Part 79: Learning to Drive

There is quite literally nothing sexier than being in a car with a man, as I’m sure you’ll agree straight single ladies, especially when he’s driving it – watching his hand clutch gearstick; his knuckles undulating under leathery skin as he moves into fifth. Even better: when it’s late and you’ve both been drinking. Ooh the thrill; the very naughtiness of it all – the life or death adrenaline rush. The haze of cigarette smoke. The bass of the music throbbing like your very own disco heartbeat. The skidding of the tyres as he takes a corner in the oily rain.

Being driven by a carefree cad is just endlessly decadent, apart from the fact that you might die a burning death in a flaming ball of twisted metal. This is not really a risk worth taking, unless he’s driving a soft-top bimmer. (Although it’s one I haven’t much needed to take since I was twenty-one anyway, because at that point all the carefree cads started driving sensibly. Or found other girls to career around being dangerous with. I suppose you can’t have everything).

My penchant for being driven has meant that since becoming a single lady I have spent a fair amount of blue dollar on taxis – both in order to sate my appetite for masculine motoring* and to get me to work on time. It has also meant that I’ve made it to the age of not-quite-thirty without the ability to drive a car. And my firm belief that a lady most certainly does not need a man (not even for baby-making now that those biologists in Oregon have managed to clone a human embryo), has recently led me to have a good word with myself in the bathroom mirror and book some more driving lessons. After all, a grown up woman should not throw her hard-earned bank notes at taxi-drivers. She should use them to learn to drive instead – in case she should have to make a sudden getaway on a Friday after midnight, when taxi cabs are notoriously impossible to locate.

If you’ve ever had a driving lesson yourself, it won’t surprise you to discover that driving instructors are the exception to the rule I began this posting with. I can report with some confidence (after three instructors and nearly 200 lessons), that there a lot of things sexier than being in a car with a driving instructor; including being in a car with a rotting corpse in the boot. And I’m no necrophilliac.

Driving instructors are the least sexy thing you can be in a car with, and not just because they’re overweight and spend at least half the lesson on the phone reminding their wife to renew the TV licence. They also criticise you pretty much non-stop – niggling over every tiny little time you get distracted by your smudged eyeliner and don’t notice the red light, or the road works, or the Chinese student on a bicycle – which makes driving lessons feel a lot like being trapped inside a moving vehicle with all the evil voices who have escaped from your head and turned into a nasal, conservative pedant with terrible breath.

Of course, there are dating options outside driving instructors. I am aware of this. It’s just that learning to drive has forced me to add one more profession to the ever-growing list of ‘jobs held by men I’ll never date’, which I keep in my purse as a handy aide-mémoire – and which I have decided not to post here in case it makes you hate me. Suffice to say it started with ‘no actors, no army’ and expanded out to include pretty much all the professions with the exception of criminal lawyers and Olympic athletes – and I’ve heard rumours that both of these occupations require long hours, and don’t pay as well as you might imagine. So even if I do find a suitable lover, I’ll probably have to drive myself home and purchase my own soft-top bimmer.

As Jake Gyllenhall once said (under very different circumstances), this is one goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation.

*Except on the rare and disappointing occasions that they send a woman driver

Part 78: Celibacy

If you, like me, were a teenager during the nineties – unplugging the house phone so you could legitimately ignore impending phone calls from the well mannered, but unfortunately sincere youth you met down the Wimpy, smoking hashish that tasted like petrol and burned crispy ickle holes into your polyester school trousers and watching American singles sitcoms like Friends and Sex and the City instead of dating – you will no doubt have been anticipating the myriad pleasures of adult life with some fervour. The Future, as the present was known then, was a promised land of caddish dark haired strangers; orgasms alfresco; studio apartments with purple doors; quirky friends with flexible, but well paid jobs and no hobbies or family commitments that might impinge on an social activity, and LOTS OF SEX. Loads of it.

Basically, sex would be what you were doing or thinking or talking about ninety eight percent of the time, unless you were buying shoes.

But as you, like me, will have no doubt realised, it ain’t the nineties no more. It’s 2013 and adult life has completely failed to deliver on the gifts it once promised. All the dark haired cads either got married or decided to embark on extended periods of travel in South Asia with their girlfriends – or else they drink in different pubs than you do; it’s been too cold to bare so much as a shoulder alfresco since the summer of 2006; house prices are now at the kind of astronomical levels which mean you’ll be lucky if you can afford a garden shed in your life time; the tripple-dip recession has resulted in all your friends working 100 hour weeks and being too knackered to do anything on the weekends except sleep, and there’s no sex. None at all.

Sex is over, so far as I can tell.

The coupled people have stopped doing it because they’re married now, or pregnant, or post-pregnant and sporting stitches in their severed genitalia. Or else their libidos have been crushed by sobering details of the sexual antics of horny, lizard faced celebs who are currently being herded into custody like decrepit old cattle. And the single people have stopped doing it because they’ve realised casual sex with strangers is mostly gross. Especially afterwards, when the clammy stench of a stranger stains the bedsheets, and the fear of super sperm that has the power to leap through latex stains the edges of any residual pleasure. Which makes adulthood rather difficult to navigate; particularly for single people who grew up in the late twentieth century and have literally no life blue-prints from iconic popular culture that they can follow without indulging in regular one night stands. It’s a right conundrum.

Luckily, I can report that not having sex is well underrated. You don’t have to worry about venereal diseases, unwanted pregnancies, failure to orgasm or rejection. You can turn the surface of your double bed into a handy storage centre so that you never have to be further than an arm’s length away from your mobile phone, laptop, PINSentry reader or copy of Adrian Mole: The Widerness Years. Nobody wakes you up in the dead of night by rolling onto your side of the bed, snoring or attempting to spoon you. Alright, there’s less in the way of tingly physical excitement, but scientists reckon you can totally recreate that post-coital high by eating spicy foods and chocolate.

The other thing is, when there’s no chance of sex you can stay in and bake and read good novels and watch Four in a Bed and not experience even the teeniest twinge of displeasure at the thought that you might be missing out. Conversely, you can leave the house and socialise with good looking people without being disturbed by the voices in your head that want to touch their private places. Which you’ll find makes social situations about six hundred per cent less worth turning up to. But still, there’s always Prosecco.

Who needs a blueprint when life’s this simple?

Part 77: Optimism

There comes a time in the life of every sour young spinster when the vaporous steam of bile that has served as soul-fuel for so long burns off and gives way to a kind of peace – in the same way that heavy grey clouds sometimes break under the heat of the sun and stream with light; or how a hangover clears, miraculously, just like that, when only seconds ago you were convinced this time you had absolutely over done it, and your liver would explode and you would experience hell, immediately. You will find, when it happens to you, that you stop idling away precious leisure hours eating cold, leftover Chinese food and praying for the death of your enemies, and start spending your days contemplating just how lovely little bunny rabbits are. And miniature poodle puppies; like alive beanie babies you can love.

As you can probably tell from the above, I’m a bit giddy right now. All the world is beautiful again – and it’s not just the weather, or the fact I’ve given up alcohol and caffeine and started wearing make-up. Something has shifted, like, as if the arteries in my heart that used to pump raw hate-sewage straight to my brain got rewired, and started pumping out glitter and love instead. It is most remarkable, and has obviously had an absolutely transformative effect on how I feel about single life. I can only conclude that the government have panicked upon receiving the news of my recent sobriety and started drugging the tap water.  

You see, whereas once I was resolutely and cynically rigid in my commitment to the solitary life, I have lately started to experience alarming signals suggesting I might want to mate again. Erotic dreams about ex-colleagues, thrills of lust when I-spy a shirtless manual worker and, alarmingly, the dawning realisation that all men might not be total scumbags (although the current penchant kind men have for sporting beards that look as though they need dusting makes it difficult for that dawn to totally break in my mind).

The only down-side to my new found enthusiasm for life, love and all it has to offer is that it’s put a right downer on the bitter-divorcée personality I’ve been cultivating for most of my adult life. We’ll have to see what we can do about that, because I still have absolutely no desire to be described as ‘nice’ by friends of friends, colleagues or other casual acquaintances. And to be totally frank I still feel fairly disappointed at the blandness whenever I am informed of  hook-ups/engagements/pregnancies, so all is not lost.

Life just feels so full of delicious opportunity right now, and I can confirm, having spent many many seconds of the ticking hands of time in the darkness, that the feeling of anticipatory delight currently coursing through my bloodstream definitely trumps the morning-after feeling of the world being full of grey, and tedious strangers in fusty beige jumpers. Life is suddenly a great big tempting plateful of sex, money and furry things that would be cute as pets. It’s like an x-rated sweet shop, and I’m going to keep giving it my custom until such time as the darkness returns. I can only wish the same for you, dear readers – because, out of nowhere, I am capable of benevolence now. Just like Jesus.   

Part 76: Icy, Icy England

Isn’t it just joyous, to step from the cosy cocoon of one’s bedclothes straight into a blast of chilling wind so icy that beads of moisture form icicles on the rim of one’s nostrils? Isn’t it just doubly joyous to do so in late March, when tradition dictates that one should be picking daffodils in pleated midi-skirts and pastel twin-sets and delivering them to one’s mother in a wicker basket?

The answer to both of those questions is, obviously, no, it is not. It is unpleasant in the extreme. Snow capped roof tops are only romantic in December. And even then only because brain freeze takes the edge off the hundreds of pounds haemorrhaging from your bank account and morphing into overpriced chiffon scarves from Accessorize that will sit unworn in the back your Nan’s wardrobe until such a time that your as-yet-unborn nephew needs a costume for his role as one of the three kings in the primary school nativity.

I don’t think I’m the only one who has looked out of the window and then at the weather app on my i-phone and concluded that Britain is going to be cold, like, FOREVER. This is seriously depressing, not least because months of central heating use have left clumps of white skin flaking from my face and landing on my clothing in an ironic impersonation of the world outside. 

Still, if there’s one thing to thank The Big Freeze for it is, unsurprisingly, that it has served as a timely reminder that excessive weather conditions are definitely easier to bear sans lover. This is because, despite those fantasies, close to the surface of our romance-hungry brains, about the warmth of another human body, sex in front of the fireplace, matching winter-wear etc, everybody knows that an extended winter lockdown with a loved one is unpleasant and likely to cause malfunctions of the personality not conducive to harmony. I mean, who could, hand on heart, promise that she would not wish to violently assault her romantic partner should that romantic partner chill her duvet-warmed flesh with a freezing tootsie. Not I.

Seasons are, after all, the reason why the British are a generally peaceable, affable people on their home turf. We have an annual schedule of activity and a carefully constructed wardrobe which revolves around three month bursts of predictable climatic conditions (including obligatory golf umbrellas for summer family picnics). We are rendered wholly unable to cope when Ural winds/halted Gulf Streams intervene in established conventions by causing the world outside to be fucking freezing at a point in the year when it should be pleasantly temperate. In fact, I think you could probably attribute much of the violence which occurred under British colonialism to the lack of preparedness our forefathers had for dealing with, say, the relentless heat of Sub-Saharan Africa, or the long cold winters of Northern America*. I have no evidence in support of this, but I would not be in the least bit surprised if the domestic violent crime rate had seen a recent sharp rise – if only because violent criminals are, like the rest of us, unwilling to leave the house because of the weather and slowly succumbing to a debilitating rage brought on by cabin fever.

All I can suggest, single people, in the midst of the modern ice-age, is that you hunker down with a sun lamp and a good book and wait for the snow-storm to pass. Unless you can afford a holiday, in which case, I’ll totally let you off should you feel all horny and allow the rush of sun induced serotonin to convince you that you’ve fallen in love with a Mediterranean waiter.  Although, I wouldn’t recommend bringing one home.

*On reflection, I probably don’t think this.

Part 75: Home Ownership

I have now reached that unenviable age; youth is just about behind me, I am on the cusp of a career that might never take off and I can only watch as all around my mates and their ‘partners’ are morphing from carefree fun-lovin’ nightclub companions into bonafide adults, using the template favoured by my own parents and many of their tedious friends (beard, betrothal, baby). This is obviously very distressing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I am now forced to find some extra thousand pounds or so in my annual budget in order that I can attend the weddings which have become the sole focus of my social calendar. I have to say, I’m looking forward to my thirties – if only for the inevitability of a divorce wave that might lend some much needed variety to my social landscape (I’m a friend much better equipped to deal with the recently betrayed than with the recently betrothed; ask anyone, my particular brand of fabulous is precisely dark enough for crises).

Still, I can just about deal with weddings and engagements because these are festivities that demand the consumption of alcohol – which, happily, takes the edge off the compulsion I have to smash my own face with a heavy glass thing whenever one is announced. There is, unhappily, no such alcohol based respite from the tedium bound to ensue when a partnered friend purchases a house – until, of course, the housewarming party at which you can take revenge for the months of wearisome reports on the offer/acceptance/disclosure/chain/exchange/remodel by decorating their bathroom floor with regurgitated Chianti. 

Home ownership is, I’ve no doubt, well overrated. When I was at university an Ancient Languages student I used to drink gin and tonic with on a Thursday night put me right off the idea of ever applying for a mortgage when he told me the word was derived from the Ancient Greek meaning ‘obligation until death’ (although, as he dropped out of his degree at the end of the second year due to an ongoing abuse of class A substances which turned out to be incompatible with the study of historic hieroglyphs, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this translation). I’m having enough trouble committing to another year in Leeds – the thought that I might be stopped from engaging in whimsical changes of postcode in order to pay astronomical portions of my wages to the bank until such a time as my yet unborn children reach maturity is entirely unattractive. As is the thought of spending my savings on such things as: roof repairs, re-tiling, buildings insurance, plumbing (God, even typing those words is boring, imagine having to read them on an invoice).

Being blessed with considerable foresight, I realise that, despite the benefits of rental, chucking half my wages into someone else’s pocket on a monthly basis might one day seem excessive. Particularly if I ever move back to London, where Boris Johnson’s staunch refusal to bring in rent control means the average monthly cost of renting is 120% of my current monthly wage.  I just hope I have the good sense to stay single once home ownership becomes a necessary evil; for reasons for which I have absolutely no justification whatsoever, I feel less wearied when single friends purchase properties – it just seems, somehow, more like freedom. Also, it’s easier to be pleased for single people because they are usually less smug about house purchases on social media forums. And the very least you can do for yourself when making an obligation until death is to make sure that your friends are pleased for you. It takes the edge off, in the absence of alcohol. I don’t know why. 

Part 74: Not Getting Murdered

Being single, particularly if you live all alone in a not so salubrious district of a disadvantaged city, can be scary. After all, noises from the communal hallway at three am might always turn out to be a mad man wielding a sharp dagger and strangly hands – although, ninety nine times out of a hundred, they end up being the creaking of an old boiler, or your next door neighbour dropping a kebab. Still, it’s easy to think, especially when your chintz bed covers start morphing into evil night demons, that a big strong man might make you safer. Or at least give you a sturdy bulk to hide behind, should the demons want to get physical.

As ever though, allowing yourself to think easy is the first step on the long road to misery. Because you are definitely not safer if you have a lover in your house. At least, not if you’re a heterosexual woman. Unusually, I don’t even have to resort to hyperbole to make my point here, it’s literally true: having a man in your life means you are more – rather than less – likely to be prematurely slaughtered. Which makes the twenty minutes you spent crying into your Ben and Jerry’s because that strong backed cad from All Bar One failed to reply to your text message a total waste of time. (Not that I’m judging babe, we’ve all been there).

On no account should any single lady who is aware of the realities of the world dream about silken wedding garments, or complain to her friends that she hasn’t had sex for nearly a year. We should be thanking the fat Lord that we’ve thus far managed to sidestep the ghastly finale that is life’s climax for many coupled females. In the UK two women a week are killed by partners or ex partners – globally, it’s even more depressing. Here are some stats: According to the UN, in Guatemala two women are killed each day by an intimate partner; in South Africa the number jumps to six. Even in the US of A (home of Disney and Jennifer Aniston) one third of women who are murdered are killed by their lovers. In 2007 twenty two women a day were murdered in India over dowry.

Most women reading this will have had some brush or other with masculine-shaped danger. Whether that shape looked liked the looming shadow of a boyfriend-scorned or the grabby fingers of a stranger at midnight makes no difference. I just hope the experience did what it needed to do and made you very very angry. Angry enough to wear tiny leather skirts and white t-shirts with no bra and then shout at men for staring at you in the street. Angry enough to swear at those e-harmony ads. We should be angry enough to take up kitchen knife arms and point them in the direction of anyone asking, ‘are you single, still?’

But even if you can’t raise yourself to righteous anger, even if you can’t quite give up on romance despite the bleak reality of the human landscape – it’s still worth remembering that a man is never going to be capable of making you safer. Even if he’s really nice. I mean, he might beat you to death while sleep-walking; or get jumpy, mistake you for a burglar and shoot you in the head through the bathroom door.

These things happen.

But not if you’re single – statistically speaking.

Part 73: Temple Run 2

Unlike most of the pseudo bourgeoisie who now make up my social group, I have never had a ‘gap year’. The idea of taking an extended break from my life in order to embark on a colonial tour of the former empire (and some of the bits we didn’t get) always seemed distasteful to me. Even during the skunked out hydro years, when I once slept in someone else’s sick.

Mostly, I’m not sad to have missed out on this rite of passage. Although, the one thing that does rile me about my lack of youthful adventure is that I have far fewer exotic stories than most people of my age and social standing. This leaves me feeling slightly inadequate in new company. Which is why I usually turn up to parties drunk, sporting dresses that display too much cleavage.

I’m particularly perturbed by the fact that my sister – who, prior to her international sojourn, was not known as Britain’s best raconteur – has the most entertaining story ever; it involves watching people drink milk expressed from rats’ nipples in a temple in India. Tbh, I’m not sure how precise her version of that story is – in relation to reality – because she once told me that she tried crystal meth and took various hallucinogens on that trip. And if I know anything, I know this: hallucinogens are a very good way to improve a story. (Although I can’t say the same for crystal meth; for vanity reasons, and also supply ones, I have never tried that particular drug).

Luckily for me though, the iphone people have invented an app that has made the concept of foreign travel redundant, and given me some excellent stories, should my sis ever try to trump me with the rat one. For the past three weeks, I have spent approximately five hours a day navigating an exotic ruin by foot (and, on the occasions when I chance upon a cave, in a careering wooden cart); sometimes I have to do this while being pursued by a lumbering monkey eagle intent on ensuring my demise.

Obviously, this has all taken place virtually, via the medium of the popular smartphone game ‘Temple Run 2’, and so cannot, in any sense, be said to have actually happened to me. Except that it feels like it has – in fact, I don’t know why I used the past tense there, it feels like it is when it’s happening. The breath-snatching awe as I take a sharp right and glimpse hot mist rising off the mountains; that physical sensation of motion as I leap over rolling spikes and rushing rivers; the leaping despair in my stomach as I take a wrong turn and jump into the abyss.

In a way, it is happening to me – more completely than things that happen to people in real life, because, while it’s taking place, I’m also getting to observe it from an external perspective. This must have been how God experienced being Jesus. Which clearly makes Temple Run 2 experientially superior to spending a spaced out year in flea ridden youth hostels, smoking ganja with some college drop-out from Seattle who thinks he’s found the meaning of life.

Having given it approximately twelve seconds consideration, I’m absolutely certain that Temple Run 2 will improve your chances with the opposite sex (or the same sex, if you like). Fortunately however, it is not possible to simultaneously maintain both a romantic relationship and a virtual adventure inside Temple Run’s world. Not if you in intend to take either of those things seriously. There’s not enough leisure time during the average weekend to both have sex and collect enough coins to complete the Midas Touch (and which one of those things will get you closer to that two gem bonus promised on completion of level 9? Exactly).  

Of course, no one can sustain addiction to a game forever. But look on the bright side: once you tire of the temple you’ll have some excellent stories to regale your date with on that next awkward rendezvous. Although, you might want to work on placing those stories in a real-world narrative; a vital tactic should you wish to avoid sounding like a crazed saddo (this is especially important if you decide you might want to have sex with your date at some future point. Which is unlikely. But still).