There's a Storm Coming... Part I

Hi there Blog Fans,

I’ve been meaning to post this for ages, but kept forgetting to do it or get around to it so please forgive my uselessness. It’s late in the afternoon and I am now here, writing for you, my public. My 9 adoring fans. I’m here to tell you more from the unfortunate, tragic, but undoubtedly hilarious sitcom that is my love-life.

When I started writing this entry, there wasn’t much to tell and I was seeing what I thought was a lovely, emotionally stable, beautiful, funny, intelligent young lady who was going to make me happy. But that, obviously, went tits-up. And in hilarious fashion. Again. I shall blog that over the next week or so when I get various personal things sorted out over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, here is what I started writing a few weeks ago...

There's a Storm Coming - Part I

Unfortunately, there’s not much currently to tell you, so I instead have to delve into my past to kind of give you all a grounding of where this all came from. I’m not talking ancient history, you understand, after all we’ve all had those stories from our teenage years when you had no idea what you were doing when it came to girls, your friends’ opinion was more important than your own, and the pinnacle of your Friday night was the slightest chance of getting tops off and fingers with Melissa Coles on the village cricket square after The Boot had served last orders. I’m talking about the bruised and battered tales of the post University life, the tales from adulthood, the stuff that has made me into the (poor, broken, shell of a) man that stands before you today.

There are plenty that will make you laugh and cry in equal measure, and we’ll get through them all in time. The Kiwi girl who wouldn’t take no for an answer, the kind-of-famous woman who became my stalker and who would wait for me outside my work, the Swedish dominatrix, bloody loads of them. But first, let me take you back to the summer of 2007 and the girl whom I thought was the love of my life and who shall henceforth be known as L***a.

I have often been accused of falling in love with women far too easily, and to a degree that’s true. The very nature of my personality is such that I throw myself into new things 100% - that’s who I am and that’s what I do and I’m completely and utterly fine with that. At the moment that thing is playing badminton with people with work followed by a pub quiz, but other times it could be anything – including a new woman in my life. But with hindsight and the benefit of age and experience I’ve come to know that that feeling I get, shit – the feeling that we all get – in the opening months of a courtship isn’t love, but a mixture of things. Lust, certainly. Need, maybe. Happiness and sheer glee, probably. But the overwhelming feeling is actually that of “Thank fuck – I’ve found someone who wants to spend time with me, laugh at my jokes, cuddle me and have sex with me”. We are human beings. We use c. 10% of our thinking organ. We are simple creatures, and whether you want to believe me or not, that is what that feeling you get in the nascent stages of a relationship is. Always.

Well, nearly always. There will be a couple of exceptions in your lifetime when it is something more than that. And these are the relationships that play the biggest parts in your life. L***a was one of those for me.

I’ll never forget the first time I met her. It was outside London Bridge Station and we had arranged to meet for a drink after work one night. She got lost coming out of one of the 342 exits there are out of that station and phoned for directions as to where I was. She had a beautiful speaking voice – perfect diction, no discernible accent... she could have been the voiceover for a Palmolive ad, such was the sultry tone that came through the speaker of my phone. We eventually found each other and as she came towards me I literally had to take a deep breath as though I had been winded by a punch to my gut. She was stunning. Absolutely stunning. Red, shoulder length hair framing a face that would enrapture Dorian Gray such was its unquestionable beauty. Deep, chocolatey brown eyes, and a perfect smile bordered with cherry red lips. She was a classic beauty from any generation and at that moment I would have done pretty much anything she asked of me. We then walked off in the vague direction of a local hostelry and sparked up small talk about our hatred of London Transport and for some reason soon came onto tales of working as a hand model in her teens – the most random of sideways steps, I am sure you can imagine.

But I was hooked. Within minutes. I knew there and then that she would be the love or loathe of my life. She was everything I could possibly want in another human being, male or female, friend or lover, and I couldn’t understand how people in the street were walking past her and not noticing. Were it not so self-defeating, I would have grabbed strangers by the scruff of the neck and present them to her, forcing them to acknowledge her excellence. I had never felt like that about Arsenal footballers or Baywatch lifeguards, let alone a real person and I didn’t know what to do with or how to handle this new found emotion.

Sure, when you’re 18, the girl you’re with then is going to be the one for you. You haven’t turned into the person you’re going to be for the rest of your life yet, your emotions and personality haven’t formed fully, and if we all look back to the girls we thought we were going to be with FOREVER I’m sure we’d all feel a little silly but at the same time lucky that we managed to escape. But at the time I was a well-adjusted, emotionally mature 26 year old man with a career in the City of London in the process of buying my first home – I was a man, and was capable of making rational, mature decisions. I had been struck down with quintessential, textbook, love at first sight.

We had a brilliant first date. We never ended up at that ‘local hostelry’ that I spoke of earlier. We walked all the way from London Bridge to Waterloo Bridge, over it and then back on ourselves towards Charing Cross and Leicester Square before ending up at the best Noodle House in Chinatown for a nibble to eat. We then eventually had a drink or two before ending up at Charing Cross Tube where we had a good, long kiss – pretty much the only time we stopped talking the entire evening. From there, I was hooked. I needed her, and the only analogy that comes to mind comes from a friend of mine who drunkenly bought some crack and a pipe on the way home one evening and awoke the next morning thinking of nothing but crack, and the feeling it gave him. He went back to where he bought the stuff but the old man dealer he bought it from wasn’t there – he remains thankful for that to this very day. That’s what I was like the morning after meeting L***a. I wanted to call her straight away, text her, email her, see her, hold her, smell her, talk to her listen to her, kiss her, be around her. It was uncontrollable.

But that was the easy part. The best bit. The feeling that you could float to work the next morning. What was to follow was something remarkable. This instalment is very much the calm before the storm, and whilst this post may seem less hilarious than usual let me assure you that the next two posts that tell the rest of this story will more than make up for it. Oh yes.

There will be tears. Of every kind imaginable.

xx