I don’t exactly have a hangover, but I did have maybe some cider, and maybe also some wine, and maybe a curry and a late night. I didn’t really fancy the three hour antenatal class in a windowless room this morning. I do, on the other hand, fancy lying down on the sofa with my book but there’s no time for that.
Better order your drinks with your best hangover cures today, please chaps.
When I spotted the topic for this month’s Skeptics in the Pub, I immediately started casting around for babysitters so that Pete and I could go. Not because I felt we were experts, or indeed because there was anything else for us to learn about internet romance, but just because it made me smile so broadly.
Despite having met in a comments box, looked into each others’ eyes at a blogmeet, and flirted for weeks by email, I’m not really sure you could ever have called this an internet romance. Sure, it was spawned on the internet and facilitated by the internet, and the internet was one of the main things we had and continue to have in common; but when you say “internet romance,” don’t you mean either a) online dating site or b) chatroom roleplay?
Ten years ago, if you asked us how we met, we might have glossed over the internet part and told you we met in the pub. Well, not you; you’re internetty enough to be cool with this. But Real Life people were less comfortable with the idea that you could pick up some stranger online, and meet them in real life. Much less go out for pizza, accidentally-on-purpose go to bed with them, and live happily ever after. Now we usually tell the truth, either because we know we’re talking to someone else who did the same, or because we like to shock where we still can. It’s quite possible that I still haven’t told the entire truth to either of my parents.
Then, and perhaps still a little bit now, online dating seemed a bit more seedy than the entirely wholesome thing we did. A bit more dodgy. People do both intentionally and unintentionally misrepresent themselves online, but that’s not restricted to dating or chatrooms, and not all weblogs tell you the unvarnished truth about a person. Pete’s probably did; it was mainly photographs of snails and posts about computer stuff. I love that he hasn’t changed one bit. But that wasn’t the whole Pete. It’s probably true of most bloggers that the part of yourself you put online isn’t your whole self; it’s your edited self, whether you want to make things look better, or worse, or you just don’t feel the need to share it all. In addition to that, the reader interprets within their own frame of reference, so my assumptions on reading Pete’s weblog before I met him were quite wrong.
However, my assumptions on first meeting him were also wrong (I thought he was sweet), and it was the lengthy emails that we both wrote while we were supposed to be working, in the weeks following our first date, where all the dark depths of his personality were revealed (I’m talking dark depths like chocolate with high cocoa solids, not marshland full of buried corpses). Yet email was still a medium in which we polished up our best sides, played to our strengths, and built a wonderful fantasy relationship that flourished both online and off precisely because there was very little mundane reality. Okay we had to eat sometimes but no-one ever had to put the bins out when we only had weekends and emails.
And then blah blah blah all that stuff in the middle & our son turns 8 next week, etc. Thanks for listening.
Just over a week ago, I took the train into Reading and ran back along the A329 to home, which google maps told me was 8 miles, but turned out to be 6.5. As I left the station, the wide pavement with its gentle downhill slope inspired my legs to move a little too fast, and I bounced like Tigger through the first couple of miles, occasionally thinking to myself how much fun this was. I didn’t even have my headphones in.
I wasn’t looking forward to the uphill section past the shops in Earley, but it was all so interesting that I powered up the slope and only near the top did I start to wonder if I had taken on too much. I still had a long way to go, especially as I still had 8 miles in my head and RunKeeper was only showing that I’d done about 3.
I passed Earley station with only the fleeting thought that I could give up and get the train home; the thought lingered a little longer at Winnersh Triangle, but by the time I reached Winnersh I could see Sainsburys and knew that I was back on familiar territory and less than two miles from home. Unfortunately the rest was both boring and uphill, so any thought of adding on an extra mile and a half jaunt to bring the total up to my target of 8 miles was quickly abandoned and I just headed for home and two showers.
I was so disappointed at the distance that I didn’t go out again for nearly a week. My longest run so far has been 7.5 miles, also on a hot day, and I have completely failed my target to run 8 miles by May. I’m still aiming for a half marathon in February but starting to wonder if that’s remotely possible, as it’s taken months just to add two miles to my distance. Not sure my legs can do it. Or my mind.
Remember when you were a kid and you didn’t feel 100% but you weren’t quite sure if that meant you were genuinely sick and could get a day off, or if you would have to play it up a bit? And so you put on the croaky voice and try to look pale, and your mum looked all kind and sympathetic, and tucked you up in bed with a nice glass of lemon squash and a good book? And when your dad came home he brought magazines for you to read? And the next day you were still off and if you felt a bit better you could get up and lie on the sofa and watch telly in the afternoon? And you’d start to feel bored and grotty and eventually be grateful to go back to school?
Remember that?
Here’s what it’s really like. Parents generally have no idea if these low-level coughs and colds are for real. We have to figure it out based on how much more than usual the kid is sleeping, and it’s so hard to detect genuine whininess when whine is their standard mode of communication. Kids’ foreheads feel hot all the time, and they get very lethargic when they don’t want to do stuff like go to school in the morning, so that doesn’t tell you anything.
If you send them to school you feel bad all day and worry about them until hometime, then let them lie on the sofa and bring them drinks and biscuits.
If you keep them home, you give calpol which perks them up a bit and then they start playing normally and claiming to feel fine even though you keep saying “are you warm enough?” “are you drinking enough?” Then they don’t eat any lunch so you realise you were right to keep them home because it was cheese and biscuits and they love that. You let them lie on the sofa and play on their tab at the same time as watching tedious tear-jerking animated movies, and tuck them up with a blanket. At half past three they ask if they can go round and play at their friend’s house and you just laugh, coldly.
And you spend the day pottering about, unable to leave the house, unable to focus on anything much, doing petty chores and refreshing facebook. The hours drag, to the soundtrack of Minion Rush and Disney orchestras. You try to calculate whether, dosed up on calpol, they could get through school the next day and free you up to go to a meeting. And then you feel guilty. Whatever you do, you end up feeling guilty.
As everyone knows, insects will be our main source of protein in 50 years. Snappy’s already started. Pint of beetles, anyone?
The trap opens to reveal the dessicated corpse of a fly. Yummy.
Since we welcomed Snappy III to Casa Uborka back in March, I’m not sure that I’ve witnessed hum catch and digest any flies. Imagine my relief to witness this silhouette!
Meanwhile, Lisa‘s VFT, which I met the other week, is doing far better. No picture, I’m afraid, but imagine a Venus Fly Trap with all its traps full, and a queue of flies leading around the block, while a woodlouse in a long black coat and sunglasses checks his clipboard to see if they’re on the guest list.
4.30am The birds start to sing. I reach for my eyemask and wish I had earplugs too. At some point, Pete shoos the cat off the windowsill where she is taunting a cackling magpie.
6.00am I notice that our bedroom door hasn’t been closed yet, which means Bernard isn’t up.
7.00am The radio comes on. Our door still hasn’t been closed. Bernard rarely sleeps past seven, and this usually means a battle to get him out of bed for breakfast. Unless…
7.10am I go and wake him, and invite him for a cuddle. He brings a large menagerie of soft toys, climbs into the middle of our bed, and commences a critical examination of any of his parents’ body parts which are available to him. Dad’s bristles go all the way to his neck!
7.20am I can’t stand him wriggling around anymore and send him to get dressed. As is his way, he chooses to do something different.
7.21am Ugh, there’s something soft on the stairs and I stood in it! Turns out that the cat got her revenge on Pete by vomiting in several places. Pete cleans the stairs, I clean the child.
7.30am Breakfast, at the usual time.