h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

An earlier conversation with Tanzen reminded me of a poem by a friend, Kevin Higgins.

Letter To A Friend About Girls
after Philip Larkin

What losers we were when it came to girls.
"Pull up to my bumper baby, drive it in between"
played soundtrack to the wet dreams
of small, inconsequential fellas, the likes of us.
And we're talking small on an almost monumental scale.
In duffel coats and awful glasses
we shuffled around the edges of other people's parties
all through the eighties,
gawking down in the general direction
of our stupid, stupid shoes.
If charisma could be distilled,
ours would've been measured
in somewhat less than millilitres.
So small, we barely existed.

On the rare ocasions when opportunity
- the tastiest variety - put herself there
to be availed of and there was nothing for it
but to press the advantage all the way home,
we either failed to spot the most obvious signals
-our radar were useless at picking incoming aircraft up-
or else managed to inexplicably miss.
She grinned through the worst jokes
and was clearly prepared to overlook that duffel coat,
but the score on the board stubbornly somehow stayed zero.
The goal could be yawning wide open
and still the ball would either trickle
pathetically wide or go sailing miles over.
And just what exactly were we supposed to say
as another cut-price night at The Oasis declined
(with no bachelor flat to which she might be lured back)?
"Lets explore the universe with my last fifty pence piece.
If I empty my pockets perhaps I could stretch as far as a kebab."

Thats me and Kevin that is, except I didn't have a duffle coat or glasses .

Aww, come here you !

I did improve a little at and romance eventually

Not only did I not improve...I think I've actually gotten worse at it!

you wait until my next disaster, I'll be revising my opinion then

When I started out in the whole "dating" bizzo I at least was naieve enought to think the best of everybody...now I meet the noicest person on the planet and I'm terrified ....

although I'm gullible about a lot of things I have difficulty opening up to people

I also have like in the poem incredibly bad radar
I remember once after a Hawkwind concert a friend came back to my flat and listened to all my Hawkwind lps all night. Maybe she just wanted to listen to 8 hours of psychadelia but I now (10 years too late) suspect not

Awww puppet !

The main problem I have these days is related to my best mate...it's not that she's evil or anything...not at all...but all the guys who talk to us I just naturally assume are interested in her...

...one of the more recent guys she made friends with always hangs around...she tends to run around the pub all the time, whereas I'll sit back and play pool or listen to the band, so I just assumed he'd stay with me and wait for her to return...

...when he went in for the pash the other week there was no one in the world more surprised than me...

(of course, it turns out that half the pub knew what was going on !)

1 thing that never seems to work is when friends try and set you up

I suppose theres just too much tension and expectation about blind dates, unlike normally when things can just develop (or not more usually)

I remember once I'd spent a weekend working myself up to ask a friend out and it turned out that a friend had asked her out earlier the same evening as I did

I accepted a set up once on the theory that everyone else has better judgement than I do....

...the mate that set me up was really cool, really lovely, and engaged to one of the sweetest men I've ever met in my life...

...the guy she set me up with was an absolute joke...he was a moron, a psycho and an embarrassment...

...and that was the last time I ever accepted a blind date

I think my friends have given up offering me blind dates
but really you'd think they'd have a longer checklist than a)both single; b)both know the friend doing the setting up

I know what you mean, I mean I have lots of single mates, but the only times I've ever thought "man, we should set them up" was when they were so similar (and only in a good way) that I thought they'd geta kick out of it...

(I didn't end up doing it though)

it always seems to be couples who want to set me up, and if they're happy they're so convinced of the virtues of being a couple that they probably think anyone will do, he must be desperate/lonely, when the truth is it rarely bothers me

I understand entirely...

...luckily, I've made all of my friends aware of my plan to be "crazy old hippie lady on a motorcycle" so they don't feel so obliged to set me up

ok, off to lunch
hippy lady on motorcycle sounds good to me apart from the bike bit, me and machinery ... another unhappy relationship

Well I still have to figure out how motorbikes will work with long skirts

I'll be off to lunch soon myself, will catch you soon

decorum on a motorcycle, you'll have to found a motorcycle that can be ridden sidesaddle

speak soon

I have no decorum as it is...which is why I believe the roads are safer with me off them !

well if you have no decorum then you can just hitch the skirt up, otherwise it'll get caught in the pedal thingies

Then I'll get skirt in my eyes while I'm riding

Not to mention the leagues of people who will veer off the road as a result...