Hell hath no fury…

About a month ago I received a message on Facebook, but because of that stupid “other” folder (that no one ever checks) I only saw it today. This is what it said:

Hi. This will seem a little strange and sorry if I have the wrong person, but if you’ve been on any dates with Max Lawson you might want to read this blog: http://diaryofadickhead.com*

Sorry for messaging you out of the blue, just woman to woman I feel like you deserve to see it. I wish I’d known about it sooner.

To be fair, he’s much nicer about you than he is about other people but it might still be interesting.

*this is not actually the name of his blog – I’ve changed it, not because I want to protect his identity but because I don’t want to inadvertently grow his (already fucked up) readership.

I’ve decided that MAX LAWSON of Angel, London is not getting the luxury of anonymity in this blog for reasons I will divulge as this post develops. But seeing as he kindly took the time to give us girls such creative and well thought out pseudonyms such as ‘She’, ‘Chatty’ and ‘Dalston Girl’ (I was known simply as ’Half Italian’) I feel he probably deserves one too  – just for fun…

‘D-Bag’ springs to mind, as does ‘Weirdo_Cat_Lover_87’ but actually, on account of his stupidly large hair, I think ’Jimmy Neutron’ will suffice. Yeah, that suits him well. I’ll call him Jimmy for short.

So after I received this message from Chatty, I was naturally a little confused and also weirdly nervous. I started backtracking through the dates I’d had with Jimmy, trying to remember if I’d done anything notable enough to feature in one of his woman-bashing blogs! I followed the link Chatty had sent me but of course, like all good tossers, Jimmy had covered his tracks.

Max Lawson

That’s when I started to feel miffed! Really fucking miffed! I thought, Come on Jimmy, don’t be shy. If you’re going to write about me then at least let me read it, ya twat! I have a vagina. I am your muse.Your raison d’etre! Don’t you want to hear my notes!?

Or maybe you just want me to shut my mouth, lay down and relax as you ‘come’ on my back ‘like a piece of meat’? (Ooh yes ladies and gents, that’s a direct quote from his blog – not about me I might add but you know… a girl can dream!)

After 24 years, you’d have thought I’d have learned not to react to anything whilst angry. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I am, as ever, a slave to my emotions. I am also notoriously nosey and so I really wanted to see what Jimmy had written about me. So of course, when I couldn’t access his page I angrily clicked on the ‘request access’ button…

I immediately regretted this decision!

Now he’d know that I knew! I’d given up the element of surprise that would have worked completely to my advantage as I plotted my revenge on behalf of womankind!

Nay bother…it’s cool… the damage is done… no point fretting about it now … (DAMMIT TO HELL!)

So I couldn’t access the blog but I could talk to Chatty and try to find out what she remembered from his posts. I liked this girl. She was ballsy. She was, quite rightly, pissed off about what he’d said about her and us other girls but instead of just shrugging it off with a sigh and a “boys will be boys” attitude, she was actually doing something about it. I liked that she had the moral integrity to let us know what was happening.

“Good for you” I thought. “You go girl!”

… Then I did that Tyra Banks style head wobble.

Chatty started to tell me about some of the stuff Jimmy had written. He’d blocked her from seeing it too so all she had to go on was her trusty memory and a few screenshots she’d taken to show friends and presumably throw gin at whilst shouting “YOU CAD!”

So yeah, Chatty started detailing the stuff that Jimmy had blogged about, and as his vile poisonous words started to appear on my screen I began to wish I wasn’t at work. The stuff he’d said and done on his “dates” with some of these girls was most definitely sociopathic. I was furious and upset and wanted to grab my company laptop, shake it and shout “YOU WOT MATE!? YOU WOT!?” in my brassiest midlands accent!

But I didn’t. I remained calm. A fountain of serenity on the outside – laughing at the jokes my team were making, keeping on top of the emails – but inside I was a seething mass of pent up wrath! How dare he talk about me, them, PEOPLE IN GENERAL in this way… AND ON THE INTERNET TOO! If you want to keep a diary of your abusive sexual exploits then please, keep a fucking diary. Lock it with one of those naff bendy keys, hide it in a sock and push it deep to the back of your stinking underwear draw where it belongs. Don’t fucking put “www.” in front of it!

Here are some of the things Chatty told me had featured on Belle du WANKER’S blog:

  1. All the dates he’s been on, including any sexual activities in some detail. (He must be spending a small fortune on beer and condoms!)
  2. Ratings and scores for each girl and comparisons between them – ‘this girl was better at this, that girl was better at that.’ (Oo yeah, like the way you might test drive a car or sample that new sofa you’re thinking of buying? News flash! Women are people not commodities.)
  3. Covertly-taken photos of the girls’ underwear (Pervert!)
  4. Grand statements about himself like “the girls were hanging off my every word”, “sparks were flying” etc… (HAHAHA…HAHAH…HAAAHAHAHAAA. Knob)
  5. A lovely recollection of how he came on ones girl’s back like she was “a piece of meat”! (Oh wait I told you that one already didn’t ? OO yuck, bleurgh!)
  6. A selection of his “anticipations” and “expectations” for date number 2. ANTICIPATE THIS, BITCH (*SLAP*)

And yadayadayada… You get the disgusting drift.

After Chatty had given me the low-down on this low life (and after I’d taken a few deep breaths to calm down) I began to feel a peculiar mix of loathing and hysteria building up inside of me. Yes, what this guy had been doing was like, real gosh darn dastardly, but BECAUSE he’d been doing it we were now fully within our right, on behalf of vaginas around the world, to execute our cunning and vindicated revenge!

Hell hath no fury…

(To be continued)

Hell hath no fury…

‘Tis the season to be floodlit

Here are some things that I think define me as a person:

  1. Hats
  2. Blueberry muffins
  3. Laughing at pretty much EVERYTHING (even when I was 16 and getting told off in the middle of whole school assembly for chatting. Apparently my face found the idea of Mr Hills shouting at me HILARIOUS! I can still see my friends eyes all wide and staring at me in an attempt to say “Dude, stop laughing! You’re meant to be being disciplined right now.”)

But today, today is the day that I truly began to understand myself.  Who am I? What sort of person am I? Questions I have asked myself on many an occasion, but to which I have never found the answer to.

Today that all changed. Today I know who I am.

I am the girl, who embraced whole heartedly, Christmas jumper day in the office.

Not enough was it to don a cardi with a cute penguin on the front, or a hoodie with a trendy snowflake design. I wanted something spectacular, something I could get excited about; something that really invoked the tackiness and festivity that this magical holiday is all about.

I needed LIGHT!

I was on a mission for the jumper of my dreams. I searched high and low. Battling through blizzards, orienteering along icy cobbles – all the while swerving hell bent shoppers as they stampeded down Oxford Street. But my toil was not in vain, for after many hours of searching I found it at last. Hidden in a forgotten corner of Primark there it was – a lumpy, shapeless, itchy Christmas jumper…

It was the kind of jumper we had in the Christmases of yore, the good ol’ days; the days when people were actually embarrassed by their festive fashion! (By good ol’ days I of course mean 1996 when my Grandma knitted me a Flintstone themed Xmas jumper that was 3 sizes too big and gave me a rash. I loved that thing!).

The original Christmas jumper was back! But this time, it had a battery pack!

It was all I had hoped it would be – my retro Xmas jumper with a modern twist.  On the front was an enchanting winter scene with all the works.  Snow covered lodge, bedecked Christmas tree, delicate falling snow, A MAZE OF LED LIGHTS THAT LIT UP WHEN YOU FLICKED A SWITCH!

And today was the day I got to wear this majesty of woollen artistry to work. I was so excited! Everyone was going to love it and I would become the office queen of comedy. More importantly, if anything was going to guarantee me a cheeky snog from the hot guy in Assurance at this year’s Christmas party, this jumper was going to do it.

I walked to my desk, awaiting the shower of praise.

“Yeah it’s funny, how are you going to wash it though?”

Is that all you have to say?

LOOK AT ME!

I’M GLOWING!

~

Moral!Do NOT spend £20 on a battery powered jumper with a Christmas tree on the front. No one will care and you’ll overheat under the cheap polyester and florescent office lights.

Bah humbug.

‘Tis the season to be floodlit

This one time, at speed dating (part 1)

This is going to be somewhat of a retrospective blog about the first and only time I will ever go speed dating.

Luckily for you the events of that night were just so bloody strange that they have happily set up camp in a dusty corner of my memory, there to reside for eternity I imagine.

It was all Gustavo’s fault.

“Guys! So I’ve always wanted to give speed dating a go and seeing as we’ll all probably be in long-term committed relationships within the month (we weren’t), do you fancy going next week?”

At £10 a pop and the impending possibility of meeting a Gerard Butler lookalike (whom I would woo in four minutes with my discerning wit and goofy good looks, of course) how could I refuse?

Safe to say Gerard wasn’t there.

Gustavo, Esperanza and I walked into the room expectantly, excited by the prospect of candle light and soft acoustic guitar rhythms.

Instead we got a room that looked like the weekend hangout spot for some dodgy 90’s rapper. With a blingtastic bar, more spot lighting than was probably healthy and white leather sofas that would have looked more at home in R Kelly’s ‘Ignition’ video , I wasn’t feeling it.

Gustavo went to the bar while we girls made a b-line for the pimped out toilets, tactfully checking out any potential “action” on the way.

There was no action. Not even a smidgen of activity. There was a big fat ass nothing rocking around in the space where all the hot guys should have been.

We left the loos and went straight to the bar.

Gustavo had already allied himself with a couple of the troll men that were to be our dates for the evening…

WHAT ARE YOU DOING GUSTAVO!?  DO NOT FRATERNISE WITH THE ENEMY!

So I ordered tequila! And a beer!

And then some more tequila.

I was so busy self-medicating for the night ahead that I completely missed the start of the dating!

I rushed back to my allocated seat to find a buttoned up Chinese guy waiting for me, already two minutes in to our four minute date.

“Oh hi, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realise we’d started. Here, I bought you a shot of tequila!”

“No thanks”

Strike one.

As far as dates go (and they were about to enter a whole new level of bizarre) this guy was pretty harmless. Granted, by the time I had sedated myself to a satisfactory level we only had two minutes left to chat, and you have to be pretty talented to make something goddamn awful in two minutes.

I can’t really remember what we talked about now. The only defining characteristic of date no.1 was his terrifying hysterical laugh that jarred uncomfortably with his very serious suit.

I made him laugh once and got scared. So I took off my funny hat for the rest of our date.

*DING!*

One down… fourteen to go!

So I don’t know about you but until speed date no.2 I didn’t have a clue what DKNY stood for.

“Hi, nice to meet you!  My name’s Valentina.” (You’ve probably guessed by now that I have a penchant for Spanish pseudonyms)

“I’m Karan. As in DKNY.”

HUH?

Turns out DKNY stands for Donna KARAN New York.

Fine. Great! But…

WHY THE HELL DO YOU KNOW THAT?! AND WHO THE HELL INTRODUCES THEMSELVES LIKE THAT?

This guy was just weird. Mainly because he had a silly hat on and was coked up to his eyeballs.

My four minutes with him were spent sat as far back in my seat as was physically possible, swatting away the barrage of aggressive drug fuelled flirtation that was coming my way.

Sweet baby Jesus ring the bell! Any second I could be roofied, chopped up into little pieces and stuffed into his DKNY suitcase!

DING!

So the tone of the evening was set …

I was in for an evening of atrocious flirting attempts the likes of which the world has never seen, including:

  1. A guy whose personal space boundaries left much to be desired. (He thought 3cm was an appropriate distance between our faces and he let his head RICOCHET INTO MY LAP when he laughed!!!)
  2. A guy who basically shouted at me for four minutes
  3. A guy who was practically trembling with pent-up sexual frustration

But more of that in part two…

This one time, at speed dating (part 1)

It’s my toothpaste and I’ll squeeze if I want to

For the last couple of weeks I have noticed something odd going on with my toothpaste.

Now I know we all have our little OCD tendencies (I HAVE TO shake out my duvet before I crawl in to bed at night otherwise the spider that is lurking under there is definitely going to bite my ankles) but the upkeep of my toothpaste tube has never been one of them.

That is why over the last week or so I have seriously started to doubt my own sanity.

Every time I go to brush my teeth (morning, night or after a particularly garlicky kebab) I’ve found my toothpaste tube in a constant state of immaculateness. It’s been squeezed to perfection so that all residual toothpaste now resides in the top quarter of the tube.

Handy, yes…

But my handy work? Oh hell no!

Has the tooth fairy upped her hours? Is she now a slave to overtime like the rest of us – her out of hours spent whizzing around my bathroom inspecting my toothpaste upkeep?

I decided to experiment.

I began to purposefully screw up the tube into a twisted unmanageable mess. I left the cap off. I left it balanced precariously on the side of the sink. I even went as far as smearing the outside with its own precious contents so that that pesky little fairy would get covered in the stuff and maybe think twice next time about TOUCHING MY THINGS!

But still, every morning and every night there it would be. Smoothed out, cap on and placed neatly back in its holder next to my toothbrush.

I asked one of my housemates.

“Gustavo, have you been using my toothpaste? I mean I don’t mind, I’m just getting freaked out ‘cause every time I go to use it it’s been squeezed really frickin’ neatly from the bottom and I’m not the one doing it. I just don’t care that much about toothpaste economy.”

Turns out, the same thing had been happening with his toothpaste!

IT’S A PANDEMIC!

Now, I’m not delusional. I don’t actually think there is a toothpaste fairy in my bathroom tidying up my stuff. So when Gustavo told me the same thing was happening to him the only explanation was that it was the doing of our other housemate, Esperanza (…ok, these pseudonyms are getting rather ridiculous now.)

This leaves me just a little bit confused. Is this an act of kindness or an act of control? Should I be thankful or threatened?

Do I let her know, that I know?

Esperanza, I know what you’re doing. KEEP YOUR GRUBBY MITTS OFF MY TOOTH CARE PRODUCTS, PUNK!…  (Oh crap, why is my assertive voice manifesting itself as a member of the cast of Annie?)

Or maybe she already knows that I know? She did straighten out the tube even after my creative attempt to make it as messy as possible…Is her maintenance of my toothpaste tube an act of defiance against my initial act of defiance?

WHEN WILL THIS TOOTHPASTE INCEPTION END?!

Now I’m worried about what comes next. What if she sees me pair my socks one time and doesn’t like the way I do it. Is she going to go in to my room, sort through my underwear drawer and pair them again, her way!?

Ooo I dare you!

You’ll get a shock if you go in there 😉

It’s my toothpaste and I’ll squeeze if I want to