stupid blanker

Mmm, she’s crazy hot, purred my sleazy drunken brain.  Across the table, Friend’s droopy eyes looked over at me, disapproving, telling me not to be quite so obvious in my admiration.  We were sitting down on the bar’s comfy seats, her bottom and legs were cutting and thrusting and swooping around at my eye-line.  I couldn’t help admiring and didn’t care.

From there the evening became blurry, and remains so now.  Virtually no words remain; only faint outlines.  Trying to remember is like visiting a gallery where the paintings become gradually soiled and obscured to the point that all you see are the frames, the parts around the edges.  Memory is like that of a silent film I half dozed through.

We’d had a good night up until then across a number of different central venues.  Friend had done his usual painfully tortured ‘oh I really shouldn’t..’ – although we both knew what was on the cards when he unexpectedly called in on my flat at 6pm.  It was Saturday night, his fiancée had gone out with a friend who was visiting.  He was free and notoriously weak where alcohol was concerned.  Opportunities to go out like this are rare for me now, chances to behave like a drunken idiot who’s perhaps a little younger than I am.  I fed Friend a couple of tantalising beers at the flat before suggesting we go the pub.  We hadn’t played any Xbox at all, which must have meant we were growing up.

After attending the birthday party of another friend’s friend in an upstairs function room – a place populated almost exclusively by well dressed, enviably good looking, shiny-faced homosexual men – we made our way back across town into the mainstream district.  We stopped in two pubs before coming to our final destination: a highly swanky looking late-night bar.

We’ve intermittently enjoyed nights like this, here in this city for over ten years; impromptu, long, fuelled to the point of memory blackouts.  While I knew they wouldn’t happen as often as in our early twenties, the chance of them, even if only now and again, incentivised my decision to move back here.

“Five quid entry,” a doorman said as we walked enquiringly towards him.

“Or is it four?” his female colleague asked.

“Three!” I interjected, charged by several large whiskies.   “Two fifty, one pound ten?!  Let’s barter!”  Friend glared disgusted, what-the-fuck-are-you-doing? daggers at me.

But something incredible happened.  They laughed, relented and simply waved us through.  “Go on., before I change my mind,” she said.  We walked in, giggling incredulously.

Memory holds reasonably firmly for an hour or so, before the dancing girl with the body.  Then she’s sitting next to me and we’re chatting.

How did you do that, you genius?

Not a clue.  And I have absolutely no recollection of our conversation.  She’s German and has a German accent.  That’s it.  No memory of her face either.  A loose recollection of her outline and basic, impressive dancing shape, dark wavy hair, but my memory stubbornly refuses to colour in a face of any kind.  There’s only fuzziness around the edges.

Friend is around, maybe chatting to her friends, or sitting on his own in a drunken stupor.  Both are plausible.  She stands up to dance again and there's a time lapse before she prepares to leave.  Her handful of friends (could have been three, could have been seven), male and female, look all set and mingle around the top of the stairs.  I’m sad she’s leaving.  She approaches me again to say goodbye and I stand, smile, possibly leer, disappointed.  Words must be exchanged but I have no idea what they are.  (I'd guess "nice to meet you").  I kiss one cheek and pause, then decide to go continental and kiss the other, and pause.  Something must happen in this pause: a raise of her chin, a smile or a look in her eye.  Or maybe it doesn’t.  Maybe I’m just drunk and fearless.  Either way, we’re suddenly kissing properly.

Me!  Dowdy loner bloke!  In a hip late night bar on a Saturday night, drunk, snogging a German female who I’m positive is really quite attractive!  She’s kissing me back!  Quick, someone take a picture to show to my Grandchil.. um, well: Great Niece or Nephew!  (See, I wasn't always like this).  This might never happen again!

We must break off and smile coyly, no numbers or details exchanged.  Why the hell not?  Did she say she had a boyfriend?  Was she just visiting friends here?  So what?   What was her name?

ANYTHING, brain?  Anything at all?  One slender grain of detail?

Nada, zilch, a big long flatline bastard.

She follows her friends down the stairs and presumably out of the bar.  I make no attempt to follow. (Again, WHY?  Prick.)  I sit back down with Friend, who’s talking to new people.  My intoxication means I’m now riding the crest of legal chemicals and temporary confidence; I’m surprisingly not dumbstruck.  I enter this new conversation with a cocksure gusto, like nothing just happened and I’d forgotten it already.

From here even the edges of memory start to blur.

*

Knowing that I don’t have a clue what she looks like annoys the hell out of me.  I privately pride myself on being good at remembering faces, being able to quickly identify people even if I only see them for a second.  Earlier that evening a Swashbuckled follower sat behind me in a pub and, not having too many followers, I felt curiously smug.  Then strange and uncomfortable.  I tried explaining this to Friend, who I don’t believe has ever visited a Twitter page.  I couldn’t argue with his deduction, “..fucking weird mate.”

Point is I enjoy my ability to tell immediately who someone is with a half second glance at their mug.  And I’m a decent listener, attentive, and will remember the key details of a conversation and usually more besides – especially if the interlocutor happens to be an attractive female.  I don’t forget.  And I imagine I came across as attentive and interested and not a complete moron, or she wouldn’t have come over to say goodbye.

But it’s academic.  Despite plaintively scrolling through my phone numbers more than once (why are you doing this, you wanker) the upshot is that I have nothing at all.  We must have spoken for a while and were attached at the face for several seconds.  Yet she could plausibly pass me in the street and I wouldn’t have a clue.

This irks me.

whatever that means

“I wanted to fuck you the moment I saw you,” she murmured into my ear.  Shit, really? Nobody’s ever said that before.  And this city’s been slicing my face into scabby pieces lately. Not wanting to alter the atmosphere in any way, I kept quiet and kissed her.

Conversely, I hadn’t wanted to fuck her straight away.  It was the Alice Band: an immediate issue which made me annoyed by my own fussiness with jewellery and accessories.  Back home Alice Bands were exclusively the staple of 12 year old girls or girly-haired European footballers.  Not women.

But by the time she breathed those words into my ear, the next morning, naked in my hotel bed, I did want to fuck her, very much. And I even liked her too.

She’d entered the bar and sat down next to me, wearing that Alice Band – worn to hold curly red hair.  She seemed nice, chatty, human and smart; neither of us perturbed by the unorthodox meeting, the loose online acquaintance but not actually knowing the first thing about each other.

We drank pints and ate burgers, drank more, conversation flowing easily.  She spoke amusingly and with the manner of a charismatic, obviously homosexual man: lots of back and forth shoulder tilting, flappy hand gestures and much use of air quotation marks, which I teased her about.  I was enjoying having company, conversing.  She was fun, the bar was cool and low key, the music good.  Although I wasn’t sure if this was just a pleasant couple of hours and we should be getting back: me to my hotel a few blocks east, her to her small flat a short train ride north.  It was more of a date than I’d anticipated when I suggested meeting up.  But that was fine, and became better than fine.

“Well.. I’m having a fun time,” she said, leadingly, so we moved on elsewhere.  In the next dark sports bar we had tequila and further strong liquors, discussing drinking, local politics, religion and family.  An hour later we tired of that bar and headed out, considering a next venue but not knowing where.  On the street it was bitterly cold.  She shivered and I put an arm around her.

Despite being the local, she was unsure where to go next. “Nothing.. funny, but we could just go back to mine, or..” she trailed away.  I suggested we go back to my hotel, a shorter distance away, just a few blocks.  Nothing.. funny either, I added, chuckling in my head.  She agreed.  In the room I generously poured from the bottle of Sour Mash bourbon bought from Moe’s Liquor Store in Sheboygan Falls earlier that week.

She flopped down onto the near-side of the bed.  I made to leap over and rest the other side of her, louche and athletic: a poor idea made worse by a misjudged leap and bounce off the far side of the bed and onto the floor.  It was clearly unintended and less than smooth.  She laughed.  We were both drunk and fuzzy.  I clambered back on the bed
and lay next to her, embarrassed and flustered, any cool I had extinguished in that moment.

We breathed and sipped at the bourbon.  What now?

“We could get naked and get in bed?” she nonchalantly suggested.

“But what would my wife say?” I whispered straightfaced.

A nervous giggle, a pregnant pause for thought.

My turn to laugh.  I assured her, agreed to her suggestion and hoped she’d take off the Alice Band.

*

Around midmorning, that stupendously filthy murmur suggested her headache had eased.  These were times of therapy for a man of fragile ego.

Midday saw glaring Chicago sunlight punish the curtains.  She rested warmly against me, now freshly showered and slowly preparing to leave. No great urgency.  I played with her hair.  The night before had been made easier by the transience of the situation: the time-sensitive One Night Only Offer.  Nothing had mattered all that much, nothing had any real consequence.  In two days’ time I’d be gone, a long way away, unlikely to ever return.

That’s unless feeling develops, if there’s any sense of mutual feeling, if raw is courage acted upon.  This is less likely with sober, pragmatic characters already encroached on their thirties.  Those who know they should stop playing games and start being serious, whatever that means.

Let it go.  Frivolously skim back across the ocean and remember it fondly.  Accept it for what it was: a night with someone you found you liked, albeit for a brief period, someone you had a good time with.  Be content to smile at the memory: that spectacular death of your cool; that you were both naked in bed before you’d even kissed; the quirky unorthodoxy of it all.  Be grateful for her unknowing illumination of your ridiculously unsuitable previous female hope.

Use the knowledge to go forward and hope that these type of meetings – for this isn’t entirely without precedent – isn’t as good as you can ever hope for.  Hope that you stop being so pathetically grateful for attention from any female with a combination of looks and intelligence.  Learn to stop excitedly sledgehammering square shapes into round holes like an overzealous recruitment consultant.  It’ll be fine, it can work, IT WILL WORK!

Move on now.

Let it go when you kiss her for the last time and smile and say something meaningless and she leaves the room and the heavy hotel door clunks shut behind her.  Let it slide and blur and fade.  Just like that.  Easy.

Lying there together in those final minutes, absently twirling one of her curls around a forefinger, perhaps it was because nothing mattered all that much, because nothing had any consequence: perhaps that made it sadder.

Christmas Eve at the local pub

When I walked past my parents’ bedroom and saw my father donning his purple waistcoat, accompanying his purple pink and blue pinstriped shirts, I knew he was Up For It.  My Dad gets a strange nervous energy in bustly social situations not involving children, ie. in the pub.  It makes his voice go high and shrill at any given moment because he thinks his effeminate camp shtick is reliably hilarious whatever he’s saying (although I’ve no doubt some do find it amusing). 

He willingly watched and subjected me to "My Family" before we went out, doubtless thinking me odd when I expressed how unbelievably shit I thought it was.  I remain unsure how I was produced from his loins.  The feeling is probably mutual.

We were heading up the local village pub for Christmas Eve: my Dad, Mum and I, as is traditional.  It’s usually not so bad.  Busy in the tight space of the main front room where we all normally congregate, younger people back for Christmas mixing with the older stalwarts of the establishment.  Our trio trudged the five minute walk up the moonlit snowy road.  It wouldn’t be terrible, I told myself.  There were a few regulars who weren’t too bad.

Tonight it was the Landlord’s smart idea to try out Christmas Carols in the larger, less well frequented rear function room, using the aid of a synth-strong keyboard and a single trumpet player.

My parents led me into the main room, which was busy and tightly packed.  Dad decided to quickly turn around and head for the function room, sold by the Landlady’s sales pitch which mainly consisted of “CAROLS, COME ON!” and wanton enthusiasm.  We wandered dumbly down the short corridor, lambs to the slaughter, took a right and opened the door: one old grey bloke propping up the bar, a daft drunk smile smeared on his suspect face, watching the spectacled Landlord on the keyboard and a middle-aged bleach blonde lady parping painfully on a trumpet.  Dad bought the first round, as is customary (me second), and we took a seat by the radiator.

I hadn’t watched many episodes of Peter Kay’s “Phoenix Nights,” but  it immediately struck me as a reasonable comparison.  We stayed the only willing spectators in the room, but for the old grey bloke at the bar.  It wasn’t surprising.  Dad started singing along, as did Mum, I imagined out of pity.

Then Dad saw the microphone.

MICROPHONE! he appeared to scream in his head, magnetically attracted like a dog to a stick.

The flittering Landlady re-entered the room, offering support to her husband, and joined Dad at the microphone.  The opening auto demo chords led into “O Come All Ye Faithful.”  I chewed on my scarf some more, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.  Dad, dressed in his idiotic waistcoat and shirt, and the Landlady sang heartily

The speccy Landlord at the keyboard was NOT amused.  Furious, in fact.

11/12ths of the pub’s custom was still camped out in the small front room, steadfastly not wanting to sing, not caring that there was barely any more room to stand.

The Landlord returned to the room with a new lead for the amplifier.  The tests worked, a synthy intro kicked in and they resumed.  Dad and the Landlady rejoined on vocals.

After three more carols it stopped being funny and started being quite  depressing.  Still no more people entered the room.  I'd returned the round of drinks and drunk my second quickly.  I'd been there about an hour: most of the minutes excruciatingly backed by that trumpet parping woman.

I asked Mum if she had a key for the house because I needed to go home and stab myself repeatedly in the eyes.  She looked at me and, understanding but disappointed, handed it over.

affair ground

A long five months ago our Hammersmith pub conversation opened up with “How do you KNOW?”  or “can you ever know, that somebody is The One?”  Doesn’t it always degenerate, get tired and dull, don’t you always end up boring one another?

After which he’d crumbled.  He told me how he was having an affair with a girl in the office, who he was crazy about.  He explained how he was cheating on his wife of a year, which was horrible and hateful but he couldn’t help it, and how the other girl herself was also married.

Now, a long five months later he told how he’d allowed the affair to turn his life upside down.  A divorce was proceeding, although he said he wasn’t really reading the letters, and he’d not only moved in with the new woman, they also were moving back to her native America after a month travelling in Thailand over Christmas.

His ex-wife was heartbroken and had wanted reconciliation even after everything became known.  Her father had visited him at his workplace and tried to persuade him to try again, even speaking of sex and how such things can dwindle but men have ways of coping, other outlets.

My friend rejected this.  He liked the other girl.  He loved her in fact, and no longer loved the woman he’d married.  This was difficult for them to accept and he received hate email, both from her and from her sisters.

In a separate, dark twist his new partner’s husband died suddenly, overnight.  A verdict is still pending.

The original concealment of the affair from his wife was less forgivable, but the manner with which he followed his heart (I can find no less trite way of saying it), grasped a very painful nettle and dared to change his life; I found it peculiarly admirable.

We spoke briefly in the South Kensington pub, before his new partner arrived to join us, about fear and self-doubt, our shared concern of boring people eventually.

If you’re seeing someone younger with plenty of those exciting 20-something years ahead of them – years when they’ll do exciting new things, go to novel or exotic places and meet interesting cool people – how can you not worry that you won’t stand up?  You will appear jaded, lazy and uninteresting, old.  You will eventually bore.  It’s a risk, like everything is.  Like “How Do You Know?”  You don’t, you can’t.

She arrived in the South Kensington pub after about half an hour: pretty, blonde and slightly nervous of me (as he’d admitted to me beforehand that she was – not having met any of his friends before).  He’d been attracted by her quirky creative bent, her desire to make her own clothes and her practicality, the fact she wasn’t a girly girl.  None of that came across.

We spoke of the Interpol concert they were heading to from here, how I’d heard good reports and there was a favourable review in the newspaper.  From the half hour spent, my impression was positive.  She appeared like someone who’d over-lived for 25, had many things happen including the possibly premature first marriage.

I left the couple to head south of the river to my work function, pleased for them and their convictions – more his than hers? – perversely envious of their dramatic, romantic year, sad I might never see them again.

Through the mill

Glancing at his pint glass across the table from mine, I noticed the liquid level was an inch further down and remembered his gulping, intimidating yet nonchalant drinking pace.  Beer was like water to him and appeared to the similar affect.

One to one, man to man, it’s difficult to NOT keep pace; you just have to.  I would be drunk before too long.

I remembered his pace from that small Croatian island three years ago when I was on the cusp of my move to London.  A group of us had been thrown together and got on well, unknowable pledges to keep in touch had been made at the end of the week, Facebook friend requests had subsequently been accepted, occasional messages, but no more than that.  Then a week into my new term in Cardiff we bumped into each other in the street, met up for lunch, and now beer.  Copious, free-flowing, fast-paced beer.

I could reign it in though.  First game of the season tomorrow, after all.  Didn’t want to miss that, not after playing myself into the starting line-up thanks to a couple of passable pre-season performances.  Wouldn’t mind seeing the England qualifier too.

Another?
No need to feel the obligation of watching England really.  Not after the summer.
Go on then.

They were having no discernible affect on him at all.  Whereas I was feeling drunk and wobbly.  He was taking more toilet breaks more than me.  Perhaps that helped.  Neither of us had eaten.  We’d sat outside the trendy bar in the street since about five o clock, watched the sun affably fade and the evening rise, the cackling leering weekend Cardiff emerge.

We got on well and shared similar interests: books, music, outdoorsyness, occupations.  He was a proper valleys boy, a couple of years older and about a foot shorter.  Walking next to him felt awkward, as if I was patronising him by being there.  Daresay he was used to it.

A colleague of his walked past the bar and joined us.  I teased her, possibly flirted, drunk: infected by Cardiff’s cackling leer?  She failed to conceal a smile, said she didn’t like me and bought us a drink; the last one as it turned out.  Rum and coke.  I was done with San Miguel after more pints than I could remember.  They had to get trains back to their valleys.  I couldn’t drink anymore and could now get home for the football highlights.

Jermain Defoe had already notched his first of three when I arrived back.  Fuck me, I was really drunk.  I drank lots of water, which made it worse: stirring an unsettled stomach.

Today saw the worse hangover I’ve experienced in years.  My head has pounded relentlessly, I vomited until there was nothing there, just stomach lining, bile and tears, I spat blood at one point and had brief fleeting fears.  I text messaged an apology for my absence to the football manager, explaining it as some sort of food poisoning.  Sorry.  I’d really wanted to play too.

Instead I slept, more than I have slept in any single day in recent memory, mostly in bed, one hour on the sofa after Football Focus.  It came in wave after sickening wave, just when the worst seemed beaten, complemented by shivers and shakes and fever and cold.  Movement induced nausea and further horrible, exhausting wretches.  Sipping water was pointless, reintroducing itself with mulchy interest inside minutes.  I slept more.  There was no other answer.

Around five o clock, twenty four hours after we had met the previous day, I awoke again.  There was an absence I was emotionally grateful for.  The squeezing and pulling at my stomach had weakened, I could move my body without wanting to hurl.  Could I sip water and..?  More gurgling and clanking, but no cold sweats and nausea which heralded those intense contractions and that gravity-defying rush.

A carefully devoured cup of tea and slice of buttered toast was heavenly.  Each crumb and drop savoured like it was the first thing I’d eaten anything for months.  Would it go down and stay down?

I waited.  Things gurgled and processed.  No sweating or nausea or horrid expectation.

Yes, it stayed down.  Now I was confident I would pull through and this traumatising ordeal would be over.

I stank.

Fallible Friends

My oldest friends and the ones I’d like to consider my best friends have always reliably disappointed me.  I get burned so frequently it’s bewildering and, at risk of sounding unnecessarily soppy, upsetting.

One of my earliest memories of this was aged fourteen or fifteen, being dropped by a parent at the cinema of a small town where we’d agreed to meet, only to discover that plans had changed but I wasn’t informed.  They weren’t there.  There were no mobile phones.

I went to see the film anyway, the first of many cinema screenings I would see alone.  At the end of Congo, a largely unmemorable film about a mountain Gorilla, I cried buckets.

There was the time not long after when I was dropped outside the house of a friend.  A big party was on, these parties had developed cult status, the host had a freer leash than most of us.  He was allowed to smoke at home.  I had finally been invited to one of these parties.  I had ARRIVED.  I found the house completely empty.  I was suddenly alone in a small countryside hamlet I didn’t know.  I walked for miles to find a phonebox.

I’m the last informed, the one people forget or don’t bother to tell.  Of course I can speculate (like you can), but I’ve never understood why.

They remain my oldest friends, but they’re inclined to do this even now I’m now back in the same city as several of them, a short walk away.  And I knew they would be.  Old friendships have been renewed.  I’ve been for drinks with a couple since returning; one has visited my new place: everything done at my instigation.  It was the latter guest’s birthday on Sunday and they all went for a pub dinner, another friend informed me by email.

“If you are offended at not being asked, dont be,” my friend’s email instructed.  “He barely wanted to have that and didnt invite anyone else either cos he's not terribly fussed on his birthday.”

I did practically nothing at the weekend and had asked if one of the group fancied meeting up for a pint, only to receive a belated ‘too busy sorting for holiday’ reply.

You can do little more than accept it, raise an eyebrow, curl a lower lip, shrug.  Given my hopelessness with females, I’m not unfamiliar with borderline excessive inward-looking, what-the-FUCK-is-wrong-with-me? analysis.  But this sort of thing doesn’t exactly help to plump up the ego either.  It gets really bloody cold out here.

Dead Dog

Klinsmann had been going downhill for a while.  He was getting slower on rare walks, which were shorter than ever, and limped gingerly when he rose after a sleep.  Cocking his leg looked like it took too much effort and he’d recently taken to squatting.  They knew there was a lump.  It was just about how big, how fast.  Now he’d begun yelping and whining when he moved up and down steps.

Graham knew it was probably curtains.

In the hallway he crouched down and looked Klinsmann in those big soppy eyes.  Face-to-face with his reliable old friend, Graham held Klinsmann’s head, tugged at his sad drooping jowls before scratching behind both his ears.  The Labrador closed his eyes, enjoying the soothing nails of his master like he’d enjoyed them hundreds of times before.  Graham stopped scratching; the dog opened his eyes and looked at him.  What?

Klinsmann slunk out onto the driveway and looked at the car.  Leaping into the back of the car had long been out of the question.  Do we have to? his face asked Graham.   Afraid so pal, Graham leaned down and took the dog in his arms, lifted him up and onto an old rug which lay across the floor of the boot.  He felt Klinsmann wince and tighten before whining as he touched down onto the rug.

Sssshhh.  Easy now.

Graham had bought the young puppy when he was on the cusp of giving up.  As much as he tried, other people still didn’t seem to work for him.  Or he didn’t work for other people.  Maybe both.  Graham worked alone from a small converted office room of his house.  Always of modest ambition, he didn’t mind his work itself.  But he was growing sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, and bored and lonely, and not having conversations with anyone for days on end, sometimes weeks; of barely having any relationships at all.  He pretended it was all fine to anyone he did speak to, of course, because that’s what you do.  Saying anything else scared people and made him sound like a self-obsessed idiot.  If ever he did say anything, they gave empty platitudes and he nodded and shrugged.  It was all rather pointless, so he stopped doing it after a certain age.

Having been raised around them, Graham always liked dogs and often entertained the idea of keeping one.  The idea wasn't one which could be realised while he rented properties, but after buying his first place – yet  another new start in another part of town which would surely herald new things (what those ‘things’ were exactly, he wasn’t sure) – getting a dog was a realistic option.   It was a greener part of town too, with easy access to other parts of the country.  Walking would be good for both of them.

Conversely, he took up light smoking around the same time, despite never smoking before in his life.  Once he got the hang of it, the breathing and taking it in properly, it was enjoyable, a sensation like no other.  There would be no global disaster if it sped up his time to expiry.

Like the smoking, Klinsmann made him calmer, less anxious.  That was, once the frenetic puppy years and misbehaviour were done with.  He became a handsome, fit and noble looking young dog; people said they complimented each other well.  They looked at them both, admiring the affable dog and pretending not to glance over Graham with that mixture of pity and sympathy.  They thought that by now he would have found a..  Perhaps there was something wrong with him.  But maybe the dog would help with.. you know? some had suggested.

Over their thirteen and a half years together, there were a couple of possibilities which withered and faded as quickly and predictably as a struck match, nothing which Graham invested much meaning in.  His pessimism didn’t stop him from trying or hoping, but maybe it still shone through somehow, or he continued to exude whatever it was that consistently repelled.  Klinsmann and tobacco became effective crutches.



The dog was good company too, a trusty dependable and dependent friend who could offer genuine affection of some kind, as well as a physical presence, from a buoyant puppy to a slow old dog.  The blonde blot on the floor plodded from room to room towards the end, grumbling and groaning in search of sunbeams which never stayed in the same bloody place.  He only became human.

*

Graham cut the car engine in the tight car part of the surgery and looked glumly ahead at the brick wall, concentrating on his breathing, not losing it too soon.  A glance in the rear mirror showed no excitable golden crown of Klinsmann's head.  He didn't care where they were, or he already knew.  The dog recoiled when Graham first tried to scoop him out of the boot, his eyes large and doey, his ears low and defeated.  Touching the cement, his rear legs bent and he expelled a small trickle of piss.  He squatted and gained some command of the flow.  They stood in the car park under an overcast, drizzling sky, watching the unusually luminous liquid running down the slope of the car park.  Many minutes had been spent over the last thirteen and a half years waiting for Klinsmann to piss.  Together they hobbled slowly into the surgery, Graham swallowing hard.

The Labrador’s hind legs buckled accommodatingly when Graham deposited him on the examination table.  Klinsmann flinched and tightened as the Vet inspected regions where he wasn’t used to being touched.  He was simply too exhausted to growl, although Graham could sense that he wanted to.  Ssh now, Graham smoothed his velvety ears, the fur there not as coarse as it had grown elsewhere.

The tumour had indeed grown, the Vet confirmed.  Can’t expect it to get better I’m afraid.  In pain now, aren't you?  Graham nodded too, his eyes filling in direct correlation with the horrid, inexorable direction of the conversation.  His hand didn’t leave brave Klinsmann’s head.

The Vet delicately inserted a needle into Klinsmann’s rear left thigh, and pressed home the lethal fluid.  Off you go boy.  Thanks, Graham whispered, gently cradling the dog’s head in his hands.  Klinsmann's chest stopped rising and falling, no air came from his nostrils, the Vet walked across to the other side of the room.  Graham wept silently, bent over his dead dog.  When he finally stood up straight, wiping his stinging eyes, the Vet looked at him from a table where he was feigning attendance to paperwork.  Seeing this kind of thing became tiring.  He looked at Graham, level and sober.  I’m sorry.  For the best.  Do you want to take him or..?  We can look after him here, if you..?  Miriam at reception can sort out the details.

Graham hadn’t thought about that.  He had nowhere to really.  Not in his small, untended garden where nothing grew.  He remembered digging graves for the dogs of his childhood: the mud sweat and tears.  What then?  Was it really worth..?  It was just the body of a dead dog now, after all.  Graham looked down at the perfectly still Labrador once more and kissed the top of his head.  Then he stroked him one last time, from his spongy nose, over his skull, neck, bobbles of spine and down to the tip of his tail, which he gripped in the fist of his right hand.  Bye lad.

Graham swallowed again, feeling his cheeks tearstained and grubby but not caring.  He took a handful of tissues from a tactfully positioned box, wiped his cheeks and blew his nose.  He turned around, thanked the Vet and accepted the forms he was proffering, before walking out of the room.  The lady at reception accepted the forms and offered him those sympathetic, pitying looks he was used to receiving and she was used to giving out.  Punchdrunk, he unthinkingly signed his name, gave a bank card and entered his pin number.

The house was empty when he stepped back inside the front door.  No fond, doddery old boy welcome, no other movements, no presence, no groaning or sly blipping farts.  Only stillness and ticking.  A faint waft of him – perhaps not as faint for visitors, he was used to it; patches of moulted hair which needed hoovering, his empty basket, that picture of him on that Welsh mountainside looking all regal, pretending he was Lassie.

Travelly twaddle

Apropos of nothing, here's another 24 hours from last summer's South Africa notes.  It grazes issues of drinking, irritation with other tourists, masculinity and contemporary South African racism..

--------------

Yesterday morning Paul ferried us from our modest house down to the guest lodge where we were charged with presenting camera-trap images to imminently departing guests: an airline pilot and a doctor. Both were decent seeming folk who were probably suffering little personal impact of the recession.  An uncomfortable bumpy ride in the back of a jeep later, the seated areas filled with guests and Stella, and we were out of the conservancy where the guests had deposited their hire car.  We bid them goodbye and safe onward journey before continuing ourselves into the town.

In a small blocky house within a small blocky suburb Stella and I received a presentation from The Snake Man, an expert in reptiles who keeps roughly a score of wild, deadly poisonous snakes in his house.  These included an apparently housetrained Black Mamba which he had reared from an egg, and one which roamed loose in the house – the deadliest of them all, but entirely tame.  Or so he assured us, waving his fingers and poking around the sinister smile of the snake.  Not massively fussed on taking the trip, I was a little bored throughout, even though it lasted only an hour.  Stella was characteristically enthused, voraciously taking notes for improbable future reference back at her school in Botswana.  She remains tiringly smackable.

This was underlined again afterwards. Martin and Paul had driven on after leaving us with The Snake Man, and headed off to collect Martin’s brother, Gavin, who had spent the previous month nocturnally tracking wild dogs via webcams.  Their three hour round trip gave Stella and I plenty of time to kill in the small town.  Hopefully no industrial riots would pass through the town, like the week earlier.

The khaki uniformed Snake Man dropped us in the smaller of the two main shopping centres.  Stella and I went first to an American themed diner for a coffee and stunted chat, then visited an internet café a few doors down.  My inboxes were again devoid of interest or hope.  We then we headed to the larger shopping centre, five minutes and a couple of blocks away, to mill around the Spar supermarket and buy a few items.  I walked too fast for Stella.  As usual, I asked if the pace was ok and she wheezed yes, fine, cough-splutter, she always walks this fast. Only briefly did I succeed in losing her.  For the remainder of our dead time we spent a little too long in the garden of a coffee shop, reading paperback novels, all possible conversation long since exhausted.

A couple of hours later the horrible Land Rover, now containing Paul, Martin and Martin’s brother Gavin, pulled into Spar car park to collect us.  From there we were transported to a bikers’ bar, where Martin, Gavin and I alighted, and where we spent a handful of hours and several beers, enjoying the change of scenery, if not the density of burly bikers and leather.

Gavin was nineteen and dopey in the style of a less developed Joaquin Phoenix.  Pale through his recent nocturnal work, he had a large, effortlessly well-conditioned frame and sprigs of hair sprouting from his chin in a desperately try-hard attempt at a goatee.  He had little of interest to say and a not particularly compelling style in which to say it.  Reunited, the brothers changed the unrealised dynamic Martin and I had developed.  Their conversations were immature and rather boring, depending much on well-worn Cardiffian phrases such as “Aeyy,” together with a clenched fist of buoyance meant to indicate that something is good.

The sun dipped, a small handful of females were surreptitiously ogled for little reason other than they were female.  One barmaid bore a passing resemblance to Angie from Eastenders in looks and style.  We’d been trapped in the secluded conservancy valley much too long.  The bar’s music was predictable modern rock while a home camera clip show played on a loop, interspersed with local advertisements for mechanical services.

Martin’s phone rang and we were beckoned outside and back into the Land Rover where Paul had come to collect us with his young friend around Mart’s age.  We headed 4 kilometres out of town to a farm, stopping once en route at an off licence for further alcohol supplies.

A slippery wet dog tongue greeted my ankle as I put my foot down on the gravel of the farm’s drive.  The rest of the dog appeared equally good-natured, and led us indoors.  A main farmhouse building, it soon became clear, was a part-renovated barn that only revealed itself fully the further into the building you went.  Immediately inside the front door was a homely kitchen and lounge, where the young chap’s parents sat watching the rugby on a handsomely sized television.  The whole place wore the look of a long-term project subjected to sporadic bouts of effort and money.

Paul set about making a large saucepan of chicken curry and rice while his young friend led us further into the building to show off his room and a genuinely impressive set of speakers.  Corrugated iron roofing and incomplete brick walls surprisingly didn’t detract everything from the comfy homeyness.

We sat in his room drinking beer, admiring his photographs, an ex-girlfriend in a frame and on his computer.  He was a good looking young guy who looked like he might have done better, yet he was still clearly hung up on her.  We talked of regular young man things: sport, music, girls.  A couple more of his friends arrived and more beers were drunk.  I was feeling their effect by now and was well ready for the food when Paul began scooping out dishes of curry.

We ate hungrily, watching assorted sport on the man-of-the-family’s cable channel.  There was considerable banter about fighting and the danger of trouble down at the bar we had just left and would shortly visit again.  Martin and Gavin, apparently seasoned fighters trained by their father, gave typical Cardiff bravado.  I sat quietly, not fussed enough about the potential confrontation not to go back to the pub, wondering how much of it was masculine bullshit.

Still struggling to correct his nocturnal body clock, Gavin passed out in our new friend’s bed.  Paul and the parents remained when the rest of us clambered into and onto the back of another Jeep, before speeding coldly through the night back into town.  There was never any hint of trouble or violence.  More drinks were drunk, locals were met, girls were admired – only a handful spoken to, all were aloof.  It became fairly busy with well age-mixed clientele yet a gender disparity weighing heavily on the side of males.

Obviously there were no black people: customers or staff, the apartheid in bars seemed as strong as ever. Casually flippant racism throughout the young was still rife too, and the use of “Kaffa” quite common, even by the otherwise genial Paul.  African black people from the area were considered a race apart, different from any other sort of black person, cleanly pigeonholed, bracketed and dismissed.  “They don’t help themselves,” was a frequently used allegation when we passed them at roadsides.  It wasn’t unlike the attitude towards Baboons.

Paul returned to the bar to join us and act as our taxi later on.  His ever-present Khaki uniform was covered by a plain fleece top and he sat with us drinking coke, looking bored and sober.  The unremarkable music stopped, lights came on, drinks stopped being served, yet there was no mass exodus.  The barstaff came and joined us.  A young girl we had admired in the bar in the late afternoon and who had worked until closing, had also enjoyed a brief stint working at the lodge.

Finally we left, crumpling drunkenly into the Land Rover.  Paul’s young friend passed out on the way back to the farm, me wedged in the middle helping to keep him vertical as he swayed right and left, front and back.  Back at the farm, now 4am, we swapped him for Gavin, ate remaining cold curry and played with the soft dog.  Paul sat watching the cable TV sport, not seeming to mind the lateness or feel any sort of urgency about getting home and sleeping.  I had never imagined being able to sleep while travelling the long, steep, violently bumpy track which led to our conservancy, but as I recall little of that trip aside from intermittently lolling forwards and headbutting the soft seat in front of me, I must have.

A marriage rocked

Yesterday evening I was reminded that my routine failure with females may not be THAT worth the constant whingeing.

Marriage is terrifying both as a concept and in practise: the bond you’ve made, the contract you’ve signed, supposedly for your whole life with all the people you love watching you.

The average age of newlyweds is getting older with generations and there’s less of a stigma attached to singletons and divorcees in their thirties, forties and fifties.  It happens.  You might argue that it happens because we communicate better, or we communicate more, or because we’re less willing to simply keep up appearances.

Yet there still exists an implicit pressure on twenty-somethings who have been together a while to do just this; those who look – to all extents and purposes – like they’re ‘made’ for each other.  If they’ve been together long enough, their families want to see some semblance of security,  maybe children; they’re nudged in that direction and if they’re happy and solid, then why not?

But if they are childhood or university sweethearts who haven’t known many, if any other relationships, does there always exist a tiny glint of attraction towards the unknown, towards the other?  Is it an innate undercurrent fear which those sort of couples learn to deal with?  It might lie blissfully dormant or never be realised (safety first).  But it might equally just need an unknown figure to appear and prise the edges apart, so that glint becomes dazzling, hot, scalding.

My former colleague was an amusing, bumbling and self- effacing guy who often exercised pleasing amounts of self-doubt.  (I always warm more easily to those who exercise self-doubt). You might have thought him slightly quirky if you only saw him loping caveman-like around the office in his baggy striped jumpers, or at his desk hiding behind a giant box of cornflakes and coffee pot, but.  In conversation though – one-to-one or in a group – he engaged indiscriminately with everyone, he was funny and candid.

After living with his long-term girlfriend for four years, they married and bought a house.

Our roughly four-monthly pub conversation kicked off as usual: work, the office, colleagues and former colleagues, my move.  Then I asked about married life and he gave hints which I entirely failed to pick up on, only later realising that he was trying to use it as a segway.  What do you think keeps couples going until they’re old?  How do you keep making a relationship work?  What is it?  Don’t all couples get bored of each other after a certain time?

I gave bland answers: separate and shared interests, doing new things, travelling, planning, shared experience, family.  Our chat progressed to a point when I mentioned my curious evening on the night of the USA-Ghana World Cup match.

“Yeah, I had a..  a strange evening then too.”

“Really, what happened?  You go first.  You’re not being..?”

He breathed in, looked down and away.  He was being..

“You ok mate?”

He wiped his increasingly glassy eye.  Did he just wipe his eye?  Fuck.

“Hey really, don’t tell me if you don’t want to tell me.  Shall I go first and..?”

“Yeah, you go on.  Just need more to drink then I’ll..”

I went on with my commentary of that evening, aware that he wasn’t really paying attention, glazed over, trapped in his own world and whatever was going on in there.

“And that was that,” I concluded.  “Now you?  If you..?”

“Mate, I’m totally fucked.”

He did the breathing, looking down, eye-wipe thing again.  His eyes looked full.

“You told anyone about this?”

“One.  Best mate.  This girl in the office: over the past month we’ve started sort of going out, I’ve taken her to places and we’ve stayed out together until three four or five in the morning.  She’s exciting and different and likes me.”

“Single?”

“Married too.  But it’s shit; she hates it, and him.  They’re getting divorced, selling their house and she’s moving back to America soon.”

“How old?”

“25, so only a few years younger.  Got married when they were stupidly young.  But mate, she’s so different and like nobody I’ve ever met: hobbies and interests and.. drugs.  I’ve always been liberal about that stuff but never tried much.  We’ve done lines of coke at lunchtimes.”

I looked at him quizzically, laughed.

“Yeah, scored them off some drunk on the train back from Brighton.  It’s overrated to tell you the truth.  But she’s just..  You know those shit montages in films which show couples getting together, doing stuff and falling in love?  It feels like I’m in the middle of one of those.  Thing is, I don’t know if this is what it’s like meeting someone new, if this was what it was like when I first met.. and everything about her was new and interesting.  I can’t remember what it was like.”

It sounded amazing, the bastard.  I shovelled back the encroaching jealousy.

“And your wife?”

“She suspects.  I slept on the sofa last night.  Probably tonight too.  Doubt she’ll believe I’m here with you, with good reason.  Before it all got to the stage it has now I’d talked about not knowing what I was doing with my life, and our marriage.  We’ve barely spoken for weeks.”

“But this girl is moving back to America?”

“I’ve said I’ll go with her but I don’t think she took me seriously.  She’s impulsive and spontaneous. She likes me, we’ve done – although we haven’t slept together.  Mate.  I’m totally obsessed with her.”

We sipped our drinks.

“You’re sure you’re not a convenience for her?” I asked.  “Attention from a decent bloke and something to do while she sits out the dregs of a crappy first marriage, and before she ups and leaves for home?”

“No.  No, I’m not sure at all.”

He held his head in his hands but was no longer on the brink of tears, at least.

We continued to bat it back and forth, speaking of little else for the remaining two hours until closing time: life’s too short, you don’t want to live life regretting.  But I also voiced my suspicions that he was being played by some sort of whimsical Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days Of Summer character (although subsequent Facebook snooping revealed a crazier looking girl), and also that he could have ruined his marriage.

This seemed to be less of an issue: he was tired of his marriage, or so obsessed with the new, exciting girl that he couldn’t be bothered to resuscitate it.  He was scared but prepared for whatever will happen in the next few weeks.  Weakness and that glint of unknown attraction, boredom with his wife; it could easily contrive to make him a single man again in a short period of time.

Fuck David Cameron’s family policies. Marriage shouldn’t be legal until you’re 30.

Viewed through this lens, failing to persuade females to see me more than once might not merit constant whingeing.  Relationships and marriage bring levels of stress that single, one-off meetings can’t really match.

Perhaps I should be relieved.

second date jinx

It goes on.  Those two shards from ten days ago appear to have now fizzled, though it took a little longer than expected, and the one enjoyed a brief crackle of sorts.

However, the one higher in my affections and more subjected to careful hope qualified her brush off yesterday evening by text message.  Her indifference had grown obvious.  She initially gave hope and we loosely arranged a second meeting, then she cancelled – really busy, promising to get in touch the week after, then didn’t.

Part due to my own circumstance and lifestyle, but I have little respect for an excuse of ‘busyness.’  It’s tantamount to not being arsed.  Unless you’re a Prime Minister or a President, or James Corden, there clearly ARE enough hours in a day or week.

Added to this sketchiness and inability to fix a date was a frustrating email manner of one-liners, text messages no more developed, minimal words.  Yet within them: still responses and questions.  If complete indifference, why bother responding at all?

I kept it casual, never mentioning my probable and increasingly imminent departure from London.  Yet mindful of ever dwindling time I decided to push the issue, and wondered by text if it was worth my while attempting to ‘challenge her indifference.’

‘Challenge my indifference?’ the three words were returned several hours later.

Perhaps I should have just called her.  Verbal conversations about such matters seem to be getting rarer, or maybe our generation is just bad at them, particularly at early stages like this.  Also.. well, I was in a cinema at the time and the film was really good.

I explained that I didn’t know if she was that bothered; she apologised for being flaky but was very busy at the moment so it was probably better if we just left it, sorry.

No reply rushed to my fingertips.  That was that then.

Perhaps on that evening, when there was that small frisson: if I’d been more direct, more of a slag – who knows if she was actually interested then, and then only..   But then came the discovery of the theft.

Everything was simpler with the brush off, but it raised the ugly narcissistic head of my relentless inability to secure second dates.

What the hell is wrong with you?  Ok, at times it’s your own doing and you don’t fancy them and there aren’t many who have moved you enough to try and persuade them they’re wrong (none in fact because you don’t Do persuasion).  But the brutal truth is that the ratio is around 50/50.  Do you scare them somehow?  Are you just not attractive enough?  Are you too needy?  (You tempered that one quite well last time too, you thought, extremely casual).  You wish you could conceal yourself slightly better, not say quite so much, lie about small things – although you’re essentially unashamed that you don’t and can’t.  Why should you apologise for yourself?  How much of your personal integrity is it necessary to compromise?  How much should you lie or fake or bluster?

But when it rolls on like this, the first dates which are only ever first dates, followed by more first dates and no second dates, you can’t help but reflect and look inward.  You can do presentable, fairly charming, moderately amusing, even upbeat at a push; you don’t swear, probe insensitively on delicate subjects, talk endlessly about work or football, burp or fart in their faces.

There are often small things I regret saying or not saying, and I know if I possessed more direction, greater ambition and knew how to confidently operate chopsticks, this would be beneficial.   On the whole though, I don’t walk away thinking I’ve given an unfair or disappointing representation.

I’m usually excellent at navelgazy self-criticism, but here all I see is fog and murk and confusion.  It concerns me.

rides

“Horsey!” infants shrieked, riding on my back as I crawled on all fours around our relatives’ large back garden.  The previous two hours had been spent playing football with a five year old.  Blissfully little of my time at the extended family had been spent speaking with adults.  When I finally collapsed into an armchair it was with small alarm that I noted the time.  I had little over two and a half hours to make it back to London.  How did it get to be that late?  It was doable, just, if I put my foot down on the A-Roads.  I thanked people for their hospitality, apologised for not going to the park with them, ruffled infants’ hair and hugged and kissed the older generations.

What would this one be like?  I pondered while speeding down a pretty A-road bisecting dense forest.  Does a date at 8.30pm on a Saturday evening basically mean you’re on a promise?

I still knew next to nothing about her, suspected she wasn’t the sharpest tool, just that she was probably willing.  Seemed willing back then, text messages suggested she may still be now.  That was ok, just go with it, get drunk, see what happens, don’t think too much.

I was back, showered, out and on a bus in perfect time.  She called asking where I was, fifteen minutes before we were due to meet.  She’d misremembered the time she’d given and sounded confused.  I’ll be there in five.

Painfully thin, a strained, pinched face which suggested nerves, troubles and fragility – please don’t be a bit mental; a whispy, flighty manner, washed-out elsewhere eyes and a strangled, almost puppet-like voice.  Ridiculously high heels.  She made you want to protect her in a not particularly attractive way.  Yet for all that, she wasn’t unattractive.

Her ‘issues’ were confirmed during our early chatter, but never in detail and I never probed.  My suspicions that she wasn’t all too bright were also given substantial evidence.  Did I care?  Should I care?  Her grammar appalled me and I couldn’t help but mention it, although I dumbed down my own language.  She smoked a lot, had struggled with it for a long time, a clearly necessary crutch which made it more acceptable somehow.  Just go with it, get drunk, don’t think too much about it.  Live in the moment for once: not before it or after it.  Take a stupid decision.

Given a lack of common ground and interests – aside from mutual loneliness and unspoken needs – I expected conversation to flag but, propelled by alcohol, it didn’t.  We passed through several bars, eventually ending at a loud, dark, busy venue with a late licence.  We had gone there via the station to check her last train times, but I didn’t know if this was merely for show.  If she would ‘forget,’ leaving the only option to return to mine.  We stayed in the late bar, discussing the music and the venue’s youthful clientele.  The time of her last train came and went, unmentioned.

It had been a long day; I’d driven a fair distance across the country and back.  I didn’t like this sort of place anyway and wanted to go, she wanted to stay.

We stayed and drank more, too much, but didn’t dance.  There was barely any obvious warmth or explicit flirtation between us, no signals being sent or received; simply an implicitly shared assumption.  I admired younger, prettier females in the bar: those with height and flesh, confidence and grace.

When she was eventually persuaded that we should leave, we tumbled out and onto the street and she became aware that the short distance to my flat was the only option outside of an extortionate taxi ride.  It was likely what we both had in mind all along.  A date at 8.30 on a Saturday night?

Just do it, you’re drunk, everything is as it was vaguely forecast.  So, she might be a bit mental but you always take that risk.

*

In the morning, following a more concerted Round Two being ridden in an entirely different way from the previous afternoon, she laboured with her hangover.  She claimed she wasn’t usually this bad and said “Oh God my head” a lot.  I made tea, returned to bed and watched the golf on mute, waiting for her to move, silently impatient although I had no plans for the day at all.

After several aborted attempts she did move, spurning all offers of paracetomol, tea, or anything at all.  I pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt while dressed in her only clothes from the night before, complete with precariously high-heeled shoes which took her an age to walk any distance in.  She might as well have been wearing stilts.

I drove her back to the station and here conversation struggled as we shared the hungover silence.  Token attempts at the weather, this part of town.   Despite a relaxed affection and playfulness which had developed in the slumbering bedroom, neither of us spoke about repeating this thing we’d done, doing it again sometime or meeting up somewhere.  Was the mismatch starkly obvious?  That it was a meeting to satisfy mutual needs and nothing more?

A final snatched lips kiss while the car engine idled outside the station: “thanks, bye then.”  She made sure she had everything and left, and stepped out, teetering on her ridiculous heels.  The passenger door clunked shut.  My eyes didn’t linger on her gallingly skeletal frame.  I checked my blind spot, pulled out, looked forward and drove on.

I would prefer never to see or hear from her again.

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.

malestream

You tell yourself what to say and how to behave as you sit there waiting, your heartbeat feeling steadily more pronounced and your stomach faintly complaining.  You’re cool though, it’s all fine.  Casual.  Remember to lie and be nothing like you are most of the time.  You must not ‘just be yourself.’  There disaster lies, or at least the usual route of ambivalence.  Nobody wants to date that sort of person: a miserable bastard.  Exude charm, appear effervescent, affect some level of charisma and contentedness with your lot: you know you can do it.  Although it feels fraudulent, like lying or pretending you’re rich.  Try not to be too honest; you’ve fallen foul of that one much too often.  Don’t allow your brain to buckle under the pressure of attempted fabrication.  Make something up.  People do it all the time.  There’s no need to lazily concede and automatically speak the truth, especially if it isn’t favourable or doesn’t reflect brilliantly upon you.  Pretend you don’t mind your job or lifestyle.  Accentuate the positive and attempt to believe it for a short while.  You don’t want to have a boss or regular hours.  You like your own freedom.  It’s all cool; maybe not forever, but for now it’s fine.  Don’t fear conversation pauses, or go about nervously machine-gunning questions into them.  You’ve done that before and they don’t like that.  Listen.  You rock at that anyway; your larger than average ears help.  Remember to specifically lie by saying ‘we’ instead of ‘I’.  (Because it’s only ever ‘I’).  Invent company if you have to.  Just do NOT sound like a weirdo loner.  Don’t look at any other girls either.  This one will be the centre of your world.  A very occasional glance perhaps, but no studied lingering looks, even if they’re insanely hot; especially if they’re insanely hot.  You can however share a bitchy comment about another person’s dress or shoes.  Don’t over-share or say too much or stay too long.  Leave something else, don’t play all your cards.

And above all… there should be an ‘above all,’ a mantra to remember at all times.  Is there one?  Perhaps: try not to think too much about it?  Don’t painfully overanalyse everything, even afterwards.  Casual, nothing really matters.  Remember that.  Now put the book down now, she’s coming.  Is that really her?  Christ, she’s quite attractive.  What would she see in y-?  Be quiet, brain.  Make your mouth smile.

*

“Who with?” she asks because you’ve avoided saying we or I, again.
Make it up!
LIE!
Invent a friend.
Don’t be a lazy brain!

Your face is transparent, crumbling under the effort.
“Just me,” you squeak.
“Are you a bit of a loner?”
She's even used the fucking word.  Jesus.  WHY are you so useless at concealing this?!  It’s not that hard.  Lie.

Oh.. bollocks.

The truth bubble has been pricked and it's easiest to simply allow it to splurge: “Hey look.  I’ve done plenty of fun travelly things I would have never done if I’d waited around for my mates.  It means I’ve done lots of them alone, yes, which I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen to, but you meet people you wouldn’t have otherwise met who I’m still in touch with.  And it means you don’t do nothing, you don’t just sit at home moping.”  Although you DO very cleverly omit to tell her that you’ve done loads of that too.  Well done, you: that's really sensational.   “And I live alone and work alone so, you know: draw your own conclusions.”  You sound heavy and serious and have completely over-shared, but strangely you don’t regret it.  You take a perverse pride in what you perceive to be your difference, even if it gets you nowhere, which it usually does.  She hasn't walked out the door yet.  You don't even want to begin trying to decipher the meaning behind her smile.

Say something stupid now.  Diffuse.

You share two bottles of wine and stay there for far too long.

Semi Final 2, Munich. (World Cup 2006)

It cast a grey fug over me for most of the following day, the female failure of the night before.  With little else to think about and nobody else to speak to, I pondered it torturously as I walked around a huge, empty sunbaked park.  I was an over-hasty idiot who felt his delicate pride had been slighted.  My only chance, and a half decent one, and I backed down, walked away.

Wouldn’t do that again.

Towards the centre of town, a series of elegant spires and jagged edges, I found a beautifully sociable beer garden with a warm, buzzy atmosphere.  Green leafy trees overhung multiple, standard pub benches, while two swiftly managed hatches sold a neverending supply of beer in an extraordinary range of glasses and long, thick, mustard-laden wurst.  You picked your size of mug from one hatch and paid at the next.  It was predictably efficient.



On the bench next to mine a lone girl stopped, sat down and began chatting to two young male American tourists.  They all seemed to get on splendidly, oblivious to the bitter envy-rays my eyes spat at them from across the path.  I sat alone on my table except for the apparently obligatory old man I might someday be.  It’s always such fairly nondescript middle-aged or old men who sit on my table; it was the day before when I’d stopped here.  It’s always them who end up sitting next to me on planes too.  Never the cute girl from the departure lounge who was sitting alone, flicking through Cosmopolitan.  That girl sits down the plane and across the aisle, next to someone who could well be me and mightn’t even look dissimilar, but isn’t me.  It’s the version of me with the luck who trails the real me about the place rubbing my nose into the floor.

In the Munich Fan Fest for the Portugal-France Semi Final I saw the boys from the previous evening and quickly passed with a nod and chipper “all right, boys?”  Partly because I was still smarting, partly because I was embarrassed of myself for leaving like that, and partly because I didn’t want to know if she and James actually did...

I strolled around the old Olympic fan park, the highest hill affording an impressive panorama across the city, the distinctively sharp-edged Munich Olympic stadium at its centre, where England had famously beaten Germany 5-1 in a 2001 World Cup qualifier.



Back inside the surprisingly modest Munich fan park itself – some scale shy of Berlin’s, I said no more than a word or two to those around me while supporting Les Bleus to their almost entirely forgettable 1-0 win over Portugal, (despite wearing a cloyingly talk-to-me intentioned England top, and France and Germany coloured flowery wrist chains).

At the full-time whistle I said something, perhaps felicitations, to a French supporting young girl in front of me, who turned out to be German.  I teased her about the flexibility of her allegiance; she looked for a name and number on the back of my England shirt.  There was none so we deduced that I was nobody.  We chatted for a short time near her timid looking friends, a couple.  (Is it more ok for Germans to hang out with friends who are couples?  Is there less awareness or awkwardness about encroaching?  Or are they less uptight about that kind of thing?)  She thought me amusingly odd to be alone.  I considered lying and making up some lost friends; didn’t bother.  With the sun fully dipped, the weather turned eerily gusty, dust and dirt whipped up uncomfortably from the bank where we were standing, blowing grit into faces and eyes.  I offered myself as a shield and she held me close to avoid getting dirt into her eyes.  We continued chatting.  She held tighter as the wind whipped stronger.  Stewards soon began to shepherd people out and away.  Her friends’ plans of what they were doing weren’t clear.  Nobody seemed to know or be terribly fussed about where I went and my new friend made no appeal for me to stay with them, she seemed genuinely ambivalent.



I walked away, hating myself anew.  Couldn’t you just grow some bollocks?

My feet took me back to the town and into a local feeling karaoke bar, on which sat a brochure of awful songs, matched by some equally bad singers.  Wearing an England top, my nationality was obvious as I sat at the square bar in the middle of the room, pawing through the brochure, half glancing up at the confident young barmaid who showed the odd uncaring indication of drunkenness.  She even contributed the occasional track from her bar.  One young local chap talked to me about the football, and was physical in his gesturing.  I nervously wondered about his orientation but he did nothing to clarify and eventually left me alone.

A girl then chatted to me, drunk but confident.  She said something suggestive.  Overweight and pierced, she looked and behaved like she’d experienced her fair share of wurst.  I didn’t warm to her, although I likely would have if she’d been an attractive tart.  I cursed my inability to compromise and numb myself, instead emitting accordingly uninterested signals.

She discomforted me into moving bar.  Another club; non-karaoke, surprisingly busy.  I glanced enviously at two young men wearing England tops, with two presumably local, attractive girls.  They both seemed fairly advanced with their partners and my envy surged again.  Could’ve been me last night.  More Other-version-Me’s with luck.  Nobody spoke to me there, but there was more to admire so I stayed awhile, bored, sad, perving.  My huge hostel and shared room wasn’t enticing.

This was supposed to be the day / night / week of my year / life.  And it had mostly been shit.

I was due to return to Berlin on the Deutsche Bahn and fly home from there in another 48 hours.  48 hours was AGES, especially with a 10 hour train ride and more accommodation to sort out.  Baddiel & Skinner came on once more and I moved for the door.  Morning was cracking the sky as I walked away.  I decided to head for Munich airport after a few hours’ sleep.  I was coming home.

Semi Final 1. Munich (World Cup 2006)

Onto Munich on the trusty Deutsche Bahn south.  At each stop between Nuremberg and Munich the female train announcer finished her spiel with, “to departing passengers, we would like to say goodbye!”  It was delivered in a half sinister fashion which made me imagine her firing a gun into the heads of departing passengers.

Approaching the door of my towering chain hostel on the fringe of central Munich, a sign hiring out bicycles caught my attention.  Reasonably priced, I thought.  A searing heat surged into the tip of my exposed big toe and I came to an abrupt halt.  I looked down to discover I had just walked into a concrete step.  It stung deep, causing waves of improbably acute pain to course through me.  Crumbling in half, I whined gently and concentrated on not swearing, before eventually exhaling.  For several moments I stood still, petrified by the level of pain which could be sourced from a toe.  I was perversely pleased to find that the cosmetic damage matched the pain.  Blood trickled from beneath the corner of nail and onto my sandal, forming a dark red sticky puddle its rubber sole.  My toe grew numb and the nail quickly began to darken.

Despite there being people present, sitting at tables of a bar outside the hostel, nobody appeared to notice.  I whined a bit more, negotiated the step and walked gingerly into the lobby.

I was given another room which, as in Nuremberg, was quite probably the furthest distance away from the reception.  I grazed my injured toe on one of the many steps up to the fourth floor and bleated in expectation of a pain which didn’t quite transpire, then felt foolish.  Five-minutes battling with my roomcard and feeling stupid led me to conclude that it definitely didn’t work, so I beckoned a cleaner from down the corridor to help me.

It wasn’t the best half hour ever.  If I’d been arriving in Munich for an England World Cup Semi Final, none of this would have happened.

*

Before the game I found a pleasant public riverside spot near the centre of Munich.  People sat on the grass enjoying the early evening sunshine and relaxing with a beer or some food, and friends.  It felt novel, being able to sit down somewhere pretty and not feel obliged to spend money on refreshments.  People Watching was rich.  A larger middle-aged lady was topless and blomonche-like; an old man taking a dip in the surprisingly healthy coloured water – in contrast to Berlin’s river – looked like a prune, stretched and skinny, what little flesh he had sagging from his torso; other younger, attractive people were more aesthetically pleasing, but less interesting viewing.  I dozed, listening to Ray LaMontagne on my iPod, feeling my toe tingle and throb.



The Germany-Italy Semi Final was played in Dortmund, not far from Bochum and Gelsenkirchen in the north-west of the county, where I had travelled from.  I watched the first 90 minutes on a large screen, hoisted high up in a crammed beer hall.  It was the quarter of Munich where several such beer halls seemed to be located, although I'd stumbled across it completely by chance.  Several revellers cast fleeting, suspicious eyes over the 3 Lions crest of my old England T-shirt.

Amidst the excitable partisan bustle, hooting and clinking of the beer hall – a long conglomeration of open bars and restaurants – I was growing quietly angry by the amount of refereeing decisions which were going Germany’s way: the bookings they didn’t receive but which I felt they merited.  Michael Ballack’s recklessly outstretched leg which took out a full-flight Mauro Camoranesi; Jens Lehmann’s errant punch which connected only with an Italian forward.  Neither were given yellow cards.  Italy looked the better, more inventive team, especially in the first half, and despite my setting I wanted them to win.

No goals arrived inside ninety minutes so I walked over to the main Marienplatz square for the extra-time period.  A large crowd sat and stood beneath a modestly sized screen outside a bar on a warm midsummer evening.  Bottles of beer were sold from a crate on the floor.

Italy scored two well-deserved and beautifully crafted late goals towards the end of the second period of extra-time, sparing yet more penalties.  Pockets of Italians rejoiced, the vast majority of natives experienced that familiar sagging.  They were understandably crushed and the atmosphere in the square drooped.  This was supposed to be their tournament, the one they hosted and owned and played well in; the one which meant the German flag could be freely and openly waved again, a justifiable united patriotism.

But now that was all over and I was pleased Italy won.  While  chatting briefly with an Italian fan outside the bar a local girl approached.  On discovering our allegiances she was only half joking in her dismissiveness, turning her nose up and quickly walking away.

An amiable France fan then joined us, sympathetically and equally briefly.  The Italian left.  Only now was this old England T-shirt paying dividends for speaking to people; people who otherwise wouldn’t have spoken to me.  I wished the Frenchman bon chance, we shook hands and he disappeared down the steps to the S-Bahn.

Another group approached: English, no colours – about half dozen of them enjoying a laddish holiday.  We had a decent football chat in the square and, after I explained my situation, they invited me to tag along in their search of a decent club.  We were directed a few stops up the S-Bahn line to a segregated bar/club area with an oddly temporary caravan park feel.

There weren’t many people around; it was too early at 11.30pm or the Germans were sick with defeat and not feeling like partying.  Or both.  Led by our main spokesman, a small, confident, geezery but likeable black guy whose name I’ve forgotten but we’ll call James, took the responsibility of asking people where was best.  Especially any passing girl.  One, who was appended to a quiet couple, gladly advised us.  She was German, confident, a little nutty and drunk, but fun and she spoke great English.  She totally contradicted my earlier pontifications about German roboticness, straightness.  As with many, she wasn't immediately striking, but once your eyes settled there was a definite appeal:  thick curly blonde hair, an open approachable face.  I don’t recall precisely what I contributed to the consultation – a few lame jokey interjections perhaps – but after she advised us of two places to try, she made a point of saying she liked me because I was typical English.  She asked my name and I asked hers: Jen (she abbreviated for me from something less pronouncable).  She offered me her cheeks to kiss, one at a time, which I did.  And we parted.

After finding our first choice was apparently “members night” only - we went onto our second choice.  Jen and her couple friends were already sitting at the bar as we entered.  She enthusiastically threw her arms around me when I entered with our group: “you came!”  We bought drinks and the boys gave me raised eyebrows.  The place was dead; she was the only single girl in there and chatted with an old man at the bar for a time.

I willed him to fuck off.

They chatted for ages.

The unmistakable opening bars to the Baddiel, Skinner and Lightning Seeds’ 3 Lions England football song were played, and she leaped down from her barstool to join us in arms-over-shoulders/ round-waist-dancing.  We chatted for a while afterwards and she was all over me.  Was she touchy-feely with everyone, or did she want me to make a move?  Was she giving signals?  The other boys were now giving me how-the-fuck-did-you-do-that? glances and unbelieving shakes of the head.  I wasn’t even close to the best looking of the group.  We hugged as she clung onto me but I never made a move and we didn’t kiss.

She went back to the bar and her friends, leaving me still quietly confident.  “I think you’ve pulled mate,” one of the guys advised.

James went to join her at the bar, started chatting, pulled up a stool.  Hello?  He’d just been talking to me about his girlfriend of three years.  Seemed the faithful sort, although I had only known him for an hour.  I had no right claiming any ownership of her but still I felt disgruntled.  Evidently so, as the other boys noticed me glancing at them.  I overheard one of them saying, “well he never actually pulled her,” and he was right.  I hadn’t.   Bollocks.  It wasn’t my style to battle, go over swinging my bollocks above my head to prove how much worthier I was.  Nor was diving straight in, which was maybe what I should have done.  She put an arm on his shoulder to lean into his ear.

Bastard.  I couldn’t watch this.  It was still otherwise empty in there.  Perhaps it was all innocent and they were just chatting and she was clearly very physical, but...  If it wasn’t I couldn’t bear to see them actually...

She laughed, he laughed.

Terrific.  They were getting on great.

I shook hands with the other boys and left, passing behind the backs of the happy fucking couple.  I despondently walked away, through the weird complex and back to the station, defeated again, out on penalties in the quarter-final to an equally capable competitor after not playing especially well.

itchy memories

I went back last Friday and found somewhere new to live.  It certainly doesn’t have the wow factor of the ill-fated first attempt, but it should do fine for a while: clean, spacey, reasonable location, a probably civilised yet fairly anonymous local community.

Pending form-filling and references, the flat is mine.  Another deposit holding payment has been made, telephone discussions have been conducted and emails exchanged.  A prospective move date has been agreed.

I’m suddenly nervous, jittery and slightly afraid.  Of what, I’m not precisely sure, although I have suspicions.  I haven’t minded London as much this last month or so, but the good financial arguments still hold, as do the social ones – despite their vague hopefulness.

Added to this is that continued nagging doubt about moving backwards, also expressed before, and the irritation of old memories which that unavoidably brings.

Current reading, Obstacles To Young Love, by David Nobbs, has helpfully (or unhelpfully) illuminated this.  Its key characters have a brief teenage fling, their first, at the book’s opening, and it seems they periodically come back together – not unlike One Day, the most recent book by the similarly styled David Nicholls.  In these books, and probably in real life, people might take a year or two to get over their other, but they ostensibly do (even if they ‘deeply’ do not).  People move on.

The horrid truth is that I haven’t, not really.  And it’s been significantly longer than a year or two.  There's been nothing anywhere near as serious.  She still invades my dreams every month or so, accusing, teasing, sighing at how utterly pathetic I must be.

But I don’t seek reconciliation.  A few months ago I unfriended her on Facebook (she had originally found me and, after a short dither, I had accepted the friend request).  I didn’t want to see photos of her and her boyfriend but couldn’t resist my temptation to click when they did appear on my feed, the handsome bastard.  I WANT to move on, put clear water between me and those memories.  I simply can’t; they keep resurfacing like stubbornly floating shit.

Returning to the scene of the crime, the place where all that was set, it’s natural for that to breed nervousness, to fear how healthy or unhealthy it could be, the scabs you’re picking anew.  It’s this which is a large cause of my discomfort about moving back, as well as knowing she could be around the next corner.

Move dates refresh this nervousness.  They make it pungent, fresh and frightening.

underground music

At 6pm I was sitting on my sofa in my poky flat, hot and bothered, bored and glum.  At 4am I was in a stranger’s basement flat assembling Spotify playlists for a horrendously handsome Californian and three French females.

I decided to take a chance on another of those social group meetings, thinking I could opt out and find somewhere else to view the USA match if I wasn’t feeling the company.  I found the bar, ordered a beer, found the group, stood back, watched the first half over the shoulders of the group and made judgements about them.

Would it be hard work?  Could I be bothered to be all genial, cheerful and open?  Did they look odd?

Yes no and yes.  A bit.

The half time whistle blew, Ghana a surprising 1-0 up, and I left.  I didn’t know where for exactly, but I paced the vague direction of the tube-line back, eyes out for an open looking bar in one of those transient West London communities.  They’re often easier places to fall into chat.

A squat, bald man sat on a stool next to me at the bar.  I rested on a pillar, facing the large screen, before which sat an assortment of fans, many of them travellers.  USA deservedly equalised and I exchanged comment with my neighbour.  A discernible West Country accent opened the door for further chat.

It’s a disappointing fact that I tend to be more comfortable in the company of males than females.  There’s no threat and no pretention, no ‘signals’ to be wary of; I’m seldom trying hard, if at all to curry favour.  In a way I wish I found men physically attractive – perhaps everything would be easier then.  Sadly I don’t.

This doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a handsome man.  Their effect on me, however, is at best a grudging respect, at worst an outright envy-led disgust at how on earth they had the fortune to be blessed like that.  What gave them the right?

It was with a combination of the two that I turned to the guy along the bar, a handsome chap standing the other side of the older chap, to whom we’d both exchanged comments about the game.  He didn’t look unlike USA player, Carlos Bocanegra, who is no Wayne Rooney in the looks department, but also wore a modest, mildly embarrassed look.  A weathered, stubbled face and arrowing jawline made him appear to be in his mid-thirties, so I was equally appalled to later learn that he was a handful of years younger than me.

He looked American and every inch Los Angeles, not least in the vaguely confused way he watched the football match, as if tentatively trying to consume something people told him was good.   He had only been in London a month, having been transferred on a short-term contract.

Ghana found a new gear and greater strength in extra time, scoring another and comfortably fending off a fatigued American threat.  At its conclusion, my new older friend was disappointed to have lost a bet, and the American shrugged, essentially unfussed.  I was quietly pleased Ghana had won.

We fell into further sporting and political discussions, offering and accepting further drinks, each growing drunk, our older member the most rapidly.  He blamed his age on forgetfulness and losing track of his points, rather than the alcohol.  He called it quits as closing time neared, hopped down from his stool and wobbled away.

Myself and Bocanegra eyed each other anew, or adrunk, still with thirst and nowhere else to go.

“You wanna see if we can get another round here, or..?” I broached.

“Sure, there’s a place I know down the block.  Need the rest room first.  Wait there.”

He took me to a nightclub, where we were rubberstamped like cattle before descending steps into a dark, low-ceilinged basement venue.  Not my natural habitat, but I went with it.  He’d mentioned a complicated relationship setup back home, an arrangement the other party had placed more stock in than him.

I wondered if this would now go like those now rare occasions with friends back home, one of whom is absurdly good looking, quite a buffoon, has no morals whatsoever but is enormously entertaining.  We always used to lose him within minutes of being inside a nightclub.

We bought drinks, took a stroll and I felt that sporadic kinship to Emile Heskey kick back in.  It’s not his fault.

We breezed past a lone female sitting at a table; I half paused, then bottled it.  My smooth companion didn’t.  She was French, upbeat and happy, pretty enough in an understated way; another national descent in there somewhere.  Her friends soon returned from the bar.  We all chatted and it was quickly detectable that they were nonplussed by me.  I left my friend to dance and canoodle with his new femme while I went to the bar and wondered what would happen now, whether I should just leave.

No, roll with everything tonight.  Why not?  Let yourself be guided for once.

I didn’t leave and continued chatting with the other French girls in an entirely innocent, rather bland fashion.  We each asked polite questions without caring about the answers.  Laughs were few.  I agreed to join them outside for cooler air and want of anything better to do.  They smoked.

The club came to close and I chatted again to Bocanegra.  Before entering the club he’d said that he lived really close and I was welcome to sleep on his couch.  We all piled up and out of the club onto the warm street, the French gabbling amongst themselves in French, us mumbling uncertainly.  We’d only walked a minute before he said, “my flat’s actually down this road, now I don’t know if..”

The French twittered in French again.  One, not his femme, expressed her reservations in English, which I said I accepted and understood, partly to make us look regular and unthreatening.  His femme swung them round and we found ourselves walking down his road, stopping at a large anonymous building with multiple buzzers.  I could have forgiven a new sense of foreboding as he led us down the building and through a maze of glass-panelled corridors to his front door.  A newly renovated basement apartment belied his length of time there: nothing on the walls or in the cupboards, which I raided.  Water was literally all he had.  I divided it up into a handful of never before-used glasses and cursed my lack of rohypnol.

We sat chatting and listening to music for a time, stretched out across two sofas and two on the floor, either end of a central coffee table.  Discussions on music and hobbies were more interesting and we grew more relaxed.  If anything untoward would have happened, it would have happened by then.

It grew later and lighter still at 4am, dawn approaching.  The two French wanted to leave, one who lived nearby and another, incidentally the most attractive, who lived not far from me.  She preferred to sleep at her friend’s rather than share a cab.  I conceded and watched them leave first, so they wouldn’t think I was following them when I made my own exit.

Bocanegra again offered the couch, but I knew it would inevitably come with authentic audio of sex from the next room.  With a frat boy parting clinch and a shared knowing smile about, in hindsight, quite pointlessly convincing our company that we were longer acquainted than a few hours, I left.

male fracture

Initially I never minded his relentless, mid-twenties, labrador-like enthuasiasm.  I respected it, was entertained by it.  At least it was character.  He wanted to build an empire, an agency, but he was essentially a freelancer or a small businessman like me – except his speciality was design, he could operate photoshop and believed he had an eye for graphics, although he still needed a developer.  Did that really amount to an empire..?  His confidence was unwavering.

We’d only met around eight or nine months before and liked each other, although our professional interests didn’t align.  I respected what he wanted to do, his bullishness and disrespect for the established industry clique.  It irked me in only a small way that he couldn’t grasp what it was that I did, or that he didn’t want to, had faint interest.  “He’s a writer, a reporter, he’s.. I don’t know.”  I paid him interest and that was enough.  I connected him to relevant people, he helped me with a website.

Despite the pokey Camden flat he worked from, he always spoke big games, frowned upon my contentedness with my scale and platform, my lack of desire to build.  Perhaps he laughed.

Knowing the organiser, we attended an all-day event and joined them for drinks, as well as a meal afterwards.  He thickly laid on his entrepreneurial zest to a successful CEO he thought it would impress.  When I told him a member of the dinner table had (quite understandably) tired of his apparently endless gushing, he was obviously slighted and bitter, pretended not to care but did.

Over the dinner he had voiced ideas about line-up photographs like Sergeant Pepper or Sillicon Valley in the 1990s, charting us all now before we had built our own incredible dynasties.  To me it seemed idiotic, laughable, embarrassingly ridden with ego.  Nobody had a revolutionary game-changing idea or a specific technology (that they were public about), we were all ostensibly performing standard services at a medium to low level.  Nevertheless, everyone made encouraging and agreeable ‘yes-let’s-do-it’ noises.

Having planned to go for drinks after the event and make an evening of it, we left the restaurant, but it was later into the evening than expected when arrived out our favoured Soho bar.

Once seated with beers he fluffed his own self proclaimed business nous, said he was good at identifying valuable stocks and shares.  I quibbled, “you can speculate about the value of any brand and what they’ll do next; it’s all a punt.  Does predicting that Innocent will make food or Bentley will make a champagne mean you're a visionary, or does it mean you’ve taken an informed guess?”

He disagreed with me that successful bankers needed to be numerate, that it at least helped.  “Bollocks, you and I could be minted bankers if we wanted.”  I disagreed, said I would be if I could be but I wasn’t.  I’d struggled to get a C at GCSE.  I could do what I do and be moderately successful but there was no way could I be a banker.  This disgruntled him.

He was the epitome of a guy from small Scottish provinces who had come to London seeking fame and fortune.  I was be the epitome of similar – but who had been dealt little fortune, perhaps had created none, and believed even less in my potential for major prosperity.  I wasn’t entirely pessimistic about my future but had no pretensions of fame, ludicrous wealth or building a famed legacy.

“Get me another beer then,” I said into the sulky pause, as we both reached the bottom of our first bottles in the late bar, hoping we could shift conversation on.

Never having divorced from checking his phone for messages, he said “no, ahv gotta be gone in five minutes mate.”

A text message may have changed his course – from his girlfriend or another friend.

“Girlfriend curfew?”

He mumbled unintelligibly.  I didn’t ask further, but it was strange given that he’d said we had a good hour and a half of drinking when we arrived.  Something changed during our discussion, my scepticism was too much, I had depressed and tired him.

“Ok then,” I said, abruptly accepting.  “We’ll call it quits,” an awkward atmosphere had been draped over us.  I had too honestly chided his ambition and he shrugged, resented it.  I had never meant to quash his enthusiasm, his passion or drive.  Or had I?  Neither of us would speak of it further.

Out into the street, we shook, clinched, spoke token words of next week – I invested little in them – and turned away.

I looked over my shoulder as I walked off, seeing him lingering, diagonally pacing back and forth across the road outside the bar, not walking away, waiting for another.  I wondered if we’d see each other again, if this was it for us.  I wondered who he was waiting for, his girlfriend, a mate, a new business partner who he could change the world with.

I imagined we were done.