The One Thing That Will Make Men Love You

My poor mother gets a bit excited when she visits. This is probably due to spending a lot of her time in the company of a sinister cat and a mentally depraved spaniel. Last weekend she came to visit, and although she was not wearing the outfit sketched below ..she acted like she was.

She was giggly, loud and excited. You could see from the glow in her face that she felt like a twenty-something again.

We were sitting around sipping tea and swopping boy-related-horror stories. When Mother decided to interject and not in a casual way. Oh no, this was a stamp of authority on the conversation.

We were in awe. What wisdom would she impart? Would she resolve all our boy troubles with one single piece of knowledge passed down from generation to generation?

She knew she held the power. She grinned at us for a moment. Drawing out the tension.

Then it came. The advice. The oracle. The one piece of knowledge that must have been handed down from woman to woman in our family for centuries.

My housemate was horrified.

My sister was disgusted.

I tried to figure out where she had heard this phrase.

Our collective horror, only made my mother smug. She thought she had out-cooled us. That we were great big prudes and she a bank of hip boy-advice.

It soon became clear that Mother had not fully understood the phrase "jump his bones".

We've decided that next time we introduce her to friends...we'll take some important measures to restrain her wordly wisdom from frightening them from the room.

Although if I'm really honest, I want things to get worse. I want to see how far she'll go and part of me hopes she'll embrace her inner-snoop-dawg and do this....

The Trials and Tribulations of Being a Hobbit Magnet

The kind of men who usually line up to date me,

look like something that crawled out of the shire,

as far as Middle Earth goes, there's actually plenty,

of men in the Fellowship I'd happily admire.

I'd give up on poetry and follow them to Mordor,

but those aren't the sort that come knocking on my door.

No those aren't the sort that climb down my chimney,

I get ginger-beards with pot-bellies that remind me of Gimli.

It gets awkward when they ask for a date,

because they remind me of this hobbit I hate...

Who took 'Hell No' to mean 'Hell Yes', because his hearing was damaged,

and he thought it was fate, because we're both vertically challenged.

See short men think my height is an open-invitation,

I'll map the hairs on their feet and end their frustration.

They sometimes salivate in the front row,

because perhaps they're sleeping or hoping to grow...

or they just don't have girls on their side of the Shire,

so now I'm on stage they think I'm for hire.

And hobbits are resilient, they don't understand never,

they think it's my way of being witty and clever.

So there's no point in telling a hobbit no,

they've a tendency to never let these things go...

But they're not as bad as the guy that looks like Gollum,

who looked in my eyes all regal and solemn,

and told me not to worry because he's broken too,

and I walked away because that's nothing new.

Then there's the men that try to act mysterious,

going hot and cold to get me delirious...

I guess in their heads they are channelling Aragorn,

but that ship has sailed and those shoes are worn.

The worst is a guy that reminds me of Gandalf,

one of those drama-kings that don't do anything by half.

He read me his poems by the light of the moon,

with what I assume was dementia, thinking I'd swoon.

I wanted to tell him he was as old as my granddad,

but I'm not the kind of girl that makes geriatrics feel bad.

My problem isn't that they're short, bald, dying or fat,

it's that I'm on stage to be listened to, not looked at.

 

Why I Should Never Ever Ever Speak to Customers

I spent a considerable amount of this year assuming the position of a dignified receptionist in a hairdressers. This involved actually brushing my hair on the days I worked and smiling as much as possible.

Despite my general lack of tact, I managed. I was positively charming or so I like to think. That was until this lady came into the salon one day. 

I could do nothing but blink politely as she brandished a picture of a girl, my age, dressed in a purple frou-frou dress and hair that was so high it appeared to be concealing a turnip. 

I tried really hard to think of something nice to say. 

Her reaction to my question was one of absolute disgust. No this was not for a dance recital or any other showcase that traditionally involves caking on the make-up and liberal amounts of glitter.

And did I reply with the obvious apology and brush it off professionally with the charm of a sophisticated receptionist? I did not.

Attempting to be Human too Early in the Morning

This week I got a new job. The sort of job where you look at construction videos until your eyes bleed and must consider it training. It seems to involve a lot of screwing and nailing. By day three I was finding it hard to wake-up in the mornings. Mostly because I have gotten used to the sloth-like hours of a student and also because 8am seems like an ungodly hour for anyone to be turning their computer on at.

I woke up, quite understandably, in denial.

Then because it's a NEW job, and I don't want anyone there to know that I've recently become a tea-drinking sweapants-aholic, I made myself look semi-professional.

It was only when I was about to suit-up to face the weather and cycle to work that the morning took a turn for the worse.

I tried to pump the tyres but the bicycle pump would not cooperate. It has clicky bits and things that screw on and off. The more the clock ticked, the more I scrambled. Soon there was no earthly way I could make it to work unless my bike magically fixed. So I did what all sane, rational, well-adjusted adults do. I lay on the floor and cursed at my bike.

I had an epiphany lying on the floor that morning. My wheel was still round, deflated tyre or not, it would still get me where I needed to go. It was time to suit-up and soldier on. 

I pedaled like a furious and demented minion to work.

It turns out there is a legitimate reason why one should avoid cycling on a flat tyre. Particularly if one has all the finesse of a badger and all the sense of a rhino in heat. The reason being that your inner tube will come loose and wrap itself around your wheel, while you are in the middle of a giant junction, in lashing rain, with cars blaring their horns at you. At which point you will have to come to terms with the fact that you may well be about to die. 

I survived, clearly. There was then an awkward few minutes spent dragging my giant bike to a nearby fence. At which point I cursed my choice of a heavy bike. I wanted a heavy one because the light one I'd previously owned used to get me blown into traffic. Which was only slightly less scary than breaking-down in the midst of roaring traffic. 

Once I tied up the bike I decided to run to work. In my giant waterproof  trousers and terrible shoes.

I got to an intersection where I had, unfortunately, another epiphany. 

I think we all know which way I decided to go. I console myself with the thought that Robert Frost would have been proud.

I only realised how unfortunate my shortcut was when I ended up in literally the middle of nowhere. 

It was all too much. I simply gave in. I would simply regale them all with my miss-adventures when I arrived sopping wet and late. 

When I finally arrived I was over five minutes late. This was really distressing until I noticed that I was the only person there. Surely this couldn't be. After all that trouble, I hadn't even managed to make a dramatic bloody entrance and there was nobody to hear my tale of woes.