struggling with direction

With a move-in date a few weeks away and notice given on my current flat, now I’m unsure about the move.

I've been quite enjoying London in the summer – it feels bigger and more full of chance than in the winter months.  Things like this can happen (I never saw or heard from any of them again).  Added to which - and it could easily be nothing at all, something I'll feel silly about in a month - but there are two thin shards of recently developed female hope.

One of these was a young lady with whom I reasserted my status as King Fuckwit.  Her bossy friend led us up the road to impatiently wait on the station steps, wanting them to hurry down onto the platform for the last train.   We walked slowly, pausing deliberately, in no stress about potentially missing her last train, talking nonsense about seasoning biscuits.  She clearly didn't want to go, and was aware that I didn’t live far away.  It only needed a suggestion on my part that we could go… to mine, we could have childishly run away, around a block, out of sight of her friend.  She was drunk, but perhaps not THAT drunk, and totally persuadable.  That is, persuadable for any regular man with a grain of self-belief in matters of being direct.

She had at least served to quell the over-replayed memory of another female from twenty four hours earlier.  It may have even been memories from the previous evening which hamstrung me into fuckwittage.  They did flicker through my brain as we walked up towards the station.

But she was really nice last night … but then, she’s nice here too, but then..

Don’t be an idiot! You have no obligation towards the girl from last night AT ALL.  Just as she doesn’t to you, and probably instantly forgot you.  You’re simply using it as an excuse to be a gutless little twerp here and now, aren’t you?!

Fnerr!  Why is everything so HARD?! I whined in my head.

Because you make it hard, fool.

I sensed the inevitable: that I was about to screw this up and let her make her train without proposing that we run away.  I gave her a card and messages have since been exchanged, but still, the immediate opportunity is difficult not to rue.

The night before had been a blind(ish) date.  I didn’t figure myself to be her usual type (she seemed to be the kind of girl to have ‘types,’ often narrowing her eyes as if comparing me to an imagined other), and although I certainly warmed to her, I suspected she was out of my league.  The evening had ended with the discovery that my laptop and camera had been stolen from my case, irrecoverably denting an amiable, maybe faintly flirtatious atmosphere that had developed.  (She had briefly played with my hair.  Girls don’t usually do that if they’re repulsed by you, right?)   As well as the sickening violation and huge inconvenience of the theft, neither loss was without sentimental attachment: both devices had done some miles with me and contained a considerable amount of personal data.  It was as if somebody had suddenly punched me in the guts and pulled off my penis.

*

Even slender shards of female hope don't appear too often.  And notwithstanding females, I've been newly unsure of the move: wondering if it's a cowardly retreat to a smaller scale and a place of proportionately reduced opportunity, albeit an improvement in living space.  It’s possible I’ve had too much time to mull it over, what with the previous aborted move.

I could cancel or postpone the move, lose a hundred quid deposit, surprise and annoy a few people, retract my notice here.

A friend asked: if something were to be engineered on the female front, would a brief thing, or a six week to six month dalliance be worth it?  I replied yes.  I’m essentially a sad lonely fool and moving won’t change this.  But it’s most likely immaterial.  It would come as no surprise if both shards fizzled by Friday.