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.

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