Boredom in the rush hour

The bus was stationary, and I glanced across the road at an equally inert coach facing the other way.

There they were: 38 people seated in twos with a driver and portly guide at the front; the latter commentating into a microphone as her audience looked on.

Disengaged, half asleep, blindly staring out of the window; their tired eyes seemed to rest upon nothing and no one as the commuters around them moved with the purpose of the rush hour, while the historic landmarks of the city stood still where they have done for hundreds of years.

Unspeaking - save for two at the back pointing at a map - each person had the passive posture of someone who had nothing to do that day but listen and wait for the next thing to appear.

We sat there on our separate sides of the road, a bus of locals on one side, a coach of tourists on the other, and I looked at the passengers one by one and thought:

God, you look so bored.

I watched them, momentarily distracted from the dull feeling in my chest, the half-conceived thoughts and feelings in my head, the ideas that would never even see paper, let alone fruition, and the minutiae of life that confines itself to one solitary hour at the beginning of the day and another at the end.

And I wondered, as the bus pulled away and I prepared to join the flow of people on the pavement, if any of them had looked at me and thought exactly the same thing.

Writing as incentive

The ability to write can get you a lot of things.

It can earn you money, gain you confidence, give you friends, put things in perspective and, well, it's a far more affordable option than therapy.

Armed with a pen or a keyboard, a bad day takes on an amusing slant instead of a painful edge, amazing experiences once articulated are never forgotten, and break-ups change from being the end of a story, to the beginning of one.

But more than all that, writing can be the push you need to do something you otherwise wouldn't.

In fact, it's amazing what can be achieved when you apply the logic "well, if it all goes tits up, at least I can write about it anyway".

Which is sort of the reason that when the fourth date* had yet to be arranged and my ridiculous girl-brain was doing somersaults - on which note, it's always those already in relationships who tell you how exciting dating is, only the rest of us know the terrifying truth - that I decided to stop waiting, and ask the question myself.

And because the path of dating never did run smooth, and the response or lack of it would have to go in writing either way and because, ultimately, everything is copy, I wrote:

So am I ever going to see you again, or is that it now you've seen my boobs?

...and pressed send.

So that's how today's story ended, with a fourth date arranged and some lessons learnt:

1) When in doubt, do it anyway, 2) Never underestimate the power of words, and 3) where possible, always use the word "boobs".

*Yeah, I skipped a few. Sorry.

Remember when we spent our Saturdays building forts

On Saturday evening, in the downtime between getting in and going out again, eight people sat talking in a living room.

The sofas were in disarray and belongings were strewn everywhere after a failed attempt to "build a fort" (as you do).

Our enthusiasm for the childish task had gradually ebbed, and the participants, tempted away from the build by more Prosecco, now sat around on bedding, pillows and blankets talking in pairs and threes.

"It was a great party," said The Neighbour, sitting with his back against the radiator while I lay on the sofa; head on a lap, another friend's fingers raking absent-mindedly through my hair. "But there was a moment when I looked around and there were at least eighty people up on the roof".

"You weren't drinking that night, were you?" I said, remembering the night in question.

"No," he continued. "I was drinking juice and wasn't on any drugs, and everyone else was in their own world and I just remember thinking that the roof wasn't strong enough. It wasn't built to hold this many people. At any moment the roof or floors could collapse and it freaked me out. We later found out it was only meant to hold eight people."

We laughed now at the imagined, hypothetical disaster. But I remember the thought crossing my mind too that night, up on the packed roof of the old house on a London side street. And even now, on a sturdy floor surrounded by good friends in a flat that is now my home from home, the fear of things falling down was equally familiar.

In fact, these days, it seems a lot of us spend rather a lot of our time waiting for the game to be up.

We worry that our jobs aren't good enough, that we aren't good enough. We worry that we don't know what we're talking about, that our employers are moments from finding us out. That our achievements are flukes, not the result of hard work and talent, that we'll never be the people we wanted to be when we were younger.

We're starting to worry that our parents won't be around forever, and we regularly voice concerns (as we nurse the third hangover of the week, and it's only Thursday) that our lives aren't following the path they should (knowing, of course, that there is no such thing).

We worry that the boys who like us will lose interest, that the see-saw will always leave us hanging perilously in the air, waiting to be let down. We worry that our friends will grow up and move on before we do and we worry about the day when yes, that skirt really will be too short.

But this is the life we chose: the big city, the busy mid-week social lives, the 9-6 office jobs, the expensive, frenetic nights out, extended lie-ins, short commutes and rented accommodation. We wanted the freedom, the choice and not to be tied down - and that is what we have.

So we sit on pillows on Saturday afternoon, making contingency plans for the future, building forts from sofas and getting ready for the next adventure.

And all the while, we worry about the roof falling down.

First Date(s)

Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.
- Virgil Thomson

When you've been single for a while, you inevitably forget things.

You forget associations you once held; with places, activities and routines, you forget the spoken nuances that were once familiar: words, phrases, nicknames and in-jokes. Then finally, after what feels like far too bloody long, joy of joys - you forget why you were even with someone in the first place.

(That last bit's well good.)

Other things get forgotten too if you allow yourself enough time: what a heart flutter feels like, the nervous expectation of a text message, or the simple comfort of being physically and emotionally concerned with someone else.

And if you've spent your singleness occasionally arranging and then cancelling dates because something just doesn't feel right, or experiencing flashes of attraction that fade into nothing when the sun comes up, you're also likely to forget something else: the unmitigated terror of going on a first date.

You forget the process of choosing what to wear, and the nerves of picking the right place to meet; of getting it just right (not too busy, not too quiet, not too expensive, not too cheap, not too weird, no strippers, and a fire exit out the back - just in case).

You forget how you're meant to greet a person for the first time when there's the pretense of maybe, perhaps, something more happening between you than friendship, and the appropriate way to say goodbye when the end of the night comes and you suspect that might be the case - hug? Kiss on one cheek? Two? Lips? Handshake?

Then, after the event - you'll wonder how you still managed to get it wrong even after all that thought.

The texts once you're both home - well, you've probably forgotten how they're supposed to start and end too, and you forget how to infer "I like you, let's arrange another" without putting yourself out on a limb and saying exactly that.

Above all, after too long spent panicking about the prospect of dates and all they mean, you forget how nice it feels to be excited about seeing someone again.

But, you think, as you check your phone again and allow your mind to wonder a bit, like most forgotten things, you'll probably pick it all up again fairly quickly - given the chance.

Alright, not bad, good, better, best mate

I was mid-whisk, giving my kitchen, face and clothes a liberal coating of pancake batter when she ran over and broke the news.

"New York is happening!"
"NOOOOO"
"Well, hopefully."
"NOOOOOOOOOOO. NOOOOOOO. No you may not."

PiB is, of course, used to my protestations about her long term travel plans. Having warned her off Australia ("God no. You don't want to go there. The spiders are HUGE"), Singapore ("Forget it. You'd drop litter when you're drunk and get arrested") and Dubai ("Love, they're very strict about nudity"), this time she seems more determined than ever to move Stateside ("No! Freezing in the winter, boiling in the summer. No good for the work ethic.")

The problem, of course, is not that she wouldn't cope admirably faced with any of the above. No, no - the girl can turn up late to a flight and still get upgraded to First Class.

Really, it's all down to the fact that I'd have to cope without her. 

The "best mate" thing always seemed like a bit of a myth when I was growing up; a term placed upon any number of fleeting presences over the years. At one point, I'd have said I had a few - but, placed against the perilous landscape of my mid to late twenties - I now I realise they were merely "good", not best.

You know when you've got a best mate when, after a bit of pleading, they change their mind about accompanying you to a party - even though they're hungover to the point of dying and can think of nothing worse. "Oh, go on then. I'll come", they'll call you back and say, "But you better have some bacon for breakfast."

Best mates can count on each other to be plus ones to weddings, saving them from sitting next to an empty chair at a fully coupled table. "This is my lady-date!" she'll declare, and won't even blink when she later walks into the hotel room to find you lying in your underwear with a large bag of Pick 'n' Mix balanced on your stomach, absolutely hammered, laughing at the TV.

"What?!" you'll say, mouth full of jelly beans.
"Nothing. I'm going to have a bath" she'll reply.
"Well, don't lock the door in case you bloody fall asleep."

(A best mate knows that she always falls asleep.)

A best mate will pick you up off the floor whether it's alcohol, high heels or heartbreak that put you there. She'll take you to shops you can't afford, hand you a glass of champagne procured from a sales assistant, and then march you up to the make-up counter issuing instructions such as "she needs Dandelion. NOW."

In fact, she'll always drop everything (or at least bring him along) when the call comes. Even if that call comes on a second date across the other side of London, because "no, you're not OK".

You know you've got a best mate when you can predict the nature of their problem by the time of the phone call (9-11am = job / boy woes. 12-2pm = a catch up. 10pm-9am = drunk and teary).

What's more, a proper best mate knows the good blokes are few and far between, and the bad ones are to be prevented from causing more hurt, preferably by declaring "well, you can't sleep with the little bastard tonight, motherfucker. Because I'm going to pass out in your bed" (yes, she thanked me the next day).

"Look," I said later, picking pancake out of my hair last week, "It sounds amazing. And of course I'll support you wherever you go..."
"Aw, thanks."
"...But I will be doing my utmost in the meantime to make sure you don't."
"Oh. Thanks."

A best mate is always welcome.

Kids these days

One of the most terrifying things about being in your late twenties is that every so often, you catch sight of a date of birth which ends in something like "2010".

If you're anything like me, you'll like to think that people just stopped being born after about 1995; a time in which everyone was caught up in deciding which Take That member to scratch a heart around with the pointed end of a compass on their pencil case, not merely Tweeting their adoration of Harry Styles.

You'll like to imagine that everyone alive now should, and indeed does, remember a time when knowledge came from libraries, not from a mythical "search engine", or - sod it - a time before the internet itself.

The fact that all our worldly information is so readily available now - to the point where our capacity for memorising things is shrinking - is indicative of a more pressing concern: that there are children in the world at this very moment who have never booted up a CDROM of Encarta Encyclopedia, and magically produced the exact same "research" as everyone else handing in their homework that day.

The same goes for mobile phones. It's not the instant, hyper-connectivity of noughties children that worries me; more that kids these days will never have to search through the Yellow Pages for a house  number and mumble a greeting to their crush's mother,

 "Hello, Mrs Smith. Is Daniel there please?"

...before making stilted, quiet, awkward conversation while balancing carefully on the stairs; an operation that was always hindered by the meter long ringlets of stretchy phone cord which never quite reached anywhere out of parental earshot.

Worst still, by taking their first "I fancy you" steps via text message or Facebook, kids these days will never have to endure the tell-tale click of a phone being replaced on its hook, followed by the hot-faced embarrassment of their older sister yelling "Oooh! Who's MARK? Have you got a BOYFRIEND?" from her listening post in the kitchen.

BT phone boxes must seem like relics of another time to kids these days; make-do street toilets, public drug taking cubicles, an extreme last resort if you forget your mobile - not a place your best mate used to call you from when her parents regularly barred outgoing calls from their house.

And let us not start on TV on-demand services, which negate ever having an all-out sibling war over who recorded over the only VHS copy of Ghost with an episode of Byker Grove, or whose cassette recorder ate the ribbon on the latest Now...! double compilation.

Oh, kids these days. Those poor people born in 2013, whose idea of nostalgia will be a screen resolution without HD.

They're missing out.

2013 Resolution: Never be bored.

We sat around a table in the basement of a cocktail bar; the boys in bow ties and black jackets, the girls in sequins, sparkles and short hem lines.

(PiB was sporting a fox fur stole that, as karma would have it, she was allergic to.)

"So, let's have it" someone said, "New year resolutions?"

We went round the table, where the usual suspects (stopping smoking, a dry January and gym memberships) were touted as 2013 goals. Eventually it was my turn, and I thought for a moment.

"Don't know, really. Cut out the Ex. Try not to be an idiot. Cook more. Be bored less."

When it comes to resolutions, I subscribe to the school of thought that you can change the things you don't like at any time, not just the turn of a year. But for some reason, January 2nd, 2013 seems like a good date to make some real change happen to the life I've been bubbling along with - sometimes contentedly, other times not - for the last twelve months.

From starting a new job, to a sudden house move, an unexpected run-in (or ten) with The Ex, and the loss of an old friend, 2012 wasn't exactly devoid of drama.

But there was also a lot of good stuff: my friendship group grew wide and brilliant, fellow bloggers became mates in the real world, my new neighbourhood became a home, and being happy by myself became a default setting, instead of one I was having to accept without a choice.

Going on holiday, cinema visits, turning up at parties or events - anything that would usually be done in pairs or more, I made a concrete effort to do alone - and it paid off.

Occasional heart flutters proved that I wasn't dead to the idea of romance; just picky, enjoying my own company and recovering slowly from the last one. That took a bit of getting used to, especially when the world around me seemed to be falling in love or going out on dates. But here we are almost two years on from one of life's big crashes, and god, I'm ready to let that whole thing go.

Because last month made me realise I'm bored of it. Bored of him being in my head, bored of the word "Ex" coming up in conversation. I'm bored of playing nice when I see him in the street, bored of wondering how he is. I'm bored of blogging about him, of attributing any of the decisions I make to him. I'm bored of entertaining the idea that this ridiculous, silly man-child who did so much to make me happy, then so much to hurt me, could ever live up to my expectations again.

I can't un-happen what happened in January 2011, but I can stop the ex-related boredom from happening now. All that requires is to leave him in 2012, while I skip on into 2013.

It was a few hours into the New Year when we were back at someone's house in central London carrying on the party. I sat atop a kitchen counter - really quite drunk now, rum in hand - when a friend appeared next to me and said, "I've got a new years resolution for you."

"What's that then?"
"Don't take it the wrong way. I've known you about a year now, and it's just something I've noticed."
"Go on, I can take it. I'm hardcore. Like a lion. A massive pissed lion."

He paused, raised an equally drunk eyebrow.

"You should be more open to stuff. People, mainly. You should give people a chance more. You know, let them in a bit."

And just as I was about to spout the same old excuses, I remembered my resolution.

"Yeah. I want to. That should be easier now. I'll give it a go. But first I have another new year challenge. I want to do the DIRTY DANCING LIFT."

Then I drained my drink, turned up the music and took to the other side of the kitchen floor for my run-up.

"Ready? GO GO GO"

As I crashed to the ground for the fifth time in as many minutes, I concluded that while some things will inevitably change this year; others will definitely not.