Embarrassing Events in My Life Part Gazillion

The honesty meme yesterday has brought up a whole series of idiotically stupid times in my life, which have been haunting me ever since like Nam quaalude induced flashbacks.  So thanks to Welsh Girl for that

As a result I thought I ought to shovel them out of my brain so I can fill it up with the usual hideous traumas that I like to mull over late at nights.

I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before.  Let’s face it, I’ve blogged about most things before.  My real life stopped about ten years ago when parenthood took its place and I have been dining out on recycled reminiscences ever since.  My life is like an episode of The Good Old Days, but without the ‘Good’ and less of the cheeky Cockney charm.

So, on with the ritual humiliation.

One one of my first dates with UHTB (unsuitable husband to be), we went to see a film at the local art house cinema in Jericho (Oxford, not Biblical Jericho, although that would have been way more exciting and possibly time travellish).  It was/is a lovely place.  It has a wine bar upstairs and a cool shop downstairs where not only can you buy popcorn and family sized bags of sweets, but lumps of cake and cups of coffee as well.

We got there early and decided to go for a drink in the wine bar.  I ordered a glass of red.  I was being sophisticated. Ha ha!

At this time I had quite long hair which I had taken to wearing in a kind of messy, windswept updo with lots of wisps and straggly bits.  Basically a kind of bird’s nest.  The kind of bird’s nest built by a totally shambolic piss artist of a bird who is half blind and feels that they are very creative and artistic.  All the other birds humour her but talk about her behind her beak.  What they say is: ‘That bird is crap, and her nest is going to fall apart in the first strong wind.  Do not let her look after the eggs when we go to the Barn Dance next Friday.  Pass it on.’  That was my ‘look’ that season.

I was very nervous that evening. Uhtb was way out of my league.  He had a flash job.  He had flash cash.  He lived in a totally chic uber flat on Gloucester Green, right in the middle of town.  He knew everyone.  He spent half the week jet setting for business and would often pop away for mini breaks in glamorous European locations.  He was lead guitarist in a band whose singer was drop dead gorgeous and who were actually quite good. His best friend was the landlord of two Oxford pubs and owned a trendy cafe in Jericho, and a comedy club. His ex girlfriend (who all new girlfriends automatically measure themselves up against) was very successful.  Before they split up they had owned a Grade Two listed cottage in a pretty Oxford village.  She drove a Porsche and wore head to toe designer labels.

Then there was me, birdsnest girl.  I had my second hand vintage pea jacket on.  I had my own unique style of dressing, which was so unique and ahead of its time I had gone round the fashion clock from chic to freak.  I earned about tenpence a week.  I had a room in a shared house.  I not only shared the house with other humans I shared it with a deaf dalmation, a hearing but mental dalmation, two giant cats, copious amounts of animal fleas and hair, some slugs that lived in a kitchen cupboard and a mad landlord who would moodily play the saxaphone on the landing when he was feeling the urge to share.  The bloke whose room was next to mine was a dope fiend who had a magic mushroom induced fear of power tools despite working in B&Q.  He also had a hideously complex love life, proving irresistible to young women who would literally shin up the drain pipe to break in and see him.  Unfortunately the first room they got to was mine.

I had just come out of a disastrous relationship with a man who used to keep Branston pickle sandwiches in his briefcase and whose prize possessions were some home made numchucks and a macrame pot holder sans pot that he had made in 1983.  My best friend lived in York and was doing an MA in Medieval Poetry.  I liked cakes, he liked drink and drugs.  He knew which fork to use at dinner parties and how to make small talk.  I could make a mean cheese sandwich and could babble on insanely for hours without letting anyone else get a word in edgewise.

You can easily see that the only thing running through my head at the time was the litany; ‘Why me? Why is he going out with me? Is he doing it for a bet? Oh my God!’ On a kind of perpetual loop.

I was sitting at the bar, half facing him, clutching the stem of my wine glass like a drowning woman clutching a life raft.  He asked me a question.  I was too busy listening to my hysterical inner monologue.  I heard noises and smiled like a mentalist in his direction.  He asked me again.  It was something totally innocuous like; ‘What did you have for dinner?’  It was an easy one.  I could answer.  I knew this.  Wait a minute.  I went into total meltdown.  My grin went sort of rictusish.  I went to speak, made a kind of gurgling noise and threw my hands up in the universal gesture for ‘What the fuck am I talking about? Excuse me for being a total muppet.’ 

I had forgotten I was clutching the wine glass.  Everything went up in the air.  The wine came out of the glass and landed in my elaborate coiffeur.  Because it was so labyrinthine it didn’t douse me all at once.  It was more of a trickle down effect over a series of some of the most excruciatingly humiliatingly long minutes of my life.

He just watched in rapt fascination.

I froze.

Once the last drips had sauntered their way lazily down my face he burst out laughing.  He laughed so hard I thought he was going to die.

I knew I was going to die.

I mopped myself gently with a napkin provided by a thoughtful and entertained barman.

I decided to weather the storm.  I wanted to see the film.  I didn’t see the point of running away until afterwards.  Then I could do the walk of shame.

We went downstairs.  He bought the tickets.  I said I would buy the supplies.  I asked him what he wanted.  He asked for a coffee.  I looked at him in total horror.  I said that I would buy it but he would have to carry it.  He said; ‘No way! I’m hoping you do that throwing it up in the air thing again.  That was brilliant.’  Nightmare.

Luckily I managed to get it to him without giving myself a shower or throwing it into his groinal area.

We were married less than a year later.

I don’t recommend it for everyone’s courtship, but it worked for us.

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