A few weeks ago I wrote a guest blog
for Harper Impulse about the three romantic gestures that have meant
more to me than any number of crushed carnations or slightly damaged
Terry's chocolate oranges. You can have a look at it here.
Now, that post was slightly out of
character for me, as regular readers may spot. I'm not usually one to
dwell on the sweet and fluffy side of life. So, on the flip side,
here is my alternative 'Romantic gestures that went totally tits up'
I'll kick off with the Saturday night
that Alistair cooked dinner for us. It was the first time he'd really
cooked for me (as opposed to just heating things up) and he slaved
his squidgy buttocks off. There was a starter, chicken, roast
potatoes, veg, pudding, wine (sadly, he'd bought dessert wine which
was grimly undrinkable, but still). The chicken had a slight
aftertaste to it, but I thought that was probably the sauce/herbs
he'd used.
The following morning I had a stupidly
early start, at half past five or something equally horrific, to
receive a delivery. Standing in the office, talking sleepily to the
chatty delivery driver, I became aware that I didn't feel quite
right, somehow. And as the chatty delivery driver said 'Well, must
get on, can't be standing here all day' (but making no attempt to
leave) I had the horrifying realisation that I really, really had to
get to the toilet NOW. I pretty much bundled the driver out of the
office, pelted down the corridor and just, just made it to the loo on
time. Within thirty seconds, I knew I was going to be sick. So I
grabbed the bin and made use of that. Twenty minutes later, I limped
back to our flat (about five seconds from the office) and repeated
the experience in our bathroom.
My efforts were not without a
soundtrack, and soon enough Ali appeared in the bathroom doorway.
'You ok?' 'Noooooaararrggghh.' We'd only been together for a few
months, but I was feeling so terrible I didn't care that he was
seeing me at possibly my lowest point, ever, pebbledashing the loo and
dryheaving into a plastic office bin.
Oh, but it gets worse. Ali was feeling
fine, so we put my D&V down to some bug I must have picked up. He
was off to do some Christmas shopping with his sister that morning,
which was a relief – I could shit out my own sphincter in peace
whilst they chose something tasteful for their parents. Until
Alistair came home very rapidly, less than an hour after departing,
and went straight into the bathroom. He'd been suddenly overcome with
feeling unwell in Marks & Spencer. Specifically in the foodhall
of Marks & Spencer. In fact, he'd projectile vomited all over the
floor in the foodhall of Marks & Spencer, in front of very many
horrified Christmas shoppers.
In between lying delicately on the sofa
and vomiting yellow bile into buckets, we weakly wondered what had
caused us to get so ill. Ali had cooked the chicken for at least 40
minutes! 'What, did you buy it fresh on Saturday afternoon?' I asked.
'No... the stuff that was in the freezer.' 'Did you defrost it?' I
asked slowly. 'No...It just said to cook it for about 30 minutes?'
Yes. He'd cooked the chicken from
frozen. And nearly bastardly killed us in the process. That said, it
brought us closer together. You can't hide much from someone who's
seen you with food poisoning from both ends.
I think this next one is my favourite
in terms of just how badly wrong a boy can get it. Aged 14, I was in
the midst of my summer job (really do need to explain this to you at
some point). Surrounded by older people for the majority of my life,
I looked and acted older than my years and was sometimes thought to
be as old as 16 (even 17! My cup runneth over). I'd been eyeing up a
French guy for a week or two, and as these teenage things tend to
happen, one night he asked for a light, and within a few seconds we
were snogging. No more than that. A tiny bit of conversation, a few
snogs, back to our friends. Then later, a few more seconds of
discussion, a few more snogs, back to friends. For possibly three
nights? Certainly no more than that. Then he went back home to
France, and that was that.
Except it wasn't. A week later, a
letter arrived (written on the weird graph paper that all continental
Europeans seemed to use as writing paper at the time). It began
'Hello, my pretty little Lucy...' and continued in that vein for four
pages. It read as though Pepe le Pew had put pen to paper and needed
only a beret and matelot jersey to complete the image. I could not
fail to read it in the most ridiculously over the top
Frrrrrronchhhhhh accent imaginable. It was full of how much he missed
me, how he had told his parents all about me, they wanted to meet me,
perhaps I could come out and spend my Christmas holidays with them?
Or he could come to the UK and stay with my family? Perhaps he could
go to college in the UK? He could not bear to be without me a moment
longer, surely I must feel the same?
I took the only course of action
available to me. I didn't reply to his letter. Which was slightly
awkward when he turned up the following summer with a group of
friends. So we both just ignored each other for the four weeks he was
there, and everything was fine.
A thankfully brief memory – round at
the house of a teenage boyfriend. He's fiddling with the CD player in
the living room, then gestures to me to come and dance with him. I
get up, awkwardly. 'Can you feel the love tonight' comes over the
speakers. I burst out laughing raucously at the naffness of it all,
and the idea of dancing to a song about shagging lions.
He gets into
a massive huff at my lack of appreciation for his big romantic gesture. End of teenage boyfriend.
And then, my very, very worst. The
lowest of all lows. The moment when I say 'Have you even met me? You
have, yes? You have been my boyfriend for four months, right?'. It
was my 18th birthday. A milestone, no? My then boyfriend
had sodded off to Costa Rica for four months, leaving my birthday
present with me, 'to be opened on the day'. Now, I think we've
established I'm not a girly girl, right? Aged 17/18, I existed on
Britpop, Bob Dylan, Iain Banks and Q magazine. I wore short skirts
and kickarse boots, I was studying for A Levels and heavily into
poetry, Monty Python and The Fast Show. Emotional, but no space/time
for sentimentalism. So you can imagine my face on that hugely
significant birthday morning, when I opened his present and found
this.
Yes, that. A teddy bear, on a treasure
chest that works as a money box. But wait! There is more!
A bunch of mascara arse mental looking
frogs! For no reason! And just to round it all off with a dose of random gravy, there was a candle. A single candle. Not scented. Not
interestingly made. Just a plain white candle. It was almost as
though he had 25 quid to spend on a present, had spent 23.89, so
threw in a bonus candle to take him up to to budget.
There was not a
single thing there that indicated that, at any point, he had actually
thought of me as his recipient, and what I might like. It was the
type of thing your slightly unhinged great aunt, who hasn't seen you
for 20 years decides to send you, having never previously sent you a
birthday present before. I can remember ripping the present open, in
happy expectation, and then just sitting back on my heels and saying
'What. The. Actual. Fuck.' There was even a brief moment when I
thought 'Ha! Has to be a joke! There will be a note inside the
moneybox!' There was no note.
The moneybox did have a happy ending,
however. My friends laughed so long and hard at it that it became the
honorary 18th birthday present for all of us, and we
passed it around, laughing until we felt sick that anyone would ever
have considered appropriate for any of us. I can't remember who it
ended up with, but it did provide plenty of laughs, so for that,
ex-boyfriend, wherever you are, thank you. Your present was memorable in so many ways.
4 comments:
I am very very close to wetting myself from laughing at your crappy 18th birthday present. I can't decide whether the money box, the frogs or the candle are the worst bit. Hilarious.
Lisa @ http://www.howtobeadomesticdisgrace.blogspot.com
I think it's the combination of all three that elevates it beyond mere crappiness and into the realms of magnificently awful. I've a feeling there might have been a card as well, but the presents have swept the memory from my mind.
Brilliant - you made my day, I've been laughing my socks off!
I used to receive lengthy love letters from boys who persisted in writing them in English (I had lived abroad and when I returned to my home country spoke English better than my mothertongue). But here's the thing: their English was not much good. So I did them a favour: I took out my red pen and corrected all their spelling and grammatical mistakes. I still think they could have been more appreciative.
Absolutely Marina! You were trying to improve their language skills - how churlish not to appreciate you! You've also reminded me of the time I received a letter from a Spanish boyfriend where he called his friend 'a sun of the beach'. Almost there, but not quite.
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