And so the sun turns, or is it the earth, I forget, but either way we revolve our way back around to Monday. What a fabulous blimming weekend. But now one must pay for all that fun with a bit of work. Have a great week, I hope it’s vaguely abnormal, if not a million miles from normal, at least just a hundred.
xxx
A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – By Paige Nick
FROM PICK UPS TO PUT DOWNS
It has come to my attention that girls everywhere are getting picked up by men regularly. Let the record show that I am not one of these girls (bar the odd car guard here or there).
The other day I went to the gym, (if jogging there to swipe your card and then walking home again can really be considered going to the gym), when I noticed a woman running on the road just ahead of me. (I lie, I actually first noticed her when she made running past me look easy.) Anyway a car drove past, one of those sleek, black zed-something or others, driven by a certain kind of guy, you know the type.
He drove straight past me, then slowed down beside the woman just ahead of me, rolled down his window and offered her a ride to the gym. She politely declined, and he drove off. Powered by curiosity, I sped up to ask her if she knew him. She said she didn’t At the time it did strike me that he had asked her and not me. But then I suppose I’ve never been a particularly glamorous sweater and she was blonde and everyone knows they have more fun.
A few weeks later, this time inside the actual gym, a guy approached the woman grunting two down from me on the stair-master, and started a conversation with her, which led to much giggling, and later some number swapping. Leading me to reason that there are two kinds of women out there; those that get picked up quite a lot (them), and those that don’t (me).
It’s that age old thing where you don’t know something is happening, and then you see it once, and suddenly it’s happening all around you all the time. Because ever since these two instances I’ve been noticing women getting picked up everywhere.
Look, it’s fine by me, I came to terms with not being a swimsuit model decades ago, and I’m really more interested in this discovery from a philosophical standpoint than a physical or emotional one (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).
Keen to test out the corollary of the theory that I am a non-picked-upper, I found myself in a bar in Spain last month. I was in the middle of a portion of El Camino, which is a centuries old pilgrimage from France to Spain. One night, after an eight hour day trekking through the Spanish countryside in the rain, I was having a drink or seven in a local bar, when I noticed a good-looking Spanish fellow pilgrim. I hadn’t brought my glasses with me, but I was almost certain we were making eyes at each other across the bar. So when he went to refresh his drink, I decided to take the plunge and try out my own pick-up skills.
As he limped past (by the time you reach kilometer seven hundred, everyone is limping), I smiled and said, ‘Sore feet?’ Thinking since he was clearly a pilgrim it might be something we could bond over.
‘Ola Sofi,’ he said. Clearly assuming that by ‘sore feet’ I was simply introducing myself with a bad Spanish accent.
In retrospect, it probably wouldn’t have killed me to be a ‘Sofi’ for the night, but instead I tried to set the record straight. ‘No, no! S.o.r.e…f.e.e.t…’ I said, enunciating every letter and pointing at my feet like a lunatic. And when he still didn’t get it, I made a big performance of acting out being a pilgrim with sore feet, in a charade-like fashion. By this stage the entire bar had turned to watch and the baffled and embarrassed Spaniard was looking around for the hidden cameras and emergency exits.
Let’s face it, no bar in any corner of the world needs to see that. So there’s a lesson to be learnt here. In future, perhaps it’s best if we leave the picking up to cranes, forklifts, and men who drive those zed cars.