Opening up a message to Gary, I saw that he wasn't online. That was to be expected, seeing as he had a full time job and everything. In a way I was a bit relieved - this meant I could just send the message and wouldn't be checking the chat every few minutes to see if 'message read', or even worse, the dreaded '...' indicating he was writing had appeared. I kept it simple - essentially just asking the same question I'd asked Bob - was this a one off drunk thing or was it something more? I added that I wasn't expecting an instant relationship or anything out of it, but I'd rather just know where I stood on it all. Perhaps not the most subtle or elegant way of phrasing it all, but if humans were build on solid foundations made up of our qualities, my two strongest ones would be 'awkward' and 'subtle as a brick'. If he couldn't deal with that now, then there was no way anything would ever happen between us!
After an hour or so, in which I read the same page of my notes at least five times, I packed up my stuff and tapped Ethan on the shoulder to let him know it was time to go. We had our first group project meeting, and I didn't want to be late. At this point all we knew were the other people making up our 11-strong team, and that this project would make up 40% of our grade this year (and therefore 16% of our overall degree classification!). We didn't know our topic, or the lecturer in charge of our team, and with it being so important to my degree I couldn't wait to find out. Luckily the project wasn't going to require much work before Christmas (especially so as I'd taken so many of my classes this semester) but I would have plenty of time after to really focus and make sure we did this as well as we could. I was also currently thinking about going for project engineering jobs after graduation, so figured this would be the perfect opportunity to find out if I was actually any good at leading a project.
Our room was in a building I'd not been in much, and was renowned for being a labyrinth, so it took us a little while to find where we were meant to be. Finally finding the right number, we were still the first people there. We'd barely sat down before a familiar face opened the door and I immediately realised who our assigned lecturer was...
Dr Lee. A perfectly nice man from South Korea, who had taught us basic process calculations in second year, but unfortunately his accent made it almost impossible to understand him. I always felt really uncomfortable complaining about it, because I respected him as a very clever man in his chosen field, and his English was incomparably better than my Korean. However... he had chosen a career as a lecturer in a foreign country, and that came with certain requirements regarding your ability to teach. It had taken us half the semester to realise the reason we could never replicate his equations was that he mixed up his letter sounds, and every person had written down incorrect equations. I'd spent hours trying to go through tutorials with him, and it took forever to work out even the slightest miscommunication in his teaching. Luckily, I suggested that it might be useful for a postgrad student to help out in tutorials to 'ease his load', and we learned the entire course from this poor unsuspecting postgrad guy.
Finding out that he was our assigned lecturer gave me a bad feeling right from the start. I knew that he'd be a lovely man to have around, but he would be useless if we had any technical problems that we needed help with - and I could guarantee 100% that there would be countless issues. Sighing, I mentally stiffened my spine. OK, not the greatest start, but surely the best project managers come from making successes of the worst messes?
The rest of the group slowly arrived. It was a pretty good mix of people from my year, including Ian: a guy I've worked with before who I knew was a fellow exceptionally hard worker and perfectionist. There was one other girl, who I knew fairly well and knew she'd keep the group motivated to do well. There was only one guy I was worried about - he was notorious for being the class clown, not through any natural wit, but through his complete oblivion to anything going on in classes, if he ever even turned up for them.
Once everyone had turned up, Dr Lee handed out our project outline. Dr Lee then ran through the basic timeline of the project - research before Christmas, each of us designing a module of the overall plant, leading to a personal and group report, then the final presentation to our whole year plus invited industry experts. I zoned out and started skimming through the outline - all of the logistics had been available online for the past month so I knew what he was saying already. It took me a while to understand exactly what we'd been asked to do. It looked like some kind of solids processing plant design, specifically for potassium chloride crystals for fertiliser... but apart from one very brief introduction to solids last year, we hadn't been taught anything about it. I didn't even know what kind of equipment we'd have to design. However, the flip side of that was that I knew most of the lecturers had very little solids processing experience as well, so hopefully that meant easier questions when it came to the final presentation and question panel.
After Dr Lee finished explaining the marking model, we were finally able to discuss the assignment. Part of the new system was each of us taking turns chairing our weekly meetings, so I volunteered to be the first chairperson. At this point there wasn't much we could do though, especially as none of us had the first idea where to start with this kind of process. We needed to come up with at least two different methods of designing this plant, with a separate distinct section for each of us to 'own' the design. We determined our rough timeline for the project, when our weekly meeting would be, set up a google documents to share research on, and finished early. Dr Lee tried to convince us to stay longer and brainstorm initial ideas for the plant, insisting that we had been taught this stuff already. Breathing deeply (not a great sign that he was getting to me so soon), I disagreed, with the rest of the group agreeing with me. When he finally seemed to accept that we were right (and muttering to himself about the curriculum needing changed to include such 'basics'), we escaped with some relief.
As I headed down the corridor, laughing with Ethan about how clueless our lecturers could be, Ian ran and caught up with me.
"Hey Jane, mind if I have a quick word?"
Waving Ethan to go ahead without me, I nodded. "No problem Ian, how can I help?"
"I just wanted to warn you... I've got a few friends who have just graduated who have been warning me about this project - it's something we need to spend a lot of time on to make sure it gets finished to a decent quality and before the deadline, as it can spin out of control very quickly."
I immediately agreed with him. "I know, I've heard pretty much exactly the same from people. I'm actually planning on setting a deadline for our group report a couple of weeks before the actual deadline - we probably won't meet it but at least it'll force us to get the work done a lot earlier so it's less of a panic, and then we can all focus on our individual reports."
"That sounds like a really good idea, I'm definitely on board with that." Ian paused for a second, smiling at me. "I have to say, I was really happy to see you were in my group for this, I know you'll push us to produce an excellent project. And don't feel this is all on you - I'm more than happy to put extra hours into this project to make sure we get the best grade, so you can always rely on me to get things done."
Touched, I grinned back at him. "Aw, you charmer! But seriously, that's really good to hear - I was over the moon to see you in the group too. Despite this weird assignment, I know we'll get through it all somewhat intact!" He waved and headed off to catch up with his friends as I turned right towards the bike racks.
Even though I'd known Ian was a hard worker, it was still a relief to hear out loud that he cared as much about this project as I did. I was definitely a bit of a control freak in group projects - my grades were extremely important to me, and it took a lot before I trusted someone enough with important pieces of work. It wasn't a good attitude to have, as it often resulted in the rest of the group quite happily leaving me with the overall work, and leaving me a burned out mess by the end of it (albeit one with top marks). This project was far bigger than any group work we'd been assigned before, and I had to learn to delegate else I wouldn't cope with the rest of the year. With the project counting for so much it wouldn't be easy, but knowing Ian was there to help eased my mind.
Tying on my helmet, I started pedalling down to the astroturf pitches for football practice. I'd warned my coaches that I'd be a bit late due to the project meeting, but if the traffic lights favoured me I would probably just make it in time. That was perfect with me - I didn't want to get there early and have to talk to anyone about the match and my meltdown over my performance.
Arriving at the pitches out of breath but nicely warmed up, I grabbed my football bag, took a deep breath and ran over to where the girls were already stretching.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Throwing my football boots into my cupboard and showering little plastic astroturf chips everywhere, I frowned into my mirror. OK, so I hadn't wanted anyone to comment on the fact I got upset at the football match - it was embarrassing and I didn't want to get a reputation as being stroppy or too emotional over games. However, I'd expected Bruce to say something. Anything! I don't know what I'd been expecting - no, I lie, what I had expected was for Bruce to say something along the lines of "I spoke to Ryan and we realised that it was unfair for you not to play the whole friendly, and for us not to consider you for any games when you are clearly the most loyal and reliable player in the team." Or something along those lines at least - god, even an "are you OK?" would have been enough!
I'd been trying to convince myself for the last week that my feelings at the match had been wrong, that it was selfish of me to be so upset over this, but damn it, I WAS the most reliable player. I was the only player who turned up to training every. Single. Week. I was the only person who came along to watch every single match as a spectator, despite never being picked, despite being in my nightmare year of uni, despite the fact it killed me to watch from the sidelines week after week after week. On top of this I was putting hours in each week as Treasurer of the team to try and make ends meet with our rapidly shrinking supply of money, and both of the girls in charge of fundraising had decided they 'didn't have time to fundraise on top of uni and playing games', so I'd been lumped with doing two of the committee roles all by myself, and I was really, really reaching my breaking point.
I was pinching my nose to try and hold back tears when my internal ranting was interrupted by my ringtone - currently the classic James Bond theme song. Scrabbling through my bag to find it, I glanced at the screen to see if it was a call I needed to take - I wasn't sure my voice could hold up to a normal conversation right now. Unfortunately, it was Alyssa, and with my parent's 50th birthday weekend coming up in four days, I quickly wiped my eyes and pressed answer.
"Hey! So, have you got all the presents?" That was Alyssa, straight into the organising. However, as a fellow organised freak, I definitely appreciated the distraction right now.
"Almost! Ray says he'll have the cake ready for me by Friday, and he'll give me a lift back to the flat after uni so I don't have to carry it, and it'll be as fresh as it can be for the weekend. The cricket tickets have been bought - sorry, I forgot to tell you I'd done that. We actually lucked out - I've had to go for the 4th day of the test match, but we're only three rows from the front so that should be a great view. What about you?"
"Good, well I've got everything - all of the food has arrived and it's in my basket, apart from the cheese I asked you to order. Has it arrived?"
Ah. I'd completely forgotten Alyssa had asked me to do that - the rest of the food had ended up being a bit expensive so I'd offered to buy the Lancashire creamy, crumbly and tasty cheese that my dad loved so much (and yes, those are the actual names for the three cheeses - you can't say Northerners aren't practical in their naming!). I had actually bought them but I'd completely forgotten about them arriving... but thinking through, I hadn't seen a 'missed delivery' note.
"No, they haven't arrived yet, but I was worried about the cheese staying fresh so it should be arriving by Wednesday this week. I'll contact the seller and see if they have a tracking number I can use though." OK, it was a bit of a white lie. I had delayed delivery, but I was certain it should have arrived before the weekend... Now, I was just worried that the postman hadn't left a delivery note and the cheese was languishing in a distant post office depot somewhere. My only hope was that Scotland wasn't known for it's warmth at this time of year, so hopefully the warehouse was acting as a giant fridge!
Alyssa wasn't particularly happy about me 'leaving delivery that late' but she couldn't argue with it.
"But Jane, if that cheese isn't there, it's completely your fault OK? And you can tell mum and dad that."
"Yes, Alyssa, I'll make sure it gets there! And I'm sure I can cope telling them that, at worst case I'll buy dad some Wensleydale cheese as a back-up and tell him the story, he'll appreciate the thought!"
"Hmph. Thoughts don't make amazing 50th birthday presents. But it's on you." She paused then, and the line fell silent for a moment too long, which immediately made me feel like something was up.
"Hey, you OK? This weekend will go absolutely fine, I promise, mum and dad will just be really happy to have us all together again."
She sighed. "No, it's not that, it's nothing." My big sister spidey sense went from tingling to full on alert.
"Nothing seems to have got you worried... Must be a pretty important nothing!" I teased her, trying to get her to open up. Alyssa was a bit funny at times, some things she would vent about for hours but on others it was like trying to open an uncooked mussel to get any details out of her.
"Ugh! If I tell you, you can't tell anyone. Seriously Jane, I mean it." Spidey sense update - boy troubles suspected.
And confirmed as she continued. "There's a guy from orchestra... and we went on a date, and it actually went really well. And we're going on a second one. But I'm just expecting him to do what everyone else has done and just mess me around until I've decided I do like him and then he'll bail."
Wow. Alyssa never talked boy stuff with me - this guy must have really gotten to her. Admittedly, there was a reason we never talked about this kind of stuff, because I had no idea what to really say back.
"Well, he must be pretty special for me to hear about him! But I don't know, Alyssa. I know guys have been awful to you in the past, and I don't want to be the one to push you into a situation like that again if he is another jerk. But you're the only one who can make the decision as to whether he is jerk material, and it depends if you'd rather know for sure and potentially get hurt, but also potentially be really happy, or if you could deal with always wondering what if." I nodded to myself - that came out marginally better than it had been in my head.
Alyssa snorted a little over the phone. "Trust you to give me the most depressing 'go for it' speech in history! But, you're right. I know. And he does really seem different."
"So... do I get to know any more about him? Name, maybe?" I quickly flicked my iPad on and opened up facebook, ready to go for some immediate stalking of this potential brother-in-law.
"Ha! No. You'll just go straight back to mum with it."
"Lies! Such lies!" I exclaimed, but couldn't hold back my laugh. It was true. There was no such thing as a secret in my family, all secrets shared between siblings found their way back to mum at one point or another. Plus, by pooling our information, mum and I had become really good at finding Alyssa's guys on facebook in the past. We have no shame.
"I'll tell you this though - he's fourth year and an engineer."
"Yesss!" I cheered enthusiastically over the phone, trying to make Alyssa laugh and succeeding. "I immediately approve. Engineers are awesome."
"Yeah, yeah, I've just told him any engineer chat and he's out the door, I get enough of that at home from you and dad!"
Laughing, we said our goodbyes and I hung up, feeling much better than I had before. As I whatsapped mum saying "New Alyssa gossip - engineer man alert!", Dave stuck his head round the door.
"Were you... cheering just then?" He asked bemusedly, eyeing me lying on my bed in half of my football gear, boots and shinpads strewn haphazardly around the room.
I grinned. "Yup! Alyssa is dating an engineer!"
He groaned. "Oh god. Not more of you. I swear there's enough engineering graduates around to take over the world sooner or later."
I threw a cushion at him from my bed whilst he was speaking and hit him full in the face. He made a face in mock outrage, before stealing the cushion and running back into the corridor, yelling over his shoulder.
"Well, I was going to tell you Agents of SHIELD was about to come on, but I'm not sure I want to watch it now with you in such a violent mood..."
Giggling, I yelled I'd be through in a second and started speed-changing from football gear into pyjama bottoms and a hoodie. The pile of notebooks on my desk stared at me, but I obstinately ignored them as I headed towards the door. With being away for my parents' 50th this weekend, there was an insane amount of work to do before then, but for now the night belonged to curling up on a sofa, watching TV, and eating home-made cookies with my best friend - exactly as it should be.
Saturday, 17 January 2015
Saturday, 10 January 2015
I'll Tell You What I Want, What I Really Really Want
On Monday I cycled to university instead of walking with Bob, as I had football training that evening. It was going to be the first one since that match last week. Now that all the adrenaline had worn off, I was really embarrassed about the scene that I'd caused with my goalkeeper coach Bruce. It wasn't his fault that Ryan had asked Hayley to play too, and that's the way that sports work - the best ones get into the team, it's a naturally competitive environment. Just because I was upset that someone better had come along didn't give me any right to cause problems. I just hoped that the rest of the team hadn't really noticed and no one said anything about it tonight.
I reached the classroom early and managed to grab one of the seats next to the wall. I always preferred having something to lean against, especially for first thing in the morning, and leaning against a wall was a tad less conspicuous than resting your head on the desk. The rest of the group slowly filtered in and started good-naturedly teasing Nate, who was sporting a magnificent hickey from the weekend. Luckily, none of them seemed to have noticed me and Gary that night, but I stayed very, very quiet just in case! I had thought that Bob had seen us kissing, but he hadn't said anything over facebook messenger when we'd been chatting on Sunday, so I was hoping I might have escaped the mandatory group teasing that something like this would normally entail.
Bob sauntered in and grabbed the seat at the end of the row, just in time to hear Nate groan loudly and tell us all to shut up.
"Are we sharing all the excitement of the weekend, then?" Bob chimed in, giving me a knowing look over Ray's head. Damn, he definitely had seen us! I widened my eyes at him, shaking my head slightly, but to no avail.
"So... I'm guessing Jane's told you all about her and Gary then?" I glared over at Bob as the group burst into noise at his news.
"Whaaat?" yelled Renae, turning to stare at me. "You can't keep gossip like that from me! When, what happened, how far, spill it! Spill it all!"
"Ooh, look at how red she's gone, it must be bad!" Ray laughed at my embarrassment, whilst Nate joined in a bit too enthusiastically, clearly relieved to share the gossip load.
"Nothing really happened..." I mumbled, not wanting to share. I wasn't at all used to being the centre of attention about this kind of thing - after all, I'd been faithfully with Lee for two years until relatively recently and had never kissed anyone before that. I just wanted the attention to end - or at least for the lecturer to arrive early and put me out of my misery temporarily!
"Well, I wouldn't say nothing..." said Bob, shaking his head at me disapprovingly. As the group started exclaiming again, imaginations running wild, I figured telling was the only way to get this over with.
"Fine! So, you guys all disappeared on Saturday night, and it was just me and Gary, and he pulled me into the middle of the dance floor and kissed me. We, um, we stayed there for a while, and then we headed back to our street..."
"And then you totally took him upstairs and showed him how true that 'lady in the street, devil in the sheets' stuff is, right?!" Ray interrupted. I gave him a look and continued.
"Haha, well, actually no. We stopped outside my flat, he kissed me again... and then I told him I hoped this wouldn't make watching Glee awkward, said bye and ran up to my flat."
Ethan snorted and started laughing, whilst Ray looked at me with mock disappointment. "Jane! If you're going to start providing us with gossip, dear, it might as well be juicy gossip!"
"Just because my love life doesn't match up to your Grindr antics!" I shot back with a smile. It was true - the things that Ray had got up to could make a stripper blush, and I'd reluctantly heard all about them in excruciating detail. He winced a little as I said it though and stayed silent, and I immediately felt bad - had something gone wrong? He normally took any chance he could to tell us about his adventures. He shrugged it off immediately, so I made a note to ask him about it later instead.
Luckily at that point our lecturer finally arrived, and the Jane/Gary Inquisition had to halt. After the class ended, I caught up with Bob as we headed over to the library. "So... how did you know?"
He looked at me like I was crazy. "... because Gary told me?"
"What?! He told you?"
"Uh, yeah, pretty much as soon as he got back. I must have only been a few minutes ahead of you two, I was still drinking water in the kitchen. You know, he was a bit bummed out by that Glee comment."
I looked down at my feet. "Ah. It wasn't meant to be mean... I guess I just panicked a bit." He looked over at me as we walked, but didn't say anything. The silence was making me uncomfortable, so I decided just to ask what had been on my mind.
"So, seeing as you two apparently talk about everything... was that a drunken thing or does he actually have feelings for me?" It had been preying on me since Saturday night, and I didn't honestly know where I stood on it. Gary was a lovely guy, but I didn't know him that well, and the fact that he was Bob's flatmate just made everything so much more complicated. And if he did have feelings for me, I didn't want to hurt him if what I felt was more curiosity than actual feelings - but if it was just a drunken thing, I didn't want to make a fool of myself by making it out to be bigger than it was. I was so inexperienced with guys, I figured I'd rather just ask the blunt questions and know than play the dance.
"OK, I can answer some things, but I'm not touching that one! Go ask him yourself!" With that, Bob veered off to grab a coffee, saying he'd catch up with us in our usual room. Climbing the stairs, I mulled over what he had said. He was right - if I could ask Bob bluntly about it, I could ask Gary himself and try and sort this all out.
Opening the door to our usual library haunt, I wandered over and sat next to Ray. He had his laptop out and had some online game up on one half of the screen whilst his group project outline filled the other. Leaning over his shoulder, I took a nosy at what his group would be working on for the rest of the year. We didn't have our first group meeting until later that afternoon when we'd find out, so I was curious to see what kind of thing we were expected to do. We'd been warned that they'd 'revamped' the group project this year to make it more 'technically challenging' due to it taking up such a large percentage of our mark this year - which essentially meant no past examples to help. So kind of them to do that in the nightmare year!
Speed reading through the page, it looked like a fairly standard process involving liquefied natural gas. In fact, it sounded very similar to a process I knew existed at a chemicals plant nearby in Scotland. It wouldn't be my first choice of something to do (ideally I wanted something to do with the oil and gas exploration sector, or renewables), but it didn't look too awful either.
Glancing around to make sure everyone else was engrossed in their work (or in Ethan and Renae's case, absorbed in the evilly difficult online geography game they were addicted to), I collapsed into the seat next to Ray and poked his shoulder.
"Soooo..."
"Soooo... what?" He parodied back at me, poking me in the side. I squeaked loudly, then quickly mouthed apologies at the student behind me who turned to glare.
"So, what's up? No grindr stories for us today? Suddenly found your modesty?"
He blushed a little and lowered his voice. "Um... actually... no. If I tell you something, promise to keep it secret?"
Intrigued, I leaned in and nodded. He took a breath and continued.
"Well... I kind of have... a boyfriend." He shook his head at me as I clapped my hands together excitedly.
"Ray, that's great! I'm so happy for you!" I genuinely was, Ray was, in his own words, a bit of a manslut and as long as I had known him I had never seen him with a steady boyfriend that he really cared about. I wasn't sure why it had to be a secret though.
"Jane - that's not all." Ah, here it came. "I've known him for about two years now, but we met on the internet."
I still wasn't really getting it. People met through all sorts of ways now and as long as he wasn't a crazy axe-wielding murderer, internet meets didn't have the same stigma any more.
"We just immediately clicked, I've never talked for so long about so many things with anyone before, and we still talk as much as we do now as we did at the start. And... the other day, we were talking, and he admitted he had feelings for me. Real, deep feelings - and I realised I felt the same way too."
I smiled over at him, it sounded like this guy was lovely. "Ray, that's amazing. But the real question is, when can I meet him?"
Ray looked away awkwardly. "Well, this is why I don't want people to know. He's from LA."
"As in... originally from LA and now in Edinburgh?" I said slowly, my brain not really picking it up.
"No. As in, he's currently living in LA."
"Ah." I didn't really know what to say. I'm not a fan of long-distance relationships at all, mainly because I hate who it turns me into, but there is long distance and there is halfway across the world.
"Look, I know. I can see exactly what you're thinking in that face." I had the good grace to blush a little there, I knew I was too sceptical about 'love being greater than all obstacles' etc. "And that's why I want to keep it a secret. I don't need people telling me it won't work and all that. I have enough worries of my own without everyone else adding their opinion!"
"Well... that seems fair enough. But Ray - are you ever actually going to go and see him? Internet chemistry and real life chemistry are two very different things." I smiled at him, but inside I was really worried for him. It just all seemed a bit impossible - long distance is for when you know you will eventually live your lives together, but planning your life out with someone you'd never even met screamed dodgy to me.
"I hope so, I would have gone this summer but I've already booked holidays with friends from home. So we'll see how it goes. I know you're not totally convinced on this, but I am Jane. I've never had feelings like this for anyone."
Softening, I managed to give him a genuine smile. "Well, if you're happy, how can I be anything but happy too?"
He smiled back and hugged me, whispering in my ear. "And now you know, I give you the task of restraining me whenever I get horny enough to consider the feelings not worth it!" Groaning and shoving him away, I couldn't help but laugh at his grin. That was definitely the Ray I knew and loved, crossing the line every time.
Friend drama sorted, I turned back to my desk and fired up Facebook, then searched for Gary's name in my messages. Ray knew what he wanted - time for me to figure out if I did too.
~ Author's Note: If anyone fancies any procrastination, here's the game that Ethan and Renae were playing (along with pretty much our entire group half the time!): http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq.
I take no responsibility for any consequent addictions and lost productivity! ~
I reached the classroom early and managed to grab one of the seats next to the wall. I always preferred having something to lean against, especially for first thing in the morning, and leaning against a wall was a tad less conspicuous than resting your head on the desk. The rest of the group slowly filtered in and started good-naturedly teasing Nate, who was sporting a magnificent hickey from the weekend. Luckily, none of them seemed to have noticed me and Gary that night, but I stayed very, very quiet just in case! I had thought that Bob had seen us kissing, but he hadn't said anything over facebook messenger when we'd been chatting on Sunday, so I was hoping I might have escaped the mandatory group teasing that something like this would normally entail.
Bob sauntered in and grabbed the seat at the end of the row, just in time to hear Nate groan loudly and tell us all to shut up.
"Are we sharing all the excitement of the weekend, then?" Bob chimed in, giving me a knowing look over Ray's head. Damn, he definitely had seen us! I widened my eyes at him, shaking my head slightly, but to no avail.
"So... I'm guessing Jane's told you all about her and Gary then?" I glared over at Bob as the group burst into noise at his news.
"Whaaat?" yelled Renae, turning to stare at me. "You can't keep gossip like that from me! When, what happened, how far, spill it! Spill it all!"
"Ooh, look at how red she's gone, it must be bad!" Ray laughed at my embarrassment, whilst Nate joined in a bit too enthusiastically, clearly relieved to share the gossip load.
"Nothing really happened..." I mumbled, not wanting to share. I wasn't at all used to being the centre of attention about this kind of thing - after all, I'd been faithfully with Lee for two years until relatively recently and had never kissed anyone before that. I just wanted the attention to end - or at least for the lecturer to arrive early and put me out of my misery temporarily!
"Well, I wouldn't say nothing..." said Bob, shaking his head at me disapprovingly. As the group started exclaiming again, imaginations running wild, I figured telling was the only way to get this over with.
"Fine! So, you guys all disappeared on Saturday night, and it was just me and Gary, and he pulled me into the middle of the dance floor and kissed me. We, um, we stayed there for a while, and then we headed back to our street..."
"And then you totally took him upstairs and showed him how true that 'lady in the street, devil in the sheets' stuff is, right?!" Ray interrupted. I gave him a look and continued.
"Haha, well, actually no. We stopped outside my flat, he kissed me again... and then I told him I hoped this wouldn't make watching Glee awkward, said bye and ran up to my flat."
Ethan snorted and started laughing, whilst Ray looked at me with mock disappointment. "Jane! If you're going to start providing us with gossip, dear, it might as well be juicy gossip!"
"Just because my love life doesn't match up to your Grindr antics!" I shot back with a smile. It was true - the things that Ray had got up to could make a stripper blush, and I'd reluctantly heard all about them in excruciating detail. He winced a little as I said it though and stayed silent, and I immediately felt bad - had something gone wrong? He normally took any chance he could to tell us about his adventures. He shrugged it off immediately, so I made a note to ask him about it later instead.
Luckily at that point our lecturer finally arrived, and the Jane/Gary Inquisition had to halt. After the class ended, I caught up with Bob as we headed over to the library. "So... how did you know?"
He looked at me like I was crazy. "... because Gary told me?"
"What?! He told you?"
"Uh, yeah, pretty much as soon as he got back. I must have only been a few minutes ahead of you two, I was still drinking water in the kitchen. You know, he was a bit bummed out by that Glee comment."
I looked down at my feet. "Ah. It wasn't meant to be mean... I guess I just panicked a bit." He looked over at me as we walked, but didn't say anything. The silence was making me uncomfortable, so I decided just to ask what had been on my mind.
"So, seeing as you two apparently talk about everything... was that a drunken thing or does he actually have feelings for me?" It had been preying on me since Saturday night, and I didn't honestly know where I stood on it. Gary was a lovely guy, but I didn't know him that well, and the fact that he was Bob's flatmate just made everything so much more complicated. And if he did have feelings for me, I didn't want to hurt him if what I felt was more curiosity than actual feelings - but if it was just a drunken thing, I didn't want to make a fool of myself by making it out to be bigger than it was. I was so inexperienced with guys, I figured I'd rather just ask the blunt questions and know than play the dance.
"OK, I can answer some things, but I'm not touching that one! Go ask him yourself!" With that, Bob veered off to grab a coffee, saying he'd catch up with us in our usual room. Climbing the stairs, I mulled over what he had said. He was right - if I could ask Bob bluntly about it, I could ask Gary himself and try and sort this all out.
Opening the door to our usual library haunt, I wandered over and sat next to Ray. He had his laptop out and had some online game up on one half of the screen whilst his group project outline filled the other. Leaning over his shoulder, I took a nosy at what his group would be working on for the rest of the year. We didn't have our first group meeting until later that afternoon when we'd find out, so I was curious to see what kind of thing we were expected to do. We'd been warned that they'd 'revamped' the group project this year to make it more 'technically challenging' due to it taking up such a large percentage of our mark this year - which essentially meant no past examples to help. So kind of them to do that in the nightmare year!
Speed reading through the page, it looked like a fairly standard process involving liquefied natural gas. In fact, it sounded very similar to a process I knew existed at a chemicals plant nearby in Scotland. It wouldn't be my first choice of something to do (ideally I wanted something to do with the oil and gas exploration sector, or renewables), but it didn't look too awful either.
Glancing around to make sure everyone else was engrossed in their work (or in Ethan and Renae's case, absorbed in the evilly difficult online geography game they were addicted to), I collapsed into the seat next to Ray and poked his shoulder.
"Soooo..."
"Soooo... what?" He parodied back at me, poking me in the side. I squeaked loudly, then quickly mouthed apologies at the student behind me who turned to glare.
"So, what's up? No grindr stories for us today? Suddenly found your modesty?"
He blushed a little and lowered his voice. "Um... actually... no. If I tell you something, promise to keep it secret?"
Intrigued, I leaned in and nodded. He took a breath and continued.
"Well... I kind of have... a boyfriend." He shook his head at me as I clapped my hands together excitedly.
"Ray, that's great! I'm so happy for you!" I genuinely was, Ray was, in his own words, a bit of a manslut and as long as I had known him I had never seen him with a steady boyfriend that he really cared about. I wasn't sure why it had to be a secret though.
"Jane - that's not all." Ah, here it came. "I've known him for about two years now, but we met on the internet."
I still wasn't really getting it. People met through all sorts of ways now and as long as he wasn't a crazy axe-wielding murderer, internet meets didn't have the same stigma any more.
"We just immediately clicked, I've never talked for so long about so many things with anyone before, and we still talk as much as we do now as we did at the start. And... the other day, we were talking, and he admitted he had feelings for me. Real, deep feelings - and I realised I felt the same way too."
I smiled over at him, it sounded like this guy was lovely. "Ray, that's amazing. But the real question is, when can I meet him?"
Ray looked away awkwardly. "Well, this is why I don't want people to know. He's from LA."
"As in... originally from LA and now in Edinburgh?" I said slowly, my brain not really picking it up.
"No. As in, he's currently living in LA."
"Ah." I didn't really know what to say. I'm not a fan of long-distance relationships at all, mainly because I hate who it turns me into, but there is long distance and there is halfway across the world.
"Look, I know. I can see exactly what you're thinking in that face." I had the good grace to blush a little there, I knew I was too sceptical about 'love being greater than all obstacles' etc. "And that's why I want to keep it a secret. I don't need people telling me it won't work and all that. I have enough worries of my own without everyone else adding their opinion!"
"Well... that seems fair enough. But Ray - are you ever actually going to go and see him? Internet chemistry and real life chemistry are two very different things." I smiled at him, but inside I was really worried for him. It just all seemed a bit impossible - long distance is for when you know you will eventually live your lives together, but planning your life out with someone you'd never even met screamed dodgy to me.
"I hope so, I would have gone this summer but I've already booked holidays with friends from home. So we'll see how it goes. I know you're not totally convinced on this, but I am Jane. I've never had feelings like this for anyone."
Softening, I managed to give him a genuine smile. "Well, if you're happy, how can I be anything but happy too?"
He smiled back and hugged me, whispering in my ear. "And now you know, I give you the task of restraining me whenever I get horny enough to consider the feelings not worth it!" Groaning and shoving him away, I couldn't help but laugh at his grin. That was definitely the Ray I knew and loved, crossing the line every time.
Friend drama sorted, I turned back to my desk and fired up Facebook, then searched for Gary's name in my messages. Ray knew what he wanted - time for me to figure out if I did too.
~ Author's Note: If anyone fancies any procrastination, here's the game that Ethan and Renae were playing (along with pretty much our entire group half the time!): http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq.
I take no responsibility for any consequent addictions and lost productivity! ~
Saturday, 3 January 2015
Where Do We Go Now?
I woke up to the sound of laughter in the flat. Rolling over, I
smiled as I checked my phone: 9.30am. Or, as I liked to call it, the
perfect weekend morning wake-up time: late enough that I'd definitely
got enough sleep, but still early enough to justify lying in bed
watching a few episodes of Buffy on Netflix. I'd never watched the
series when it originally came out but figured it's never too late to
catch up, and had become completely addicted to it within the first few
episodes. Although I had to admit, I really didn't get the whole Angel
thing - give me Spike any day!
The laughter faded out as I heard the front door open and close, followed by the sound of Dave locking up. After the drama of Dave finding out he was going to America, it sounded like Dave and Jess had finally made up. She still wasn't particularly happy about him going, but she'd agreed to give long distance a shot and they were making sure they made the most of the time left together before he left. Dave was frantically trying to get everything sorted, booking London visits for visa applications, finding the cheapest flights he could, and most importantly, figuring out how many essentials he could fit in one 23kg suitcase! The company organising the placement had already sorted his accommodation for the first month, so finding a long-term flat was something he could do once he was over there. On a slightly selfish note, I'd suddenly been thrown into a panic of what would happen with our Edinburgh flat. Luckily as this was our second year in our flat, we'd passed the initial rental period of a year and were on a sort of rolling month basis, provided we gave enough notice to the landlord. My options were either find someone to move in - which was a bit difficult as not many students were looking to move midway through the year - or find someone with a space. I'd put a few feelers out on room rental websites to see if anyone was interested, but internally I was really hoping something turned up that didn't result in me living with a complete stranger.
As the second episode finished, I finally managed to drag myself out of bed. For once, I actually had plans for a Saturday night which meant a productive afternoon was a necessity. Renae, one of my friends from my course, was turning 21 and that meant only one thing: a night out at the Big Cheese! Drinking, dancing, and singing along to all the cheesiest hits of the last few decades at our university union building was exactly what I needed - between work overload and all the stress of football and Dave moving, I couldn't wait for tonight.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I nipped past the shop to grab bottles of Peach Schnapps and lemonade on the way over to Renae's. We were having pre-drinks and playing a few drinking games before heading over to the Cheese early to get free entry. Buzzing what I hoped was the right flat number (as I always got it wrong), I tried not to look at the guys heading into the door behind me. Renae was convinced it was some kind of local brothel due to all the guys and interestingly dressed girls who came and went. Unfortunately, her bedroom window overlooked the entrance so I figured she saw more than she really wanted to!
Reaching the flat, I realised I was the first to arrive. Giving Renae a hug and waving hi to her flatmates, I poured myself a Schnapps and lemonade. Offering Renae one, she scrunched up her nose and shook her head vigorously.
"Uh, no, you wouldn't catch me dead drinking that stuff! It's like pure sugar, I don't know how you drink it without gagging!"
"I'm sorry my drink doesn't match up to your super-posh beers, and you know death by sugar is my demise of choice" I laughed back at Renae. "Speaking of which, where are your fancy beers? Parents not get you any this year?" Renae was renowned for getting weirdly-named beer that no one had ever heard of from her parents, but I couldn't see the usual table of bottles.
"Yeah, they couldn't make it out to Edinburgh before the weekend so I'm seeing them tomorrow..." I glanced incredulously over at her; Renae wasn't exactly known for her restraint on nights out. She noticed and grinned wryly. "I know! Don't worry, they've been told not to turn up anytime before 2pm, and they're experts at dealing with me hungover by now."
As I shook my head smiling, Renae dragged me through to see the new Dr Who duvet set her brother had got her. We originally bonded over our shared love of Dr Who, which led to a particularly fun trip to London last year for the 50th Anniversary convention. One of our favourite memories was the actors in full Cybermen and Silurian costumes terrorising the younger kids - plus seeing all the fire and explosion special effects gave us a new alternative career aim if chemical engineering didn't work out!
Whilst we debated how the latest series had turned out (we both love Capaldi but have differing views on his companion, Clara), the rest of the crew slowly turned up. As people poured drinks and chatted away, I glanced around, not seeing a face I was expecting.
"Hey, Renae, did you invite Bob?" She frowned and looked around too. "Well, I thought I did! My phone's dead, can you give him a text?" I nodded and quickly messaged Bob, asking if he was turning up tonight. Things had been going pretty well between us recently - it felt like we both really had just moved on from that awkward night, and I had made sure that there had been no other uncomfortable incidents like the whiskers one. Of course, it helped that we were so overloaded with work that our courses took up around 90% of our conversation!
A few minutes later he texted back:
Me and Gary were going to, but her flat's miles away! Not really too keen on heading halfway across town tbh.
Well, that didn't make sense. Renae's flat was a five minute walk from our street, if that! After bouncing a few messages back and forth, it suddenly made sense - Bob had google mapped 'Road' instead of 'Street' in the address, giving him a completely random house on the other side of town. With that sorted out, he said he'd be over in half an hour. As I was letting Renae know, Ethan produced a pack of cards and started setting up Ring of Fire. Inwardly groaning (as any game involving dirty pints immediately has me scared), I grabbed another drink.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We headed over to the union at about half nine - Renae had been unlucky enough to lose both games and consequently drink two dirty pints, so when she started demanding that we head out now, none of us decided to argue! I ended up walking over with Gary, Bob's flatmate. He was one of those deathly silent types when I first met him, but I'd been round at Bob's often enough that he'd opened up a bit around me now. We'd recently connected over Glee, which both we knew Bob hated and therefore had started watching every time I came round.
For some reason we'd started talking about penguins, and as soon as I'd mentioned that polar bears are probably quite fond of penguin suppers he'd burst out laughing - apparently, they're from different hemispheres... proving what a geography-challenged idiot I can be, much to Gary's amusement. In my slightly drunken state, however, I was not to be defeated, and launched straight into an argument of how a polar bear could travel from the North to the South Pole if it did decide to snack on some penguins.
By the time we'd reached the union we were both giggling helplessly at the ridiculous picture I'd painted. Not paying attention to my step, I tripped over the cobbled street and would have fallen flat on my face if Gary hadn't caught me. Finding this even funnier, I went straight into uncontrollable giggling territory as the Schnapps properly hit me. Gary insisted on linking arms to 'save my face from the floor', and that's how we arrived at the bar. Gary insisted on buying my first drink, so I hung back a little away from the bar to wait for him. The dance floor was still completely empty apart from Renae, who for no clear reason was full on galloping around the area yelling. My amusement was interrupted as a presence at my shoulder caused me to look up.
"So... you and Gary, huh?" Bob nudged me, grinning slyly. For one of those very rare periods in my life, I was lost for words.
"Um - I mean - what?" I couldn't feel more awkward if I tried - I genuinely hadn't been thinking that way about Gary, I'd just been enjoying our ridiculous conversation. And for Bob of all people to be commenting on it - I didn't know how I felt about that. It almost felt like I'd been doing something wrong, and I had to remind myself strongly that there was nothing going on between us, and that there never would be. His smirk ignited a flash of strange anger in me, and words flowed back.
"Me and Gary as friends? I know, it's taken long enough for him to relax round me! You should really have told him I'm not that scary, just a bit crazy!" I smiled at him as Gary returned with our drinks, and swept past him to the table with the rest of our group.
Trying to shake the weirdness of the moment off, I threw myself into the game we were playing. I'm naturally competitive at the best of times but this time the focus hit crazy levels! It was one we played quite regularly on nights out - the basics of it being you start at 1 and 'pass' on to the person on your left or right, who says 'two' and passes on to the person on either the left or right of them and so on. At certain numbers you have to point in a particular way or do a certain action and if you forget you drink and the whole process starts again. Gary was next to me and whenever I passed to him he immediately passed straight back to me. It ended up in a few intense battles just between the two of us, but Bob's words were still at the back of my head and I always caved and passed to Renae before they could go on too long.
A couple of drinks later we all headed over to the dancefloor. Ethan was chasing Renae and pretending to gallop like she was doing earlier, whilst the rest of the guys stopped dead and started singing as 'Don't Stop Believing' came on. Laughing, I started dancing away between Gary and Nate, another guy from my course. The night blurred as other classics such as Blue (Da Ba De) and 5, 6, 7, 8 came and went, accompanied of course by our stunning dancing and singing.
Eventually, between people going to the bar and disappearing outside for a break, our group dwindled to just me and Gary. He was twirling me around to a song I didn't know, any awkwardness from earlier completely forgotten. As the song drew to a close he grabbed my hand and pulled me into the centre of the crowd. He turned back to me and slipped his arms around my waist, and the only natural thing to do seemed to be to put my arms around his neck. He smiled at me and leaned in slightly - only for me to leap back in excitement as the opening chords for 'Sweet Child of Mine' rang out.
"I LOVE this song!" I yelled at Gary, grinning wildly. I threw my arms back around his neck and started enthusiastically singing along. He danced along, laughing at me. As the solo hit and I stopped singing, he leaned in quickly and kissed me lightly. He drew back, looking at me warily, until I pulled his head back to mine. We stood, surrounded by strangers, lost in each other for the moment. Reality slowly set back in as I pulled away, the music filtering back into the moment as Slash's guitar solo faded away and Axl Rose's voice filled the room singing: "Where do we go now?"
Over Gary's shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Bob staring over from the edge of the room, his face unreadable. I tried to hold in drunken giggles and tears as I started singing along with the song again, but this time meaning the lyrics with all my heart. Where do we go now, indeed.
The laughter faded out as I heard the front door open and close, followed by the sound of Dave locking up. After the drama of Dave finding out he was going to America, it sounded like Dave and Jess had finally made up. She still wasn't particularly happy about him going, but she'd agreed to give long distance a shot and they were making sure they made the most of the time left together before he left. Dave was frantically trying to get everything sorted, booking London visits for visa applications, finding the cheapest flights he could, and most importantly, figuring out how many essentials he could fit in one 23kg suitcase! The company organising the placement had already sorted his accommodation for the first month, so finding a long-term flat was something he could do once he was over there. On a slightly selfish note, I'd suddenly been thrown into a panic of what would happen with our Edinburgh flat. Luckily as this was our second year in our flat, we'd passed the initial rental period of a year and were on a sort of rolling month basis, provided we gave enough notice to the landlord. My options were either find someone to move in - which was a bit difficult as not many students were looking to move midway through the year - or find someone with a space. I'd put a few feelers out on room rental websites to see if anyone was interested, but internally I was really hoping something turned up that didn't result in me living with a complete stranger.
As the second episode finished, I finally managed to drag myself out of bed. For once, I actually had plans for a Saturday night which meant a productive afternoon was a necessity. Renae, one of my friends from my course, was turning 21 and that meant only one thing: a night out at the Big Cheese! Drinking, dancing, and singing along to all the cheesiest hits of the last few decades at our university union building was exactly what I needed - between work overload and all the stress of football and Dave moving, I couldn't wait for tonight.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I nipped past the shop to grab bottles of Peach Schnapps and lemonade on the way over to Renae's. We were having pre-drinks and playing a few drinking games before heading over to the Cheese early to get free entry. Buzzing what I hoped was the right flat number (as I always got it wrong), I tried not to look at the guys heading into the door behind me. Renae was convinced it was some kind of local brothel due to all the guys and interestingly dressed girls who came and went. Unfortunately, her bedroom window overlooked the entrance so I figured she saw more than she really wanted to!
Reaching the flat, I realised I was the first to arrive. Giving Renae a hug and waving hi to her flatmates, I poured myself a Schnapps and lemonade. Offering Renae one, she scrunched up her nose and shook her head vigorously.
"Uh, no, you wouldn't catch me dead drinking that stuff! It's like pure sugar, I don't know how you drink it without gagging!"
"I'm sorry my drink doesn't match up to your super-posh beers, and you know death by sugar is my demise of choice" I laughed back at Renae. "Speaking of which, where are your fancy beers? Parents not get you any this year?" Renae was renowned for getting weirdly-named beer that no one had ever heard of from her parents, but I couldn't see the usual table of bottles.
"Yeah, they couldn't make it out to Edinburgh before the weekend so I'm seeing them tomorrow..." I glanced incredulously over at her; Renae wasn't exactly known for her restraint on nights out. She noticed and grinned wryly. "I know! Don't worry, they've been told not to turn up anytime before 2pm, and they're experts at dealing with me hungover by now."
As I shook my head smiling, Renae dragged me through to see the new Dr Who duvet set her brother had got her. We originally bonded over our shared love of Dr Who, which led to a particularly fun trip to London last year for the 50th Anniversary convention. One of our favourite memories was the actors in full Cybermen and Silurian costumes terrorising the younger kids - plus seeing all the fire and explosion special effects gave us a new alternative career aim if chemical engineering didn't work out!
Whilst we debated how the latest series had turned out (we both love Capaldi but have differing views on his companion, Clara), the rest of the crew slowly turned up. As people poured drinks and chatted away, I glanced around, not seeing a face I was expecting.
"Hey, Renae, did you invite Bob?" She frowned and looked around too. "Well, I thought I did! My phone's dead, can you give him a text?" I nodded and quickly messaged Bob, asking if he was turning up tonight. Things had been going pretty well between us recently - it felt like we both really had just moved on from that awkward night, and I had made sure that there had been no other uncomfortable incidents like the whiskers one. Of course, it helped that we were so overloaded with work that our courses took up around 90% of our conversation!
A few minutes later he texted back:
Me and Gary were going to, but her flat's miles away! Not really too keen on heading halfway across town tbh.
Well, that didn't make sense. Renae's flat was a five minute walk from our street, if that! After bouncing a few messages back and forth, it suddenly made sense - Bob had google mapped 'Road' instead of 'Street' in the address, giving him a completely random house on the other side of town. With that sorted out, he said he'd be over in half an hour. As I was letting Renae know, Ethan produced a pack of cards and started setting up Ring of Fire. Inwardly groaning (as any game involving dirty pints immediately has me scared), I grabbed another drink.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We headed over to the union at about half nine - Renae had been unlucky enough to lose both games and consequently drink two dirty pints, so when she started demanding that we head out now, none of us decided to argue! I ended up walking over with Gary, Bob's flatmate. He was one of those deathly silent types when I first met him, but I'd been round at Bob's often enough that he'd opened up a bit around me now. We'd recently connected over Glee, which both we knew Bob hated and therefore had started watching every time I came round.
For some reason we'd started talking about penguins, and as soon as I'd mentioned that polar bears are probably quite fond of penguin suppers he'd burst out laughing - apparently, they're from different hemispheres... proving what a geography-challenged idiot I can be, much to Gary's amusement. In my slightly drunken state, however, I was not to be defeated, and launched straight into an argument of how a polar bear could travel from the North to the South Pole if it did decide to snack on some penguins.
By the time we'd reached the union we were both giggling helplessly at the ridiculous picture I'd painted. Not paying attention to my step, I tripped over the cobbled street and would have fallen flat on my face if Gary hadn't caught me. Finding this even funnier, I went straight into uncontrollable giggling territory as the Schnapps properly hit me. Gary insisted on linking arms to 'save my face from the floor', and that's how we arrived at the bar. Gary insisted on buying my first drink, so I hung back a little away from the bar to wait for him. The dance floor was still completely empty apart from Renae, who for no clear reason was full on galloping around the area yelling. My amusement was interrupted as a presence at my shoulder caused me to look up.
"So... you and Gary, huh?" Bob nudged me, grinning slyly. For one of those very rare periods in my life, I was lost for words.
"Um - I mean - what?" I couldn't feel more awkward if I tried - I genuinely hadn't been thinking that way about Gary, I'd just been enjoying our ridiculous conversation. And for Bob of all people to be commenting on it - I didn't know how I felt about that. It almost felt like I'd been doing something wrong, and I had to remind myself strongly that there was nothing going on between us, and that there never would be. His smirk ignited a flash of strange anger in me, and words flowed back.
"Me and Gary as friends? I know, it's taken long enough for him to relax round me! You should really have told him I'm not that scary, just a bit crazy!" I smiled at him as Gary returned with our drinks, and swept past him to the table with the rest of our group.
Trying to shake the weirdness of the moment off, I threw myself into the game we were playing. I'm naturally competitive at the best of times but this time the focus hit crazy levels! It was one we played quite regularly on nights out - the basics of it being you start at 1 and 'pass' on to the person on your left or right, who says 'two' and passes on to the person on either the left or right of them and so on. At certain numbers you have to point in a particular way or do a certain action and if you forget you drink and the whole process starts again. Gary was next to me and whenever I passed to him he immediately passed straight back to me. It ended up in a few intense battles just between the two of us, but Bob's words were still at the back of my head and I always caved and passed to Renae before they could go on too long.
A couple of drinks later we all headed over to the dancefloor. Ethan was chasing Renae and pretending to gallop like she was doing earlier, whilst the rest of the guys stopped dead and started singing as 'Don't Stop Believing' came on. Laughing, I started dancing away between Gary and Nate, another guy from my course. The night blurred as other classics such as Blue (Da Ba De) and 5, 6, 7, 8 came and went, accompanied of course by our stunning dancing and singing.
Eventually, between people going to the bar and disappearing outside for a break, our group dwindled to just me and Gary. He was twirling me around to a song I didn't know, any awkwardness from earlier completely forgotten. As the song drew to a close he grabbed my hand and pulled me into the centre of the crowd. He turned back to me and slipped his arms around my waist, and the only natural thing to do seemed to be to put my arms around his neck. He smiled at me and leaned in slightly - only for me to leap back in excitement as the opening chords for 'Sweet Child of Mine' rang out.
"I LOVE this song!" I yelled at Gary, grinning wildly. I threw my arms back around his neck and started enthusiastically singing along. He danced along, laughing at me. As the solo hit and I stopped singing, he leaned in quickly and kissed me lightly. He drew back, looking at me warily, until I pulled his head back to mine. We stood, surrounded by strangers, lost in each other for the moment. Reality slowly set back in as I pulled away, the music filtering back into the moment as Slash's guitar solo faded away and Axl Rose's voice filled the room singing: "Where do we go now?"
Over Gary's shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Bob staring over from the edge of the room, his face unreadable. I tried to hold in drunken giggles and tears as I started singing along with the song again, but this time meaning the lyrics with all my heart. Where do we go now, indeed.
Monday, 29 December 2014
Author's Note
Apologies for the lack of a post - I intended to get a post written up before all the Christmas mayhem hit, but unfortunately it never quite happened. This week should be a bit quieter so I'll try and get a bonus post up sometime to make up for it! I know pretty much exactly where the blog is going over the next year so the problem is definitely finding time rather than figuring out what to write :)
In the meantime, if anyone has any feedback on the blog so far it would be very much appreciated! My long-term aim is to be an author one day but before that becomes a reality I need a lot of practice, so any comments on writing style, conversations, character development, the pacing of each post (or any other aspects you want to comment on!) would be very useful at this stage. However, I understand for a lot of you the fun is in the reading and not the commenting (I've generally always been a non-commenter in the past reading other blogs), so otherwise just a massive thank you for taking the time to read my story :)
And finally - hope you all had a wonderful Christmas (or a wonderful holiday for those non-Christmas aligned!), and a very Happy New Year to you all!
Jane x
In the meantime, if anyone has any feedback on the blog so far it would be very much appreciated! My long-term aim is to be an author one day but before that becomes a reality I need a lot of practice, so any comments on writing style, conversations, character development, the pacing of each post (or any other aspects you want to comment on!) would be very useful at this stage. However, I understand for a lot of you the fun is in the reading and not the commenting (I've generally always been a non-commenter in the past reading other blogs), so otherwise just a massive thank you for taking the time to read my story :)
And finally - hope you all had a wonderful Christmas (or a wonderful holiday for those non-Christmas aligned!), and a very Happy New Year to you all!
Jane x
Sunday, 21 December 2014
He Wants To Be In America
Cycling back from university on Wednesday, I couldn't decide if I was more excited or nervous about the football game tonight. On one hand, I'd been playing for years, I knew what I was doing, and this was only a friendly - nothing to worry about! On the other, the irrational part of me had been repeating a mantra all day: "This is it. This is it. Don't mess it up - this is it."
Last year in the team, I'd shared almost exactly half of the games with our other keeper. We'd both been about as good as each other, and it was a good way to not have too much pressure on one person whilst still getting plenty of games. As soon as I'd met Hayley, our keeper this year, I'd known it was going to be different, but I had university to focus on. On top of that, I was being Treasurer of the Committee for the second year running, which was it's own major source of stress. I'd taken the first step and spoken to our head coach, saying that I understood Hayley had a lot more experience and would probably get more games, but I was happy to take a step back and not play quite as many as last year - saving awkward conversations all round.
It had backfired a little though, as I hadn't played any games at all yet. I knew we were trying to win the league, but when I didn't even get picked for the games where we knew we'd win by ridiculous margins, it was a bit disheartening. I'd responded by trying to become the most reliable team member there was: attending every single training session, coming along to support the home games from the sides, and always keeping my Wednesdays free for games. I loved playing football and not being able to play anything was killing me.
Wrapped up in my thoughts, I was back at my flat before I knew it. Taking the stairs two at a time, I dropped all my university folders on my bed before heading to the kitchen.
"Dave? You home? I've got a match tonight so I'll be eating early, you want anything now?" Opening the fridge, I tried to decide what I wanted to eat. Nothing too heavy, but equally without eating I'd almost definitely faint... Picking out some spring onions, salmon trimmings and creme fraiche, I decided pasta would definitely do if I didn't cook my normal ridiculous amount. Despite being Head Chef of the flat, I still could never figure out how much dry pasta would give a reasonable portion size, and I had a tendency to make far too much.
Frowning slightly, I realised Dave hadn't replied. I'd bumped into him that morning ago on campus as he was about to head off to the cinema with Jess, but he said he'd still be home before I was. Wandering into the hallway, I saw his door was open. Sticking my head through, I saw him sitting on his bed staring out the window. Jumping on his bed and dropping down next to him, I nudged him with my elbow, and he burst into tears.
Suddenly looking at him properly, I saw how red his eyes were and the mound of tissues next to him on the bedside table. My stomach sank - had him and Jess argued again? Or something even worse?
"Dave, what's wrong? What happened?" I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and pulled him into a hug as he sobbed, unable to speak for the moment. As I rubbed my hand up and down his back, he pointed at a piece of paper lying in front of him. Confused, I picked it up and started to read. My stomach tensed even further as I realised it was about his industrial placement. As part of his course, students had the option to go on an industrial placement from January to September next year, and I knew Dave had been waiting on the result from an interview with his top company last week.
As I began to understand what I was reading, I frowned even harder. Surely I hadn't read that right? It looked like-
"I got it." Dave stared at the floor, not meeting my gaze. "I got the job."
"But - what? You got it? But you should be happy! That's amazing - congratulations!" I went to hug him again but he held up a hand to stop me.
"It's in America."
Stunned, I stared at him. America? We hadn't even known that was an option when I was helping him research companies. I was still thrilled for him though - this was a fantastic opportunity, and we'd been told so many times that it was so rare for students to get an overseas placement - you had to seriously impress them to get one. I couldn't figure out why Dave wasn't over the moon as well - until it hit me. Jess.
He half laughed as he noticed my expression change. I knew she made him happy so generally I didn't comment on anything Jess did, but to cause this level of misery when Dave had been offered such a great opportunity? To make my best friend this unhappy? No way could I accept that.
"Oh, Dave... She was there with you? She didn't take it well?"
He nodded and started explaining. Apparently he'd got the email just before the film started and immediately told Jess, unable to believe he'd done so well. Dave is a great chemist, but he's much better at the practical than the theory so his grades don't always reflect how talented he is, and it's affected his self-confidence. However, Jess hadn't dealt well with the news. She'd started crying but refused to talk to him, leaving them sitting there with her silent tears throughout the entire film. Afterwards Dave had tried to discuss it with her, but she'd told him it was too much for her and left him standing in the street without another word. From experience he knew chasing after her never worked, so he'd come home and sat in his room until I'd arrived back.
As he trailed off, I took his hands in mine. "Dave, I know I'm not always the most sympathetic when it comes down to relationships versus career, but this is such a great opportunity for you. Please don't tell me you're considering not going?"
He instantly shook his head. "No, I think that's why she was so upset. I didn't even consider not taking it. But I want to make it work long distance - I love her, Jane. And it's only half a year, and then I'm back in Edinburgh. She just won't even talk to me right now..." He stopped talking again as more tears trailed down his face. Feeling helpless and angry, I turned to my usual fallback when faced with tears: the magic powers of food.
Dragging him through to the kitchen, I opened the cookie tin and placed it in front of him as I started preparing tea. I'd made a batch of double chocolate cookies the previous night so I knew there were plenty enough there to at least slightly cheer him up. Sugar and sleep: the two great healers in my philosophy!
As I chopped the spring onions and set the pasta cooking, I managed to tease a few more details out of him. The job was in Philadelphia, and it wasn't just him - there were 8 students in total from across the UK, with one other student from Edinburgh joining him out there. It sounded like exactly the kind of work he wanted to be involved in too, and he slowly started talking more excitedly. Plus, as I reminded him, the perfect opportunity for me to take a holiday out and visit him! My dad had accumulated a lot of BA points through various business trips, and had said I could use them whenever I wanted, so flying out there wouldn't break the bank. After he pointed out where Philadelphia actually was in America (my UK geography is already pretty awful, never mind USA geography), and I realised how close it was to New York (home of the magical land of Broadway theatres!), my excitement levels quickly rose to match his. Luckily Dave was one of the rare breed of guys who enjoyed musical theatre too, so I was already planning how many shows we could fit into a week in my head.
As I served the pasta, he brought the conversation back round to Jess. "I can understand why she's upset." Seeing my skeptical look, he frowned at me and continued. "No, seriously. If she told me she was moving halfway across the world with no warning, I'd be pretty upset too. I just wish she'd talk to me about it."
"Well, she has to talk to you, sooner or later. And it's not like you're giving up on you two because of the placement! So really, what you two should be doing is making the most of your time here before you fly off."
He nodded slowly. "I think I'll try and phone her again, and see if she'll let me come round and talk."
I told him that was probably the best idea, and as he headed back to his room I quickly washed up the dishes and changed into my football gear. The temperature was dropping fast at nighttime at the moment, so after throwing on about four layers, I was ready to face the cold, and the match.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bouncing on my feet, I waited for Bruce to throw the ball at me again. Diving to my left and punching it away, I landed on the frozen ground hard. Grateful for all the padding from my multiple layers, I scrambled up and ran after the ball, inwardly berating myself for punching instead of catching. After finally reaching the ball, I picked it up and started jogging back, only to see Hayley standing chatting with Bruce - in full goalkeeper gear.
Feeling sick, I joined them in front of the goals where Hayley was apologising for running late.
"So, last minute change of plans, Jane. Head coach decided that it would be good for both of you to play, so you'll play the first half and Hayley will play the second." Trying to keep tears back, I nodded. I didn't trust my voice as Bruce and Hayley started talking about the other team and the players we'd need watch out for. Slowly, my tears hardened into resolve - so what if I only had 45 minutes to play? The aim was still the same - show that I was good enough.
The first thirty minutes flew by. I was so focused on not messing up, and so far I was managing that - I was picking up loose balls, letting my defence know ASAP of any unmarked players, and my goal kicks were the best they'd been in a while. However, the other team hadn't really had an opportunity to score yet. I couldn't relax and enjoy the game - pure adrenaline was rushing through me, and as the end of the half appeared, the pressure to do something amazing to prove myself mounted.
Suddenly, a girl broke free of the defence, with a winger keeping her company down the left. Our defence were pelting it back down the field towards me, but a quick glance showed me they weren't going to reach me in time. Running out to face the striker, I tried to stay slightly between her and the winger. Two on one was almost impossible to stop for a keeper, but if I could try to get a foot out when she passed it, I could knock the ball off enough for the defence to get back and help.
It wasn't a bad plan. In fact, if that's what the striker had planned on doing, as so many other teams did, it might even have worked. Instead, all I could do was watch as she eyed me and the goals up, and then shot the ball between my legs and into the back of the net.
I'm not sure how I made it until half time, and we were lucky that their goal galvanised our team to keep up an attack until the whistle blew. I didn't hear a word of the half-time team talk, just tried to keep it together. As soon as the second half started, I walked a bit away from the reserves and sat on the grass, ignoring the biting cold of the frost. Bruce noticed, murmuring something to Ryan (our head coach) and headed over to squat down next to me.
"Unlucky about that goal at the end, but otherwise a pretty good half!" He smiled at me but I couldn't fake one back.
"Jane, what's up?" Bruce looked genuinely concerned, and that's all it took. Tears started streaming silently down my face.
"I blew it. I needed to prove myself, I needed to show Ryan that I was good enough to play - all I want is a game Bruce! Just one game! He wouldn't even pick me last week when we played the bottom team in the league. And after that he's not going to pick me against Hayley again." I looked up in time to see Hayley make a fantastic diving save. As much as I wanted to hate her in that moment, I couldn't do anything but respect her talent.
I finally looked Bruce in the eye. "I don't mean to whine, or demand a game. I get it, I really do - she's brilliant, and we need to win the league this year." As Treasurer, I knew how much of a bonus winning the league would be to our finances, and believe me we needed the money.
"It's just... I love football. It makes me feel alive, and I love being part of the team. But this year? I barely know the team because I've not had a single game with them. And I'm not enjoying training or games like this, because all I feel is the pressure to show that I am actually good. Not amazing, not the best keeper we have, because I'm not. I just want to Ryan to feel he can play me in a game against the bottom team of the league, because if he can't trust me there, why am I even in the team?"
Taken aback, Bruce didn't say anything. I hated what I was right now - I was never the crying in public type, and even less so the whinging type. All I wanted to do was head home to bed, curl up with my hot water bottle, and cry where no one could see me. Getting up, I told Bruce I'd see him at training on Monday, and headed back to my bike.
Last year in the team, I'd shared almost exactly half of the games with our other keeper. We'd both been about as good as each other, and it was a good way to not have too much pressure on one person whilst still getting plenty of games. As soon as I'd met Hayley, our keeper this year, I'd known it was going to be different, but I had university to focus on. On top of that, I was being Treasurer of the Committee for the second year running, which was it's own major source of stress. I'd taken the first step and spoken to our head coach, saying that I understood Hayley had a lot more experience and would probably get more games, but I was happy to take a step back and not play quite as many as last year - saving awkward conversations all round.
It had backfired a little though, as I hadn't played any games at all yet. I knew we were trying to win the league, but when I didn't even get picked for the games where we knew we'd win by ridiculous margins, it was a bit disheartening. I'd responded by trying to become the most reliable team member there was: attending every single training session, coming along to support the home games from the sides, and always keeping my Wednesdays free for games. I loved playing football and not being able to play anything was killing me.
Wrapped up in my thoughts, I was back at my flat before I knew it. Taking the stairs two at a time, I dropped all my university folders on my bed before heading to the kitchen.
"Dave? You home? I've got a match tonight so I'll be eating early, you want anything now?" Opening the fridge, I tried to decide what I wanted to eat. Nothing too heavy, but equally without eating I'd almost definitely faint... Picking out some spring onions, salmon trimmings and creme fraiche, I decided pasta would definitely do if I didn't cook my normal ridiculous amount. Despite being Head Chef of the flat, I still could never figure out how much dry pasta would give a reasonable portion size, and I had a tendency to make far too much.
Frowning slightly, I realised Dave hadn't replied. I'd bumped into him that morning ago on campus as he was about to head off to the cinema with Jess, but he said he'd still be home before I was. Wandering into the hallway, I saw his door was open. Sticking my head through, I saw him sitting on his bed staring out the window. Jumping on his bed and dropping down next to him, I nudged him with my elbow, and he burst into tears.
Suddenly looking at him properly, I saw how red his eyes were and the mound of tissues next to him on the bedside table. My stomach sank - had him and Jess argued again? Or something even worse?
"Dave, what's wrong? What happened?" I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and pulled him into a hug as he sobbed, unable to speak for the moment. As I rubbed my hand up and down his back, he pointed at a piece of paper lying in front of him. Confused, I picked it up and started to read. My stomach tensed even further as I realised it was about his industrial placement. As part of his course, students had the option to go on an industrial placement from January to September next year, and I knew Dave had been waiting on the result from an interview with his top company last week.
As I began to understand what I was reading, I frowned even harder. Surely I hadn't read that right? It looked like-
"I got it." Dave stared at the floor, not meeting my gaze. "I got the job."
"But - what? You got it? But you should be happy! That's amazing - congratulations!" I went to hug him again but he held up a hand to stop me.
"It's in America."
Stunned, I stared at him. America? We hadn't even known that was an option when I was helping him research companies. I was still thrilled for him though - this was a fantastic opportunity, and we'd been told so many times that it was so rare for students to get an overseas placement - you had to seriously impress them to get one. I couldn't figure out why Dave wasn't over the moon as well - until it hit me. Jess.
He half laughed as he noticed my expression change. I knew she made him happy so generally I didn't comment on anything Jess did, but to cause this level of misery when Dave had been offered such a great opportunity? To make my best friend this unhappy? No way could I accept that.
"Oh, Dave... She was there with you? She didn't take it well?"
He nodded and started explaining. Apparently he'd got the email just before the film started and immediately told Jess, unable to believe he'd done so well. Dave is a great chemist, but he's much better at the practical than the theory so his grades don't always reflect how talented he is, and it's affected his self-confidence. However, Jess hadn't dealt well with the news. She'd started crying but refused to talk to him, leaving them sitting there with her silent tears throughout the entire film. Afterwards Dave had tried to discuss it with her, but she'd told him it was too much for her and left him standing in the street without another word. From experience he knew chasing after her never worked, so he'd come home and sat in his room until I'd arrived back.
As he trailed off, I took his hands in mine. "Dave, I know I'm not always the most sympathetic when it comes down to relationships versus career, but this is such a great opportunity for you. Please don't tell me you're considering not going?"
He instantly shook his head. "No, I think that's why she was so upset. I didn't even consider not taking it. But I want to make it work long distance - I love her, Jane. And it's only half a year, and then I'm back in Edinburgh. She just won't even talk to me right now..." He stopped talking again as more tears trailed down his face. Feeling helpless and angry, I turned to my usual fallback when faced with tears: the magic powers of food.
Dragging him through to the kitchen, I opened the cookie tin and placed it in front of him as I started preparing tea. I'd made a batch of double chocolate cookies the previous night so I knew there were plenty enough there to at least slightly cheer him up. Sugar and sleep: the two great healers in my philosophy!
As I chopped the spring onions and set the pasta cooking, I managed to tease a few more details out of him. The job was in Philadelphia, and it wasn't just him - there were 8 students in total from across the UK, with one other student from Edinburgh joining him out there. It sounded like exactly the kind of work he wanted to be involved in too, and he slowly started talking more excitedly. Plus, as I reminded him, the perfect opportunity for me to take a holiday out and visit him! My dad had accumulated a lot of BA points through various business trips, and had said I could use them whenever I wanted, so flying out there wouldn't break the bank. After he pointed out where Philadelphia actually was in America (my UK geography is already pretty awful, never mind USA geography), and I realised how close it was to New York (home of the magical land of Broadway theatres!), my excitement levels quickly rose to match his. Luckily Dave was one of the rare breed of guys who enjoyed musical theatre too, so I was already planning how many shows we could fit into a week in my head.
As I served the pasta, he brought the conversation back round to Jess. "I can understand why she's upset." Seeing my skeptical look, he frowned at me and continued. "No, seriously. If she told me she was moving halfway across the world with no warning, I'd be pretty upset too. I just wish she'd talk to me about it."
"Well, she has to talk to you, sooner or later. And it's not like you're giving up on you two because of the placement! So really, what you two should be doing is making the most of your time here before you fly off."
He nodded slowly. "I think I'll try and phone her again, and see if she'll let me come round and talk."
I told him that was probably the best idea, and as he headed back to his room I quickly washed up the dishes and changed into my football gear. The temperature was dropping fast at nighttime at the moment, so after throwing on about four layers, I was ready to face the cold, and the match.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bouncing on my feet, I waited for Bruce to throw the ball at me again. Diving to my left and punching it away, I landed on the frozen ground hard. Grateful for all the padding from my multiple layers, I scrambled up and ran after the ball, inwardly berating myself for punching instead of catching. After finally reaching the ball, I picked it up and started jogging back, only to see Hayley standing chatting with Bruce - in full goalkeeper gear.
Feeling sick, I joined them in front of the goals where Hayley was apologising for running late.
"So, last minute change of plans, Jane. Head coach decided that it would be good for both of you to play, so you'll play the first half and Hayley will play the second." Trying to keep tears back, I nodded. I didn't trust my voice as Bruce and Hayley started talking about the other team and the players we'd need watch out for. Slowly, my tears hardened into resolve - so what if I only had 45 minutes to play? The aim was still the same - show that I was good enough.
The first thirty minutes flew by. I was so focused on not messing up, and so far I was managing that - I was picking up loose balls, letting my defence know ASAP of any unmarked players, and my goal kicks were the best they'd been in a while. However, the other team hadn't really had an opportunity to score yet. I couldn't relax and enjoy the game - pure adrenaline was rushing through me, and as the end of the half appeared, the pressure to do something amazing to prove myself mounted.
Suddenly, a girl broke free of the defence, with a winger keeping her company down the left. Our defence were pelting it back down the field towards me, but a quick glance showed me they weren't going to reach me in time. Running out to face the striker, I tried to stay slightly between her and the winger. Two on one was almost impossible to stop for a keeper, but if I could try to get a foot out when she passed it, I could knock the ball off enough for the defence to get back and help.
It wasn't a bad plan. In fact, if that's what the striker had planned on doing, as so many other teams did, it might even have worked. Instead, all I could do was watch as she eyed me and the goals up, and then shot the ball between my legs and into the back of the net.
I'm not sure how I made it until half time, and we were lucky that their goal galvanised our team to keep up an attack until the whistle blew. I didn't hear a word of the half-time team talk, just tried to keep it together. As soon as the second half started, I walked a bit away from the reserves and sat on the grass, ignoring the biting cold of the frost. Bruce noticed, murmuring something to Ryan (our head coach) and headed over to squat down next to me.
"Unlucky about that goal at the end, but otherwise a pretty good half!" He smiled at me but I couldn't fake one back.
"Jane, what's up?" Bruce looked genuinely concerned, and that's all it took. Tears started streaming silently down my face.
"I blew it. I needed to prove myself, I needed to show Ryan that I was good enough to play - all I want is a game Bruce! Just one game! He wouldn't even pick me last week when we played the bottom team in the league. And after that he's not going to pick me against Hayley again." I looked up in time to see Hayley make a fantastic diving save. As much as I wanted to hate her in that moment, I couldn't do anything but respect her talent.
I finally looked Bruce in the eye. "I don't mean to whine, or demand a game. I get it, I really do - she's brilliant, and we need to win the league this year." As Treasurer, I knew how much of a bonus winning the league would be to our finances, and believe me we needed the money.
"It's just... I love football. It makes me feel alive, and I love being part of the team. But this year? I barely know the team because I've not had a single game with them. And I'm not enjoying training or games like this, because all I feel is the pressure to show that I am actually good. Not amazing, not the best keeper we have, because I'm not. I just want to Ryan to feel he can play me in a game against the bottom team of the league, because if he can't trust me there, why am I even in the team?"
Taken aback, Bruce didn't say anything. I hated what I was right now - I was never the crying in public type, and even less so the whinging type. All I wanted to do was head home to bed, curl up with my hot water bottle, and cry where no one could see me. Getting up, I told Bruce I'd see him at training on Monday, and headed back to my bike.
Monday, 15 December 2014
Whiskers
Sitting in class, we were playing our new favourite game: lecturer bingo. Or specifically, Fred Bingo. This particular lecturer was one of the fun kind who only worked at a university to do research, and hated all student-related work that was pushed onto them. Considering we'd worked out that he'd plagiarised the entire course from one of our standard textbooks, it wasn't exactly inspiring us to stay interested for the full two hour double lecture.
The only redeeming feature of Fred was that his lectures mainly consisted of him repeating certain 'stock phrases': "one shoe fits all", "all the nitty gritty", and our particular favourite, "BOOM!". One of my friends, Ethan, had started up a bingo game amongst our group, each of us choosing a phrase and counting how many times Fred said it. Bonus points if he used two of them together in a combo, and even better if you asked him a question that he answered with a stock phrase.
Still, even with Fred Bingo keeping us occupied, it couldn't detract from the sheer dullness of his voice and the topic at hand. I already knew that I wanted a job in the energy sector, and the finer points of solids separation in hydrocyclones weren't going to do me much use there. Bob seemed to feel the same way, as he started poking my wrist with his pen. Audibly sighing, I ignored him as he started drawing on the back of my hand and checked the family Whatsapp. Mum had sent me a daily picture of Inka, our border collie, fast asleep under a tree in the garden. Grinning to myself, I messaged her back one-handed asking her to give Inka a cuddle from me. Although I really loved university and the freedom it gave compared to growing up completely isolated in the country, there was always a part of me missing my dog, even more so than the rest of my family. I'd justified it to mum as that I had plenty of other people to talk to, which just made the lack of a furry friend to stroke in the evenings even more conspicuous.
The sudden increase in volume alerted me to the fact that Fred had disappeared for our halfway five minute break - although with Fred's special dedication to our education, it was likely to be more like fifteen. Not that I was complaining! I turned back to see what horrors Bob had drawn on my hand, fully expecting to see some form of male genitalia. I loved my guy friends, but they were seriously predictable at times.
"What... what even is that?" I squinted at my hand, completely confused at the blue mess he'd created. Well, it wasn't a penis. Bob put the pen down and grinned broadly.
"Isn't it obvious?"
"Um... no. It really isn't." I twisted my hand, trying to see it at the angle he'd been drawing it from. "Wait... oh no. You haven't... is that a hairy foot?!"
Bob snorted and crumpled over laughing whilst I stared at him in mock horror. I'd made the mistake of walking to uni with both Dave and Bob the previous week, which had mainly involved them repeatedly making hobbit jokes about me (due to the fact that my home county was generally referred to as 'the shire' by locals). It had culminated in Bob asking Dave if my feet really were as hairy as legends told, with them both now trying to convince me to remove my socks around them as often as they could. Have I ever mentioned that my friends are certifiably crazy?
Staring at the (awfully drawn) representation of a hobbit foot on my hand, I failed to mask my sudden fit of giggles. Determined to get my own back, I dived towards Bob's hand with my own pen, but only managed to scratch a few wobbly lines before he was holding me away from him.
"Not fair... That's not how this works!" I struggled against him as he laughed, but as much as my mild feminist hated to admit it, built rugby player was never going to be overcome by tiny Scottish girl, no matter how annoyed.
Sticking out my tongue (I know, mature), I relaxed. "Fine! Have it your way!" As he let me go I leaned down and grabbed my bag, searching through it. I knew it had to be in here somewhere... Bob eyed me suspiciously before Ray asked him a question from his other side. As he turned away, my fingers came into contact with a hard, thin object - yes!
Flicking the lid off, I sat up and drew a long, black and rather permanent stripe down Bob's arm with the marker pen I'd found. He yelped and grabbed his arm, giving me the opportunity to stripe him some more before he realised his mistake. Smirking smugly back at him, I revelled in my victory a bit too long.
Taking me completely by surprise, a hand appeared from behind me and plucked the marker out of my hand. Before I even had the chance to see who it was, my arms were pinned to my side as mystery betrayer held me trapped in my chair. A low laugh behind my head told me all I needed to know - Ethan.
"Uh... Ethan? Could you maybe, you know, let me go?"
"Well, I could... But where would be the fun in that?" As I started protesting that as I'd only got a few stripes in compared to Bob's Middle Earth inspired sketch, a sudden movement to my left caught my eye.
I looked up to see the marker in the last place I wanted it - Bob's hand. My stomach dropped a little in dread - when you wound Bob up he didn't really have many limits, and from his face I could see he was definitely at that point.
"Not the face. Please, anything but the face!" Seeing Bob's eyes light up, I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth.
"So Jane... how do you feel about whiskers?"
My eyes widened and I immediately started shaking my head back and forth so he wouldn't have any steady facial surface to write on, with the additional bonus of whacking Ethan behind me with my ponytail. In terms of a defence mechanism it was pretty pathetic though, as Bob quickly reached out and held my face still with his hand. Shoving away the little thrill of excitement at the sensation of his skin on mine, I glared at him.
"You know I've got football training tonight? I can't turn up with whiskers."
"Your point being..." Bob trailed off as he started colouring my nose in black. I started trying to break free again, but he rapped me on my nose.
"Seriously Jane, think about this. Which would you prefer - beautifully drawn whiskers or black scribbles over your face?"
"He's got a decent point there... Plus, keep hitting me with that ponytail and the scissors are getting involved!" Ethan teased me from behind. At least, I hoped he was teasing. My stubborn part wanted to ignore them but my reasonable voice reminded me that at least whiskers would look marginally better than a permanent black scribble over my face - not to mention, Ethan's hairdressing skills were probably the stuff of nightmares. Accepting my bewhiskered fate, I looked behind Bob to meet Ray's eyes. Whilst he was trying not to laugh, he was also shaking his head at me slowly. Closing my eyes, I screamed at myself silently. Whatever this was, it definitely wasn't backing off.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As predicted, I was the centre of entertainment at football training that evening. However, after a brief explanation of how my friends had amused themselves at my expense, the whiskers seemed to lose their novelty and we quickly settled down to training. Unluckily for me, my goalkeeper coach couldn't make training this week so we keepers had to join in with the normal training plan - which today, was circuit training.
Now, there was a reason I became a keeper. Well, the original reason was that my dad became coach of the primary school team, and because I kept kicking the people instead of the ball (demonstrating my excellent co-ordination skills even at such an early age), I got put into goals. Since then it had grown on me - sure, it mainly involved people kicking a hard, painful ball as powerfully as they could at you, but once you lost the fear of being hit it was actually good fun. You had an unparalleled view of the field, and it gave you the perfect opportunity to direct your team and spot any potentially unnoticed plays from your opponent. And, of course, you didn't have to run.
Ninety horrendous minutes later, I was collapsed on the astroturf slowly pulling my football boots off and dreading the cycle home. As I was trying to figure out if the jelly that had replaced my legs would survive even getting on my bike, our head coach called everyone round.
"So, as you girls know, we don't have a league match so I've set up a mid-week friendly. Jane, are you available to play as keeper?"
"Yes! Definitely!" I virtually bounced up beaming, whiskers and leg fatigue forgotten. I hadn't had a chance to play at all yet this season, and I was desperate to show our coach that I was good enough to be picked. This would be my chance!
The only redeeming feature of Fred was that his lectures mainly consisted of him repeating certain 'stock phrases': "one shoe fits all", "all the nitty gritty", and our particular favourite, "BOOM!". One of my friends, Ethan, had started up a bingo game amongst our group, each of us choosing a phrase and counting how many times Fred said it. Bonus points if he used two of them together in a combo, and even better if you asked him a question that he answered with a stock phrase.
Still, even with Fred Bingo keeping us occupied, it couldn't detract from the sheer dullness of his voice and the topic at hand. I already knew that I wanted a job in the energy sector, and the finer points of solids separation in hydrocyclones weren't going to do me much use there. Bob seemed to feel the same way, as he started poking my wrist with his pen. Audibly sighing, I ignored him as he started drawing on the back of my hand and checked the family Whatsapp. Mum had sent me a daily picture of Inka, our border collie, fast asleep under a tree in the garden. Grinning to myself, I messaged her back one-handed asking her to give Inka a cuddle from me. Although I really loved university and the freedom it gave compared to growing up completely isolated in the country, there was always a part of me missing my dog, even more so than the rest of my family. I'd justified it to mum as that I had plenty of other people to talk to, which just made the lack of a furry friend to stroke in the evenings even more conspicuous.
The sudden increase in volume alerted me to the fact that Fred had disappeared for our halfway five minute break - although with Fred's special dedication to our education, it was likely to be more like fifteen. Not that I was complaining! I turned back to see what horrors Bob had drawn on my hand, fully expecting to see some form of male genitalia. I loved my guy friends, but they were seriously predictable at times.
"What... what even is that?" I squinted at my hand, completely confused at the blue mess he'd created. Well, it wasn't a penis. Bob put the pen down and grinned broadly.
"Isn't it obvious?"
"Um... no. It really isn't." I twisted my hand, trying to see it at the angle he'd been drawing it from. "Wait... oh no. You haven't... is that a hairy foot?!"
Bob snorted and crumpled over laughing whilst I stared at him in mock horror. I'd made the mistake of walking to uni with both Dave and Bob the previous week, which had mainly involved them repeatedly making hobbit jokes about me (due to the fact that my home county was generally referred to as 'the shire' by locals). It had culminated in Bob asking Dave if my feet really were as hairy as legends told, with them both now trying to convince me to remove my socks around them as often as they could. Have I ever mentioned that my friends are certifiably crazy?
Staring at the (awfully drawn) representation of a hobbit foot on my hand, I failed to mask my sudden fit of giggles. Determined to get my own back, I dived towards Bob's hand with my own pen, but only managed to scratch a few wobbly lines before he was holding me away from him.
"Not fair... That's not how this works!" I struggled against him as he laughed, but as much as my mild feminist hated to admit it, built rugby player was never going to be overcome by tiny Scottish girl, no matter how annoyed.
Sticking out my tongue (I know, mature), I relaxed. "Fine! Have it your way!" As he let me go I leaned down and grabbed my bag, searching through it. I knew it had to be in here somewhere... Bob eyed me suspiciously before Ray asked him a question from his other side. As he turned away, my fingers came into contact with a hard, thin object - yes!
Flicking the lid off, I sat up and drew a long, black and rather permanent stripe down Bob's arm with the marker pen I'd found. He yelped and grabbed his arm, giving me the opportunity to stripe him some more before he realised his mistake. Smirking smugly back at him, I revelled in my victory a bit too long.
Taking me completely by surprise, a hand appeared from behind me and plucked the marker out of my hand. Before I even had the chance to see who it was, my arms were pinned to my side as mystery betrayer held me trapped in my chair. A low laugh behind my head told me all I needed to know - Ethan.
"Uh... Ethan? Could you maybe, you know, let me go?"
"Well, I could... But where would be the fun in that?" As I started protesting that as I'd only got a few stripes in compared to Bob's Middle Earth inspired sketch, a sudden movement to my left caught my eye.
I looked up to see the marker in the last place I wanted it - Bob's hand. My stomach dropped a little in dread - when you wound Bob up he didn't really have many limits, and from his face I could see he was definitely at that point.
"Not the face. Please, anything but the face!" Seeing Bob's eyes light up, I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth.
"So Jane... how do you feel about whiskers?"
My eyes widened and I immediately started shaking my head back and forth so he wouldn't have any steady facial surface to write on, with the additional bonus of whacking Ethan behind me with my ponytail. In terms of a defence mechanism it was pretty pathetic though, as Bob quickly reached out and held my face still with his hand. Shoving away the little thrill of excitement at the sensation of his skin on mine, I glared at him.
"You know I've got football training tonight? I can't turn up with whiskers."
"Your point being..." Bob trailed off as he started colouring my nose in black. I started trying to break free again, but he rapped me on my nose.
"Seriously Jane, think about this. Which would you prefer - beautifully drawn whiskers or black scribbles over your face?"
"He's got a decent point there... Plus, keep hitting me with that ponytail and the scissors are getting involved!" Ethan teased me from behind. At least, I hoped he was teasing. My stubborn part wanted to ignore them but my reasonable voice reminded me that at least whiskers would look marginally better than a permanent black scribble over my face - not to mention, Ethan's hairdressing skills were probably the stuff of nightmares. Accepting my bewhiskered fate, I looked behind Bob to meet Ray's eyes. Whilst he was trying not to laugh, he was also shaking his head at me slowly. Closing my eyes, I screamed at myself silently. Whatever this was, it definitely wasn't backing off.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As predicted, I was the centre of entertainment at football training that evening. However, after a brief explanation of how my friends had amused themselves at my expense, the whiskers seemed to lose their novelty and we quickly settled down to training. Unluckily for me, my goalkeeper coach couldn't make training this week so we keepers had to join in with the normal training plan - which today, was circuit training.
Now, there was a reason I became a keeper. Well, the original reason was that my dad became coach of the primary school team, and because I kept kicking the people instead of the ball (demonstrating my excellent co-ordination skills even at such an early age), I got put into goals. Since then it had grown on me - sure, it mainly involved people kicking a hard, painful ball as powerfully as they could at you, but once you lost the fear of being hit it was actually good fun. You had an unparalleled view of the field, and it gave you the perfect opportunity to direct your team and spot any potentially unnoticed plays from your opponent. And, of course, you didn't have to run.
Ninety horrendous minutes later, I was collapsed on the astroturf slowly pulling my football boots off and dreading the cycle home. As I was trying to figure out if the jelly that had replaced my legs would survive even getting on my bike, our head coach called everyone round.
"So, as you girls know, we don't have a league match so I've set up a mid-week friendly. Jane, are you available to play as keeper?"
"Yes! Definitely!" I virtually bounced up beaming, whiskers and leg fatigue forgotten. I hadn't had a chance to play at all yet this season, and I was desperate to show our coach that I was good enough to be picked. This would be my chance!
Sunday, 7 December 2014
Back to Routine
Once Bob came back to classes, everything fell back into the normal
routine. He still sat next to me in classes, doodled on my notes and
teased me over anything and everything, but that's where it stopped this
time. No more going round to watch films at the weekend, I started
cycling to university instead of walking with him every day, and I told
Ray to yell at me if I even hinted at entering awkward territory again.
Besides, fourth year at university was as horrific as people had promised. In Scotland, the Masters degrees take five years to achieve but as half of the final year is spent on placement in industry, the really hard stuff is all combined into this year. In addition, because I'm certifiably insane, I'd asked to shift my workload to 65% : 35% between the two semesters. As I'm convinced that our lecturers hate us, 40% of this year's grade is based on an 11 person design project completed in the second semester. As I'm a complete control freak, I decided I'd rather free up some time to devote myself to the project then, and get the extra classes out of the way now.
However, although it seemed like a good idea at the time, I was regretting it now! I had so many assignments and mini group projects going on at the same time, and on top of that I had football training, my choir and my increasingly failing attempts to keep going to zumba classes. Most of my friends were getting by on pure caffeine but I'd never acquired a taste for coffee, so a combination of sugar, early nights and super long lie-ins at the weekend were keeping me going.
"Jane! So, have you thought about what to get them yet?"
Rubbing my eyes, I resisted the urge to fake bad signal and go back to sleep. Although I loved my sister, phoning before 9am on a Saturday morning went against all that was pure and holy.
"Uggh. Not awake. What are you talking about?"
"Oh my god Jane, you've forgotten! How could you have forgotten? It's only their 50th birthday, it has to be perfect, like absolutely perfect. We've only got two months to get everything ready!"
Again, I have to state I do love Alyssa. When we're not living together or organising presents, we get on like a house on fire. Our mum always raised us to put time into choosing thoughtful gifts for people but with Alyssa it had backfired into her becoming a Giftzilla, to my regular frustration. However, luckily for her I was way too tired to start any fights this morning. And in this case she was actually right - both my parents were turning 50 within a week of each other, so they'd planned a family weekend away at Crieff Hydro, a very posh hotel in the middle of Scotland. Sorting out presents was up to us three kids (myself, Alyssa and our younger brother Peter).
"Ahh. I hadn't forgotten - time is just flying past so quickly, that's all. Let me get up and showered, and then we'll Skype and try and sort something out?"
Slightly pacified, she agreed to at least let me get up and eat breakfast first. Twenty minutes later, all clean and scrubbed, I was poaching a few eggs when Dave wandered in. Dave is one of my flat mates and my best friend - I met him in first year and soon realised he was one of the few people I could deal with talking to early in the morning. When he proposed living together for second year, it was a no brainer. We came from very similar backgrounds, so it felt very normal to share food costs and eat together - something which apparently wasn't the normal thing to do amongst many of my other friends. We also had our Ginger Wednesday night tradition - essentially us taking advantage of the 241 cinema ticket offer that Orange provide every week, but as Dave is perhaps the most ginger person you've ever seen, we had to rename it. It was proving to be an education, as I always preferred musicals and comedy/dramas whilst Dave loved awful action remakes.
However, perhaps the most important thing as to why he was my best friend was that I had absolutely zero romantic attraction to him. In my eyes, he was my elder brother in all but blood.
As Dave greeted me groggily, his girlfriend Jess entered behind him. Giving me a sickly-sweet smile, she asked how university was going. Hiding a grin of my own, I kept my answer brief. Although she was never mean to my face, Dave had moaned repeatedly of how jealous she was of our friendship. In particular, she hated our Ginger Wednesday tradition. Dave had reassured her multiple times that our relationship was like brother and sister, but it didn't seem to help. Unlike the Bob situation, I was certain that I had given her no reason for her jealousy, and it was clear to anyone that Dave was head over heels for her.
"Jane, where's the carrot things? Those cupcakes you made yesterday?" Dave poked his head round into our tiny kitchen and I gestured with my head towards the fridge.
"Dave, are you sure you really need to eat those? Why not just have toast?" Jess tried and failed to sound light-hearted.
"Oh come on babe, they've got walnuts and carrots in them - basically health food! Plus, you need to try one, these are de-licious, Jane's a baking master!"
Laughing, I stepped out into the lounge to let him past. "Can I get that in writing for every time I have a baking disaster? No more teasing me for my epic cake failures ever again!" I goofily started doing a victory dance around the table, stopping abruptly when I saw Jess glaring at me.
"Um, my sister's probably waiting for me, so I'll go eat this in my room..." I grabbed my eggs and toast and scooted out of there as quickly as possible. I don't really understand what Dave sees in Jess, especially with the number of times he's ended up crying on my shoulder after one of their arguments. However, I'm not exactly the Relationship Queen myself, so who am I to say anything?
I powered up my laptop and messaged Alyssa and Peter to let them know I was ready. They immediately video called me back.
"OK, so I figure we need at least one big present each. And then possibly a few joint presents... oh and a cake! And decorations for the lodge we're staying in - I'm thinking balloons, lots of sparkly things - oh, we could put that mini '50' confetti in their presents so it goes everywhere when they open it!"
Opening up a browser window, I started googling whilst Alyssa kept firing suggestions at me. Peter occasionally chimed in, and between us we came up with a good few suggestions. Apparently Dad had already bought Mum a new golf bag and a few clubs on our behalf, so that was Mum's big present sorted. For the first joint present we decided to get a few really nice prints of our dogs, both current and passed away, and luckily we managed to find a few deals online which meant it wouldn't break the bank.
We were struggling for another joint present when Peter suggested Blue Mountain coffee - a coffee that my parents swear by, which they first tried when on holiday to Jamaica for their 40th birthdays. From there the foodie ideas started flowing - cheese from Lancashire where they were born, the local chilli artisan jam my Mum loves so much, the aforementioned coffee, Blackpool rock for Mum and fancy dark chocolate for Dad. Alyssa already had a small hamper so that was that sorted!
The real problem was a big present for my Dad. He is one of those people who will just go and buy whatever he wants, so buying him presents he doesn't already own is always a real pain. Spurred on by our 'food from the past' theme for the hamper, I was running through my favourite memories of my Dad. Suddenly, I had it.
"Peter, remember the 2005 Ashes? When we decided to go down last minute for the last day of the test and ended up with amazing seats? How about we recreate that?"
Peter and Alyssa loved it. The Ashes were returning to England next year and one of the tests was being played in Durham, relatively close to Edinburgh. Of course, we'd have to book the tickets now instead of buying them on the door as we did last time, but I was sure Dad could cope. That day was one of my favourite memories: it was the day I really became interested in cricket, and an amazing experience with my Dad and brother. Cheering on the England teams against the Aussies, the tension as we came so close to winning, and the glorious sunshine - it couldn't have been better. Trying to recreate it was maybe a risky attempt, but I was thinking that if I put the tickets inside a handwritten letter letting Dad know how much that day meant to me, and how much it would mean to spend another day like that with him... well, if that didn't bring a tear to his eye, I don't know what would!
"OK, so Peter, you need to find good photos for the prints. I'll look up the foodie items and start ordering them. Jane, you need to talk to Mum to see if she'll cover the cost of the cricket tickets. Anything else... Oh! Cake!"
"Actually, I might have an idea for that..." I was thinking of Ray - I knew that he was a very accomplished amateur baker, and had often baked cakes for friends and family. From many tasting sessions, I knew his cakes tasted good!
"Just tell me what theme to go for and I'll have a chat with him". We decided on a golf-themed cake, with the flag having a '50' on it. Alyssa reminded me that Mum wasn't too keen on butter-cream icing, so I made a mental note to ask Ray what alternatives he could come up with.
Saying goodbye, I sat back smiling. For once it had actually been a very productive brainstorming session, and when we weren't arguing Alyssa and I were an amazing team. Spinning slowly in my chair, I caught sight of the pile of notebooks waiting for my attention. Groaning, I nipped through to the kitchen and grabbed a carrot cupcake before settling down with my good friends Fluid Mechanics and Equations of State. Who needs caffeine when you have sugar?
Besides, fourth year at university was as horrific as people had promised. In Scotland, the Masters degrees take five years to achieve but as half of the final year is spent on placement in industry, the really hard stuff is all combined into this year. In addition, because I'm certifiably insane, I'd asked to shift my workload to 65% : 35% between the two semesters. As I'm convinced that our lecturers hate us, 40% of this year's grade is based on an 11 person design project completed in the second semester. As I'm a complete control freak, I decided I'd rather free up some time to devote myself to the project then, and get the extra classes out of the way now.
However, although it seemed like a good idea at the time, I was regretting it now! I had so many assignments and mini group projects going on at the same time, and on top of that I had football training, my choir and my increasingly failing attempts to keep going to zumba classes. Most of my friends were getting by on pure caffeine but I'd never acquired a taste for coffee, so a combination of sugar, early nights and super long lie-ins at the weekend were keeping me going.
"Jane! So, have you thought about what to get them yet?"
Rubbing my eyes, I resisted the urge to fake bad signal and go back to sleep. Although I loved my sister, phoning before 9am on a Saturday morning went against all that was pure and holy.
"Uggh. Not awake. What are you talking about?"
"Oh my god Jane, you've forgotten! How could you have forgotten? It's only their 50th birthday, it has to be perfect, like absolutely perfect. We've only got two months to get everything ready!"
Again, I have to state I do love Alyssa. When we're not living together or organising presents, we get on like a house on fire. Our mum always raised us to put time into choosing thoughtful gifts for people but with Alyssa it had backfired into her becoming a Giftzilla, to my regular frustration. However, luckily for her I was way too tired to start any fights this morning. And in this case she was actually right - both my parents were turning 50 within a week of each other, so they'd planned a family weekend away at Crieff Hydro, a very posh hotel in the middle of Scotland. Sorting out presents was up to us three kids (myself, Alyssa and our younger brother Peter).
"Ahh. I hadn't forgotten - time is just flying past so quickly, that's all. Let me get up and showered, and then we'll Skype and try and sort something out?"
Slightly pacified, she agreed to at least let me get up and eat breakfast first. Twenty minutes later, all clean and scrubbed, I was poaching a few eggs when Dave wandered in. Dave is one of my flat mates and my best friend - I met him in first year and soon realised he was one of the few people I could deal with talking to early in the morning. When he proposed living together for second year, it was a no brainer. We came from very similar backgrounds, so it felt very normal to share food costs and eat together - something which apparently wasn't the normal thing to do amongst many of my other friends. We also had our Ginger Wednesday night tradition - essentially us taking advantage of the 241 cinema ticket offer that Orange provide every week, but as Dave is perhaps the most ginger person you've ever seen, we had to rename it. It was proving to be an education, as I always preferred musicals and comedy/dramas whilst Dave loved awful action remakes.
However, perhaps the most important thing as to why he was my best friend was that I had absolutely zero romantic attraction to him. In my eyes, he was my elder brother in all but blood.
As Dave greeted me groggily, his girlfriend Jess entered behind him. Giving me a sickly-sweet smile, she asked how university was going. Hiding a grin of my own, I kept my answer brief. Although she was never mean to my face, Dave had moaned repeatedly of how jealous she was of our friendship. In particular, she hated our Ginger Wednesday tradition. Dave had reassured her multiple times that our relationship was like brother and sister, but it didn't seem to help. Unlike the Bob situation, I was certain that I had given her no reason for her jealousy, and it was clear to anyone that Dave was head over heels for her.
"Jane, where's the carrot things? Those cupcakes you made yesterday?" Dave poked his head round into our tiny kitchen and I gestured with my head towards the fridge.
"Dave, are you sure you really need to eat those? Why not just have toast?" Jess tried and failed to sound light-hearted.
"Oh come on babe, they've got walnuts and carrots in them - basically health food! Plus, you need to try one, these are de-licious, Jane's a baking master!"
Laughing, I stepped out into the lounge to let him past. "Can I get that in writing for every time I have a baking disaster? No more teasing me for my epic cake failures ever again!" I goofily started doing a victory dance around the table, stopping abruptly when I saw Jess glaring at me.
"Um, my sister's probably waiting for me, so I'll go eat this in my room..." I grabbed my eggs and toast and scooted out of there as quickly as possible. I don't really understand what Dave sees in Jess, especially with the number of times he's ended up crying on my shoulder after one of their arguments. However, I'm not exactly the Relationship Queen myself, so who am I to say anything?
I powered up my laptop and messaged Alyssa and Peter to let them know I was ready. They immediately video called me back.
"OK, so I figure we need at least one big present each. And then possibly a few joint presents... oh and a cake! And decorations for the lodge we're staying in - I'm thinking balloons, lots of sparkly things - oh, we could put that mini '50' confetti in their presents so it goes everywhere when they open it!"
Opening up a browser window, I started googling whilst Alyssa kept firing suggestions at me. Peter occasionally chimed in, and between us we came up with a good few suggestions. Apparently Dad had already bought Mum a new golf bag and a few clubs on our behalf, so that was Mum's big present sorted. For the first joint present we decided to get a few really nice prints of our dogs, both current and passed away, and luckily we managed to find a few deals online which meant it wouldn't break the bank.
We were struggling for another joint present when Peter suggested Blue Mountain coffee - a coffee that my parents swear by, which they first tried when on holiday to Jamaica for their 40th birthdays. From there the foodie ideas started flowing - cheese from Lancashire where they were born, the local chilli artisan jam my Mum loves so much, the aforementioned coffee, Blackpool rock for Mum and fancy dark chocolate for Dad. Alyssa already had a small hamper so that was that sorted!
The real problem was a big present for my Dad. He is one of those people who will just go and buy whatever he wants, so buying him presents he doesn't already own is always a real pain. Spurred on by our 'food from the past' theme for the hamper, I was running through my favourite memories of my Dad. Suddenly, I had it.
"Peter, remember the 2005 Ashes? When we decided to go down last minute for the last day of the test and ended up with amazing seats? How about we recreate that?"
Peter and Alyssa loved it. The Ashes were returning to England next year and one of the tests was being played in Durham, relatively close to Edinburgh. Of course, we'd have to book the tickets now instead of buying them on the door as we did last time, but I was sure Dad could cope. That day was one of my favourite memories: it was the day I really became interested in cricket, and an amazing experience with my Dad and brother. Cheering on the England teams against the Aussies, the tension as we came so close to winning, and the glorious sunshine - it couldn't have been better. Trying to recreate it was maybe a risky attempt, but I was thinking that if I put the tickets inside a handwritten letter letting Dad know how much that day meant to me, and how much it would mean to spend another day like that with him... well, if that didn't bring a tear to his eye, I don't know what would!
"OK, so Peter, you need to find good photos for the prints. I'll look up the foodie items and start ordering them. Jane, you need to talk to Mum to see if she'll cover the cost of the cricket tickets. Anything else... Oh! Cake!"
"Actually, I might have an idea for that..." I was thinking of Ray - I knew that he was a very accomplished amateur baker, and had often baked cakes for friends and family. From many tasting sessions, I knew his cakes tasted good!
"Just tell me what theme to go for and I'll have a chat with him". We decided on a golf-themed cake, with the flag having a '50' on it. Alyssa reminded me that Mum wasn't too keen on butter-cream icing, so I made a mental note to ask Ray what alternatives he could come up with.
Saying goodbye, I sat back smiling. For once it had actually been a very productive brainstorming session, and when we weren't arguing Alyssa and I were an amazing team. Spinning slowly in my chair, I caught sight of the pile of notebooks waiting for my attention. Groaning, I nipped through to the kitchen and grabbed a carrot cupcake before settling down with my good friends Fluid Mechanics and Equations of State. Who needs caffeine when you have sugar?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)