Redheads - Always dangerous
The sage advice of my brother having split up with the firefanny that over a period of 10 months managed to empty my bank account whilst travelling the country fucking other blokes at my expense.

Long story.

Trouble is, I can't get enough of the ginge, especially the mental ones.

There'd be little difference between Florence Welsh's tits and a decorator's radio if I had my way.
(Worthless wishes he had the brains of a pigeon, Fri 26 Feb 2010, 13:22, 12 replies)

I will click this for the very droll Florence Welch metaphor
ON ONE CONDITION:

Please tell us the long story. A few good stories might drag this qotw topic out of a mire of bad redhead jokes.
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 26 Feb 2010, 13:58, closed)

I really don't think you want
someone droning on about how bad his ex was do you?

Suffice to say, I was naive, she was a very good & inventive liar, mad as a box of frogs & liked taking her knickers off in the presence of other men having first groomed them via forums & messageboards
(Worthless wishes he had the brains of a pigeon, Fri 26 Feb 2010, 14:10, closed)

You never know
If it's well written, it can make a very good read - and be surprisingly cathartic for the author. I speak from experience, coincidentally, as my own rant about one of my exes spent a couple of months on my profile as one of my "most popular qotw answers." (Though that may have been because all my other answers were shit!)

But obviously I'd understand if you'd prefer not to tell it. I'm just curious, really.
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 26 Feb 2010, 14:16, closed)

Me too -
could not be more aggravating than some of the shite on qotw just now.


edit - who Flo Welsh?
( Larry Vest One day at a time, sweet Jesus, FFS., Fri 26 Feb 2010, 14:18, closed)

Her of Florence and the Machine fame
Whether you like the music or not, she's still pretty nice to look at (if a little on the skinny side for my liking)
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 26 Feb 2010, 14:21, closed)

Ah. She.
Didn't know she was Welsh.
Pfft - just read that again.
( Larry Vest One day at a time, sweet Jesus, FFS., Fri 26 Feb 2010, 14:24, closed)

Ok then
I may be some time
(Worthless wishes he had the brains of a pigeon, Fri 26 Feb 2010, 14:25, closed)

I think QOTW should have been about exes
seems a few of us need the catharsis.
(Galahad is out of his gourd on yellow bentines, Fri 26 Feb 2010, 14:39, closed)

The mentalist
I've never been what you might call God's gift to women. Some men have it, others don't. I fall firmly into category B, always tongue-tied and totally afeared of rejection. Easier to do fuck all in the long run than to have them tell you to "fuck off, ugly."

And then she came along. It was a slow burner. Working in HE, she was around some of my classes, but unless she came in with a big sign on her head saying "I'd quite like you to put your little willy in me for the short period of time it takes for you to unload" then I wasn't about to notice any signals, I'm just not tuned in that way. There was a time in a lab where I sort of sensed something, and she once turned up at a cricket match I was playing in, but I just didn't get it. I was 36 at the time BTW. Bright ginger hair, almost orange, not totally genetic natch.

She left my establishment, but a year or two later resurfaced working for a TV company, and made contact, ostensibly on the pretext of researching a show they were making. Flirtatious e-mails were exchanged over a period of a couple of weeks. I don't know what it was, but something prompted me to ask her out. Completely unlike me. An agonising 12 hours or so went by, before she responded, not just positively, but with comments like "I've waited 5 years for you to ask me that"

Result. Liaisons were arranged, fluids were swiftly exchanged the whole thing was gathering frightening pace, but we got on, it wasn't just a sex thing, we made each other laugh, and she seemed to be on my wavelength, unusual for me & that redhead flush thing on the shoulders & neck after they've come is a real turn on.

Within 3 months she moved in, it was a whirlwind, I had completely fallen. I've always been a trusting person in my youth and when people tell me stuff I take it that they have no real reason to lie.
Well I learned eventually that isn't always the case.
She had manged to wangle her working periods so she could work at mine & then make periodic trips back to London for meetings etc, everything was going swimmingly.
My massive naivety allowed her to get away with this for much longer than I should have, since no money was coming in from her end. She made excuses about why there was no cash & promises that it was coming. I found out later that the day she moved in with me she just stopped turning up at work. The long periods on the PC were on msn and stuff, chatting up blokes. 3am finishes weren't uncommon. I used to sleep on the fucking sofa most of the time. Sex wasn't a problem, I was never knocked back, so that wasn't an alerting factor.

Eventually after 10 months (November) I discovered some e-mails in the internet cache of my PC that showed she had been with another bloke back in the May. ("Like hell that's 6 inches, much closer to 7")

That was enough, it's over, allied to the work thing this is enough. However, this was just the start of me piecing together the actual events of the preceding 7 months or so we had lived together. I had to do this via my own detective work, phone records (the itemised £298 quarterly bill was a help!), credit card records and my memory.
She'd been shagging at least 4 other blokes when on her "work trips". I'd been providing the train tickets & spends

The modus operandi was

1. Make contact via e-mail / message board PM
2. Exchange flirty stuff
3. Get a phone number
4. Have phone conversations for a week or two (disguising my home number when phoning out)
5. Meet up & fuck

In other words, pretty much the same way she got me.

The edited highlights of the lies included

1. Travelling to watch her football team play in the play-offs, meeting up with lifelong friends. (Going to Manchester for a shag)

2. Travelling together to the play-off finals where said lifelong friends (who didn't exist) would provide tickets. We managed to find a spare outside the ground for her, I went back to the hotel. Cost me over a grand that weekend.

3. Going to see said lifelong friends for a post-season piss up on her birthday (Travelling to Manchester for a shag) I gave her her birthday presents prior to putting her on the train. She also went back to see this one in his hometown sometime later, again under a "work" pretence.

4. Travelling back to London to see her close friend from TV land who had been caught up in 7/7 whilst pregnant & had lost the baby. (Travelling to Nottingham for a shag). Classy stuff. The woman wasn't pregnant & though they worked for the same company, she hardly knew her never mind being friends (I found this out from a colleague of hers later). She wasn't even caught up in the bombings. This trip occurred towards the end of July because I had to wait until I was paid before I could afford it, meaning 3 weeks of grief for me, she was despearte to see her friend at her time of great need. All very plausible.

5. Travelling to Nottingham for a messageboard meet (shag).

I should point out for the purposes of further ridicule that this was a board that I used as well, I had been on previous meets & had met 3 of the others involved.

It was whilst she was on a further meet that I discovered the above mentioned e-mails & ended it when she got back. She quite possibly bagged a 5th (very married) victim that night, but that one I don't know about.

By this time I was very skint, credit cards maxed out, loans taken out etc. Not to the point of losing my house etc, but it took me 2 years to recover financially.

Knowing a bit more about her history it was clear that she had been very badly treated by various men at all stages of her life & had developed a real talent for lying / creating alternate personalities because of this. I shan't go into more detail, but the woman has some problems that a professional needs to help her with.

Other episodes of uber-mentality included

1. Claiming to have borne & very quickly lost the child of a famous footballer. It was only later that I checked the dates he played for her team & they just didn't tally. Their paths can't have crossed.

2. Claiming not to be able to have kids, then putting me through an agonising 24 hours when she "knew she was pregnant, she could just feel it"

3. Affecting a false name & accent when out at "meets" or speaking to people on the phone (in my absence)

4. Claiming to be rich. In reality she had fuck all apart from 30 quid a week earned doing bar work.

5. Avoiding phone calls from the earlier-mentioned colleague. Turns out this woman is the woman with whom she had spent the previous 18 months in a lesbian relationship, she had just one day nicked off (to move in with me) owing her around 2 grand. It would seem that the initial trips up to see me were under a "work" pretext as well.

6. In the whole 10 months not taking a single incoming phone call / piece of mail (except a parcel of sweets sent to me c/o because...

7. Claiming to all and sundry online she was working in quite a powerful TV role & still living in London. All mention of our relationship was banned.

So, you may ask, how can you be so fucking stupid not to notice all of this shit at the time? Well, I dunno, I'll use the excuse that I was in love. Easy to say all of this in hindisght. As I said I was a trusting person, not the type to examine in minutiae (at the time!) every conversation.

It didn't end there. She moved into an empty house of an old friend around 35 miles away & the whole thing dragged on for another 3 or 4 months. A messy ending, I shouldn't have bothered, but as I say we got on really well, and my mates alwys say if I was shot I'd see it from the gunman's point of view, so I'd go round to hers a coupel of times a week. Plus it was sex on tap, I must admit that for the sake of honesty.

And now, some 4 years hence?

Every woman I see with ginger hair is an immediate attraction. I'm no psychoanalyst, so I don't know if any budding Sigmunds would diagnose me as not over it, but the colour just makes a woman so much more appealing.

The one thing I would say is that trust in me has now all but totally disppeared. I see the way supposed friends treat each other. I have a mate come to me to say that a really close mutual mate has been texting his girlfriend & offering her cunnilingus & sex. I can't believe the number of people who are ruled by their genitalia to the exclusion of all consequences in their mind.

I seriously doubt whether I could ever trust anyone again, I'd be wanting to check text messages & stuff and every time we weren't together I'd be wondering. That's just not acceptable & I can't become that person, so I think I'll stay single & devour large quantities of pornography thank you very much.

Cos I'm a right cheerful fucker me....


As for her? I don't know. She moved away from the other town. The texts have now stopped after I learned my lesson & started ignoring them. Given the behavioural patterns I suspect she's probably doing the same thing to someone else. Poor bugger.
(Worthless wishes he had the brains of a pigeon, Fri 26 Feb 2010, 15:47, closed)

I feel every bit of that pain...
I know what you mean about the trust..what I will try and do eventually is let whoever I next find have the benefit of the doubt - after all they are not HER.

All the best matey.
(Galahad is out of his gourd on yellow bentines, Fri 26 Feb 2010, 15:55, closed)

*clicks as promised*
I wouldn't worry about the ginger fixation: the ex I ranted about was Taiwanese but that hasn't done anything to hamper the effect that Asian women have on my trousers.

And as for trusting people...well, once bitten, twice shy, as they say, but I can assure you that not all peope are that shady or that mentalist.

Best of luck old boy. And hey, in the meantime, enjoy the pr0n!
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 26 Feb 2010, 16:05, closed)

What a nutter you had there!
Although I've a feeling that, with some distance for perspective, the whole affair might turn out to be one the best times of your life.
I bet she was great fun - charming -tremendous sex?
Just give it time and you'll enjoy the memories.

Good story, bravely told.

edit - just re-read my answer. Fuck me that was patronising even by my standards. Should I have left it at
'Make the best out of a bad job, and laugh it off'?
( Larry Vest One day at a time, sweet Jesus, FFS., Fri 26 Feb 2010, 16:11, closed)