Goggle-eyed

Can you get prescription swimming goggles? I wondered about this as I shared the pool with the Gillingham football team, who were staying at the hotel on Friday night. I would like to take credit for slowing them down sufficiently to be beaten 3-1 by The Mighty Iron*. I'd like to, but I can't.

They'd limped back to Kent by the time I dove back into the pool on Saturday night. There was just me and one other regular. He's there most nights and often just the 2 of us are left ploughing back and forth when most others have long since resumed their Lives. It seems we were the only 2 without better things to do that night.

I love talking to him. I'd flirt were it not for the puce face ( too long in the sauna), hair plastered to my head and the harsh realities of a bathing suit - there's nowhere to hide in one.
I spent a particularly long time chatting on this particular occasion and discovered to my delight that he's unattached. I think my pupils may have dilated slightly as I gracefully launched myself into another lap, savouring this joy and using the possibility of drowning to hide my excitement.

I was still smiling to myself as I headed home, where I dashed upstairs to change into my pyjamas. It was there that the smile froze on my face. As I pulled my new cashmere sweater over my head, I saw with horror what appeared to be the blackest, hairiest armpits one has seen this side of Germany since Nina performed '99 Red Balloons' on Top Of The Pops. The cashmere had shed fibres. I wept.


* Scunthorpe United Football Club, currently riding 7 points clear at the top of the league table and pushing for promotion to the Championship. Apologies for the sudden and gratuitous sporting reference. I shall try not to do it again.

Apology Time

I am a bad blogger. I have committed the ultimate blogger crime. I have neglected, and continue to neglect my blogroll. I am ashamed.

I have no excuses. It's not as if I have been having a life. There was one night when that rugby player who I've mentioned on previous occasions actually turned up on my doorstep. That was fun. I can't say anymore than that. This is not a 'Girl With a One Track Mind' type of site. And I know you wouldn't be interested.

That was just one night in the last 50 or so. I've joined a Creative Writing Class. It's only a short 10 week course which is fortunate as my ability to string words together on the page appears to be disappearing rapidly with every lesson. I started out quite enthusiastic, quietly but rather misplacedly confident. I am currentlysomewhere around the completely despondent phase. I have to hand around a piece of original writing tonight for the others to take away and read ready for next week. I'm not sure I'll be able to bear their pitying looks. I wish I'd just copied down some Marillion lyrics and passed them off as my own as Ian Gribbon did at school.

So what have I been doing all this time? I have not been idle. I have been perfecting my Tantric Aquatics. It looks very much like swimming only I do it far slower than everyone else.

Thank you for not giving up on me. I will be over to see you soon. I know I should have treated you better. I really am very sorry.

Hot Stuff

Fashionable is not a term Jack would ever be likely to use if he were asked to describe me. In fact, to prove this, I have just asked him exactly that.

He had to think about it for a minute, and made me fetch him a doughnut and glass of milk because he was comfy beneath the duvet on the sofa and didn't want to have to get up before he answered.

' Pretty cool, easy-going, down to earth...you can be a bit of a knobhead'

That's a fair summary.

Currently, I think I look reasonably trendy and 'with it'. It is purely accidental. My batwing sleeves, long jumper-dresses and wide-striped sweaters are vintage 80's which I've never thrown out. In fact, never really stopped wearing, although I did lay off on the legwarmers a few years ago. Even my blue eye-shadow and hot-brushed hair flicks are back In.

I wouldn't normally be concerned with the latest fashion trends. I haven't set foot in a TopShop or Dorothy Perkins since I was a size 8 ( a considerable time ago). The same cannot be said for Jack's new girlfriend, Cat. My friend gave her a lift last week. I'm told she is a devotee of Sienna Miller's. She has a penchant for partying in her pants.

I'm thinking of trying the look myself. I wonder whether Jack would approve.

Tyred! Braked! Exhausted!

No. They didn't send in the cavalry. That's the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse and their cronies ceremonially heralding the arrival of biblical proportions of snow at exactly the moment I drove into Lutonff.

It's 35.5 hours since I left home and 37 since I last slept. I have tried to remain perkier than Bridget Jones in a Thai prison but the disappointment at not being smugly and comfortably tooked up in a 5 * hotel, enjoying Turkish Baths and Hungarian ghoulash together with an unexpected garage bill, which cost more than the flipping car in the first place, just to get home has left me somewhat BudaDeprest!

All that adventure lark is thoroughly overrated.

Hungry for Adventure

I am taking the advice of Jane Austen. As adventures do not appear to be befalling me in my own village, I am seeking them abroad, at least for the next 2 days. That's if I can make if as far as Luton before the forecast snow brings the country to a standstill.

I shall be squandering 40000 Forints on pummelling, pounding, bathing, general wobbling about in towels and lashings of gulyasleves and tokaj.

Egészségédre!

The Great Escape

The first place he took me was a Jewellers'. He asked me to help him pick out a cameo brooch for his mother's birthday. I don't wear much jewellery, mainly because no-one's ever bought me any but also because I'm not really very interested in shiny baubles. I ventured the opinion that jewellery was very much a matter of personal taste and as I had never met ( nor likely to meet) his mother I did not think I could be of much help. I hovered outside the shop instead, depriving him of his opportunity to wow me with his generosity and cunningly establishing my preference for diamonds ( I don't have one - it is a subject of which I have absolutely no experience).

Next he steered me into M&S. I was about to start a new job a week later and he offered to buy me a suit to mark the occasion. I politely rejected the offer and also refused to choose a tie for him whilst he picked up some work shirts, disclose my favourite perfume, list my 3 favourite contemporary artistes or try on shoes. By now I was beginning to wonder what sort of a woman he was used to; if they were favourably effected by his over-the-top generosity, they could only have been hookers or incredibly desperate women, perhaps even just ones he had met in porn movies.

20 minutes had passed at this point.

It seemed an age.

I bit my lip and resolved to make the best of it for as long as I could before blurting out that I really had to get back to relieve the babysitter.

" But we've only been here 22 minutes, look - it says so on my Rolex ( clearly fake, it was ticking) watch". I did feel a little shamed when I saw his shoulders droop but it didn't have the effect of curing his bouncy walk which was a far greater crime.

He let me drive home and I relaxed for the first time that morning, knowing normality was drawing ever closer. He turned his entire body towards me in the passenger seat, the merest hint of a bounce still evident. I kept my eyes straight ahead, focused on the road, thankful that I'd chosen to wear my long permed hair down on the left that day. It provided a perfect screen to hide behind as I responded to his incessant babbling.

" I get the impression you are not normally this quiet". No, no, I assured him, I'm really quite a shy girl.

" The thing I miss most about being in a relationship is the physical contact, waking up beside somebody, the touching, the holding, the sex in the kitchen, the conservatory, the bath." Give me Scrabble instead any day, I told him, not entirely without truth.

I managed to keep a straight face until he'd driven, somewhat jerkily and stalling once, away from the station. It was only then that I realised that he could not possible have been the chap I'd given directions to all those months ago. He'd been over 6' tall and had a Scottish accent!

Fuel Injection

I knew it was his car parked on the opposite side of the station carpark, a monstrous Mitsubishi sports-performance testerone-replacement Tossermobile. I wasn't about to walk over to it. I checked my lipgloss in the rear view mirror, all the time scanning for movement behind me. I was soon rewarded by the sight of an abnormally large floral bouquet bouncing in my direction. I climbed out of the car just as it was about to collide with my bumper.

" For You, Darling, because we could not be together yesterday*" The bouquet, which appeared to be wearing white trainers, the sort that have thick wedgy soles and should never be worn after puberty, thrust itself towards me.

I was horrified. The flowers were the ultimate ostentatious, tryingtoohard statement. I mumbled something that could have been mistaken for thanks as I threw them on my backseat, destined to be an impromptu gift to my mother, who to this day thinks I had been overcome with a sudden desire to thank her for just being her. Behind the bouquet, bobbing above the trainers, was a bomber jacket, distressed tan leather, a rather dated blouson style, inside which lurked a nondescript man of indeterminate age ( he'd said 30, I think that might have been creative).

We'd provisionally agreed to go to York for the day but I already knew I couldn't travel that distance and back with him so quickly suggested Lincoln as an alternative. There was a slightly increased chance that I might bump into someone I knew but the shame of that was far outweighted by the knowledge that I was only ever half an hour away from home.

He handed me his car keys, explaining that as he drove all week, he'd prefer to be a passenger while I took control. I wasn't blind to what he was doing, trying to impress me with his shiny penile propulsion, but I was itching to get behind the wheel. I ignored his not completely unpatronising tone as he assured me that it mattered not if I crunched the gears or kangaroo hopped out of the car park whilst I got used to an unfamiliar and much more powerful vehicle. I smiled gratefully at him, adjusted the seat and the mirror ( the lipgloss was really quite a flattering shade), turned the key and felt the gear shift satisfyingly into place as I simultaneously let out the clutch, tore out of the car park and gave the drive of my life.

I'm not sure if it was shock and awe, or the physical effect of the G force which kept him quiet for the first 10 miles, but it was a good 5 minutes before he spoke, "You, er, you're quite a good driver. Have you been rallying for long?"

Thus the journey to Lincoln passed surprisingly quickly and pleasantly. If only the next hour had.

This post and, quite possibly, the overall story has gone on long enough for one weekend. Can you guess what happened when we did eventually arrive in Lincoln or are you, like me by that time, already starting to lose the will to live?

* 14 February