Where I make a (not so) Triumphant Return…

I’ve been away a while. Sorry about that.

I have a few things going on which have prevented me from blogging.

I won’t go into all the boring details but work has been insane, my laptop broke, I discovered I was able to watch Netflix on my Playstation (which meant I could start and finish Arrested Development season 4 without a laptop) and I joined a new football team. I also had a few trips to go on and I made a new friend…only to ‘lose’ said friend a few weeks later (a story for a future post). I didn’t actually like him anyways so please don’t feel too bad for me.

Anyways, the laptop is fixed, my social circle had decreased (again), I have watched almost everything on Netflix and work seems to have calmed down. This means that I can get back to sharing the details of my awkward existence with you all.

Worth every penny.

As I mentioned a few lines ago, work has been busy, really busy! A couple of weeks back I had a particularly crazy week which involved me going to meet a client in Portugal before heading to London for a meeting and then going to Ireland to catch up with an existing client of ours. After Ireland I would be on a plane to Germany for another meeting before heading home (you can probably see why I have not been blogging much as of late!).

This was a big responsibility as a lot was riding on the success of these meetings.

If you have read my blog before then I do not blame you for expecting me to make some kind of enormous faux pass at one or two (or even all) of these meetings and spoiling my career prospects in the process.

I am happy to report that all meetings went well.

But before you think that I have turned a corner and am no longer a social misfit I need to tell you about my flight from Ireland.

Not my experience of Ireland…

I had taken my seat on the plane to home that came before my connecting flight to Germany (don’t ask) and, strangely enough, found myself sat next to an Irish girl.

My first thought was that she was cute. I mean, she wasn’t the prettiest by conventional standards but, in my mind at least, did kinda resemble Lene Marlin…sort of. In case you are not aware, Lene Marlin is a Norwegian popstar who had one major hit single here in the UK. I had a massive crush on around 2000/2001.

My plan was to admire her from afar silently before texting R upon touchdown and together we would curse me for not having the guts to talk to her.

However, our flight was delayed shortly due to some problem with the runway. She turned to me and asked me if I knew what people who were getting connecting flights were supposed to do when they touched down.

I didn’t.

My initial instinct was to lie to her and strike up a conversation but I decided against it.

She then spotted my book on Morrissey. As she was a huge Smiths fan this led to a conversation on music, gigs we’ve both recently been to, magic tricks and, randomly, how we both spend way too much time blocking people on Facebook who have annoying statuses.

At the risk of sounding ever-so-slightly insane I think that, within only an hour of knowing her, I had fallen in love with this girl.

My worst fears were confirmed when she had to pop the toilet. This gave me a couple of minutes to daydream. Don’t judge me too harshly but in the 140 seconds or so that she was gone I played out the entire relationship in my head, asking myself various questions along the way. How I could maintain a long distance relationship with someone in Ireland? Will I have to learn to Skype? Would we get married in England? Will her family hate me? Should I start drinking Guinness or Beamish? Would we raise our family in Ireland? What would I do for work? Would our children be classified as Irish or English? Hopefully they’ll like football…proper football that is and not that Gaelic nonsense they play over there – this was one of the most important ones too.

I was snapped back into life by her return.

Oh Lene, we’d have made beautiful children!

It was then time to put our seatbelts back on and prepare for landing. We had enough time for her to tell me about her biggest Facebook gripe (people posting pictures of their pets if you’re interested) before we had to get off the plane.

I was happy when it transpired that we were walking across to the same terminal together for our next flight. It meant we were able to continue our chat for a little bit. It then dawned on me that we would be going our separate ways soon though so I decided to steer the conversation towards getting her phone number.

Before I could ask she told me that she was going to do a spot of travelling in Europe and then spent some time in India. This meant that her phone would be more or less out of action for the next month or two.

She did say that she would have access to a web café so asked for my full name and email so that she could email me and add me as a friend of Facebook. I duly obliged.

A good friend of mine has just returned from India so I was able to give her some insight into how great the place is. She said that she was really looking forward to her adventure but that her mum was really worried about the foreigner rape stories that apparently were all over the news back home.

I didn’t really know how to respond to this comment so I shrugged it off as standard parental paranoia and ignored the remark.

By now we were queuing for passport control, I suddenly realised the time and that I was getting pretty late for my flight so decided to say my goodbyes and try to get through security:

Jay: “My flight leaves in a little while. It’s been lovely chatting but I have to dash. Hopefully we’ll chat soon.”

Girl: ” I hope so. Expect a friend from me in the next couple of hours…and you’d better accept it!”

Jay: “Of course I will”

Girl : “Good”

Jay: “Anyways, best of luck in India”

Girl: “Gee thanks”

Jay: “Don’t get raped, yeah?…”

It was at this stage I was expecting her to laugh before disappearing to see the world with thoughts of me in her mind. It would only be a matter of time before we got back in touch, fell in love and live happily ever after.

Instead I was greeted by what I can only describe of a look of pure and absolute disgust! I am not sure if I have ever really been greeted with genuine hatred before but this was not a look that I will forget any time soon.

I had blown it. Big time.

essentially this expression (thank you Google images!)…

In retrospect I realise that rape is a kind of a sensitive topic and probably not one that I should be making jokes about…especially to strange girls who I am attempting to woo.

After her reaction I panicked, mumbled a goodbye, turned away from her and shot up the queue asking people if it was okay if I go ahead of them because my flight was about to leave. Fortunately people were allowing through without hardly any fuss so I was able to make a quick getaway.

I arrived at security and joined one of the queues. As this queue was moving at a painfully slow pace I was replaying the final exchange over and over in my head, kicking myself for my stupidity and lack of social decorum. For some reason I turned to my left. Guess who I saw standing a few metres away from me?

Yep, it was her. Standing with her arms folded and a face like thunder.

She saw me too. After a fleeting moment of eye contact we both put our heads down and seemingly partook in a mutual decision to ignore each other for the entire time of going through security.

This all happened 2 weeks ago. She has not emailed me or sent me a friend request.

Oh well. I didn’t even want to move to Ireland anyway!