for. I was completely besotted with him but despite his claims that he felt the same we never actually went on a date. With him actually using how much he said he liked me as his excuse – he didn’t want me to be rebound fling apparently and was scared that he’d mess things up because he wasn’t ready for another relationship.

Then I met The Ex, sorry, Mario. Well not met, I’d worked with him for a couple of years by that point but we’d never spent any time together socially and he’d always been fairly mute around me. But at a work away day that featured cocktails in the evening I saw for the first time how funny he was and then I started noticing how nice his smile was and how well his arms filled out his shirt. By the end of the night I had a schoolgirl crush.

When it was clear that he liked me back I turned a little harpyish with Mr What If. A couple of days before my first date with Mario I pretty much issued Mr What If an ultimatum: either we went on a date or I was moving on. The date didn’t materialise so I moved on and gradually fell head over heels in love with Mario. At which point Mr What If decided to pop out of the woodwork to tell me that I was with the wrong man and I should leave Mario to be with him instead because he was in love with me and there was even some schmaltz about soulmates.

Obviously, I didn’t leave Mario for him but I did often wonder how things would have turned out if I had. I thought he was destined to be the guy I’d always have unanswered questions about, hence the name. We did stay friends though (up until he got a girlfriend) and we’d have lunch every now and then or hang out if we bumped into each other in the pub by the office. Over one such lunch we discovered similar taste in fiction and I lent him some books. And FINALLY, I get to the main point of this post!

That was about two years ago and I still haven’t had the books back. I want to lend one of them to my mum and I went to buy it again but it’s out of print so when I saw him in the pub a couple of weeks ago I asked if I could have them back. He moved house a few months ago so he requested I text him the titles and he’d have a look for them as they might be in his Dad’s house. I dutifully text him the names of the books and who they were by. Silence. Oh well, best give up on getting them back then. Always a risk you take when you lend someone a book.

But last Wednesday I suggested to a group of colleagues that we go for a mid week drink as it was such perfect beer garden weather and he happened to be there too, clearly having the same thought. I was minding my own business when he spotted me and called across the pub to me, “Leigh! Books! Yeah… They’ve been destroyed I’m afraid. I’ll replace them though.”

Sorry, what now?

Destroyed?

Lost, I could understand. Even given to a charity shop, but “destroyed”? Seriously, what the fuck? Did he burn them? Did his girlfriend eat them?

Reading is my first love and I adore books. I’m really anal about them and I read carefully, treating my books almost with reverence. He knows that and he even went on to have a conversation with one my companions, to whom I’ve also lent a book, mocking me for it. He knows that watching someone break the spine of a book makes me shudder and he stood there and told me that some of my books, some of my favourite books, had been destroyed, with no explanation and barely a trace of apology.

I regret that it took me a little while to get angry. It was some time later, while I was walking to my car that I realised how furious I was. I don’t care that he offered to replace them – even if I believed that he actually would, I am so annoyed by the lack of respect a boy who once claimed to love me, showed my property that he could give me three copies of each book and I’d still be fuming.

I ranted about it to everyone I know who likes books and was just starting to forget about it when I get a text from him saying, “Found your books! I’ll bring them in tomorrow.”

Riiight… So, my books hadn’t been destroyed at all but he told me they had been anyway. Despite knowing what I’m like and that it would upset me. Perhaps precisely because he knew it would upset me. I can think of absolutely no reason to tell someone something of theirs had been destroyed when it hadn’t other than to upset them. Surely most people would say they’d lost them even if they actually had destroyed them.

And with that, every drop of feeling I had left for him evaporated. No more moments will be spent wondering how my life would have turned out if I had chosen him instead, if I’d waited for him or if I’d broken up with Mario when he asked me to. Goodbye what if, hello lucky escape.

Follow Friday: Blog Edition

For those of you not on Twitter (Is anybody not on Twitter anymore?), Follow Friday, or #FF if you like, is a trend where people recommend other tweeters you should follow.  As I’m so shite at writing blog posts lately, I thought I’d do a blog edition and point you in the direction of some of the good posts I’ve read this week - in between the flailing and swearing at the horrible job I’m battling with at work.

If you’re not subscribed to the Team AWOT blog, why not?  This week there have been posts about marriage equality, gender stereotypes and competition between women.  And that’s just this week!

The brilliant Arielle of Not the Mermaid wrote a great post about why being single is awesome.  As someone who would far rather be single than in the wrong relationship, I love finding other people who agree and this is such a refreshingly honest look at singledom.  Being single may be great for a bunch of happy, shiny, I-can-do-what-I-want kinda reasons, but it’s also great for other reasons that are often overlooked.

If you’ve never heard of Postsecret, the best way to see what it is to click the link.  The Sunday Secrets are one of the highlights of my blog reading week.

The lovely Jo makes something as shitty as flat hunting entertaining to read about.  I particularly liked her statement that basements are a good place for hiding boyfriends.  A boyfriend I could keep in the cellar and just bring out when it suited me sounds ideal!

Brandy has written posts that have made me laugh, made me cry and inspired me.  This week on the blog she wrote a lovely post about something she’d written – I know, meta right?

I also discovered that Jenn, previously of Free and Flawed is still blogging at Bottle up the Crazy.  This made me happy as I thought she’d stopped blogging and I miss her Paint masterpieces.

Right, now I go back to InDesign hell.

Why I don’t like Valentine’s Day

I’ve read a couple of posts today looking at the different sides of the old Valentine’s Day debate.  Popvulture is against it.  LaRainbow is for.  And the lovely Lauren Bravo (I’m sure the other two are lovely too but I’ve met Lauren in real life) just talks a lot of sense.

Personally I’m not a fan, mainly because I’m an emotional cripple and any expression of love makes me deeply uncomfortable.  Err, I mean commercialism, Hallmark Day, rarr!

It only dawned on me the other day that the biggest reason I have for not liking Valentine’s Day is that it steals my thunder.  It’s my birthday on Friday so technically this week is mine.  Hell, I’ll take all of February if you let me but this week at least, is definitely mine.  Then Valentine’s Day waltzes into my week and other people get presents and attention.  Thunder gone.  I think there should be some sort of rule where people have to hand over their presents to me and give me cake to apologise.

Even worse than thunder stealing friends with their, “look at my shiny thing/tacky schmaltz/flowers,” are the boyfriends who think it’s okay to combine birthday and Valentine festivities.  Not because I’m greedy and I want two days of treats, that actually just makes me feel guilty, but because it feels like I’m losing my special day somehow.  It’s suddenly about them too.  Well them and them and the 50 other couples rammed into the restaurant that usually only fits 20 of course.

So this is me starting my campaign to get Valentine’s Day abolished.  February is a short month, there’s only room for one day of rampant consumerism and that’s the 17th damn it!

It’s Time to Talk

Thanks to a stomach bug that left me unable to stomach much more than a turkey sandwich and a couple of crisps from Christmas Eve to Boxing day, yesterday* became my Christmas day. There was fizz and turkey and what I believe is technically termed a metric fucktonne of trimmings. Followed by party poppers, mandatory wearing of glow in the dark tat and silly string fights. It’s all class in my house.

It was when said silly string fight had petered out i.e. when we confiscated it from my maniacally giggling Nan that I made a comment about last year’s silly string fight, only to be reminded that it wasn’t last year at all because we were elsewhere last year.

“Oh of course! I wasn’t present last year!” I announced to some strange looks from everyone except my mum who confirmed that I was indeed “away with the fairies” last Christmas and New Year. I don’t really remember the festivities from last year because I had so completely and utterly checked out. I spent almost the entire time shut away in my aunt’s spare room crying and avoiding human interaction at all costs. A bit like a teenager really.

It wasn’t until I saw a very nice doctor in January and he prescribed me Citalopram that I started on the road to recovery. Well if recovery is shutting yourself off from everyone in your life except your mum and only leaving the house to go to the doctors for more time off work because you have panic attacks at the thought of going back.

Depression is one of those things we don’t talk about, not really. People will say they’re depressed when they don’t really mean it – “They sold out of Bombay Sapphire, I’m so depressed!” – but if someone really is depressed or was and got through it they “weren’t very well” or were “going through a tough time”.

When Gary Speed killed himself my twitter timeline filled with some beautifully moving tweets from people expressing their sadness and sharing their thoughts on what he must have been going through to drive himself to suicide. One such tweet I favourited because it resonated with me was @Katie_Khan saying: “It’s only really possible to share regarding depression when you’re out of it.”

I originally started this blog as somewhere I could write about what I was going through. Splurge the dark thoughts out of my head, shape them into something coherent and hopefully work my way past them. That didn’t really happen. I wrote one post, that sort of mentioned my depression and that was about it really. I then neglected the whole thing until I was back at work, feeling much better – well, better at least, much is stretching it.

—–

I started writing this in between Christmas and New Year - hence the Christmas reference at the beginning, the yesterday referred to was the 28th December - but got waylaid by the family shattering my peace and wanting attention.  Since then I seem to have been struggling with a block between my brain and fingers.  There have been lots of things I’ve wanted to write about and I’ll find myself mentally drafting posts when I can’t write, like when I’m driving or half asleep, but as soon as I’m in front of a notepad or keyboard the words won’t come.

Originally this post was supposed to be about how much better I’m doing now.  I was going to write about how awful I’d felt and then self indulgently congratulate myself on not feeling like I’m about to crumble anymore.  But on Monday morning I couldn’t get out of bed.  Just couldn’t move.  I woke up at alarm time and just sat there.  I just stared at my wardrobe for about an hour and a half.

Nothing bad has happened, nothing’s changed at all, there’s absolutely nothing to explain why all of a sudden I felt incapable of facing the world.  Choosing clothes to wear felt like a crushingly difficult decision, the idea of then getting in my car and having to drive for half an hour felt like a huge insurmountable task.  I had a mild panic attack when I tried to push myself to get up and get ready for work.  I felt ridiculous trying to explain that I was sick to my boss but I did, I tried to put into words feelings that I don’t even understand myself.  In the past I would have just taken leave or fallen back on the migraine lie – as I’ve even been told to so before by a member of the management team.

Today was my first day back at work and I was dreading it.  I feel embarrassed to suffer with depression, even though I know how ridiculous that is.  I would tell anyone else they were being bloody stupid if they said they were embarrassed or ashamed of their mental health problems.  I just can’t stand seeing the pity in people’s eyes.  Or worse, doubt.  Those people who put depression in inverted commas with their tone of voice.

I didn’t know how to act at work today.  If I was happy, would people think I was just throwing a sicky?  If I was quiet and down would they worry I was about to breakdown again?  I worried about the how-are-yous and the are-you-feeling-betters you inevitably get after a few days off.  How much should I say?  Would they know?

Fortunately – or unfortunately, I don’t know really know - there’s been a stomach bug going round the office, so I just look like another victim of that and I didn’t have to deal with people looking at me like I’m about to crumble.  I shouldn’t feel relieved that I’m helping perpetuate the reluctance to talk about depression and other mental illnesses.  I should feel able to tell people that I had a bad couple of days in the same way I would tell them if it had been a stomach bug.  Who the fuck decided that it was more acceptable to talk about vomit than anxiety and sadness?

It really is time to start changing how we think and the only way to do that is to start talking about these things.  This is my first step.  I suffer with depression.  I still get bad days and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Nerds are sexy and bow ties are cool

In my social group the only accepted way to mark an increase in one’s age is to don a silly costume and go get drunk. Fancy dress has been mandatory for birthdays so long that as soon as someone mentions a night out for their birthday the first question any of us ask is “what’s the theme?” My friend’s impending birthday celebrations have a nerd theme. I am not okay with this.

For a start it’s unoriginal – I much prefer my shunned suggestion of dressing as games. Mainly because I had an awesome Snakes and Ladders costume all thought out but also because it means being creative. You can’t just go out and buy a Mousetrap inspired ensemble, you’d have to make it and for me half the fun of fancy dress is in making your costume.

But I also find the whole theme marginally offensive. Firstly let’s look at the question of what actually is a nerd?

Doing a google image search for a picture of the stereotypical nerd to illustrate this post really went to show the many different views of what makes a nerd. As well as the expected pictures of people in fully buttoned shirts and bow ties wearing oversized glasses there was Daria, a scientist, a group of people at a historical reenactment and many, many screen shots from The Big Bang Theory.

According to the Venn Diagram we have on the wall in the IT Cave a nerd is an intelligent, socially inept person with obsessions. Uh, hello! I already AM a nerd, without having a don a single pair of braces or orthopedic shoes. I won’t bore you with my nerd CV but on Friday whilst chatting about my broken website and getting a friend to look at my CSS I actually uttered the sentence: “But my code’s really messy and I’m embarrassed.” I think that makes my point perfectly.

How the hell do you dress as a nerd anyway? There isn’t a nerd uniform. We’re hiding amongst you like the new Cylons. Anyone could be a nerd, there’s no way to identify us until it’s too late and you’re embroiled in a conversation about Ewoks being the scourge of the film world.

If we dress as the stereotypical nerd no one will know if we’re nerds or just particularly stylish. Big glasses are trendy, you regularly spot fashionable menfolk with shirts done up all the way to the top, clashing patterns are allowed, christmas style patterned jumpers are in all the shops. “Nerdy” is cool.

Choosing a theme that is basically dressing as smart people feels like bullying to me. I spent far too many years being called a swot because I did well in tests and exams (without revising I might add/brag) to want to dress as the victim of US pop culture mockery. Because I can guarantee my friends won’t even be regionally correct nerds, they’ll dress like they’re in American teen movies.

Another source of major irritation is that we will be obliged to sex it up. I will be surrounded by a gaggle of “Slutty Nerds”. I love fancy dress but the expectations of those around you that you’ve got to flash skin if you want to dress up annoys me greatly. For the same friend’s birthday a couple of years ago we had a ball gowns and tiaras theme. I raided the mother’s wardrobe and wore a late 80s/early 90s puffy sleeved monstrosity of a dress. I did not look sexy in any way shape or form but I felt like a Princess and to my mind I looked great.

Yet I got given stick by a girl in the toilet queue. She nastily wished me “good luck pulling in that”. Given that I had a boyfriend stood downstairs this didn’t concern me, plus I’d already had a very attractive man tell me I was pretty so she was wrong anyway. I politely informed her that I wasn’t aiming to pull but she just kept going on and on, not grasping that I was in fancy dress. If she hadn’t been a lot bigger than me I would have been more tempted to make a snarky comment about not needing to flash tit to pull when you’ve got a half decent face and possess a personality.

I saw quite a few articles and blog posts around Halloween regarding the slutty costume issue but I also saw this tweet.

I can’t help but feel this woman has missed the point entirely. Dressing “slutty” is not being proud of your sexuality, just as dressing modestly is not being ashamed of it. If you want to flash your legs in a Sexy Nurse/Witch/Tomato costume you go ahead but don’t say that you’re celebrating your sexuality. You’re celebrating your good legs. And good for you, you’ve got a nice set of pins that you probably work hard for, show them off all you want. But to claim that you’re flaunting anything other than your body is ridiculous.

Aren’t we more than just our sexuality anyway? My proudest Halloween costume is still my 2008 black widow costume where I made myself extra legs using tights, cotton wool and wire, which through an elaborate engineering system featuring braces, string and holes cut in the back of my top moved in sync with my arms. What’s wrong with flaunting our creativity or our sense of humour? Even if the fancy dress situation is being used as a pulling opportunity I for one would far rather get chatted up by someone who appreciated the fact that I was dressed as a woman being eaten by a shark. (A costume someone on twitter – don’t remember who sorry – spotted this Halloween that I think is genius.)

Instead of wearing a short skirt with braces and cinema 3D glasses with the lenses popped out as my companions undoubtedly will, I plan to wear jeans and a t-shirt with a computer joke on it. People will think I haven’t joined in and I’ll probably get told off by my friends for being a spoil sport but I’ll know I’m the most authentic nerd there.

Maybe I should take my Venn diagram to explain that.

It’s not me, it’s you. Or it might be me.

I think I might have agreed to go on a date. I’m fairly certain I have no desire to go on said date. This could get awkward.

My friend’s brother has recently moved back from Zimbabwe and he seems not to have taken me running away from him the last time we met personally. I had wandered out of the pub everyone else was happily ensconced in because I was feeling out of place. Uncomfortable around the fun but stupid people I was surrounded by. And he followed me.

After a conversation whilst sat on a wall where I failed to successfully explain why I wanted to run away, he asked me if I’d go for a drink with him some time. I accepted in part out of politeness and in part because he was the only person I’d spoken to all night with any intelligence or wit (notwithstanding a brief text conversation with a former dalliance, Mr What If) and I enjoy talking to him.  But mainly it was because I didn’t know how to turn him down.

How do you tell someone you’ll have to see again that despite them being lovely you have no desire to get involved with them? Especially when you can’t actually give a reason for it. I don’t know if it’s something about him that puts me off or if, to go with the cliché, it’s not him but me.

I don’t really feel like I’m still messed up. I don’t think I’m in love with the Ex (who I’m going start calling Mario*) anymore. I’m not entirely sure when that happened but one day I suddenly realised that I don’t miss him as much. I still think about him but it’s not in a longing way, things just make me think of him. It’s the same way that things remind you of any close friend I suppose. When someone has been a big part of your life for any reasonable length of time and have lots of stories involving them you’re going to think about them quite often.  At least until the memories get overwritten by shiny new things you do.

So even if I wouldn’t feel like an idiot wheeling out the “I’m not over my ex” excuse more than a year after we split up I don’t know that it’s entirely truthful. I suspect my reluctance to get involved with anyone else now has more to do with The Fear. Being so utterly heartbroken changes you. I’d been hurt before and I’d even thought I’d had my heart broken but it had nothing on this.  This break-up has changed me, like no break-up has before. But then, the relationship also changed me like no relationship has before.

The point is that I’m now terrified of feeling like that again. Before my relationship with Mario I was totally uninhibited and some might say reckless with my heart. The longevity of a dalliance was never a concern when starting out. It wouldn’t enter my head whether I could see myself still seeing the person I was flirting with in a week’s time, let alone a year.  It simply didn’t matter.  Now it seems to.

I don’t know if it’s because of the hurt or simply because I’m getting older but now I feel like I want to get it right next time.  I don’t want to get my heart stamped on again and that’s making me very cautious and a bit picky.  If I can’t see a future with someone I don’t really want to waste my time with them when any relationship that develops is destined for failure.

And I don’t see a future with my friend’s brother.  I can’t even truly envisage a date with him.  He may be funny and interesting but he’s also nine years my senior and you can tell. I do find him attractive but not so much that I’d want to show him off. I just can’t see us as a couple and I really can’t imagine introducing him to my family. That probably shouldn’t matter but to me it does. Or maybe it only does because my family adored Mario.

So maybe it is me or maybe it’s him but the empty sickly feeling when I think about him calling me to arrange the date suggests that either way it doesn’t matter.  No butterflies, no date.  Any ideas how to get out of this?

*Because he bears a striking resemblance to the mushroom from the Super Mario games (puffy hair) and he’s a dab hand with a sewing machine like Mario (a Tailor) from The Only Way Is Essex. Yes, I watch The Only Way Is Essex. No, I’m not ashamed. Much.

The healing powers of laughter, music and cider

Last night I slept with someone for the first time since the ex and I broke up.  I’d expected it might make a bit sad but the only feelings experienced were contentment, followed by mild irritation at the snoring.  I was quite proud of myself for resisting the urge to punch the offender in the ribs and then later on I managed to stop myself stripping off my pajamas when I overheated.  I don’t think my female friend would have appreciated going to sleep next to a fully clothed fellow drunkard yet waking up with a sore head and a naked woman lying next to her.  That’s how rumours start.

For it was just a girly night away with a friend and nothing more sweaty and interesting I’m afraid.  My best friend Mr Director – so named because he ran off and left me to study film making – and I had planned to see The Naked and Famous ages ago but his Uni filming schedule got in the way and he couldn’t make it so I invited a relatively new friend from work to come with me instead.

Cue a road trip including hysterical giggling, shrieks of joy every time we saw an Eddie Stobart lorry, hours spent wandering around Bristol trying to locate a particular cocktail bar only to turn a corner and find it – closed – minutes after we give up, stolen bottles of water, running over a bridge whilst humming the batman theme tune, insistence that the space ship from Flight of the Navigator had landed in central Bristol, overheard conversations about gay men vomiting at the sight of a vagina, and massive medicinal fry-ups in the morning.

This is what’s been lacking in my life over the last couple of years.  Friends who make you laugh so hard that you struggle to breathe.  Someone who’ll ask you why you’re being so nasty when you mention getting out of bed, who looks at you and mimes sticking her fingers down her throat while she’s on the phone to her boyfriend.  A friend who, like you, is more interested in At-Bristol than Broadmead.  In short, friends who get you.

An occasion that could have had ghosts of happy times with a boy I once loved hiding around bathroom doors and in front of stages was instead the best time I’ve had in months.

According to The Beatles all you need is love but give me a friend who asks if they can be Robin to my Batman and demands we come back to Bristol to drink spiced mojitos and jump around to music on a boat any day.

Genetic Idiocy

Being the social life impaired loser I am, instead of being out getting up to costumed mischief on Saturday night I was stood putting the finishing touches to a curry when my phone rang.  I was greeted by my mum asking me to collect her from the police station two towns over and instructed to bring towels.

So off I dutifully trotted, heavily laden with towels to collect my errant mother.  10 minutes later when soggy woman and dog had been bundled into my car with heating vents angled towards them and towels wrapped around them I asked, with a dramatic long-suffering  sigh, “What did you do?”

She’d set off to walk the dog in a local Country Park at around four o’clock and it was now almost eight o’clock and pitch black.  Somewhere along the line she’d decided to explore, lost her bearings and ended up in a field in the middle of nowhere.  Where a cow proceeded to leap – okay climb, whatever,  in my head it leaps – over some tyres and chase her.  At this the dog, naturally, decided to go all Sir Didymus and challenge a creature 10 times his size to a duel.  I was going to compare my mum to his cowardly steed Ambrosius then, but I think she bears greater similarity to the more pragmatic Hoggle in this situation. By which I mean she legged it.

It’s now that the scene in my head stops being one plucked from Labyrinth (some gratuitous dancing Bowie for you, you’re welcome) and my childhood obsession with The Last Unicorn rears (fnar) its head and I see a giant glowing red bull chasing woman and dog through the field.  She managed to escape being pulverised by running into a ditch, filled with water of unknown depth.  As you do.  Fortunately she was able to wade through the chest deep water to safety.

This is only the last in a long list of strange events in the life of Leigh’s Mum.  She will usually rush into things half cocked and it’s only through dumb luck that things turn out okay.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up with a Darwin Award one day. She’s killed more hedge trimmers than I can remember by cutting the lead instead of the hedge so it’s lucky they have good safety measures or I would have a crispy matriarch by now.  It’s not even that she makes questionable decisions, more that she doesn’t even see that there’s a question to be asked.  She just bimbles through life wondering, “Ooh what’s down that dark alley?  Why don’t I have a look?” or, “What does that button do?”

The worrying thing is I can feel myself going the same way.  My stories are increasingly met with, “only you!” from my friends.  I got chemical burns from parsnip plants last summer.  Yep, that’s right, burns. Yes, from a plant.  I’ve been on the receiving end of angry Facebook messages from a colleague’s wife informing me I was welcome to him after I’d called him munchkin in an email.  (I use stupid terms of endearments for my friends, which I see this colleague as.  I call another married male colleague/friend things like chickpea and sweet cheeks in front of his wife.  In my head this is fine.)

I criticise my mum for her lack of concern for her own personal safety – she’s yelled at and chased people trying to steal a car, got out of her car to confront a bloke who’d stopped his to call her names and she regularly walks the dog in the woods after dark – yet I’m just as foolhardy with my own.  It’s a rare drunken night out where I don’t wander off somewhere, either alone to drunk dial or to make a trip to Tesco with someone I’ve just met.  I need to remember that we have crazies in semi-rural Wales too.

Our fight or flight response to a challenge, while obviously largely dependent on the circumstances also has a nature element and it would appear there’s a genetic predisposition to stupid decisions too.  I’m hoping it’s something that’s being bred out of the family and not something that develops with age, like enthusiasm for elasticated waistbands and ugly shoes.

But just in case, I think it’s best I take on board the new maxim: don’t press red buttons, always run away from grumpy fresians and if you must go exploring down dark paths carry a big stick.

The Waiting Game

“It’s been like a month and she’s still holding out. Who does that these days?”

Now I’ve heard of people casting aspersions on those who jump into bed with someone straight away but judging someone for waiting a while before having sex is a new one on me. My friend who made the comment was talking about a love rival so naturally there’s some cattiness to be expected but she genuinely couldn’t comprehend the idea of “holding out” for as long as a month.

I hate that expression, holding out. It turns sex into a commodity that we women want to hoard and it suggests games.  For some women that actually is the case but sometimes we’re just trying to protect ourselves. As much as we females try to say that we can have sex without any emotional fallout, it’s a simple fact of science that it’s much harder for us to do so.  As Blonde explained in an article for Blokely a while back, we can blame oxytocin for that.

Also, I don’t know about you but once I’ve had sex with someone, as long as it’s not awful I like to go on to have a hell of a lot more.  And if you’re spending all your time having naked funtimes it can be to the detriment of the getting-to-know-you activities.

I’ve ruined a couple of relationships by rushing into sex before we really knew each other so these days I like to wait a while. In my last relationship that meant we dated for over a month before we had sex and had even slept in the same bed without having sex twice – this confused my friends no end.  The relationship before that it was also around a month and the one before that it was one date and about 15 minutes of the second (one of the ruined relationships).

Everyone is different and as I’ve thrown myself into boys’ beds before you can say, “Can I buy you a drink?” as well as waiting longer than the month my friend thinks is remarkably frigid I don’t tend to judge anyone for how long it takes them to do the nasty.

Most of my friends do leap straight into the sack with every potential suitor who comes their way – as the, “who does that?” should have suggested - and most of the time it ends with tear-streaked faces denouncing men as bastards.  I can’t help but think they should try waiting a bit longer, to be sure they weren’t going anywhere before getting busy.

I have a rule, it’s a simple rule but it’s one that has served me well. When I’m tempted to sleep with someone I’ve only just met I ask myself:

1. Will it bother me if I never see this man again?

2. Will it bother me if I can never get rid of this man?

If the answer to either is yes, then I don’t have sex with them. I’ll often want to. God, I’ll want to but my self-preservation instinct must be stronger than my sex drive – huh, when did that happen?  Maybe I am becoming a grown up after all.