My First Serious Girlfriend...
...(me 16 she 15 at the time - I'm 33 now) was, with hindsight, an intolerably pretentious twat who has left me with a lasting and very strong dislike of luvvies and other such stuck-up arty types. I mean, the girl grew up on the same rough-as-fuck council estate as I did, rubbing shoulders with scrotes, slappers, dealers and care-in-the-community types. You'd think this would instil a sense of what-really-matters, but no.

Instead she developed and displayed a feigned fondness for all kinds of stuff, including classical music (which she pretty much knew fuck-all about), 'contemporary' poets (a reading taste she seemed to think gelled seamlessly with the Mills & Boon bollocks she read the rest of the time - she used to spout dramatic lines from those at me expecting to be taken seriously), amateur dramatics (christ on a fucking trike), topical debates (which for her was pretty much the same thing as amateur dramatics) and last but not least, she read the Guardian (at 15 - a habit basically copied from her dad who was, to be fair to the bloke, a supercilious prick) and crowed proudly about it when it came up in conversation (which it did - often).

What else? Oh yeah, she went to tap-dancing class twice a week with equal levels of proud crowing and added tap routines to demonstrate her skill, whether they were requested/appropriate or not. Tap-dancing though, for fuck's sake - Lionel Blairy-type noisy shoesegs shee-hite.

Oh, I also loathe Vivaldi, Hallmark posters, Garfield and Dirty Dancing because of her but then that probably would've been true now even without her help.

In her favour though, even at 15 she went like a train - probably explains why I overlooked her appalling luvviness for so long. Despicably shallow I admit, but I was in good company for it, trust me.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Mon 3 Oct 2005, 12:58, Reply)