Dear Mum,
I bought my winter coat this week. During one of the warmest
weeks of 2012, I stood in Topshop, in the grips of a monstrous, furry winter
skin.
You may laugh but, come winter, which will creep up on us like
a Jamaican athlete, I will be ready. I won’t have to make the mad dash into Bluewater
to find a fashionable, warm and well-fitting coat, a mission impossible.
I won’t have to unearth last year’s layers, now coated in fluff
bobbles and sticky packets of forgotten soothers in their pockets.
No, I found a coat I liked
in my size and knew it was the most sensible (if rather sweaty) decision to get it there and then, despite 20˚ temperatures
outside.
The coat channels two trends. On the one hand, it’s baggy
shape and colour means I look like I’ve stepped out of Only Fools and Horses. I
can’t help but go ‘Aw’righ’, Marlene?” when I put it on and do a Cockney walkworthy of Mickey Flanaghan.
It is also made of Mohair, meaning it has a slightly shaggy
quality. This, combined with the shape, means I also look like one of the
Pevensie family dressing themselves for the winter climate of Narnia.
I’m completely chuffed with this look, though I obviously
cannot model it until the temperature drops, which I’m not going to encourage.
But the nights are getting colder as Autumn appears and reaches
it’s leafy fingers toward us.
I’ve found my sitting with friends of evenings, enjoying the
Autumn sky, and being inventive with what to use for layers – tarpaulin and plastic
picnic blankets being remodelled as stylish mantels.
On two occasions in the past week, while wrapped in a
resourceful layer, I’ve been asked “How’s your love life – are you seeing anyone?”
No good can ever come of this question.
Either you are seeing someone but it’s too early and you
don’t want to talk about it (else
you would’ve brought it up yourself), or you’re not and so this is just
awkward.
The latter was and is the case in both instances.
Early in the week a group of girlfriends asked “How’s your love
life – are you seeing anyone?”
“No”, I said, the simple and honest truth.
This really was all there was to say on the matter. In both
instances the group of girls and the group of guys looked awkwardly down into
their glasses, a heavy silence surrounding us.
There really was no need for them to feel awkward. But, me
being me, hating an awkward silence and not wanting my friends to feel bad, felt
the silence needed to be filled, said “Which is totally fine, and I’m cool with
it.”
MASSIVE ERROR.
I now sounded desperate, lonely, reassuring others with my assuredness.
Needless to say, this was followed by an even greater awkward silence and I
began to sweat with sheer mortification and embarrassment, biting my lip to
avoid saying something else.
Why did I say it? I didn’t need to say it!
The real irony was that, a few days later, a group of guys
asked me exactly the same question; I gave the same answer, cue awkward silence,
cue my ‘totally fine’ response and, once more, the world stood still and CRINGED.
Why couldn’t I told them that I had taken up archery, or
heard a brilliant interview between Caitlin Moran and Jennifer Saunders on
Radio Four?
But being one of the chattiest and clumsiest
twenty-somethings on the face of the earth I felt it necessary to open my gob
and destroy any credibility I have. Total cretin.
In my defence, I return to the fact that this is simply a stupid
question and topic of conversation. No good can ever come of it – as a rule, if
I have something of note to report I will tell my friends, rather than waiting
for them to ask.
That’s it. I might as well write ‘Yes, I’m single – now
BUGGER OFF” on my forehead. Or perhaps I should just leave for Narnia. At least
there I can hide underneath my new coat, and practice my archery.
