Ah, Debbie, the love of my life for three weeks.
I was 13, we'd been spending a lot of time together but I was oblivious to us being anything more than friends.

One fateful Wednesday afternoon, I was hanging round waiting for the school bus with friends and one of them asked me if I was 'going out' with Debbie.

I blushed and spluttered and was preparing to say 'no' when a voice I knew well came from behind me and said 'Yes, he is going out with me'

And that was that, with no say in the matter, I had my first girlfriend.

We went to the cinema the following Saturday, 16 May 1987 (I remember the date because I had to miss the end of the Tottenham Hotspur/Coventry FA Cup Final to see her).

Our romantic choice of film for our first night out alone, just the two of us, was…House II.

Except, at happens, it wasn’t just the two of us. I had obviously misunderstood. It was the two of us...

...and 5 of her girlfriends.

Still, somehow, I nervously sneaked my first kiss that night. And vowed never to kiss anyone except Debbie ever again.

For three weeks, I was in love. Then, on a school trip to France, the words that broke my heart, never to mend.

‘We’re not going out anymore, I like Ian now, but we can still be friends’

I was devastated, I knew I would never love again. Until I dance with Sonia at the disco that very night.

At which point Debbie stormed over, furious at me for dancing with someone else ‘so soon after we broke up’

And then we weren’t even friends anymore.

Ah, Debbie, I still think of you, and thank you for such a crash course the fact that I will never understand women

And basically for setting the template for every relationship I have ever had: Lack of control, confusion, lust, not getting to watch football, shock and taking the blame.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:51, 2 replies)

In the lamest way possible
We met on an online dating site, both reeking of desperation. He liked The Simpsons, ice hockey and Terry Pratchett too and I liked his hair. I sent him a picture of me cuddling Winnie the Pooh and he thought I was cute.

We MSNed back and forth, sometimes til the wee hours of the morning, just talking bollocks. Then he came down to stay for the weekend and things were awkward at first. Then my housemate made him stay the night and the rest is history. Although sometimes I wonder what I'd have had to do that weekend to put him off, having got pissed on snakebite (student), thrown myself at him, been hungover and in a foul mood the next day, wanting him to leave due to hangover and him not trying to take me there and then (combination of shyness and wanting to get to know me first, gaaaaaay :P), then falling asleep together the next night only for me to have the painters in the next morning. Then the next time he came down, I got pissed again and he had to hold my hair back whilst I was calling God on the big white telephone. I offer a messy breakup 2 weeks before we got chatting as a lame excuse for crazy behaviour. And he still wanted to come back! He must have really liked my boobs.

Still, he's my friendly internet weirdo and we'll have been together 4 years in October. He stuck with me through the crappy times, makes me laugh, took me to Hong Kong Disneyland for my birthday last year and he calls me Poppetsocks. I love him so very much :)
(claireyfairy There's a smell in here that will outlast religion, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:51, Reply)

We\'d known of each other for some time
but finally got it toghether at a mutual friends hat party. She was wearing a funeral/wedding hat (I always get those two mixed up) and I was wearing a giant furry number which makes me look remarkably like Teen-Wolf\'s retarded brother. I can\'t remember much of how I managed to woo her, only that we ended up back at hers.
My next clear memory is waking up on her sofa wearing only her short denim skirt. There was an odd pain and I found what appeared to be two large brand marks on my right buttock. There was also a large quantity of what appeared to be (and later turned out to be) my blood smeared onto walls around her flat.

Needless to say I saw her again and about a month later she moved in. We\'re still together to this day and to this day she still claims now knowledge of what transpired that fateful night
(wooly_sammoth, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:50, 1 reply)

I asked her if I could put my finger in her belly button.
She said "that's not my belly button"

I said "that's not my finger"
.
(Ali Bongo 9000 Ali Bongo 9000, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:47, 2 replies)

In the park on teh swings
Do you want to come to my house and see some dead puppies little girl...?

G.Glitter
(TwinkleFuckingToes Has a ingrown toe nail, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:39, Reply)

Maybe I will find my next flame on B3ta
One crazy, neurotic, car loving gal seeks man with high levels of tolerance to get oily with. Knowledge of B series engines a bonus.

Contrary to previous crushes you are required to be single, without children (dogs are fine), not harbour any serious drug addictions and either be a smoker or ok with the fact I smoke - please note social smokers who never buy their own will not be tolerated.

Anyone with a discount at Halfords gets extra points.
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:38, 47 replies)

"How did you get your current flame to go out with you?"
I snuffed her.
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:25, Reply)

Not sure exactly
I was a barmaid, he was a DJ. I went off to uni, split up with the 6th form boyfriend (as does everyone) came back to the pub to work at weekends. Got drunk together lots, went to karaoke one night, snogged all night and I pretty much moved in the next day. 2 months later we were expecting our eldest son. 10 years and 3 children later still married.
( moogy boobles, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:24, Reply)

I was a zombie and he was a wandering hobo
We first met when I was coated in latex to look like a zombie with peeling skin. He was sleeping under someone else's bed.

The night we got together was in a game of 'killer'. In this game each person is assigned a target and must 'kill' them over the next few days using either a carrot, a pillow (dropped from a height, like an anvil) or toothpaste (contact poison).

I got him with an 'anvil' to the head. The rest is history...
( Citizen Cavy Admires your passion for conformity, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:21, Reply)

I was a boy and she had the requisite chromosome combination
She let me kiss her behind the leisure centre car park. She smelt of Vodka and fags. She was sick all over herself. I took her home.

And suprisingly that's how most encounters have paned out ever since.
( rofl harris, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:20, 2 replies)

All it took was 7 years of friendship
and one night out on the lash.

We've been together for 3 and a half years now, are engaged to be married and own our own place together. I've never, ever, ever been happier. He's my best mate and the love of my life.
( Captain Wow currently being a cunt in Infamous, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:10, Reply)

Sticking stuff in holes
She stuck her finger in my ear
I stuck mine up her nose

She asked "Well are you going to buy me a drink or not?"

The rest is history
( Captain V, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 11:02, Reply)

In which Chickenlady loses her composure
I was staying with my cousins in Northampton and I had just split up with my boyfriend of eighteen months because he wanted to get engaged and I wanted to enjoy being at Uni.


My elder cousin, Joe, was taking me to a club where Paul, his brother would meet us with all their (male) mates.

I had prepared for the evening out by spending an hour in the bathroom, putting on my shortest tight black skirt, highest black patent heels and lowest cut purple blouse. All in all I looked like the evil love child of Prince and Brian May (all that curly dark hair, you know). The make up had been duly applied with various building implements and dangly earrings framed my face much in the same way that traffic lights adorn an A road.

Before hitting the club we visited a couple of pubs where I kept up my classy appearance by downing pints of cider and laughing raucously at rude jokes…rude jokes that I had just told.

All was going swimmingly, my cousin and I were sharing old family stories and reconnecting over our pints. Finally the time had come to hit the club and find Paul. Joe had warned me that Paul had an entire gang of mates, a few of whom were shady characters. Paul himself divided his time between cleaning windows, drinking pints and smoking joints - he truly lived the life of Riley and his lazy mate.

I was prepared - I had been drinking cider, the drink of champions, tramps and pissheads. I could take on the world and tell them where their apostrophe should go - politely, of course.

Now, I should perhaps add here that I have always had a habit of making up words for my own entertainment... Onanistic neologism if you will.

Anyway, we arrive at the dark and slightly sweaty club and to be honest it was a bit of a disappointment. I was expecting neon and chrome, the approximation of the last debauched days of Rome wrought from early 90s tat and a bit of vacuum formed plastic. Instead the club was strip lighting and formica and a faithful recreation of the last staid days of Bognor Regis in a church hall on a wet Sunday evening in January.

Joe got me another pint of cider, this time served up in a plastic glass which I balanced on my knee while I sat watching the high fashion outfits of a decade previous shake, jump and wobble about on the parquet floor.

Paul showed up with his crowd of mates all of whom seemed to be pleased to see us - I was so glad we'd sat by the bar.

During the next hour or so a few more pints were downed, a teetering trip to the toilets was undertaken, but all in all it was uneventful…..until the music began to change as chucking out time approached.



Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a young man.

His trousers were the most conspicuous detail about him; having grown up watching Ben Elton do stand up in what can only be described as Chernobyl trousers, I honestly thought they were a BBC wardrobe creation and not available for general public purchase.

I was wrong.

Aside from his striking trousers he was dressed normally - white shirt, goping* shoes, the usual clubbing attire for many young men at the time.

His face however let him down badly, or rather his doctor or chemist had. His nickname was Pepperoni - for two reasons as it turned out, but the main one being that his face closely resembled a pepperoni pizza so bad was his acne.

Pepperoni was one of Paul's close mates and he asked me to dance.

In the time honoured tradition of my family I accepted - always accept a dance, regardless of what you may think of the person, asking for a dance requires courage and refusal will cause the asker to lose face with his mates. By all means if you dislike the person then only dance the once with them and don't accept the offer of a drink, but never turn down a dance.

So I stood ready, arms raised and prepared to hang around Pepperoni's pustule ridden neck, a fixed rictus grin pasted upon my heavily made up face. No doubt I closely resembled a zombie at this point, however, it did nothing to dampen his ardour, if anything it enflamed it. He grasped me tightly around the waist and began to gyrate and grind into my hips, while snuggling his pimply face into my neck and breasts - did I mention he was a good few inches shorter than me?

I attempted just like the poor black pussy cat who has her back painted with white emulsion to struggle away from my very own Pepé Le Pew but my efforts were in vain as it just made him gather me in towards him with greater relish.

All the while the droning tones of 'Three Times A Lady' continued in the background and I silently cursed each and every member of the Commodores to a long and painful bum disease.

The seconds seemed to turn into hours and then I noticed It.

The real reason he was called Pepperoni.

Not only did he suffer with appalling acne but he also had the unfortunate tendency to wear baggy trousers in which his own private pepperoni could stretch and relax unencumbered by lycra or a swift knee from me.

My struggling increased…as did he.


You know the old joke about starting a fire with two Boy Scouts?

I had been a Girl Guide.


Finally the song finished, it was time to go home and he was walking with us. "Would you like to go out with me?" he asked in almost reverential tones.

The force of six pints of cider, being squeezed and 'rubbed' against all built up in me…..Two things happened.


Firstly I blurted out the words that had been going around in my head ever since he grasped me to his pyretic gonads,

"But you have burning swonicles!"

To which he backed away slightly from the strange young woman who stood in front of him. This was a Good Thing because at that moment my stomach decided to add in its own comment on the evening's romantic shenanigans….

PPARRRPPPPP!!!

And at that moment I became Cinderella at midnight - I ran for the door and made it home long before my cousins and without one shoe.


I never liked that pair anyway.








*Not a particular style of shoe, rather a descriptive term for anything revolting or unpleasant, i.e. It's pissing down, this weather is bloody goping. Or, Have you tried this fish pie? It's goping.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 10:59, 11 replies)

Having just split up with my wife...
...I can say the going out in the first place was easy, but I think the beer goggles were on that night.

However it seems to have taken 9 years for me to get my sight back again.

Girls can't be trusted.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 10:58, Reply)

How the Gibbon got his stripes
I met my one true love just over 6 years ago. I was at a party when we were introduced. I was 17 and a little too young for her but on first impression she seemed to not mind and she certainly looked fantastic. She was lightly bronzed (Which I am a big fan of) and the thing that really struck me was her bubbly personality - but not too much to be like one of those fat, annoying types and certainly not plain or bland. We got on great and before long I knew she'd got me pretty drunk. When we parted that night I knew I'd want to see her again, and every day after that for the rest of my life. I truly believe in love at first sight.

Over the coming weeks, however, I was totally skint and going out with my mates to the pub to see her was almost impossible. She'd be there every night with other men and I was losing some prime opportunity to win her as my own. Luckily I chanced upon an incredibly cushy part-time job and so money rolled back in.

After about 6 weeks I went to the pub with my mates and got myself a pint - and there she was at the bar. She looked even better than the last time, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. I'd forgotten how sweet she could be, how warm she made me feel, and I just felt so confident when I was with her (confidence was a big issue for me before I met her). However, I'd noticed that a couple of other men had taken a liking to her, I wasn't sure if this was a problem but I decided I'd need to act fast and spent as much time with her as possible. I think we both knew that there was some sort of unique connection between us but I was still wary of the competition. Again we parted that night, and although I soooo wanted to take her home with me, it just didn't seem right.

My luck was in the day after however. I was in my local supermarket getting a few essentials when I happened to bump into her. After a little deliberation I paid for my goods and we went back to my place for some fun. I flung her cap off her head with one movement and pressed my lips against her lip. She felt so good on my lips, I just KNEW she was the one. It was over way too quickly though (time flies when you're having fun!) And by this point I was hooked. I loved her and wanted to be with her forever. Ever since then we've barely had a day apart.

Beer, I love you.
(The Oscillating Gibbon is eating curried squid, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 10:55, 9 replies)

milord tulip
and I met completely randomly. For some reason this makes people think we met online, but we didn't, we met in real life and everything. It was in a pub about five years ago. He caught my eye over my best mate's shoulder, waited until she went to the bar and then pounced. We talked for three hours that night, swapped numbers, then met up two days later and spent the whole day together. I knew within about five minutes that I would marry him one day. Course I didn't tell him that until after he proposed about two years later, I'm not daft.

He is ace, and he thinks I'm the best girl in the world. The sight of his lovely bottom in his cricket whites makes me go weak at the knees, and no-one makes me laugh like he does. And no-one else has ever waited up for me till past midnight with champagne on ice and a special meal, just because. (that was the other day) We're best mates and he calls me his little buddy (amongst other things)

I can't wait to marry him. He's promised to wear his kilt and everything.

apologies for lack of funneh.

click I like this if you think I should wear pants-with-the-cross-of-St-Andrew-on underneath my wedding dress.
(happylittletulip helpless and delicious, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 10:30, 23 replies)

Let's
Not turn this rape into a murder.

I'd have loved to have used that chat-up line back in my hedonistic days.

Or

"Get your coat - I've got a knife..."

Sadly I didn't hear of those two lines until Sickepedia got going and, by then, I was inextricably bound to Mrs Legless.

Cheers

What?


( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 10:28, 6 replies)

To be read with the theme to ‘Love Story’ playing in the background…

I have always been staggeringly unable to ‘chat up’…it’s just not for me. As a result I always hated the so-called ‘thrill of the chase’ bollocks.

A perpetual nightmare of my youth was going bright red, getting incredibly nervous and going all ‘Stammerry McSpackalot’ over some poor unsuspecting ladygirl.

This usually proceeds trying overly hard to impress – resulting in my making an even bigger tomato-faced twat of myself.

It doesn’t help having zero self confidence. It’s a bit difficult to think anybody can find you charming or attractive when you don’t think you are yourself…

But still…you lot with your ‘bed-hopping’ antics can keep it as far as I’m concerned. All I ever wanted was someone lovely to spend as much time as possible with (By ‘time’ I mean quality time and sexytime of course…I mean I'm not a TOTAL nutjob).

When we met, the only way the present Mrs Pooflake would allow me in the same room as her was if I viciously attacked her* with various knifes, swords and big sticks; and let her subsequently hoof my useless, dumbstruck flabby arse up and down a big spongey mat…twice a week. But I kept going, because I had fallen in love with her from the first minute I saw her.

My so called ‘charming repartee’ went something along the lines of…

“Hello…..erm…” *THWACK!* “UUuumph…You look very prett…"...*TWOLLOCK*...“Ooyah cunt…I was wondering if you…”…*WHUMP*…”Jeeeesus…fuck…whimper….perhaps sometime I could buy you a... " ... *SPLANG*… ”ooooooyah… Is that your sister?..What’s she doing with tha….?*WHACKETY WHACK*…”Oh for fucks’ sak… *CRACKASPLOCK*…”will somebody please call an ambulance…?"

Afterwards, nearly every time, she would be kind enough to snap my neck back into place, tend to the bleeding and let me buy her a pint.

The rest…as they say…is chemistry, with a bit of biology and some amateur dramatics thrown in for jollies.

So all in all, I reckon you can shove yer Mills & Boon up Barbara Cartland’s dead, pink stinkhole…that’s REAL romance for you.

Length?...married nine years. The secret?... DO NOT fuck with a woman who can snap you like a twig.


and just be nice to each other.



*and Captain Placid…trying to upend that fucker is like shifting the Rock of Gibraltar using a broken toothpick
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 29 Aug 2008, 10:27, 4 replies)

eek
I can see this qotw developing into a cuteness overload, which may indeed envelop the earth.
( rofl harris, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 10:23, 3 replies)

We were both caught out by a rainstorm walking between casinos in Monte Carlo
My dinner jacket was soaked and her elegant dress was clinging to the curves of her body, I pointed to my luxury yacht moored in the harbour and said, “lets get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini”…then the PE teacher from my schooldays was shouting at me that nobody could leave until I climbed the gym rope and I was surrounded by jeering children. Then my alarm went off.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 10:22, Reply)

We met on a beach
It was one of those jaw dropping moments that you don't think will happen in real life.

She was there with her family on holiday, I was feeling a bit down in the dumps after losing my job but i'd already booked the holiday so I was damned well going to enjoy it.

She was just paddling in the shallows when I saw her. She had this wonderful innocence in her eyes.

I knew of course, that she was well out of my league so I just enjoyed the moment as I lay in the sun.

But then, as I walked back to my apartment later a miracle occured. It turns out they were staying just a couple of apartments over from mine. After a bit of clandestine stalking errrr observation, I realised that her bedroom window was overlooked by mine.

That night as I enjoyed my chicken risotto I noticed her parents leaving the apartment with some friends. But she wasn't with them.

Sensing my chance, I climbed in through her bedroom window and stole her. But in the end I had to kill her as the publicity got a bit too much.

I'm sorry, I know it's wrong. I hope it hasn't bindun either
(Bazongaloid, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 10:14, 7 replies)

Put the kettle on, make a cuppa, sit back and read the story of Che & Xena
One of the first reasons why I wanted to stay with Xena for the rest of my life was because of where we met.

Seriously. I thought to myself: 'Wouldn't it be great, if in years to come, when people asked you where you met, you could say: "We met in a Family Planning Clinic....in Soho"'. If you're reading this, and you know me, now you'll know who Che Grimsdale really is, because I guess there aren't many couples who can say that.

Back in the summer of 1985 I was working for a temp agency in London called Catch 22. I think the catch went something like: you want work, we will send you on shit assignments, if you complain, we won't send you on any more, if you don't complain, we will.' That's some catch that Catch 22.

I did some interesting work with Catch 22. One of my favourites was the Hilti drills warehouse near Wormwood Scrubs where I worked with a guy who’d been a helicopter engineer in the Falklands amongst others. We used to have pallet hand-cart races around the warehouse. Another time I was commissionaire for an office block next door to the South African embassy just off Trafalgar Square, I was post-room boy at Readers Digest in one of the posh London squares and for Olivetti in Clapham or somewhere and for a while I was a driver's mate for the Bloomsbury Health Authority. The guy I worked with was Portugese - can't remember his name - and our job was picking up the laundry from the various hospitals and clinics in the area and taking them back to the big laundry in one of the large hospitals, possibly the Middlesex.

It meant early starts but our first stop would always be for a coffee at one of the little Italian cafes somewhere in the West End that was open early for cabbies etc. I vividly remember one morning...we'd just got our coffees, which were in polystyrene cups with those annoyingly tight-fitting lids; I was sat on the passenger side of the van while Luis (now I come to think about it, I’m fairly sure that was his name) drove. As all the ancillary workers at that time smoked - possibly still do, I wouldn't know - it was common practice to smoke in the van between pick-ups. I always used to smoke roll-ups; I've written before about the ritual and paraphernalia of the rolly that I enjoyed almost as much as the actual smoking. I had a cheap refillable lighter in those days in the Catalan colours, a souvenir of my work-camp experience in the Pyrenees, and a tobacco tin with Fat Freddy and his cat painted on the lid. Anyway, I balanced the tin on top of my coffee cup lid, which was held between my legs so that I didn't drop it, but it left my fingers free to roll the fag. When suddenly, Luis hit the brakes, I was thrown forwards, my legs came together, the lid popped off the coffee, my tobacco tin fell onto the floor of the van and scalding hot coffee poured onto my crutch and thighs. Fuck me that hurt, I mean REALLY hurt. Luis was not very sympathetic, we carried on and for most of the morning my scalded thighs were made worse by chafing of damp jeans. Not a good day.

My stoicism was rewarded though, as very soon after that incident, I was asked to work for three days at the Margaret Pyke Family Planning Clinic, which had been one of our pick-ups on the van. It was located underneath the Hospital for Women and was just off Soho Square. The most popular gynaecologist there was the guy who’s alter ego was Hank Wangford - Country ‘n’ Western star. It was June, I was 21 years old, very nearly 22 and my life was soon to be turned upside down.

I was asked to do some filing. There were wire baskets full of files from patients that needed to be re-filed. Oh well, beats humping bags of hospital laundry into the back of a van. Needless to say, the place was full of women - and I'm sure you know the kind: the kind that like working in a Family Planning Clinic. Their idea of a joke was to 'tease' any blokes that came in for free johnnies: "OK son, drop your trousers and we'll measure you up straight away" was their idea of putting a lad at his ease. You'd think they didn't want men to take any responsibility for birth control at all.

Anyway, I was diligently filing away when suddenly all noise faded into the background, the light in the clinic seemed to gain in intensity, time slowed down...if I'd looked up to the top of the filing cabinets, no doubt I'd have spotted Cupid chuckling away merrily to himself safe in the knowledge that another of his arrows had sped home speedily and true.

Just to back up a tiny bit here, if you've been following my posts over the years, you'll know that I’d had a few dalliances with a variety of foreign girls during my year of travels but the first true love of my life had faded away and none of the others were the ‘real thing’. I kept locking gazes with lovelies on the Tube and my pheromone detection and transmitting equipment seemed to be in constant overdrive. What I'm saying is that I was a total liability to myself and any female person to come within my soft, steely gaze.

Xena didn't stand a chance.

She was the permanent filing clerk and I, as the temp, was her helper. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you: What chance did either of us stand? We were both doing the filing, the filing stacks were those movable filing stacks that we all know and loathe...except I didn't loathe them at all. It meant that all day long we were squeezing past each other, smiling, brushing up, breathing in…

Xena was petite, 5' 1" I was to find out, which makes my 5' 7" look (reasonably) masterful. She had longer than shoulder length wavy dark hair, greeny-brown eyes, a Mediterranean look and complexion but a general purpose London accent. She had the Mediterranean figure to go with the looks, and being short, she often had to use the little kick stool and stretch on tip-toes to put files away on the top rows. Boy oh boy...

So, it was a Monday, it was June, London was warm, Soho Square was full of people eating their lunches ("I believe that it's called Al Fresco" don't lie, you know, it's called Al Fresco because you're a middle-class Southern arse) and sunbathing in that typically English way, i.e. shirt off for men, skirt rolled up to mid-thigh if you're a woman.

That summer, I was working my way steadily through Joyce's 'Ulysses' - I was so young and full of myself that I didn't care or realise how much of a tosser this made me look. I was probably wearing a Glastonbury tee-shirt proclaiming the top bands to be something like Peter Gabriel and the Pogues.

Anyway, we settled down to a routine, Xena and I: first we'd do the filing, then we would sit in the little reception area and pack pills. I think Microgynon (sp?) was the most popular in those days. They would come in their blister packs in a box, and there would be little cardboard sleeves separate. We'd sit companionably side by side packing them and chatting.

Here's a tip for finding a life-mate, if you can meet in an environment where sex is the business of the day - though not in a bad way - then the ice isn't just broken, it's neatly carved into interesting little shapes, floating and clinking merrily in a double strength Gin & Tonic.

I was making a good impression on this impressionable though independent girl, I could tell. I'd been regaling her with my 'travels with a backpack' stories and she'd been telling me a little about her family. This is one of the fine things about London and about multi-culturalism. I don't want to get onto a soap box or anything, but Xena's parents both moved to London as economic migrants, her mother was a nurse from Ireland and her father was from Turkish Cyprus. For myself, my great-grandparents had escaped the antisemitic pogroms in Russia and Lithuania at the end of the 19th Century. Between us we carried genes from a pretty damn wide gene pool and we could have - if we had so wished - probably started a third world war. As it happened, that was the furthest thing from our minds.

On the Tuesday, I told her that I was a poet. Now, this was true in the very widest sense of the word: occasionally, I set words down on paper which conformed to rhyming or metering not usually found in prose. Bad poetry has two major sources: greetings cards and love-sick young men. Xena asked me for a poem and so, during lunchtime on the second day I had known her, I started penning a poem. It was...well now, how can I put it? Catchy? Not sure. It was longer than I'd planned, 7 little four-line verses, rhyming, using Xena's name [her real name that is] as the key rhyme running through the epic. The final verse was (if I can remember it correctly):

"So don't forget my name now,
And smile your whole life through,
And when I'm rich and famous,
I'll come back and marry you!"

Well. Surprising? It kind of surprised me too. I gave it to her as we parted at Oxford Street tube station.

The next day I found out would be my last on this assignment, so with mixed emotions we went through the routine of the day and this time, as we parted, she passed me a piece of paper. With tears welling in my eyes I fought my way down to the Northern Line, North-bound platform, dashed onto a train, found a seat (a miracle in itself) and unfolded the piece of paper to read (actual name changed to protect the oh-so innocent):

"To Che Grimsdale words from the boss,
To send you on your way,
A nicer lad I've never had,
To keep the files at bay,
Oh temps they come and temps they go,
And some I don't like much,
But really I would be quite pleased,
If we could keep in touch.
Boom boom"

I'm not sure how many times I read that during the 30 minute or so journey home as my memory is all a buzzing blur from that time. But if I could bottle that feeling...

God knows where I was sent the next day or so, but the following week, I was asked to go back to the clinic. Oh joy. I didn't have Xena's address or phone number - don't forget, this is 1985 and mobile phones didn't exist. I knew she lived in a bedsit somewhere in Cricklewood but that was all. Now I'd have the chance to ask her out properly...

Oh black day.

I turned up for work like an eager young puppy to be told that Xena had left.

Oh woe is me!

That would have been the thought running through my mind at the moment I discovered that Xena had left.

It would have, but the horrendous cocktail of hormones coursing through my young body had, semi-mercifully, given me a chemical lobotomy. Although it was London in late June and the sun was, apparently beating down relentlessly through the smog, everything in front of my eyes had a grey cast and I was feeling chilly.

I set to the task of filing away the medical records with about as much enthusiasm as I might have had for sorting out a rugby teams dirty kit before hand-washing and ironing it all. Last week, it had seemed as if I could have filed happily for the rest of my life, now, I couldn't even raise a smile when I came across the file for Violet Gumbs. The day dragged on interminably; lunch came and went - I found a pub somewhere off Soho Square and had a pint or two while re-reading the same paragraph of Ulysses about 30 times with as little understanding the 30th time as the first.

In the afternoon, the filing finished for now, I went upstairs to the office where Antonia worked. I'd spent a day a couple of months before helping her out in the office on a previous Catch 22 assignment. She was a pretty, cheerful girl; hair in a checker-board of tight, close plaits, glasses perched on the end of her nose and deep magenta lipstick contrasting with her almost velvet-black complexion. She had liked Xena too, and knew from the clinic gossip mill what the situation was. There was a spare chair in the office and I slumped there while Antonia made me a cup of tea and tried to cheer me up.

"The worst thing is," I told her, "is that I haven't got her phone number or address." At which, she gave me a serious look over her glasses before turning away to a filing cabinet, pulling out a file and taking it to her desk. She opened it up, copied something out, put the file away and came over to me.

"Look, if you ever tell where you got this, I'll be in real trouble, OK?" and she passed me a piece of paper with an address on it. "I haven't got a phone number, just her address."

I grasped her hands and kissed her on the cheek, "Don't worry, I won't tell, and...thanks. Really - thanks." Her smile must have at least part-way reflected my own as light began to seep back into my life.

Right. What to do? What to do?

I know: it's my birthday coming up, only a few more days left of being 21 - my folks are going to be away, and I've a party planned, just a few friends. I'll invite her along. So I posted her an invitation and got a card back saying she was sorry but she couldn’t make it - she could see me the following weekend and would phone me on the Saturday. That was the day (July 7th 1985) that Boris Becker became the youngest ever (and first unseeded player) to win the Wimbledon Men's title. I can remember watching the match, I remember being in a pit of misery as I waited for the phone to ring and I can remember that it was the best match of tennis I have ever watched. What I am saying is that one part of my brain was enjoying the match at some level, but my body was miserable, with that 'pit of the stomach' misery that is the flip-side of being in love.

Eventually she rang and we arranged to meet up. I believe Beethoven wrote his 9th Symphony chorus just for me on the day. We set a time and a place: Highgate Tube station 7.30pm Friday. I was there at about quarter past three - just to be on the safe side. Not really, in fact, at 3.15, I was probably in the shower, scouring, rinsing, lathering, rinsing, re-lathering (just to be on the safe side), re-rinsing, towelling down, brushing teeth, gargling, shaving, checking the result in the mirror, spraying, combing, talc-ing, brushing down, cooling off, choosing clothes (clean clothes!), dressing, preening, combing hair again, pacing, going out for some fresh air, smoking, coming in, cleaning teeth again, changing tee-shirt...

At 7.30 I was waiting at the top of the escalator at Highgate Tube (one of the longest) and then she appeared.

There are times when the anticipation is better than the event, when ‘tis truly better to travel in hope than to arrive. This was NOT one of those times. Oh no, this time, anticipation was a drink at the bar and some nibbles compared to the six course, haut cuisine, silver-service banquet that was the event.

I was the host. I didn't live in Highgate, but the Flask, on top of Highgate Hill was one of our regular drinking holes during the 6th Form and remained a firm favourite - especially in summer as there were plenty of tables outside. Xena was wonderful, not what she said or did, but just being there...

She wore tight pale pink trousers and flat red pumps. She was wearing a loose white shirt over a simple tee-shirt and a little jacket. She had a style all her own. Goodness knows what we talked about, but the conversation never dried up. We walked around Highgate Village a bit, stopping to sit on a bench in Pond Square while the sun when down. Then we wandered back to the Flask.

She drank vodka and orange and swirled the ice around, sucking the orange slice and laughing. I drank pints of cloudy scrumpy - the speciality of the house, but not to get drunk, or rather, I wouldn't have been able to tell if I was drunk or not.

After closing time we went back to the Tube. We'd been holding hands as we walked along but we stopped just outside the entrance and she turned towards me and held me round the waist, looking up expectantly into my eyes, smiling and we kissed. I don't know how long for, but we were brought out of our reverie by a car going past which honked its horn as some lads 'wa-haay-ed' out of the windows. It was that sort of a kiss: it was complete in itself and timeless but held promise, like a taste of new red wine from the finest vintage, a promise of future wines, great wines yet to mature in the barrel and later in the bottle - picking up flavours and deepness, rounding out, filling up, gaining depth, maturity, deepness of colour, fine bouquet; changing each year, always a joy, always a surprise, always a return to something familiar, overlaid with new subtlety, new enjoyment.

I knew that this was special. That this was 'it'. Oh yes, no mistake, and I wouldn't lose her a second time, oh no. No way Jose, this time, it was for keeps.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 9:53, 13 replies)

Cuddling on the sofa..........
I said (in all seriousness) "Would you be more comfortable if I took my trousers off?" She said "Yes". Been together five and a half years now........

If I had known how easy it was going to be I would have used that line many, many years before!
(Pork2311, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 9:50, 1 reply)

Middle Kingdom
As a fresh-face, bright-eyed graduate, degree certificate looking bright and clean and free from coffee-rings I landed a job in an engineering firm in the East Midlands. "Yay, great!" I thought, and threw myself into the new job with gusto, thinking that I would be trained and coached and generally guided into the dizzy heights of engineering by wise and sympathetic men. That's what it said would happen in the IChemE manual: how could I doubt that?

Mr Boss, however, had slightly different ambitions. The new company had a plant being built in the Far East and, at this stage of construction just needed bodies out there. The ability to tell one end of a spanner from the other, breath and a pulse were all optional - it was bodies that counted! Having at least two of the three options I was almost over-qualified. So less than three weeks away I set off for Red China.


Now most people on "the China Project", had a local girl. Or two. Or enjoyed the whoring scene with no censure applied, partly because China has manufactured whores since the Tang dynasty and partly because decent people don't go to the sort of bars expat engineers do.

I arrived with excess baggage in tow. I was still embroiled in a four-year on-off relationship with a girl who, for all that I loved her, did her level best to trash my esteem and sense of self at every step. On the side I had a couple of girlfriends who were up for parties and sex and not too interested in "long term"-ness (or so I believed until I tried to end it with one of them, who went completely doolally). So believing that I should try to be a "good man", or at least that I shouldn't complicate my life any more than I already had, I held out longer than most men, but got talking with this local girl who worked in a nearby restaurant where I liked to eat. Over successive nights we talked. Loads. When she wasn't busy she'd come and sit with me just to chat. And we became very good friends.

Ultimately after a number of nights sat on the sofa watching TV and talking until I had to run for the bus to work having never rumpled the bed we admitted we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We had an amazing few months together.

I was strongly advised by colleagues to opt for a clean break on leaving China. She would be broken-hearted for a while, but would recover... perhaps with a healthy caution of expats and a few tales to tell, but recover nonetheless. I was resolute that this was the correct move... but, things flourish in the most unlikely places. As I was in the hotel in Beijing, on an overnight stay before my flight back home, I used the free hotel broadband, and that wonderful system that is Skype, to call her to end it and say a last good bye. The words that actually left my mouth are indelibly etched: "I love you, I can't leave you". I was in hell all day and half the night tearing my own soul in half before making that call. And I'm damn pleased I've made the choice I have.

Anyway, long story short, over the next couple of years I halfway bankrupted myself over flights to China whenever I'd saved enough holiday, extended myself further for the wedding, further still for a decent house, further still for the costs of the UK visas and immigration and all that, and still further to make our life together. We've been married for a little over 2 years and have an amazingly handsome son together...

... and to pay back the gods for making the RIGHT choice for a change, she's in China again with our son, he's learning to speak, but not English, and I'm roasting my bollocks off in Saudi Arabia, building yet another Earth-destroying refinery so that we can afford the "happily ever after".

I hate everything about this 14th century hell-hole, and would crawl down the phone lines to see them, have a hole in my heart every day that I can't hold my son and have 3 more weeks to wait for my vacation when I can.

My wife, though, she's perfect!
(daizi last tried to escape on, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 9:40, 1 reply)

Extreme 20 questions
I knew him to speak to online on the rally forums but it wasn't til I ended up driving in a convoy with him that we got talking in person. A few thousand miles of semi-decent tarmac and we were old friends. Well, I was old. He was 9 years younger.

"Want to play Extreme 20 Questions?" I asked.

"What's that?" he replied, and so I explained that it worked the same way as normal 20 questions but with forfeits. The person asking could suggest a prize, e.g. "if you guess correctly you may feel my knee", or the guesser could state the goal, e.g. "if I guess this correctly, I will feel your knee".

It worked. It worked so well he got to feel a helluva lot more than my knee and we crashed twice. I even broke his selector rod as a result.

Extreme 20 Questions. Better than Strip Chess by Waddingtons, and more diverse than Naked I-Spy where it's usually just "something beginning with C".
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 9:40, 9 replies)

Its all in the tongue!!
After I split with my ex I entered the 'rebellious phase' where I would do all the things I wanted to do in a vain attempt to cheer myself up and simultaneously piss off my ex by doing all the things she wouldn't let me do while together.

One of the first things I did was get my tongue pierced - she hated most piercings and though they were for freaks, but I always wanted one and used every opportunity to show it off (especially around her!)

The other thing I did alot was go clubbing. Now I didn’t actually like the clubbing that much – most of my friends only went because of the influx of illicit substances that frequent those places and their ability to enable the imbiber to dance for 8 hours without feeling tired.

I on the other hand had a knackered kidney, and didn’t really want to risk taking ‘performance enhancers’ at the risk of my kidney exploding – but what I really wanted was something to take my mind of things and my friends.

A few months into freedom we decided to go to the University club (which is now a car park) – it was a ‘school night’ event and you got free entry while in school uniform. As you can imagine most of the guys are trying to look butch while the women have made every attempt to look as slutty as possible (which isn’t hard in a school uniform!).

In my infinite wisdom I had come across the idea of infusing my new found piercing with clubbing – I simply added a UV ball to my tongue stud and I had an instant UV glow tongue that was sure to make me look cool!

In the events leading up the entering the club we all decided to get extremely pissed – mainly as a way of avoiding paying the stupid prices in the club itself. So as we stumbled inside the music started and we all ‘got down’ as the kids might say – as soon as my dancing fury was unleashed so was the tongue, waving it around in its illuminated glory!

For one person in particular this seemed to be more enticing than others - she came up to me dancing, as we got closer and closer we ending up making out on the dance floor; both drunk as high school kids.

“I love your tongue” she says to me, “I really like piercings – I got my pussy pierced recently, want to check it!?” said the school girl– without an answer my hand was thrust under her tiny skirt and into her lady parts to find the aforementioned piercing.

“Very nice” I say, trying to stay cool over the first bit of action I had received in many months.

As you can guess things went up from there – we got back to her place and did the horizontal tango. The next few days were an utter gift to me and my rebellious phase, still trying to piss off my ex.

I still worked with her and made every attempt to tell everyone (usually within earshot of the ex) about my newly found pierced partner, “Yeah it’s very cool, Ive got my tongue pierced and she had her pussy pierced – it tings when I go down her! It’s great!”

That was about 6 & ½ years ago now. We’re thinking of getting married. Needless to say that’s not the version i’ll be telling my kids.
(ldwater otherwise known as a 'jive turkey', Fri 29 Aug 2008, 9:38, 2 replies)