Friday 30 July 2010

What The Duck?

Other titles I considered for this post included: Duck’s Sake!, Ducking Unfair!, oh and of course I Found The Catch. There had to be a catch - after all no man is that perfect - and Duck Man, as he shall henceforth be known, turned out to be no different from the rest. So I shall now attempt to do for you what I couldn’t bring myself to do for him and that is summarise ‘in straight forward sentences’ what he did wrong.

Two words: hence why.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I could have learned to live with it. Except I know I couldn’t. I had already mentally corrected his English, rearranged his apostrophes and glossed over instances of random capitalisation. And in fairness he took it in good part when I corrected him. He even went on to use ‘hence’ without the redundant ‘why’ tagging along but his look of utter confusion when I explained to him why it was wrong told me we could never be soulmates. Still, even a grammar nazi like me doesn’t throw away a perfectly good man just because he capitalized the word 'Freezer' in an email. No, no I managed to pick all sorts of other ludicrous holes in his personality and indeed the very fibres of his being.* These holes include, but are not limited to, the following:

The fact that he bought 9 chickens just because I mentioned I had always quite wanted some.

His ability to expound on a subject at length without needing me to interject more than once every half an hour or so.

The fact that he doesn’t believe in global warming.

But he does believe his house is haunted.

And most disturbing of all: the fact that he didn’t laugh once when I played him the Flight of the Conchords album. So shocked was I in fact that I played it again in its entirety just to check. Nothing. Not even a chuckle.

And so the awful truth began to dawn that perhaps I wasn’t going to marry this man and have his babies after all. In fact I was beginning to feel decidedly claustrophobic.

This probably wasn't the best time therefore for my dog to attack one of his ducks. His son's favourite duck no less. I say 'attack' - she merely playfully pinned it to the ground by the neck and then looked up at me as if to say, "What? We're just messing" before letting it stagger free outwardly unharmed, if a little disgruntled.

I was due to see Duck Man a couple of nights later when I got a last minute phone call to say he couldn't make it. The duck had gone into shock and he had to stay at home and care for it.

Four days later the duck died. In front of his 8 year old son.

My dog killed my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend's son's favourite duck.

Now I’ll never get to drive his Ferrari.


*I realise these are ridiculous reasons to dump someone. I may have been a bit picky.

Tuesday 27 July 2010

Shit My Mum Says

Move over Craig David my new inspiration and muse is the great Justin Halpern of 'Shit My Dad Says' fame. If you haven't come across this phenomenon yet I urge you to google it pronto. And in the meantime I shall shamelessly rip him off for your blogging pleasure...

So....mothers, mums, mams, mas and mummys. Whatever you call them they gave life to us all. They nurtured us, fed, bathed, cuddled and cared for us; showering us with a seemingly endless supply of love no matter how stinky our nappy, or embarrassing our tantrum. What could be more sacred than the bond between mother and daughter?

Except I don't think my Mum read that bit of the idiot's guide to motherhood. I think she got bored and started reading 'how to lose friends and alienate people' instead. How else can you account for some of the shit that my Mum has said in the six months that I have been single? For example:


On living alone with dogs in London:
I'm just worried that your friends will stop asking you to go out because you always say no and that you'll end up a lonely old spinster. You don't want to end up like that woman who had her toe chewed off by her dog.


On my brother and his wife getting a divorce:
Well who knows what their reasons are. Maybe she wasn't giving him sex?


On relationship advice:
You do say sorry don't you? Never forget the power of sorry. Because I remember a certain young lady who swore that hell would freeze over before she would ever say sorry.
(MUM! I strongly suspect I was 16 when I said that!)


On needing her mother-of-the-bride moment:

If you DARE run off to Vegas and get married I will kill you.
(I had been seeing this man for TWO weeks)


On enjoying my independence:
Oh my god! You're not going to be a single parent are you?


On why I'll never keep a man:
Mum: I do worry about your black moods.
Me: What black moods?
Mum: Well you told me you were in a black mood last weekend when you went to see J.
Me: I was in a grump. It took me a whole hour to travel 1 mile in Friday evening traffic. A grump. It's different.


It's clear my Mum knows just where to stick the knife. And twist it. Truly - it's an art form. Are all mothers so skilled? What shit does your mum say? Answers on a postcard please. Or in the comments section below. Yep, down a bit and to the right...you can't miss it.

Love is Blind...LITERALLY!

Hello blogettes! Long time, no see. Sorry about that. HackneyGirl has been "otherwise engaged" and I've been...well...on holiday perfecting my negress tan. All I can say is thank fuck for Datefatigue holding the fort and selflessly subjecting herself to some serial courtship!

Alas I bring you sad news, for I have just this week retired from the terrifying world of dating. No, not because I have finally accepted my destiny as terminally single cat-lady but because...STOP PRESS...I have met my match. The truth is, after all these interweb dating shenanigans and hours of my life devoted to making my profiles appear cool and my emails appear cooler, it turns out I'd been unwittingly dating my now boyfriend for months. Sound retarded? Yes, well that's because it is.

The best bit is that absolutely nobody found this news suprising apart from me. Actually most of my friends laughed in my face, belmed at me and sighed "finally". For my part, I am still a little bit surprised every day that the man who earnt himself the moniker Not-Your-Boyfriend is, in fact, Now-My-Boyfriend. This is a guy I've known for eight long years, most of which he's spent in a sealed box marked "not in this lifetime" (in my head..I've not quite reached that level of lunacy! Yet.) and the whole thing scares the shit out of me. Whoever said "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" is a dick. What if I lose one of my best friends, huh? Didn't think of that, did you, Tennyson? Oh well, too late now. So I have spent the last week perfecting a game-plan and this is it:

DO. NOT. FUCK. IT. UP.

That's the plan. I'll keep you posted...

Meantime, to you all I say: open your eyes - you never know what ..or who.. might be lurking right under your nose.

And to my mother I say: IN YOUR FACE! Now where's my double bed?

Wednesday 21 July 2010

RIP 4am guy

I didn't think I would be posting for a while but it turns out that just cos you have a 'boyfriend' (I'm struggling somewhat with that word at the moment) the spadework of the past few months doesn't necessarily vanish overnight. There is also a fair amount of dating 'admin' to deal with if you do decide to retire but more of that later...

For now, imagine my surprise when, just as I am trying to adjust to the good life (4 dogs, 3 ducks, 2 sports cars and a house in the country), my phone chirrups at 1.30am with a message from a man I had not heard from in months suggesting he take me out for dinner in a couple of weeks. I'm sorry. Is it ok to send such messages in the wee small hours? He got short shrift. He is not, however, the only man to rudely awaken me from my beauty sleep recently (via the medium of text. Not in an exciting way). Just a few weeks ago I received this message at 4am: "I'm massive and feared my sneaky hackney half...no wonder you pump that sausage dog full of 'roids! x" He didn't get a second date either.

More surprising still was the text I received at 9.15am (yes, AM) last Friday from an unknown number. Unknown purely because I recently had my phone stolen in another unfortunate man-related incident. In fact I knew exactly who it was. Yes ladies. It was 4am guy. Or taxi man. Or fireworks snog man. However you like to fondly recall him he was my hot Passing Clouds lover who, not heard of since the evening of the inappropriate text message, had, I thought, vanished from my life forever along with my stolen phone. Yet here he was resurrected in all his glory and looking for a weekend of passion with yours truly. I won't lie to you; I did a small victory dance in front of the mirror, chanting 'HA HA I WIN' repeatedly whilst applying my make up. I then immediately replied with the lame pretence that I didn't know who it was thereby appearing to be both desperate and a slag who has any number of men booty calling her of a Friday morning. He vanished once more but I was confident I hadn't heard the last from him.

Fast forward to 1am Saturday night and I'm standing in my new man's kitchen tucking into my fifth mojito (he knows how to keep me happy) when my phone buzzes on the counter next to him and he picks it up saying excitedly, 'ooh you've got a message'. Mercifully he passed it straight over without stopping to read it (damn you iPhone text display - the scourge of extra marital activity) and while I took a perverse pleasure in stringing him along for a bit in the end it gave me no small amount of joy to send him packing.

RIP 4am guy.

Jessica was the cool one

Hello all,

At the request of the nauseatingly loved-up Hackney Girl I will be contributing to her beloved blog until she works out what the catch is (serial killer? It's still an option . . . ).
I've been going for the carpet bomb approach to meeting a man for the last couple of weeks (last week I managed 4 dates), and it has made me realise several things:

1. Just because a man writes a good email, that doesn't mean he can string a sentence together.
2. I only have four anecdotes and they're all a bit shit.
3. If all you do all week is go on dates, it's quite hard to answer the question 'so what have you been up to this week?' with anything other than 'stuff'.

But, whilst they've failed to set my world alight with their sparkling wit and big manly thighs, the men I've dated so far have at least provided some blog fodder...

Example 1:
Apropos of nothing, the first date of the week (let's call him Museum Boy) came up with the following:

MB: You know it's because we're bipedal.

Me: Um, what is?

MB: The fact that the female orgasm is so elusive.

Me: um...

MB: When we were all wandering about on four legs, doing it doggy-style, it was fine. Because, you know, the angle, and the friction and stuff.

Me: Um. Oh. Ha ha.

It's been suggested to me that a more appropriate response would have been 'your mum's bipedal', but I do think I should have informed him that a) it's not that elusive, b) there's really nothing to stop you doing it doggy-style despite the fact that you have arms, and c) when the fuck were we quadrupeds? but I think my knowledge of evolution might have been vastly inferior to his, so I let it be .

Example 2: Again, out of nowhere, date 2 (let's call him ENORMOUS nostril boy) came up with:

ENB: I stopped wearing a watch when I realised that Jessica Fletcher didn't wear one.

Me: Oh, um, really? Like as in Murder She Wrote? Angela Lansbury? Really?

ENB: Oh! No! Oh my god, that's so embarrassing. No, I meant - oh shit, what was her name - they were twins - she was the cool, naughty one.

Me: (disbelieving) Jessica from Sweet Valley High?

ENB: Yes! She was much cooler than the other one. And she didn't wear a watch.

No second date for you, you big freak. Although he's right, Elizabeth was lame.

Aaanyway, last night I had my first SECOND DATE. I had to see him again, because he hadn't said or done anything blog-worthy yet - he's just nice, and tall, and has hair as soft as a baby bunny. He kissed me, finally, just as we were about to part company at the end of the evening, and the moment was marred only by the whimpering homeless person and her two dogs who were sitting at our feet at the time. He will be getting a THIRD DATE, but remember, nothing interesting is allowed until FIFTH DATE. In the meantime, I have another date tonight, and have had a call from the weeping rock-star. More of both of those if they become interesting . . .

Monday 5 July 2010

What's the catch??? What is it? TELL ME GOD DAMN YOU!

I'm a bit nuts right now. You might have gathered. You might also have noticed that there's been a little bit less blog-action recently.

Why? Well because I've met the most amazing man. The kind of man who brings you a picnic on your first date and mixes you mojitos in the park just because you mentioned you like them. That kind of man. Like I said. Amazing.

Too amazing in fact. He's funny, and clever, and charming. He's tall, handsome, generous, thoughtful, rich (well, reasonably)and practical. And did I mention he is THE MOST AMAZING KISSER? Did I mention that? I think it's worth mentioning again. AMAZING. Oh and he seems to really, really like me. These things in combination are literally unheard of.

So what's the catch? Hmmm? Hmmm? Seriously?! It's killing me.

Tomorrow is 4th date and if I find out what's wrong with him I'll let you know. But if by some miracle there isn't a catch you will not see me for dust. After all this is not a man you blog about...