The Hobby

The Hobby

I don’t want to end up old and alone. I know that sounds terribly pathetic/ non-feminist/ needy/ bordering on desperate, but it’s true. Isn’t that true for everybody? Nobody really wants to think that they’ll be spending the evening of their lives sat in Drucker’s with a stale scone for company. And nobody to share the apricot jelly with.

So, in the vein of finding my Jack/ reassuring myself that I’d rather be alone, I have asked some of my friends to set me up with somebody suitable. And not just someone that will be comedy value for them (although I suppose it would give me something to write about). I have high hopes. And that’s despite my experience of Alison’s husband’s friends to date (pointing out when I’m exposing myself in that ill-advised Vicky Martin top with the doily-type pattern down the front/ telling me I could have bought 3 pints with the amount I’d just spent on a Grey Goose martini. Yeah. And…?) Anyway, I’ve given up on men at BBC. And at the gym. The boys in my office spent this morning arguing over who was entitled to the last lemon meringue Krispy Kreme. Only one of them was gay.

(Allegedly).

And my most recent experience of Virgin Men was when one of the sales team examined a photograph of a gorgeous Olympic athlete in a sports magazine and commented. “She’s got no batty. Like an Ikea flatpack. I can’t work with that.” She’d be devastated, I’m sure.

In other non-panicking-about-impending- lonely-retirement news, I have also been thinking about hobbies. This was brought on by an evening jaunt around the Edgbaston reservoir, watching the various rower-types on the water. Every time I walk past the Edgbaston rowing club I resolve that I will join some kind of water-based sport in the summer – and become one of those happy outdoorsy type people sailing gaily across the lake. As soon as I get home I promptly forget this resolution - until the next walk, when I think about it again. And then forget. And so the cycle continues. I’d say it’s coming up to 10 years now that I have been considering my boating career. God, I could have entered the Olympics by now.

But I digress. My friend pointed out that, really, we weren’t like them – they were too “posh and row-ey”. Apparently, we’re common and un-row-ey. But it made me think about starting a new hobby. Unfortunately my track record with hobbies hasn’t been too great: there was the book club I started, with the book that I chose and made everyone buy. Within one chapter I decided that the book was far too dull for me to waste any more time on, and so Meeting One turned into brunch with wine, minus discussion of books. And then everyone lost interest.

 Then there was the salsa class I joined in Manchester, when I was living with Boring Simon. Simon was in IT Recruitment which, as my colleague pointed put at the time, was like ‘Boring squared’.  Boring Simon had somehow managed to acquire Fun Chinese Girlfriend, Ting Ting, whose enthusiasm for salsa persuaded me to attend a class with her. It wasn’t until 20 minutes in, when I was wondering how the hell everyone knew all the moves - and could execute them so quickly - that I realised that Ting Ting had tricked me into entering the Advanced class, the Asian bitch. So she merrily cha cha cha-ed away whilst I stepped on people’s feet and pirouetted the wrong way. Then I got Hand Raped by some random Italian guy when we had to partner up – who kept stroking my thumb in a forceful way - and all in all it was just a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

But I do feel like I have tried to be a joiner several times over the years. In the name of getting outside of my comfort zone I spent an evening at a 3 hour Experimental Dance class in a warehouse in Digbeth. The evening culminated in us having to spell out the letters of our name, using different parts of our body. And join this up into a dance. And then perform it in front of 2 dance instructors and the remainder of the class. That was amazing. There was the writing MA that I started, but then gave up on when I realised that spending 3 hours every Wednesday listening to other people read their writing in a Dramatic Voice was beginning to make me want to kill myself.

So… I’ve still not signed up for the rowing club. I’m guessing that, along with my yearly resolution to ‘write more’ and ‘save more’, I should just accept that I’m not really a joining kind of girl. I’m quite happy standing at the front of the gym, telling everyone else what to do. Control freak? I just like to think of myself as Girl Who Knows Her Own Mind.