We're Gonna Score-ore-ore Tonight...

Yes, my friends, I am back from a temporary blog-abyss – I'm running out of anecdates so in order to keep you interested it has become necessary to string out these entries I like to keep you lovely readers both in suspense. :-)

And in case you're misled by the post title into thinking I gave in to the demands of the KIB (far from it) this blog title paraphrases a song "ostensibly" about bowling; really about, well, 30-year-old teenagers getting it awn, from the filmic fabness that is Grease 2.

Here it is, just in case you feel you're missing out on something having never seen Grease 2*:

Yes that is a young Michelle Pfeiffer. She went on to better things. I'm told.

During my last meeting (I shan't say Date) with KIB in which he poked his noodle salad and narrated the Museum of 1951 to anyone who may be hard-of-caption-reading, he had managed to bait me again and subliminally persuade me to give him one more strike... with the promise of bowling.

Oh man. I'm making bowling/baseball puns. This is not good.

Now. I like to bowl. I'm fairly heinous at it (see: all sports and games involving co-ordination) but occasionally I pull one out of the bag (like when I play pool after a couple of drinks) and hit a pin or two.

...like zis. via here

And from what KIB had said, and based on his fetish penchant for all things vintage** he would find us an old-fashioned bowling alley where You Actually Had to Keep Your Own Score. Imagine.

Well, he didn't. He found us a contemporary alley in Bayswater and was (typically) keen to have me commit to the bowling so he could book it. And by book it, I genuinely thought he meant, just ring and reserve. So after his barrage of texts (including two within twenty minutes without even waiting for the reply to the first…) I said aye, or, in non-committal language, "That sounds OK".

Of course, there was a small amount of time between PseudoDate The Third and DeciderDate the Fourth (six days) and in those six days I'd Done a Lot of BrainThinking and Worrying and Overanalysing that Actually I Wasn't Sure I Wanted to See Him Again.

And I'd been doing a lot of Overheating too.

Yes, the day we'd chosen for our bowl-fest was a Wednesday in early August when it had been absolutely broiling all day. And the air-con (or lack therein) in my office had left me lethargic and in need of an evening of Doing Nothing and essentially feeling a little bit like this:

Yuuuuuuuurrrrhhhh... via here

Bowling, i.e. Something That Involved Exertion and Also Finding My Way in the Heat to Bayswater was not something that appealed. Plus, I knew I'd be grumpy in the heat, and for all his flaws (and one of mine) I didn't think I could inflict Grumpy QB on him yet again.

So just before the end of my working day I sent him a text to apologise, and pull out. It went something like this:

Hi KIB. I'm afraid I need to cancel this evening. I'm sorry if this is a pain as you've already booked. QB

Which I thought was fair. Wasn't it? Who knows? Much like Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory my grasp of social cues isn't all that strong. I thought it was polite, anyway, and apologetic. A little cowardly, maybe, but hey, that's just me.

via here

I did not expect this reply five minutes later:

30 quid non refundable

That was it. No salutation, no signoff. Just STROP.

WHOA. Back it up, huff-boy, no need for that.

At which point, I hate to admit, I think I gave a little primordial growl, right there in the office, to the tune of, "Arrrrrgh! MEN!"

This little one-liner actually served two purposes: 1) it guilted me into retracting my cancellation and yet 2) made me see KIB in a whole new light, and let's say, it wasn't flattering. It was the sort of light that makes Dates who were Once Good Prospects actually seem Scary and just a little bit Sociopathic. The kind who if irked will lash out. And I wasn't sure I could be doing with that.

But yet. I then sent a grovelling apology (that I'm not sure he deserved).

And he sent an overlapping apology asking me to excuse his last text. It had been "a rough day at work".  

Yes, I have those too. And when I do, I try to spare relative strangers from Grumpzilla QB by calculating my responses. But anyhoo.

He said he appreciated my text and was sure I had a good reason. Which made me feel even guiltier because, well, it wasn't like my pet gecko had died or I'd misplaced a limb under a vehicle somewhere.

I was just hot and bothered, and wanted out of the Date.

Colour me this bird:

BOK! Bok bok bok! via here

but I also still had considerable reservations about KIB after the Hair-Pulling Incident and although he'd been well-behaved enough at our last meeting, the Over-Narrating (or, as I perceived it, Treating Me Like an Illiterate Imbecile) was also Something of a Deal-Breaker.

And yet… off I toddled to darkest Bayswater via my coffee retailer of choice (which rhymes with Foster Toffee) for something cold and tasty, and sat in Hyde Park for about an hour with my book and my continuing reservations over the integrity (and incidentally the mental status) of KIB.

We met, we chatted, we popped into another coffee retailer (which rhymes with Tar Sucks) then headed to the alley. And by and large, we were actually fine. It was actually sort of fun. He was kind enough to steal back our bowling balls from the Japanese teenagers in the next lane who appeared to be stockpiling them. Plus there was an interview with dishy Dominic Cooper playing on the TV that hung over the alley so I was neatly distracted.

...Smoulder. via here

(Yes, I was ogling Le Cooper while KIB was bowling. But I did mention it wasn't a Date, not really. And besides. Mr Cooper is but fantasy. Sadly.)

All was going well.

Except for one small snag.

Either KIB is the worst bowler known to humankind, or I'm the worst bowler known to humankind and he was humouring me but I Won. Two games in a row, I won.

And he seemed almost incapable of accepting that I was winning. Maybe it's a Male Competitive/Ego Bruising Issue but he seemed to feel the need to give me a near-patronising congratulation every time I hit more than two pins (Well done, little lady! You can throw a ball in a near-straight trajectory, even though you're a girl…) and then proceed to throw a ball down into the gutter as if that was the way to score.

Je pense que NON.

I did ask him outright if he'd let me win and he denied it… but I have my suspicions.

After my TRIUMPH we decided to grab something to eat and settled on a Tex-Mex place on Notting Hill Gate. Ordered a non-alcoholic cocktail (some sort of daiquiri) and a heap o' nachos and he ordered some sort of potato-skin dish. And I thought, marvellous, we can just eat and be.


No chuffing chance.


Now, not that I'm one to disclose the ins and outs of my innards but I'd recently been suffering quite horrid bouts of indigestion whereby I'd actually looked somewhat pregnant after eating (talk about a food baby…) and felt really uncomfortable and balloon-like.

...like zis. via here

After much Google-based self-diagnosis I'd finally put it down to not letting myself sit and just eat quietly whether it was at lunch at work, or out with KIB – there always seemed to be the need to talk or break up the monotony of digestion with, I don't know, doing something less monotonous. Like Holding Conversation.

He hadn't helped matters in the past -- on the night of the Incident we'd been looking for somewhere to eat after the gallery, but I was just after something small following our chips earlier that night, and he'd made some comment along the lines of, "Ah, are the chips layin' heavy on you?".

A world of urgh.

Concern it may have been, but there's nothing less attractive than a man drawing attention to your stomach and its contents. Of course we then had that Black Forest Gateau but we'll gloss over that.

So having concluded that talking-whilst-eating was my problem I was all ready to sit quietly and scoff my little self silly on tortilla chips and cheese (and yes I expect my carb-tastic diet may have contributed to the afore-mentioned discomfort but we'll gloss over that too). And bask in his company comparatively safe in the knowledge he wouldn't try pulling my hair again, and there were no captioned pictures nearby for him to narrate to me.

But of course not.

He talked.


And talked.


And talked.

Which would have almost be OK if at each juncture he hadn't waited for my response on questions relating to my recent activities. Such as my visiting friend J for a weekend in Somerset.

Now. Before you label me Queen of the Hypocrites after smiting down ODNU for not upholding a Conversation, at least with ODNU we were just conversing over a drink, not trying to eat as well. Two very different media, people. Very different Kettles of Fish.

via here

Subsequently when I did respond to KIB's Spanish Inquisition – or should that be Texan-Mexican Inquisition – after pointedly finishing my forkful very slowly I felt the need to emphasise that one of the many upsides to spending that weekend with J in Somerset was the Quiet.

Yes, the Lack of Need to fill every moment of silence with Words.

And he seemed to agree.

Yes, the man who could not just let me wander in Silence around a gallery or exhibit without filling the void with his insights claimed to like Silence.

Je pense que NON!

**you thought I'd forgotten those double asterisks, didn't you. No, never. I never abandon punctuation.

(Except maybe parentheses.

) < there you go.

**KIB was one of those overly perky puppies for whom London is not the overcrowded, overpriced every-man-for-himself metropolis that it really is; it is full of tiny vintage hidden alleyways, secret vintage dinner clubs, secret vintage cinemas, secret clubs for Those Who Like to Pull Hair, secret vintage rooftop pubs, everything that a Londonophile with a Thing for Vintage could dream of.

And yes, to begin with I was almost convinced that there was more to our c(r)apital than this:

"MOVE DOWN THE CARRIAGE!" via here

but then reality set in and the London Love was soon lost in the crowds of Very Unvintage Pushy Me-Me-Me-ers barging me onto the Tube of a morning/evening/mid-afternoon.

I did find a good opportunity to "sit quiet for a while" (as my grandmother used to say) and ingest my nachos while he regaled me with the details of an Average Week in the Life of KIB. This usually went along the lines of:

Monday, tea in a secret tearoom

Tuesday, secret gig

Wednesday, secret vintage car rally

Thursday, secret BSL class

Friday, secret evening class in Gallery Narration for Insecure KIBs

Saturday, secret cinema screening

Sunday, watching a motor race on a rooftop. A secret rooftop, natch.

[some incidences contrived for comedy value but not by much.]

And yet here he was telling me that, just like me, he liked his Me-time, and his Quiet.

I'm not quite sure when he ever had time to be Quiet with all the secret vintage carryings-on with which he filled his every day.

And then...

...he raised the Big Question.

"So… I really like you, like. How do you feel?"

…

WHOA.

I have to answer that?!

OK. OK, admittedly I'd seen this coming and if anything I was hoping this discussion would happen as at this point I had reached the inevitable conclusion that if KIB and I were ever anything more than Friends we would just get on each other's gourds he would just get on my gourd. And that's not criteria for a Lobster, I'm sorry to say. If he were my Lobster I could have overlooked all of this.

But no.

So, I took a deep breath, finished my forkful of nachos, and decided that honesty was the best way to go.

…uhmmm…

Oooh!

…Er, well…

I'm not sure what I want at the moment. [Read: Or, I know what I want and it's not you. Soz.]
 
Aaaand... I think I'd like to try just being Friends. [Read: Abandon hope, ye KIB. Soz.]

...

Silence.

Actual silence.

REJOICE! I'd actually left him with Nothing to Say.

...

After that little bombshell I may have mentioned that I'd be incommunicado for the next couple of weeks as I was off to Austria.

I may or may not have committed to getting back in touch.

Either way, I didn't.

To his credit, neither did he. Obviously he wasn't in to being Friends, and all honesty I was relieved to sever the connection at this point.

So... thus endeth that nonDate... And subsequently thus endeth all Dates with KIB.

...It was too weird an experience and also far too stressful given how friends seemed to be promoting Dating as Fun when I found myself all too often trying to find a way to get out of a Date, or to concoct an answer to a question like, "Do you like having your hair pulled?"

So, onto the next...

Flaws and All

When I started this blog I should have included in my sidebar a proviso that, for comedy value, I have deliberately masked about 95% of my flaws in order to portray my Poor Unsuspecting Dates in the most unfortunate light possible.

That proviso aside, I'm not taking all the blame for unsuccessful dates upon myself although I can accept some, being peculiar and unused to the Dating Malarkey as I am was. Because my word I tried my hardest to spark with Mr Shorts in Winter aka ODNU. And as for KIB no human being is at their best after a twelve-hour day and a blatant display of follicle-fetishism.

But yes, it's safe to say that I'm no Meg Ryan-in-any-rom-com-she's-ever-been in. I'm not cute and sparky, I'm just quirky. And flawed. And I accept that.

Yes, I acknowledge and bewail my manifold quirks and weirdnesses.

Here be they:

• I'm picky.
• I can be judgmental.
• I'm pedantic about spelling, grammar, punctuation and punctuality. And the misuse of the word "myriad".
• I have fluctuating levels of tolerance especially of people who have no handle on the above.
• I cringe at the use of the word "foods" (plural) as in "I like all sorts of foods" – arrrgh. I don't even care if it's grammatically correct versus "food" plural, and that's saying something.
• I'm not fond of "movies" for "films" either. We're British. It's a film.
• I'm grumpy as feck when I'm tired or hungry. Or tired and hungry.
• I'm stubborn as. 

via here

• I have my whiny moments.
• I have my drama-queen moments.
• I can be insecure about my mediocre intelligence to the point whereby I can't be patronised … but I also can't Miss Out and need to be Kept in the Loop.
• I obsess about odd things, about which most sane folk wouldn't have any interest. Aussie serials. Actors in Aussie serials. Bad 80s dance films. 80s rock and 80s rockers. Camels.

Yes, camels. via here

• I have my moments of immaturity.
• I also have my moments of old-lady-dom.
• I play The Sims on Facebook or chain-Sudoku in my spare time.
• And I'm not a great hugger. In fact I'm a pretty appalling hugger. I suspect shoulders have been bruised in the process of my attempts.

BUT!

BUT!

I'm also arty, daft, quirky, medium-maintenance, and capable of love.

And if someone transpires to be my Lobster, two things will happen:

1. They'll love me for all those flaws above
and
2. I'll love them, flaws and all.

I've been told that's how it works.

Sushi Wars and Sunsets

Now. In my last entry, born of the trauma of tress-tugging, I mentioned that I gave KIB/IHP a wide berth for quite some time.
 
That time frame was two weeks. For two weeks I was able to find reasons to avoid meeting up with his ever-tugging self, which given the Events of Our Last Date gave me enough time to – ahem – MULLET over.

Don't break my heart, my achy breaky heart...via here

(Get me and my poor, poor hair jokes...)

In that time I was able to persuade myself that while hair-pulling re-hea-ally wasn't my bag (baby), I’d perhaps been a little hasty in putting up the barriers and perhaps I ought to give KIB, who had been a great First Date, a second chance. But this time play it differently. Approach him as a Potential Friend.

Play it cool.

Agree to no riverside walks with their heinous capacity for cliché and subsequent Poor Snoggage.

And Other Refinements.

Admittedly, I’d never been brave enough to say explicitly to KIB that the hair-pulling had – ahem – wigged me out. I was so thrown by it, and so dog-tired, that maybe, just maybe, I’d overreacted, so by the time we’d made plans for meeting again, I’d pretty much shelved it in my annal of ‘anecdates’ and was all prepared to Move On. As long as he didn’t try it again. And we did OK. We chatted well, crossing the bridge from Embankment. I made light of my fatigue last time we met. We discussed what books we were reading. It was fine. It was all good.

I'd suggested we go for sushi, thinking we’d rock up to the chain sushi place on the South Bank. We did sushi not at Hi! Sushi* as I’d hoped but at a small sushi restaurant down the side of the Festival Hall that he led me to despite my dropping hints that the place I wanted to go to was just around the corner. Meh.

We ordered miso soup and got some strange looks from the staff when we asked for cutlery (how else do you eat miso soup?! Oh, you can just drink it, apparently...) and ordered salads – mine was seaweed, his was noodles. Admittedly these salads were basically plates of, respectively, seaweed (and nowt else) and noodles (and nowt else) but while I happily chowed down on mine KIB ended up probing his and commenting a couple of times that it was just a plate of noodles. (This never would have happened if he’d let us go to Hi! Sushi where he could have had a more varied platter but neeeever mind. I didn't mention this and just stayed as beatific and non-vocal as possible, choosing to seethe inwardly instead.)

We went to the South Bank Centre after that, just to see what was on. He parked in front of the leaflets bank and picked up several for the upcoming vintage event, and insinuating, as he did, that we could take in these events, or we could go to this secret gallery or that secret gig and I smiled, considered, didn't commit to anything, and wondered whether it was bad form to get more excited that Moby (one of my crushes once upon a time) was appearing at Foyles in a week or so to sign his new book…

Moby. Sigh.
via here

Then, we found and wandered around the Museum of 1951, the excellent free exhibit detailing the anniversary of the Festival of Britain.

And yes, He Narrated.

Ah, those are the programmes.
(he stated in front of a frame full of Festival of Britain events programmes)
I love the design and typography, I ventured. (Because while the Narration was Annoying as billy-o I wasn’t so mean as to not validate his attempts to Make Conversation.)

Ah, that’s a 1950s room.
(he stated in front of a set-up of a 1950s sitting room complete with period furniture and books)
It actually looks quite contemporary, I ventured, noting the current fad for retro furniture.

Ah, they’re steel drums.
(he stated in front of a set of steel drums)
Yep. (I had nothing else to say about steel drums.)

I took a few deep breaths, decided to Let the Annoyances Wash Over Me, but noted that gosh it was getting late. And I’m not at my best when I’m tired.

As we know.

But we decided to check out the view from the fifth-floor bar and balcony before we left and, well, I like a good view.

And it was a magnificent sunset. (Was it a Waterloo Sunset? Couldn't possibly say.)

I yanked my compact camera out of my bag and snapped away.

“See, I knew you’d like the sunset and I knew you had your camera,” he said, as if somehow he had personally engineered the workings of the universe to my liking. But I don’t recall ever having told him I had my camera with me. He was bluffing.

At some point as I snapped I spotted the Houses of Parliament and may have dropped the name ‘Westminster’ into the conversation. Purely by accident.

“Do you want to go back to Westmins—” he began.

“Nope.”

Nope, I was not about to re-enact the Tug of War. Or the All-You-Can-Eat-of-my-Face Buffet.

So we returned to Embankment and went our separate ways.

I’d survived! And to his credit he hadn’t tried anything so he had redeemed himself a little, at least for the time being. Perhaps we could try being friends.

...And then came The Day of the Broiling Bowling Session...

*not its real name – betcha can’t guess which chain of sushi restaurants I’m possibly referring to!