I was asked to help out at a wine and beer tasting at the Town Hall the other day. I was given a table in our woody, portrait-y Edwardian Banqueting Suite, and enjoyed three hours talking about the beer, which came from Belgium, the US, Germany, and a canned IPA from north London.
As I locked my bike up outside, a wino who'd been sitting in the adjoining gardens came up to me. He informed me that he was an ex-soldier and that he'd be "kicking off in there in a minute." "Jolly good," I said. He managed to get in before we were open to the public but was politely ejected before he could practice his penalties.
Morgane's mum's sister was there. I was aware of staring at her for a couple of seconds too long, but she is so attractive it's an effort not to. We chatted for a little while and I noted that she is still with the angular-headed Christian. A few years ago, when I was going out with Morgane's mum Felicity, we were all sitting around at the Chilli Festival at Levens Hall, where Anglehead's children were testing my ability to restrain a laughter that would have been impolite. "Daddy believes in the Bible," one of them loudly declared, in a tone weighted with the precise ambivalence between factual statement and mocking pisstake in which teenage girls are expert.
I met Kirsty's neighbour's daughter, and made a point of asking her whether her sister is single. I know full well she is, having been told this by the girl herself on the dancefloor at North Lancs Soul Festival couple of weeks ago, but I hoped she'd pass on the enquiry.
On Thursday I was contacted on the dating site by this gorgeous Irish redhead, whose interests include real ale and foreign films. There was something I wanted to see at the pictures yesterday and I thought there'd be no harm in suggesting it to her. She said she was going too, with a friend, but suggested we meet up an hour or so beforehand.
In her initial message, she said how much she liked a Belgian beer that I mention on my profile. As I had been paid partly in beer at the beer tasting, I wrapped up a bottle of Brooklyn Blast IPA (8.4%) in some reused shiny purple wrapping paper, as a little present, and went to faff about with my hair and clothes. Eventually but only last minute happy, I rushed out to meet her, forgetting to take the beer.
She was every bit as attractive as her photo had suggested. Beautiful long curly ginger hair resting sexually on her tits. We chatted away easily enough in Lancaster's All Fur Coat And No Knickers pub before walking to the cinema. A Pigeon... is a surreal, straightfaced satire, wittily knowing about the specifically Swedish form of dour. She, on the other hand, thought it a waste of two hours of her life. I went to the loo and stopped a couple, complete strangers, to ask them what they thought of it, so desperate was I to gabble on about what I thought was a masterpiece, a modern dreaming Buñuel. The man I knobbled had seen Andersson's entire oeuvre and recommended another of his films: such are the little serendipitous joys of living in Lancaster.
Her friend joined us afterwards, having put a respectful several rows between us during the film. I was hoping we might go next door, where there's a proper English boozer, but we sat in the theatre's bar, a place whose bleak design and high prices might have been designed to prolong the stark air of a Swedish arthouse film.
Me and the Irish girl walked home in the same direction -- turns out she lives just a couple of streets away. It was time for the goodbyes. "Well, OK then. I'm not getting any spark," she said. "Er... no, er... yes, I don't know." I had forgotten we were on a date. This is the third date in a row where the woman has said the same thing at the end of the evening.
This morning I sent her a message saying that it was a pleasure to meet her "and I can't think that someone as good-looking and lively as you will be short of offers." "Yes, not short of offers," she said. "Most of which begin and end 'hi babe'." She said that if ever I'm in need of filmic company to give her a bell.
I'm not sure. One can't help but take such rejections personally, since they are precisely that; and I think there'd always be another agenda apart from the film, of trying to win her round, and I don't even want to put myself in that position. It is a shame modern daters expect everything to happen so quickly, with attraction expected to flare on the first evening together.
In the pub the other day I saw a friend leaning on the bar, about to pay with a twenty pound note. He's a loveable man, stooped and unbarbered, with that panicked look to a point in the middle distance that the infirm elderly often carry round. I've been wondering for years how to phrase this: "Listen Issac, I'll miss you when you're gone, and I'd like you to give my number to someone who could notify me when you're on your way to the crem."
I went to walk past him, then quickly reached back round his shoulders to nip the note out of his hand. I fluffed it and the note stayed where it was. We got talking, and he told me he'd just won a thousand pounds, and gave me the twenty.