Andrew Carter's Blog

Louise and I went for dinner in a Greek restaurant last week. We were being shown our seats by the window when I noticed a woman I recognized walking down the street. The last time I’d seen this woman she was sacking me. It was a numbers game and the ball was in my court but I hadn’t been making the hard yards.

“So, Andrew. Do you think this is working out?”

“Not really, no. I’ll get my coat.”

After the sacking I realized I’d left my cycling gloves in the office and had to go back to get them.

Excruciating.

I offered my ex-boss a smile and cheery wave. She didn’t wave back. To my dismay she walked into the restaurant. Blanking me is bad enough but when you are going to be sat in the same room as me thirty seconds later? Come on now. Fortunately she sat a few tables away with a wall of people in between us so dinner wasn’t ruined. Feelings of abject failure and incompetence resurfacing were nothing a bowl of giant olives couldn’t cure.

This is not the first time I’ve had an unfortunate meeting in a restaurant. On my tenth birthday we went to Salvos (an Italian restaurant in Headingley for the 1% of people who read this blog that aren’t from Leeds.) Sat on the table next to us was my teacher, a strict lady who thought I was a bit of a prick. Inspired by Gazza I’d recently bleached my hair and she said, in front of the whole class, that it looked like I had a fried egg on my head. It’s fair to say we had a fractious relationship. Outside of the classroom setting she terrified me and I didn’t speak for the entire meal, shovelling pizza down my throat so we could get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

After Louise and I left the Greek restaurant a strange incident occurred. We were strolling home when someone shouted at us from across the road.

“Oi, you two!”

I looked over to see a giant man carrying two cardboard boxes.

“Do you want some biscuits?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Biscuits, chocolate, you name it!”

What was his game? Had he stolen the biscuits? Were biscuits and chocolate a code name for crack and heroin? Who knows? I didn’t want to stick around to find out. Besides, I wasn’t hungry.

“No but thank you,” I said and watched him march down the street, carrying his cardboard boxes, scouring the quiet streets for potential customers.

“What was that about?” I said, turning to Louise. Louise, however, was not there. She had taken a tumble over a curb and was sat on the floor. I blame biscuit man for this — a menace to society.

Gladly the only thing wounded was Louise’s pride and she was fighting fit to go on to her hen do at the weekend. It sounds like they had a terrific time and she returned in high spirits carrying gifts, cards and a book full of photographs. I returned from my stag do with a headache and broken sunglasses.

On this topic I have just been on my second stag do. This is one too many stag dos, isn’t it? Stag do 2 was a cycling weekend in Yorkshire with my dad and brother. Things got off to a wild start when my dad picked me up and, halfway back to his, I realized I’d forgotten my Hi Vis cycling coat. Disaster. This error cost us nearly an hour, dinner was delayed and a mooted game of Pétanque bit the dust.

We went to the a blues bar on Friday, something that Louise usually vetoes when suggested. While the cat’s away… For the occasion my dad gave me a leather jacket which he’d worn a couple of times before deciding it didn’t suit him. Shrewd business. It was a great evening. The band were good so I shook hands with the lead singer at the end of the set to tell him this. High praise indeed. Wearing a leather jacket, tapping my foot and drinking ale provided an insight into my impending middle age and it doesn’t look like there’s anything to fear.

The next day I awoke with a hangover and feeling of dread about cycling all day. Still, I put on a brave face as my dad made us a coffee. After a couple of sips, he said, “this tastes a bit weird?” and looked in his cup to find a Crayola crayon.

What happens on the stag do stays on the stag do.

The morning’s cycling passed by in a nauseous blur but morale picked up after a lunch break where my brother ordered not one but two sausage sandwiches. The North Yorkshire countryside is, of course, beautiful and the afternoon’s ride was excellent, although not quite excellent enough to take up my dad’s suggestion and take a seven-mile detour to see something that “looks a bit like Stonehenge.”

We stopped for an ale in a village pub where I took of my gloves (you might remember these gloves from paragraph 4) to see that all of my fingertips had turned white. Depending on who you speak to this either means I have good or terrible circulation. I should probably speak to a doctor about it, although I went to the doctor’s surgery last week and filled in all the forms only for the receptionist to say, “Sorry love, wrong catchment area,” and return to her computer screen. I bet she was playing Solitaire.

My hands had piqued the interest of a man sat on an adjacent table, smoking an e-cigarette.

“Bloody hell, pal. Your hands look horrendous.”

“Thanks man.”

After his charming opening gambit, he surprisingly turned out to be an okay guy, expressing sympathy as he suffers from the same issue. Using a jackhammer at work, he told me, was the catalyst.

Our accommodation for the night was a Wetherspoon’s hotel in Ripon. I didn’t know they’d branched out into hotels? It appears that Wetherspoon’s are taking over the world. It was a nice place and the staff were friendly but, at one point, a crying woman charged past me in the corridor to throw up in a sink. I suppose it’s reassuring to see that they aren’t drastically rebranding.

We had a good night out in the bright lights of Ripon but dinner wasn’t up to much. Hungry from the day’s cycling we went in the first place we came across, an Italian restaurant up a cobbled side street. Here, we made the common error of eating too many bread-based starters and I was nearly full before my main course, a salty substandard calzone, arrived. I left feeling bloated, dehydrated and exhausted.

At least there were no ex-employers or primary school teachers to be seen.

*

I gave dry January a go and lasted three weeks which is enough, isn’t it? I’m not normally a fan of such fads. Movember might be for a good cause but it seems that hardly anybody donates anything to charity and it is just men posting pictures of their questionable facial hair on Facebook in the hope of attracting girls’ attention.

“Nice tash, Ryan! LOL.”

“Thanks babe. How’s things?x”

Even people who weren’t doing the ice bucket challenge were irksome as they made a song and dance about their moral standpoint:

“I choose to donate to charity of my own accord. I DO NOT agree with wasting water!”

“Aww, too right Ryan!”

“Thanks babe. Wanna meet up?x”

I went for dry January because, without trying to show off — “Quiet one last night, just the eight pints” — I had been drinking too much. My weekly unit intake began sneaking up after I’d “smashed” a 10K run in early November. Will people stop saying smashed soon? I hope so. For the record, my time in the run was modest, not a smashing, but it represented a last stab at wholesomeness before the slippery slide into the festive season and, by mid-November, the Wednesday night glass of red had become an 8.57 pm dash to Patel’s to buy a second bottle.

Here are some findings following three weeks of abstinence.

· I felt marginally cheerier at work. I didn’t, for example, get angry with my colleague when he did his daily, unbelievably-loud sneeze.

· I had slightly more energy, taking the bins out without Louise having to ask twice before clattering around deliberately noisily until I step in.

· The self-satisfaction you get from waking up at 8am on a Saturday and going out for the day is outweighed by being unable to celebrate with a pint.

· My friends liked me less.

· Camomile tea is nice but saying “Camomile Heskey” has a short shelf life.

The results, then, were unspectacular and I probably won’t do it next January. So, there you go.

Thanks for reading.

Alcohol aside, Louise and I are trying to get in shape as our wedding is fast approaching. The big day is in less than five months, which isn’t long. I once waited for five months for my CRB check to come back.

Undeterred by our fruitless first foray into fitness classes, we have started weekly personal training sessions with a mate (I’ve only recently learned how to do those hyperlinks so expect an annoying influx in future musings.) As my pal was demonstrating how to hold a heavy metal bar, he asked me if I wanted triceps like his. The answer was, of course, yes. He does exercise for a living, after all. He got Louise and I to run up and down his street, taking it in turns to give one another piggy backs. A senior colleague of mine happens to be his next-door neighbour and I remain hopeful that she didn’t look out of her window as Louise was carrying me on her back, sweating and swearing. How do you explain that?

Louise is fully committed to this new healthy lifestyle. She doesn’t do things in half-measures. She has watched the TV series, Dexter, in its entirety. (Were 8 series necessary?) Her commitment was evidenced when I found a new book in our living room which wasn’t there when I left for work. Flicking through, I followed the adventures of a lycra-clad Scandinavian woman who eats carrot sticks, meditates on white-sand beaches and rides horses through meadows. Riding horses is good for mindfulness, our beautiful host tells us. I disagree; as a child, I rode a horse on a family holiday in Majorca. My horse got angry and started fighting another horse while I was on his back. I felt terrified, not mindful. Perhaps the Scandinavian’s methods are flawed?

My pals and I went to the opening night of the swanky new casino in Leeds on Thursday evening. It is excellent and, as long I can stop when the fun stops, it will be a great addition to the city. It represents a step up from Napoleons which was apparent in the queue when the bouncer told a man that he would have to remove his baseball cap if he wanted to come in. The man was far too reluctant to do this, claiming that his ears were cold. It was warm inside and caps don’t cover ears, so I thought this odd.

The casino was covered in sparkling ribbons and giant balloons, everyone was immaculately dressed and we rubbed shoulders with celebrities — I stood next to the Look North weatherman at the bar and was genuinely star struck. We drank fancy cocktails, won handsomely on blackjack and had a terrific evening. The only snag was that casinos don’t have clocks and when we left, it was 1am, which is at least ninety minutes too late for a Thursday. My pal, worried that his wife might be annoyed with the late return, managed to get hold of one of a giant balloons and took a great deal of effort to squeeze it into our taxi home. There’s only so long you can be cross with a man when he has given you a balloon so large it contains smaller balloons, isn’t there?

Predictably enough, I didn’t feel too clever at work the following day. Around eleven am, the office had fallen into the quiet lull that follows the Friday bacon sandwiches. I was sat staring at the non-moving small clock at the bottom of my screen, my mind drifting. Calm. Silence.

“ACHOOO!!!”

I wanted to punch him in the face.

“Alright, Luke, how’s it going?”

Mr. Patel has called me Luke the last three times I’ve been into his shop.

“Not bad,” I said, “just been playing football.”

“I played football last night. We won.”

“Great, what was the score?”

“Well, let me tell you the story, Luke.”

He handed me my change and I leaned on the checkout, making myself comfortable.

“We were three-one down, then we pulled it back to nil-nil. Then I made an amazing save, kicked it out to our striker and he scored. One-nil. Unbelievable!”

Does he understand the rules? Can he count? I checked my change carefully.

“Right, well done. See you later then.”

“Bye, Luke.”

I left the shop feeling confused, which often happens after my conversations with Mr. Patel. There is really no excuse for him calling me Luke. Earlier this year, I crashed my car and dented his van, so we exchanged personal details.

The crash happened twenty metres away from my house. Louise and I had just moved onto the street, so this was a solid introduction to our new neighbours. I was partially to blame but the sun was the real villain. Blinding.

I’d just passed my test at the third time of asking, which was a huge relief. Credit must go to my driving instructor, Harry, a man in his sixties who always wore a black shirt and sunglasses and liked drinking Carling, though not at work, he assured me with a chuckle. Several times.

Harry never met Louise and, other than the odd comment, I hadn’t mentioned her much. For some reason, however, he’d decided that she was a dangerous driver.

“This is a thirty zone, slow down. Just because your missus drives quickly doesn’t mean you should.”

“I bet your missus would have overtaken that truck, Andy. Believe me, that would have been a bad move.”

This wasn’t the only thing Harry made assumptions about. During one lesson, we were in an industrial estate, practicing reversing around a corner when he said.

“I was once driving along a country road at night and I saw a cyclist with no lights on. I didn’t hit him but I could have done. What was he thinking?”

“I don’t know, Harry.”

“Do you know what I think, Andy?” He said, looking out the window wistfully. “I think he’d decided that this world was no longer for him. He’d had enough.”

I thought this a rather bleak conclusion to draw and wondered how many other people Harry had deemed suicidal with little evidence over the years.

Anyway, I digress. This is supposed to be a festive blog and I haven’t touched on Christmas yet. Perhaps I’ll send Mr. Patel a Christmas card so that he knows my name? There we go. Seamless.

Following a lack of interest, my work Christmas do was postponed until the new year. It needs rebranding really but “midweek drink in January” doesn’t have the same ring, does it?

I have been to one party, at least. Louise and I started ballroom dancing classes a few weeks ago and, despite our limited talents, were invited to the Christmas dance (on the proviso that we paid a fiver each and brought a bottle of wine.)

We were among the first to arrive at Hawksworth Village Hall and sat nervously on the edge of the dance floor. A pair of gentlemen in their eighties strolled in; David and Everett.

“Nice to meet you, how are you?” I asked Everett.

“Well, I’ve been to the doctors today. I’ve got a cough.”

“Sorry to hear that. It’s been going round hasn’t it? I had a cough last week.”

“Mine has lasted for thirty years.”

“Oh.”

By the time the first song — a waltz version of Mistletoe and Wine — had started, around twenty people had arrived. Louise does — and always will I fear — have issues with me leading but it went okay. We managed to get around the dance floor without clattering into anybody, anyway.

The second dance was a Rumba, something which I cannot do. David ambled over to us. His trousers were pulled up to his armpits.

“May I dance with the lady?”

As David whisked Louise off and began showing her the steps, I was put with a middle-aged lady, who was wearing a fancy frock.

“So, do you know the Rumba?” she asked.

“Nope, not at all. You?”

“Yes, I suppose I’ll have to lead then?”

The next five minutes were painful. I couldn’t get the steps and kept standing on my partner’s feet. She was not having a good time and kept longingly looking at Everett who was skilfully doing the New Yorker.

When the dance eventually finished, my partner left to get some Pringles and didn’t return. Besides me, David continued to stand with Louise. He was holding her hand.

The next dance was the Cha-cha-cha.

“May I dance with the lady again?” David asked me.

“Well, we know this one,” I said, grabbing Louise’s available hand firmly.

One of our teachers overheard us.

“No, you don’t know this one. You haven’t learned it yet.”

For fuck’s sake.

“I’ll have to show her then,” David said, smiling at Louise. “Just so you know, I sometimes add my own moves.”

This time, I was partnered with another middle-aged lady who was also a better dancer than me. She told me her husband had left. I wasn’t sure whether she meant he’d left dancing classes or left her altogether.

Again, I was clumsy and off-the-pace. In the corner of my eye, I saw David twirling Louise around.

When the music stopped, David remained holding Louise’s hand once again. Momentarily forgetting that David was well into his eighties, I felt a pang of envy in my stomach. Get off her, David. Stop holding her hand. Are men genetically programmed to feel this kind of jealousy, whoever the rival? Had David been a muscular twenty-eight-year-old at Oceana, this would been more understandable but I knew I was being irrational. I told myself to stop being so ridiculous and calmed down. David was a nice, old guy. He wasn’t trying to steal my woman. Was he?

“Next up, we are doing quick-step,” the teacher shouted out.

“May I…” David began to ask.

“No. We definitely know this one.”

We didn’t know it. I marched off to pour myself a Buck’s Fizz.

Dancing is one of several new hobbies that we’ve tried our hand at this year. We’ve also done military fitness classes, dog walking and meditation. I reckon there’s probably something in meditation but at the last class, a middle-aged man in an Airwalk t-shirt got out a didgeridoo and started a “sound bath” while a woman in a floral dress talked about “gentle loving kindness.” I felt comfortably out of my comfort zone and considered whether we were victim to a candid camera prank. If you’re thinking that these extra curricular activities make me reek of being white and middle-class, think again; over the past few months, my friends and I have been having regular games nights, where we play board games, eat cheese boards and drink red wine. On these nights, we sometimes listen to Skepta.

Louise loves Christmas, which is all well and good but can be trying. Last week, my mum took me to town to pick some new clothes as a Christmas present. Among the clothes was a smart new jumper, something I’m in desperate need of, having been wearing the same frayed black cardigan for several years now. I took it home, excited about putting it on. The new me.

“What are you doing?” Louise asked, scowling as I took it out of the bag. “That’s a Christmas present, you need to wrap it up and put it under the tree.”

I’m spending Christmas in Leeds for the first time in six years and it will be Louise’s first festive period up North. I’m a bit nervous about going to the Original Oak on Christmas Eve as per tradition. Am I too old for it now? Will it have changed? Will people think I have changed? I won’t have changed clothes since last time, I suppose. I do enjoy Christmas Eve and I’m looking forward to showing Louise the classic pub, midnight mass, Rajiput’s sequence. What better way to start your Christmas?

I’m hoping to get my new book finished over the holidays too but this depends on a) whether or not I get a box-set for Christmas and b) how committed I am to turning my Fantasy Football season around. Either way, it’s nearly finished so fingers crossed it will come out in the not too distant future. That’s so vague, isn’t it? I might as well say in due course.

Right, I’m off to Patel’s.

Merry Christmas.

x

Hello pals of Goodreads,

Here is an excerpt from the book I am writing at present.

https://medium.com/@andyc1421/headset...

Please have a read if you've got a spare few minutes.

Cheers!

Andy

Good evening pals,

Here is a short tale about an annoying man I met a few years ago. Please have a read if you've got a spare five minutes.

https://medium.com/@andyc1421/the-ann...

Cheers!

Andy

Good morning pals,

Here is my latest blog, Euro Musings. Not to be confused with the EU Referendum, it is about our recent trip to France to watch the football.

https://medium.com/@and…/euro-musings...…

Please have a read if you've got a few minutes (and fancy reading about something other than the EU Referendum.)

Cheers,

Andy

“I’ve signed us up to a military fitness class.”

“I’m sorry?”

I had zero recollection of ever expressing an interest in such a thing.

“The first class is a taster so it’s free.”

Well, in that case.

This isn’t the first time Louise has made decisions without consulting me.

“Louise, who’s that man in our garden?”

“Oh, that’s just Joe. He’s our gardener.”

“Our garden’s pretty small, do we need a gardener?”

“Do you know how much a lawnmower costs these days?”

“No.” I opened the window. “Hi Joe.”

I reluctantly agreed to go to the military fitness class, although threw a strop akin to how I acted before classical guitar lessons when I was eleven, deliberately dawdling as I put my shoes on.

“Hurry up, we’re going to be late.”

“I don’t care. I don’t even want to go.”

As is usually the case when you do new things with people you don’t know, the opening few minutes of standing around unsure what to do or whether to strike up a conversation were unbearable. After giving a flat smile and raised eyebrows to a man in a Tough Mudder t-shirt, a handsome chap in camouflaged trousers shouted out.

“Fix up, look sharp. Grab your bibs.”

His biceps were the size of my head. If I stick with this, will I look like him one day?

The bibs signified difficulty level with red for easiest, blue for medium and green for hardest. This presented me with an early dilemma; while I’m no Iron Man, I’m reasonably fit so fancied myself to be fine as a blue, maybe even a green? Alas I am a pathetic loser and wanted to stay with Louise, who’d gone for red. I didn’t want to be paired up with a stranger for any of the exercises. As I pulled on my bib which was meant for a child, I was aware of dismissive glances from the man in the Tough Mudder t-shirt. He’d gone for a green bib. As he sprinted past me on the warmup jog, I felt a strong urge to ankle tap him.

We dispersed into our groups and our instructor shouted out.

“Right, get with someone who is a similar size to you.”

Louise is a lot smaller than me.

The next twenty minutes was spent grappling, piggybacking and commando rolling on the floor with sweat-dripping, middle-aged men, one of whom was far too competitive in the foot wrestle with gritted teeth and pulsating temples. I didn’t know foot wrestling was a thing?

After this, there was a sprint to and from a distant tree, where you had to grab a leaf to show you weren’t cheating, before we were divided into groups of four. My plans to remain by Louise’s side for the entirety of the class were thwarted once again as I ended up in a group with three women, one of whom had a blue bib on. A superior. My hay-fever had started up and my face was red and puffy, eyes streaming.

“So, is this your first class?” She asked.

“How did you guess?”

In one of the games, I had to put a bib in my shorts, while two women tried to prevent the woman in the blue bib from grabbing it. A weird game, which ended in predictable humiliation. My defences were breached and the grabber made a lunge, missed the bib and pulled my shorts down. Fully down. Ankles.

The class eventually ended and I walked back to the carpark near, but not with, a couple of the guys I’d been grappling with earlier. They were immersed in a conversation about an upcoming triathlon. I remained silent, rubbing my eyes with pollen-covered hands and trying to look like I was wiping sweat off my face, but actually blowing my nose on my t-shirt. I looked over to see Louise jesting and laughing with a couple of older women. Women are better at this sort of thing aren’t they?

“So, did you enjoy it?” Our instructor asked, leaning on his van.

Despite the distresses of the last hour, I was feeling oddly happy; relieved that it was over and post-exercise endorphins flying around. Near euphoria in fact.

“Yes, it was good.”

“Will you be doing it again then?” He asked.

“Where do I sign?”

They’ve got you haven’t they?

The following week, I had a worse experience at the same park. One evening, Louise was sat scrolling through her phone, grinning which is always ominous.

“Andy…”

“What?”

“I’ve signed us up to walk other people’s dogs.”

“Why?”

“It will be fun.”

It wasn’t fun.

We were met by a fraught-looking lady with a dog pulling hard on its lead, wagging its tail. He ran over and jumped straight up to my chest, making me stumble backwards.

“He’s not for the faint-hearted.” The woman said. “Haha.”

What this actually meant was; he’s completely fucking mental. Whichever direction you wanted to tried to walk in, he yanked his head the other way, causing friction burns on your hands. When he was let off his lead, he got into a fight with another dog and as Louise bent down to untangle his lead, he head-butted her and slobbered on her nose. I’d made my decision about making this a regular thing long before the woman said;

“You’ve got to be careful with him around children. He sometimes thinks that they are other dogs.”

Joining fitness classes and walking other people’s dogs is a telling sign that I am entering the next stage of life. This was further exemplified when I attempted a night out a couple of weeks ago. I’d won some money on the football so, spontaneously (after uhming and ahhing for three hours), decided to go to town. In the first venue, a rammed cocktail bar, I remember standing with a pint of lukewarm Amstel, unable to hear anything anyone was saying and not knowing where to stand, thinking; is this fun? After finally finding a spot to sit down, I got into conversation with a digital marketer who had a business on the side selling penis enlargers on the internet. It’s apparently lucrative - a high markup. I went home at eleven, catching the tail end of Match of the Day.

The end of your twenties is not all bleak. Last week two of my best friends got engaged - to their girlfriends not to each other - and a couple Louise and I are good pals with had a baby daughter, which is all great news isn’t it? Weddings and babies are flying in from all angles at present. How long does this stage go on for? Eight years?

I enjoy stag dos, although on the last one I went on, my friend and I got into a pickle. We’d inadvertently dispersed from the rest of our pals and found ourselves strolling the streets of Cologne at 3am.

“Shall we get a taxi back?” I asked.

“Do you have the address?”

“No.”

The schoolboy error of arriving, overexcited, in a city at night, not taking in your surroundings whatsoever and failing to write down your address. We’ve all done it haven’t we? After stomping the streets for two hours, the sun was beginning to rise so we gave up and stayed in a by-the-hour room in a motel, accompanied by a life-size statue of a Red Indian wielding a spear.

While my Monday Musings break has gone on for longer than planned, I have been writing a lot lately. My ideas for a second book are wavering as I’ve found that even when I try to pull away from it, almost everything I write is based on my real life. I lack the imagination for pure fiction. Much of my first book was loosely - and at times not so loosely - based on real happenings, but at the time, I was living in Hong Kong, arguably a more interesting setting than Horsforth.

I’m considering a non-fiction book of anecdotal tales. Basically just a much longer, hopefully better-structured version of what you are reading now. I’m confident I could think up enough material; last week I started writing about my first night out in a club called Bassment (not a spelling mistake but a clever play on words by the way) and it ended up as long as my final year dissertation was at university. The issue is, whether or not people actually give a shit. It’s a very self-indulgent thing to do.

A non-fiction book may just be a flash in the pan idea. I tend to be influenced by whatever I’m currently reading and at the moment, I’m enjoying Karl Ove Knaussgard’s books. Louise was unimpressed to see me ordering a poster of him smoking a cigarette for £16.99 minutes after I’d said I couldn’t afford to go and see the new X-Men film. There are nagging concerns that I’m not quite in his league however so who knows what the future holds. It remains to be seen whether there is a market for a book about a guy who moves back from Hong Kong, has a shit job for a while, fails his driving test a couple of times and signs up for a military fitness class.

One summer evening when I was twelve, I was walking to the park. I was bouncing a deflated basketball and minding my own business when I was interrupted by a kid I had never seen before. He was tall and lithe with blond hair and freckles.

“So, you like basketball then?”

“Um, yes.”

He fell into my stride uninvited and told me that he too liked basketball, but didn’t play as much as he’d like to. Who the hell was this confident kid? He seemed about my age and was friendly enough but it didn’t seem normal to me to just start talking to someone you don’t know on the street. It still doesn’t. Is it?

We chatted idly for a few minutes before he turned up his drive, bid me farewell and I carried on walking to the park, bouncing my deflated basketball.

A year or so later, I was on the bus home from school when I saw the kid again, a couple of stops from my house. He beckoned me to get off which I did. He looked pleased with himself, like he had a plan.

I walked down the road with him and we chatted. He told me that he had a couple of friends at my school, which I didn’t doubt if he approached everyone who was walking down the road and befriended them. Suddenly, he started rummaging around in a bush and unearthed a bottle of Lambrini, the cheap wine synonymous with teenagers and chronic alcoholics. He’d stashed it there the previous Friday, he told me. The circumstances surrounding this were unclear.

“Let’s down it,” he said, his excitement contagious.

We headed to a park a few minutes away and took it in turns to neck the drink until the bottle was empty. As soon as we had finished it, I was hit with a deep sinking feeling. I’d said I would go straight home from school as my grandparents were over for an early dinner. Shit. I’d only been with him for fifteen minutes.

Giggling, we said goodbye and I stumbled back to my house, feeling increasingly intoxicated as the sugary wine worked its dubious magic. By the time I’d got home, I was dizzy and felt sick. I sat at the dinner table with my grandparents, picking at my fish fingers and chips, barely saying a word. If I did, it would be apparent that I was drunk. At 4pm on a Monday. Aged thirteen. My grandparents would be appalled. It was the quickest, most pointless booze-up I’ve ever been part of. It was, however, the first adventure of many for the confident kid and I.

Last Friday was my work night out / 'do.' People go a bit mad on the day of the work do don’t they? From circa 2.30pm, women start applying lipstick and curling their hair and nobody does any work. This would detract from examining the cocktail menu of the bar in intrinsic detail, deciding what you will have for your first drink (in three hours’ time) and who you could pair up with for the 2-4-1 offer, which always gets a bit political. There is heated debate about the best routes and parking spots for the designated drivers too, with people strangely protective of their preferred multi-storey car park.

This was only my second work do at this place, although the first one barely counts. I’d only gone for one drink as I was meeting some, non-work mates later on in the night - the social butterfly that I am. Unfortunately, my phone battery died – which only seems to happen on the rare occasions when I actually need it – so I missed a crucial text informing of a change of plans and ended up sitting alone in a loud bar, watching MTV for an hour, willing them to show up.

They didn’t.

Defeated, I called it a night and reflected on how there were currently two separate and likely enjoyable, night’s out going on and I was on my own on the number one bus, while a gang of teenagers played grime music on their (fully-charged) phones.

There were to be no such mistakes this time around. It was a good evening and I managed not to make too much of a fool of myself, which is always a relief. It’s one thing waking up with a sinking feeling after a night with friends or family, but the workmate sinking feeling is another level. Awful.

The only hiccup was when I made, what I thought was a reasonable quip but nobody laughed. I stupidly and over-confidently assumed that they hadn’t heard me properly and repeated the quip a bit louder. No laugh again. They had heard.

I sought solace in a five-minute conversation with the toilet attendant, who seemed to like me after I paid £1 for a solitary Softmint. He was an agreeable guy although he did continually repeat his crude catchphrases throughout the duration of our chat.

“No money, no honey” was probably the most sophisticated one in his repertoire and it was the first time I’ve heard it from a man in his profession. I usually associate it with men in holiday resorts trying to coax you into their restaurants or into buying wooden elephant ornaments. Thinking about it, it’s not really relevant in that context is it? It rhymes though doesn’t it? Catchy. That’s the main thing.

After the Softmint and gathering my thoughts, I got through the rest of the night unscathed and had a good time. I resisted the temptation to dance, which is no bad thing and found myself discussing topics ranging from Buddhism to Finnish rockers, The Rasmus with a team leader. There were no faux pas to compete with a night out at a previous job where I’d thought disclosing to my manager that we spent every Friday afternoon holding a secret fifty-question football quiz was a good idea.

Having returned home at a reasonable hour, dignity intact, I felt pleased with myself. Louise had fallen asleep on the sofa in front of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which she has, I believe, started watching from the very beginning again. She was not interested when I woke her with tales of my conversation with the toilet attendant and swiftly went upstairs to bed.

Feeling sociable and still in night-out mode, I grabbed an ale and turned on the computer, which is never a good idea.

The next morning, I woke up with 'In the Shadows' by The Rasmus in my head, felt a niggling fear then read through and a host of nonsensical Tweets to minor celebrities and a series of grammatically flawed Facebook comments to pals. Just when I'd thought I was safe, there it was. The familiar sinking feeling.

So close.

On the topic of cringe-worthy Facebook behaviour (of which there is lots), a friend of mine has a joke at the moment where he replies to posts from many moons ago, thus unearthing embarrassing exchanges. This is one of those things that’s funny until it’s your turn and his recently dug-up post of mine made me realize that if I met my nineteen-year-old self, I wouldn’t like him. We wouldn’t get on. That guy was an idiot.

The post was littered with bad spelling and some frankly unnecessary swear words as I talked about upcoming plans to see a DJ in a nightclub, using words such as ‘epic’ and ‘legend.’ In defence of the nineteen-year-old me, I didn’t understand the concept of Facebook for quite a while; I thought that if you wrote on someone’s wall, only they could see it. That’s no excuse though.

Idiot.

If memory serves me correct, at the nightclub in question, I was turned down by laughing bouncers at the door because I was wearing an ill-fitting shirt which I’d stolen from my dad. Bouncers have never seemed to like me.

“Not tonight mate.”

“Why not, you’ve let everyone else in?”

“Leave.”

This is probably a bit of a worry as to what people’s first impressions of me are; are bouncers representative of wider society?

Unperturbed by my volatile relationship with doormen, from between the ages of seventeen to twenty, I erroneously thought I was genuinely quite cool. I tried to make people aware of this with my aforementioned wise words on nightlife (I was a drum and bass fan despite not actually liking it) and adding a hint of streetwise slang to my vocabulary. I also had bleached highlights in my hair and - when not in my dad’s work clothes – wore baggy jeans, brightly coloured Nike Air t-shirts and, on occasion, sweatbands. Those were the days. Or were they?

If my friend unearthed a Facebook post from the twenty-nine-year-old me a decade from now, I wonder if it would evoke a similarly negative response? Would I look back with disgust thinking, I was such an idiot back then? If he picked out anything I wrote on Friday night, probably yes.

The Peter Andre concert was not a success. I feared the worst when, stood at the bar, I overheard a conversation between women in their fifties who were wearing pink cowboy hats. Here is a snippet:

“Gina, did you wear your new bikini in Tenerife?”

“I certainly did. I’d love to show Pete my new bikini! If you know what I mean?”

What Gina was saying seemed fairly self-explanatory, which begs the question - was “If you know what I mean?” necessary?

Pete was wearing a glittery belt and took us on a nostalgic / unbearable tour of his entire back catalogue. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of those “So bad it was actually good! LOL.” – things and we left before Mysterious Girl. I was in a bad mood because I’m selfish and Louise hadn’t enjoyed my present and Louise was in a bad mood because she had just sat through an extended version of Insania.

There was a poignant moment as we walked through town, fraught and in silence to see the delighted crowd spilling out of the theatre down the road, talking about how fantastic Swan Lake had been.

I’d got this one wrong.

We, at least, managed to get the last train home although this was a close shave after I’d tried to redeem myself by taking us on a superfluous short cut. I didn’t get a seat and was stood in the aisle near a couple of punk rock women - the type who keep their festival wristbands on for years - in their early twenties. They were animatedly discussing their work for charities and dyed, matted dreadlocks notwithstanding, seemed like a pleasant pair. I listened in jealously, reminiscing about the pre-Andre days when Louise and I used to have nice conversations. When the train stopped, the women got up and I offered them a friendly, flat smile and raised eyebrows.

They didn’t smile back. One of them was scowling.

“Are you just gonna stand there? I need to get off. Move man.”

Move man?

I was shocked. They’d seemed so nice? Perhaps I’m not as good a judge of character as I’d thought? I’m certainly not a good judge of what entails a good night out for a woman’s twenty eighth birthday.

An evening to forget although I can confirm that Louise enjoyed her bath salts.

While it is still too soon to laugh about the Andre debacle, the fallout didn’t last too long and Louise and I enjoyed a nice weekend. This is mostly down to the fact that it is nearly spring so it isn’t cold and shit all the time. Life is considerably better when you can do things other than binge drink or watch box sets for weekend entertainment.

The plan was to go for a long bike ride with a group of pals on Sunday, although promising numbers rapidly dropped to two, then eventually zero. I’m quickly learning that the large thumb icon on Facebook should not be taken as confirmation that someone is in. I was guilty of large thumb misuse myself and pulled out on the day, citing a bad Asda curry on Saturday night.

Those insufferable Just Eat adverts have made me reluctant to ever order takeaway again. (If you are thinking; “They might be bad adverts, but you are talking about them aren’t you eh? They’ve got you! Clever advertising!” I politely suggest that you piss off.) An important lesson was learnt though; don’t try and skimp and go for supermarket versions of takeaways. You save about £3, it’s nowhere near as nice and you feel ill the next day.

Instead of the peloton, Louise and I went for a hike (gentle stroll) along the Meanwood Valley trail, a walk my dad used to take me on when I was a kid. One of the highlights of the walk is an old viaduct in the woods, which is a good five metres high. I have hazy memories of my dad not forbidding, but actively encouraging my brother and I to climb around some sharply spiked fencing and walk along the top, which is perilously narrow. This was fun at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, may have been slightly irresponsible parenting?

The better weather also means that tennis is back on and tennis is, of course, excellent. The first time I played tennis against Louise was last year. As we were warming up, I thought I’d show off by practicing my fast serve, which can be quite useful, if wildly inaccurate. I tossed the ball up high and pinged it with the sweet spot. A perfect connection. It felt great. As soon as the ball left my racket, satisfaction turned to alarm as I looked up and over the net. Louise had turned her back and was bending down and fumbling around with her handbag on the floor. As the ball soared through the air, everything became slow motion until time almost stood still. I could see exactly what was unfolding and was powerless to stop it.

“Watch out!!”

It was, of course, too late.

The ball bounced, skipped up off the tarmac and smacked the crouching Louise plumb in the side of her head.

No!

Feeling like an utter brute, I ran over to apologize profusely and check that she was okay.

“I’m so sorry. It was a complete accident. I didn’t….”

“It’s fine.” Louise said. And she was fine. Completely fine. Unfazed. She was chuckling.

“At least you didn’t hit a fast serve. That might have hurt me.”

This was not even intended as a (fully deserved) spiteful comeback to make me doubt my fast-serving ability. She genuinely didn’t think the ball had been going very fast. I’d thought it was as good a serve as I’ve ever hit. Fuming. Guilt, regret and emasculation within five seconds. A bad combo.

Spring is as good as it gets for me. A lovely respite in between rain and darkness and the May emergence of hay-fever, which annually rears its ugly head to derail my summer. I’ve been a hay-fever sufferer for two decades now - a hay-fever veteran you might (but probably won’t) say. Every year I forget about it until one morning I wake up with itching red slits for eyes and sneeze nine times in a row. I’ve heard that if you take hay-fever tablets a few weeks before it usually strikes, it can be an effective barrier. A lady I used to work with took this to the extreme and took them every day, all year round. Fair enough I suppose, although in December, I reckon you’re probably safe?

While I enjoy spring and fear summer, I’m sure that most people can’t wait for summer. Gina, for instance. A great chance to show off that bikini.

@andyc1421

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