Things to Do Before You Die!

Magazines have a habit of printing meaningless lists with the title 'Fifty Things to See/Hear/Do/Draw/Taste/Wring Out/Sing/Soil/Swim In (delete as applicable) Before You Die!  Recently I was trying to find something good to watch on telly and caught the tail end of a show on some obscure food channel called 'Twenty Foods to Try Before You Die!' (there's always an exclamation mark on these titles).  The last taste experience on this particular list was the Singaporean durian fruit; the one with a smell resembling blocked drains which is so strong you're forbidden to eat it in public places (there's a little sign on public transport featuring a picture of a durian fruit with a dramatic red line drawn through it, like our 'No Smoking' signs, which I thought was the most bizarre sign I'd ever seen until I went to a restaurant in St. Petersburg and saw the same sign featuring a picture of a gun instead).  I've never tried it, don't plan to and somehow I don't think the last words I'll ever croak will be "Bugger...I never got to try some of that stinky old fruit from Singapore.  This has been no LIFE, I tell you!"

But things do take on a bit more urgency when you're reminded that you have to get them done "before you die!"  I've got countless books and DVD box-sets on my shelves that I haven't got round to savouring yet.  Thinking about which of them I'll actually get to see "before I die!" is quite a sobering experience.  It puts the picking up of 'Jeremy Kyle - You Couldn't Make It Up' in perspective...if I started that and then I died tomorrow, would I really want it to be the very last book I ever read?  What if I was brandishing it as the moment of death arrived?  I'd just be labelled a chav, instead of the highly articulate and intelligent person I actually am, whose friend bought her a copy of the aforementioned book for her birthday as a joke gift.  I don't think that particular book would be on anybody's "quickly!! - read this before you die!" list.  Except perhaps Jeremy's Mum's...but then again maybe not; after all she'll already know the story, won't she?

But everything's essentially a to-do list for before you die.  Things like the washing up, making sure the cat litter's been changed properly and drawing Hitler moustaches on pictures of celebrities in the newspapers left out in the gym coffee lounge.  Even things like that, which when you really think about it make for a more worthy and grounded sort of life than eating durian or swimming with dolphins or climbing mountains.  Really, it does.

Newsagents and the unlikely yet pivotal part they've played in my life so far!

I was round at a friend's house last week, and when I popped into her local newsagents for a Crunchie bar on the way home I found myself being served by my old 'boss'; a man who owned the local newsagents where I did my paper round every Sunday.  He didn't recognise me (which is fair enough when you consider I was fourteen years old when he last saw me; though he himself hadn't changed a bit, aside from the grey hair and his wearing of 'normal' trousers instead of the unflattering too-tight shorts he used to wear in the shop of a Sunday morning in the midst of winter!).

Part of me wondered if he was happy with his lot in life; he's obviously always been a newsagent and did he think that was a fulfilling way to spend the majority of his life, distributing snippets of news and chocolate to the great unwashed of Essex (me included!)  And another part of me couldn't help musing over the 'life lessons' I've learned from my association with newsagents over the years.  Allow me to elucidate...

Right and Wrong - I think I've blogged about this incident before, but the little newsagent's shop on the corner of my road was the scene of my first and last 'crime'; pickpocketing a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum when the nice man who ran the shop's back was turned.  To cut a long story short, my Dad found the wrapper, interrogated me, dragged me back to the shop by my ear and made me confess and pay up out of my pocket money.  I've never stolen anything since.

Patience and Endurance - when I was doing said paper round at the age of fourteen, I had to walk two miles in all weathers carrying a heavy bag full of 'Sunday Times's (why didn't I have more sense and insist on a paper round in a 'Sun' reading street?!).  One lady on my route insisted I post her 'Sunday Times' through section by section, in a particular order (sport last, 'The Funday Times' first).   And there was a man who insisted on actually opening the door to me when I delivered his paper, which would have been fine except he always wore the same stained dressing gown that showed off his grey matted chest hair.

(The newsagent's I worked for had a painted sign outside the shop which stated "Have Your Paper Delivered By Us...Without Any Trouble, Without Any Fuss!"  That never failed to make me laugh, especially when I'd struggle past the sign at 6:30am in the pouring rain).

Empathy - there was a little newsagents' shop my friend and I would always pass when walking home from school.  But we'd rarely ever go inside, because the lady behind the counter had the most unsmiling, scariest face we'd ever seen.  We nicknamed her 'Medusa'.  And then one day I was walking home from school past the shop, when I fell over and cut myself (I was always doing this as a child; I was perpetually covered in so many bumps and bruises that one of my teachers was convinced I was getting beaten up at home, but that's another story!)  'Medusa' had seen me fall over, and came running out of the shop with a plaster.  When she'd patched my knee up for me, she gave me a chocolate bar.  I stopped calling her 'Medusa' after that.

In conclusion...who knows what path of rack and ruin I'd have taken in life had I not been saved by these vital encounters with newsagents during my formative years?!

An Evening with Will Young

My music tastes have never really been what you might call 'cutting edge'.  I blame my Dad, who not only aurally assaulted my sisters and me from birth with Roy Harper and Leonard Cohen, but when I got my first record player (second-hand from my Nan) we didn't have the money to actually buy any records for a while, so to compensate Dad went up into the attic and found some of his and my Auntie Julie's old record collection from their youth, to keep me going until I could buy the latest 'Now!' compilation (we were only on Now! 8 or 9 then which makes me feel supremely OLD - I think I saw an ad for Now! 11, 235 the other day).  The dust-covered collection included George Formby's 'When I'm Cleaning Windows', something by Lonnie Donegan (of 'My Old Man's a Dustman' fame) and David Cassidy's 'Could it Be Forever' (a song I rather shamefully still play now and know all the words to).

This is a roundabout way of me trying to excuse my fandom of Will Young, whom I've loved ever since I was twenty-three and voting for him non-stop on 'Pop Idol' (the rest of my family were Gareth fans, the philistines!).  You know how there are some artists you like but you just feel a bit embarrassed to admit it?  Well for some reason I've always felt a bit like that about lovely Will...maybe because his audience has always seemed a bit middle-aged and middle-of-the-road (both more like me than I'd care to admit?!)  I can't help it though...he just has one of those rare, wonderful voices that brings me out in goosebumps.  There.  I've said it.

Anyway...I've just come home from a concert of his at a local venue which I thoroughly enjoyed.  And I while I was there I made a few useless observations, which I have decided to report uselessly below, in the name of having nowhere else to put them:

• Will's music doesn't really lend itself to dancing.  Even the more 'upbeat' tracks are more sway-fests than dance-fests.  It was therefore quite amusing to watch some of the rest of the audience try to decide what to do with their bodies whilst watching and listening to lovely Will.  Some swayed slightly, some clapped (that's always funny as well, watching people decide when they should stop clapping) and some just threw their whole bodies into it with careless abandon.  Even when Will sang 'Leave Right Now'.
• The lady sitting in front of me spent most of the concert taking pictures of the stage, then posting them to her Facebook page.  She wasn't the only one...the room was littered with people taking endless pictures, or filming the concert and then texting the footage to their friends.  While the concert was going on.  Why?!  How is that in any way enjoyable?
• I spent most of the concert utterly transfixed by the keyboard player in Will's backing band, who had the cutest, smiliest face on the planet.  Plus he kept doing these endearing little 'twitches' in time with the music and singing along with Will like his life was depending on it.  
• Will Young dances like someone who's been chained up by his feet, then shoved head first into a paper bag full of tickly feathers.  That was endearing as well.
• The man next to me evidently thought he could sing as well as Will.  But he was wrong.  

The evils of social networking

Reading the paper at lunchtime I noticed an article written by a pregnant lady, who had felt compelled to write all about how she wouldn't be sharing the details/photos/updates regarding her pregnancy on Facebook, and how when she'd told her real-life friends about this, they'd been aghast.  (She finished the article by mentioning that she was aware of the irony involved by her sharing the details in a national newspaper!)  Lots of the comments accompanying the article (as I have established here previously, I always read the online comments!) were from people who felt equally compelled to spout on about how they had "no time for Facebook anyway" and that those who use it should "get a life".

Though I am a snob myself, I really loathe that kind of 'social' snobbishness that involves looking down on people who use Facebook and the like, or who watch things like 'Big Brother' or 'The X-Factor'.  I once watched an episode of 'Grouchy Young Men' (for my sins!) in which lovely Dan Snow summed up the Facebook conundrum by saying "it's just a nice place to share some photos!"  And that's basically my feeling about it as well.

Having said that, the world probably would be a marginally better place if you didn't log on to Facebook to be immediately confronted with about six different 'poo' updates from new parents (referring to their children, just in case you were wondering about the sort of people I mix with online!) Scan pictures are fine, but I have to confess to finding those new '3D' scan pictures incredibly creepy.  Sorry.  But I don't mind general 'baby' updates; it's natural for people to want to share those with the people they care about, isn't it?  And anyway, people moaning on about their jobs, or how tired they are, or the fact that they've just eaten their dinner (OMG!  LOLZZ!) can be a lot worse, for my mind.

I think you can tell quite a lot about someone by their social networking preferences.  I used to have a MySpace account (basically Facebook wearing a Burberry cap and set to music) on which I'd write inane blogs like these; the lack of anything resembling a 'nutter filter' on that site meant I'd get about fifty messages a day from well-meaning sex pests and affable weirdos.  It was actually great fun, reading through these messages and I got at least three story ideas from them all (you have to make the best of these things!)  Now I've been a member of Facebook for a few years, and it's clearly the choice of the more timid and civilised social networker, with all its little managed lists and easily manipulated news feeds, making it the clear choice for the OCD sufferers amongst us as well.  Don't like someone?  Well, with just a click of the mouse Facebook can become your personal mafioso and that person will suddenly cease to exist.  Hours of fun can (probably) ensue by 'friending' people you don't know/don't like and then just getting Facebook to "rub them out" on your behalf (surely it's only a matter of time with all those endless Facebook apps that there'll be one allowing you to send a 'virtual horse's head' to people you don't like?!)

But I've never had a Twitter account; in fact the idea of Twitter scares me a bit.  It all seems a bit frantic and feral over there.  And the concept of having 'followers' piles on the pressure...it gives the impression that you're going to be spouting from an endless fountain of insight, humour and interest.  Not regaling people with things like "Ian Beale off EastEnders reminds me of Stan Laurel with that moustache.  Lolzz!" 

So I guess I'll stick with what I know...my Facebook account allows me to stay in the loop with my four younger sisters, plus I do meet the occasional interesting person through it every now and again.  Just a warning though - anyone who annoys me on there is getting "rubbed out" without a second's thought, OK?

The sun and the moon...are they the same thing?!

Recently I read an snippet in the paper about the 'Celebrity Big Brother' winner and former patron of the Essex pub in which my sister worked (where according to my sister she was "a bit in love with herself") Chantelle Houghton, who exclusively revealed that up until fairly recently, she had thought the sun and the moon were one and the same.  This was followed by a few sneering sentences about her general stupidity from the journalist reporting it.

Now I know Ms. Houghton isn't exactly renowned for being the sharpest pencil in the case, but I felt a bit sorry for her. I'm willing to bet we've all had thoughts that, taken in isolation and reported in the national press, could make us sound ever-so-slightly dense.  For posterity, here are a few of mine.

1. You know when you're talking to someone, or you're watching the news, and you're reminded that "the clocks go forward/back tonight"?  Well, right up until I moved out of home at the age of nineteen I thought all clocks just did this of their own volition.  When I was a lot younger I tried staying up until 2am just so I could see all the clocks going back at the same time, but I was never able to stay awake that long.  Then I moved out of home and I realised my Dad had been putting all the clocks forward and backwards himself.  The truth felt a lot less magical.

2. I once worked in an office where I had to answer telephone requests from newsagents to send out retail promotion packs (and people wonder why I wanted to work for myself?!) Someone called up from Galashiels in Scotland.  I'd never heard of Galashiels and wrote it on the envelope as 'Gala Shields'.  The Sales Director happened to be wandering past my desk at this very moment; he looked at the envelope and burst out laughing.  "It's Galashiels, not Gala Shields!  They haven't just won an award for the 25 metres in swimming!"  I laughed back and said I'd done it as a joke; I'd thought it might have made them smile when the pack arrived.  But I was lying.  I really had thought there was a place called 'Gala Shields'.

3. My Mum used to live on Southend seafront when I was little, and for years I thought I was looking at America when I looked out of her front window (I'd thought the Thames Estuary was actually the Atlantic Ocean). It was ever-so-slightly embarrassing to be told, in voices shaking with laughter, that it was just the Kent coast I'd been viewing in fascinated wonder through the window.

So just a few 'thicko' examples there, then.  If I ever become a famous and sophisticated author a la JK Rowling, expect to see them recreated in the Daily Mail along with the customary sneers!

The day my Christmas innocence died

So it's that time of year again...the time of year when my friends with children of a 'certain age' are facing that seasonal dilemma regarding when to tell the kids the "truth" about Father Christmas.  It's a difficult dilemma, and one I'm glad I'll never have to confront...although I put my foot in it earlier this week when I was talking to a friend and I said to her "When did you stop believing in Father Christmas?" with her seven year-old daughter in earshot.  I changed the subject swiftly and calmly (the advantage of being the type of person who indulges in regular 'foot in mouth' behaviour is that you get pretty good at recognising it quickly enough to minimise the potential fallout) and I think I got away with it!

I can remember the exact moment I knew myself that Father Christmas wasn't real.  I'd been debating it in my confused little head for a while anyway...so many things didn't add up, most notably the fact that we didn't have a chimney (when I asked my Dad he said Father Christmas came in through the front door, but then I imagined him having to carry enough keys to get into everyone's houses and that just didn't sound very...practical).

But the fateful moment came not from either of my parents, but on a festive day at infants' school, on which our teacher excitedly told our class that Father Christmas had torn his coat while at her house...and she'd brought the piece of coat he'd left behind into school with her for us all to see!  We all clamoured round excitedly as she produced...a piece of red crepe paper with bits of cotton wool glued to the bottom.  Now even at the age of six, it was hard to imagine exactly how a giant piece of crepe paper, a packet of cotton wool balls and a tube of Pritt Stick would provide adequate protection from all that snow in the North Pole...let alone the durability required to go up and down all those pesky chimneys (and what about the pockets for all those keys?)

"That looks like crepe paper with cotton wool on it!" I said loudly and precociously (I didn't have many friends, for some reason), and everybody went quiet.  I looked at my teacher for blessed reassurance that I was wrong, but the slightly panicked look on her face said it all, and I went home feeling supremely disappointed.  I knew Christmas was never going to be quite as good ever again.

(Though I still went along with all the 'Father Christmas' stuff at home because I was a lovely and bountiful older sister who didn't want to ruin all the magic for the little ones, and...well, you got more and better presents if you still believed in Father Christmas!  I wasn't that stupid).

2012 and turning 35...with some growing up to do!

So I turn thirty-five next year...the year of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee (I was born in the year of her Silver Jubilee - that woman keeps on stealing my thunder!).

Thirty-five seems a very 'grown-up' age to me.  I'm surprised more people don't mark it as a proper milestone...for me, thirty-five always represented the age of genuine adulthood.  And as such, I've decided I'll be making a few changes in 2012.

Top of the bulging list is to manage my finances.  I currently have an extreme "head in the sand" approach to money-management, most likely borne of the fact that my Dad is exactly the same and so are my sisters...many of my fun childhood memories at the supermarket involve us flinging all manner of stuff into the trolley without any one of us giving a second look to whether or not cheaper versions were available (no Peter Kay-style "roller cola" for us!)  This definitely wasn't because we had money to burn, it was all just a sort of fun, childishly random devil-may-care attitude to the purchasing of stuff that I've retained to this day.

Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people who checks comparison websites or different shops to see if I'm getting good value for money.  I never ask companies to "give me your best deal".  I'm far too clumsy and embarrassed and 'but-people-will-think-I'm-being-rude' for that kind of caper.  My gym had been getting away with charging me double the monthly fee it should have done for years...and I knew about this, and I didn't do anything about it!  Not until last week anyway, when I finally plucked up the courage to ask the manager why I was being charged so much.  It was a simple admin mistake which was instantly and easily corrected, and as I left the gym I got the feeling that I should be taking more care of where my money's going.  Because that's what sensible adults do.

So - next on my list is my mobile phone network.  They keep on calling me to offer me a new plan since my latest contract expired...they know I'm paying too much, they want to offer me something better, and yet I keep avoiding actually speaking to them!  I know - no logic whatsoever.  You might even call it a bit stupid.

But...the reason I don't want to talk to them is because I'm worried they'll bamboozle me with 'science' and I'll end up being talked into signing a new contract that'll see me paying even more than before, and I won't have the guts to say "no" and the salesperson will put the phone down, rubbing their hands and cackling very evilly at my gullibility.  It's like that Jerry Seinfeld joke about the reason why a lot of straight men are wary of being around gay men is because they know, deep down, how easily persuaded they actually are and it wouldn't take much for them to end up talked into becoming gay themselves.  

I will call the mobile phone company, though.  I really will (cough).  Maybe once I've turned thirty-five and turned into a proper grown-up.

On not being the "whoop and cheer" type!

There's a gym class I go to every week that reminds me of being back at school, which were definitely not the "best days of my life" (who the hell ever said that, and where are they now?  Probably chewing at the insides of their mouth whilst secured to a table leg by a rusty chain outside a dodgy pub somewhere, I should imagine).

And so this gym class reminds me of being back at school, which is in itself quite terrifying considering how long ago that was, but the really awful thing about it is that it shows me how little I've changed in over twenty years.  

This class is held at lunchtimes, and its regular participants are made up of a large group of people who all work together in the office next-door to the gym...and then there's me.  So there's a real 'school clique' sort of feel to it, from which I am automatically (but not unkindly) excluded by the simple fact that I don't work with them all.  And also because I make absolutely no effort at all to talk to any of them.

I realise I'm presenting this as though it worries me, but it doesn't...what actually worries me is that I don't care and I keep thinking that I should care about how anti-social I can be.  For instance, one of the group recently got engaged.  She ran into the class whooping and flashing her engagement ring around the room, to a deafening cacophony of even more whoops and cheers from the rest of the group.  

Now...you might have guessed that I am not a "whoop and cheer" type of person...well, not unless it's a REALLY special occasion, anyway!  But in this particular class, it's better if you are.  This is basically what I'm referring to about school days; everybody else seemed united in their constant enjoyment and general rebellion, whereas I just drifted obliviously and generally unnoticed, alongside it all.   I did all the homework because I enjoyed all the learning, I spent lunchtimes reading in the school canteen (or going to the newsagents to buy my daily lunchtime staple of three bags of crisps and three chocolate bars...Jamie Oliver would have a heart attack!), and when I was there I didn't much care about anything else.  

And so it goes...in the class I do the workout because it's incredibly tough and I enjoy it, but I'm not interested in all the "whoop and cheer stuff" that goes on before, during and after each session.  But I keep thinking I should be...if only all that didn't take so much mental energy alongside the physical.  And to be honest it'd help if they didn't all come in discussing what's just happened in 'The Only Way is Essex' and how much it costs to wax your armpits (if you're interested, men pay more for waxing certain areas, according to the man who said that, anyway!).  Fun to listen to, but I haven't got anything to add, on the whole, so for now I think I'll just keep on exercising obliviously away.

(God, aren't I boring!)

Murder mysteries and white fluffy robes

This weekend was spent at a spa, along with a lovely friend.  Not my natural home really, spas; I'm not a fan of enforced serenity (or enforced anything, for that matter) which is the reason I didn't really get on with meditation.  It doesn't matter that I can see and understand all the benefits, my mind just doesn't work that way.  I'm always willing to try it though...how harmful to my over-delicate sensibilities could a weekend of therapists' bad breath, white dressing gowns and soothing aromatherapy oils really be?  (More on that later).

I made sure to take some suitable reading matter with me.  Basically, this means explosive murdery sort of stuff, which works well with the whole 'enforced serenity' surroundings I just talked about.  So I took Mark Billingham's 'Sleepyhead' which was the perfect choice, as it turns out.  Recently I've started to develop a taste for crime fiction; none of that stuff has ever really interested me before save for Christopher Brookmyre's offerings, which are mostly too frenzied and surreal to qualify for true 'crime' (in my mind).  But in reading 'Sleepyhead' I discovered that I quite like being taken for a ride...unlike some friends of mine who are big crime fiction fans I don't bust a mental gut trying to work out 'whodunnit' (seems I'm a bit of a thicko at heart!)  I have some ideas as I read, but I've found I just like going along with it all and then being completely surprised and outwitted at the end.  Great fun.  

But back to the spa.  They're such curious places!  I can't quite get my head around wandering about in a dressing gown all day; this is something you only do at home with the telly on and a vat of Tesco's Cheesy Balls, surely?   When you don't want anybody to see you.  Because they don't suit everybody, fluffy white robes (me included).  And the fluffy uniform gives the place a strange sort of falsely intimate feel, because you're not supposed to see people in their dressing gowns and as such, people are a lot chattier with you than I suspect they'd otherwise be.  You end up learning far more than you really need to about people's recent operations, family feuds and opinions on household recycling (in retrospect I should have taken my notebook!)

I also have trouble staying straight-faced during the treatments.  I can't help it, unfortunately.  It's the music mostly, because I don't get the whole 'crashing waves and whale noises' thing being at all relaxing.   This, coupled with those massage tables where you have to put your face through a hole at the top and the fact that laughing isn't exactly encouraged, makes for an hilarious experience (for me!)  And being English, I feel a bit bad about the concept of a stranger putting themselves out just to make me feel 'relaxed'.  At one point I actually apologised to my therapist for taking up her time.  

But...the spa I went to has an 'exclusive wax bath' on its treatments list, so I decided to try it out.  It consisted of this: being enveloped in candle wax, then a load of clingfilm, then a heavy blanket, after which you're left in the dark for twenty minutes (during which your hands are waxed to your sides so you basically can't move).  I spent the entire twenty minutes in the dark giggling at the absurdity of it all...so much that the therapist kept opening the door to check if I was alright.  I told her the whale CD was playing up.  More great fun!

And it was a fun weekend - I was in good company, and my friend had thoughtfully brought most of the stock from the local Thorntons with her (the spa restaurant shunned chocolate in the same manner that Katie Price shuns natural beauty).  But...no more spa-time for at least a year.  I just don't think I could handle the stress of it all!

A solitary social life - quite fun when you think about it

Doing 'social' things on your own really can be fun sometimes.  I say this as someone who quite often goes to writing events, concerts, plays and shows on my own.  This is usually because I don't know many people who have the same tastes as me, and I'd never ask people to come with me to things they wouldn't like - as has been proven in the past I'd just spend the entire time worrying about them, rather than enjoying whatever it was I'd wanted to see or hear.  So it's easier to just do some social thingies on my own and therefore only be concentrating on whether or not I'm enjoying myself; a realisation which has made social events somewhat more relaxed and has also coincided quite nicely with my getting a bit older and wiser and therefore marginally more confident about actually doing things on my own in the first place.

One of the things I love most about being on my own at things is how much more sensitive I am to other people's behaviour; how I'll tend to notice all kinds of subtle nuances I'd probably have missed had I gone along with someone else and been talking to them about work or kids or what's been on telly.  I love that I have absolutely no obligation to talk to anyone at all if I don't want to.  It's a luxurious feeling.

Last week I went to a comedy show at a local theatre...again, not something that anybody I knew was interested in coming along to.  So I booked a single ticket and went on my own.  Because of this I didn't get to the theatre too early; no point sitting around for ages waiting for the show to start, so I got there about five minutes before the support act was due to come on.  As I walked into the auditorium I noticed that my seat was in a bank of three, with a couple already ensconced in the remaining seats.  They had piled coats and bags onto 'my' seat, seemingly with the view that nobody was going to come in at this late point to watch the show on their own.  I wasn't embarrassed about asking them to move their stuff; perhaps it's all the years I've had to do that sort of thing on the train.  But they were clearly a bit rankled by my sudden presence, ruining their seat-solitude and spoiling the resting place they had for their precious Sainsbury's carrier bag, faux snakeskin handbag and two uninspiring duffel coats.  The female half of the couple couldn't help sighing as she moved them all to the floor.  Being suitably English, I apologised to her.

The support act came on; he was very good.  Then there followed a long delay between his set and the main act of the evening, during which it might have been a bit awkward, me sitting on my own with a couple.  But I was prepared!  I always have a book with me for just such an occurrence; for some silly reason it always makes me happy when I get to actually take out the book I carry with me "just in case"; it's like when people ask "Has anybody got a stamp?" and I can produce a whole book of them from my purse because I always have stamps "just in case" as well.  Somehow these things make me more relevant.  And in some cases, a little bit smug as well.

And I was feeling smug on this evening, enjoying reading my book in the theatre whilst all around me people were tutting in irritation at the slight delay.  The couple next to me seemed a bit wearily disconcerted by one another's presence, mentally hurrying the evening along in desperation lest they were forced into actual conversation with each-other.  I was concerned at one point that one of them might start trying to chat to me, so I buried my head deeper within the pages of my book.  And then the male half of the couple, the one I was actually sitting next to, took out a bag of Maltesers from his pocket, opened it and took his time selecting each individual Malteser from the bag carefully before eating them painfully slowly.

After about the fifth Malteser there was a significant pause.  I knew instantly what was going through his mind; he was wondering whether or not he ought to offer me one.  His wife/girlfriend/significant other had just taken a handful and now there he was, trapped in his Malteser-based conundrum with no idea how to solve it.

Now I'm going to diffuse the tension right away and say I wasn't offered one; about ten slow seconds later he went back to rummaging carefully through the bag and starting his selection process all over again.  I wondered whether I ought to shoot him a disapproving look from above the pages of my book, before deciding against it.  But I was amusingly disappointed by his lack of courage.

(Incidentally I'm not averse to offering strangers chocolate; once on a delayed train stuck at depressing Pitsea I had a large box of Ferrero Rochers in my bag that someone at work had given me, which I had no hesitation in breaking open and offering to everybody sitting in my carriage.  You see - I can be sociable when I feel like it!)

I enjoyed all of these little incidents so much that they almost overshadowed the show itself, which was very good.  But I really do recommend everyone goes to a social thing on their own at least once.  Just remember to take a book, "just in case".