About two or three months ago, when Christmas was a pale speck on the horizon and my energy levels were somewhat higher, I bought two tickets for Grania and I to attend a singles party with a twist. The idea was that, in a room full of singles, there would be people called 'Meddlers' who would help to orchestrate that first meeting with the handsome guy standing by the bar. It sounded quite funny and I was looking forward to it. Then I woke up yesterday morning and realised that I wanted to go to the Meddlers Ball about as much as I wanted to force rusty skewers under each one of my toenails.
Still, a promise is a promise, so Grania and I dragged our sorry asses along to the bar at the arranged time, went in and sat down. The lighting was pleasingly low and we bought some revolting white wine and sat in the corner with a plate of deep fried mezze. Around us on the tables were blank Christmas cards and biros for us to send a festive flirt to a fellow singleton. I examined our options. The crowd was ok and the music was reassuringly familiar, but more than that, there was something extraordinarily liberating about being in a room full of people like us, young men and women who still hadn't yet made the decision to settle down. Going to a bar on a normal evening is, of course, an exemplary way to spend a few hours, but there's little more frustrating than wheeling out your most winning anecdotes to a man who, after forty-five minutes of flirtatious questioning, casually mentions that he's also been to India, and in fact proposed to his wife in the gardens of the Taj.
We finished our food and stepped into the throng. I'd early identified a boy who looked a little like a mustachioed Heath Ledger, while Grania pointed out a lovely tall man with excellent jeans. Mr Denim was first, and I accosted him by the bar and we chatted to him for three minutes, which was long enough to make it perfectly clear to both of us that he was very dull. It's self-evident that not every gorgeous person one sees on the tube or in the supermarket is possessed of a wondrous personality, but it's always nice to receive hard evidence of this. We moved on feeling buoyed.
The next hour or so was spent chatting to several small clusters of uniformly unremarkable men, one of whom had said that he loved Jeremy Kyle and another who'd said that he'd come to this same event in April and met a Brazillian who had dumped him after five months, so he was back for another go. Honesty perhaps not the best policy there. Suddenly, one of the Meddlers ran up and excitedly told me that he'd found me a Guardian reader, as though all my woes were cured. He pointed out two men who looked quite nice, and Grania and I spent a bit of time chatting to them later on in the evening. They were indeed good company but not quite right, and we drifted off before too long, leaving them dancing to Bonkers by Dizzee Rascal. To be honest, I'm not sure my rapping along was doing me any favours although Grania seemed to be loving my work even more than usual.
Cut to an hour later. We are sitting down, chatting about nothing, because talking to boys is exhausting. Suddenly, a small notepad lands on the table in front of us. We open it and read 'Two girls talking to each other? That doesn't not fair on us lads!' We look up and see a small man who I know for certain that I will never love. Grania starts to write but I get impatient and take over, constructing our reply, which reads 'But you need to be cool enough to justify us standing up.' Grania changes the full stop to an exclamation mark because she's nicer than I am, and we send it back. Two or three more exchanges culminate in the pathetically depressing request, 'Stand up and give us a twirl' to which I reply 'I'm trying to be nice here, but that is LAME.' Grania does not alter my punctuation.
We spot another guy behind us, sitting on his own and writing intently. 'What are you writing?' we write, and throw the notepad at him. He reacts as if shot. Eventually we get a reply, 'I try to write the beginning of a play.' 'Can we be in it?' we ask, coquettishly. He ignores us. Grania starts chatting to Mr Give Us A Twirl, while my interest levels are waning. I pick up one of the Christmas cards and start writing a message to Grania's mother. Later, I go to the bar and find myself standing next to Heath Ledger, who tries to kiss me almost immediately. I look displeased and tell him I'd singled him out as a potential hopeful earlier, and now retract that. He looks crestfallen and mumbles 'Sorry' several times. A few minutes later I spot him on the dancefloor with his shirt half unbuttoned, rubbing his chest, seemingly in an attempt to arouse the two girls he's jigging with. To their eternal discredit, they appear to be enjoying themselves.
By the end of the night, Grania is talking to a guy who looks like he'd rather be sucking a vomit lolly than chatting at a singles party, while I'm trying to persuade his lank-haired friend that I don't want to sit down next to them and that I'm fine standing. Eventually we decide that enough is enough, and scamper back down to the tube, suffering an emotional parting at the Northern Line / Central Line junction at Tottenham Court Road. The boys may not have been up to the lowest of our standards, but it was an extremely fun night and I left with my self-esteem almost buoyed, which was odd given that I had started the evening saying 'There are going to be 100 single men in here. If you don't find one you like, you need to change your criteria.' If there were some nice guys in the throng, we didn't talk to them. Still, I'm glad I went.
And now, this.
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