Day 17. You're pretty good with words but words won't save your life. (17/1/19)

(Soundtrack: Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention 'We're Only In It For The Money'. Because I posted that I'd tried a best of Zappa and still found him to be unbearable smart arse indulgent nonsense. People replied, saying things like, 'You need to try this. Or this. Or this. Try the Mothers stuff, it's great. Try 'We're Only In It..' it's a fantastic satire on the late 60s hippie movement.

Two tracks in and I want to kill people. Can't go 10 seconds without a self-consciously wacky/zany time change or comedy skit. It's infuriating.

Soundtrack: The Hold Steady 'Boys and Girls In America. Thank god: tunes and energy)

I hope you realise that brief aside is probably half of tonight's blog.

I'm a bit late, aren't I? We went out for tea. Did that thing where you leave the house, have something to eat in the hotel round the corner, something to drink and remember that the two of you still exist and you've got stuff in common. Where you speculate that our attire, J in a business dress, me in suit and overcoat, may influence the scant other diners into thinking we've just met at a conference of some kind and anything may happen: "look, she's laughing, they've started flirting", Nah, mate, thirty years down the line, I'm just really bloody funny. I genuinely have a certificate to prove it. But then, so does that Irish bloke in the dress who used to say 'feck' on the BBC until he realised he could get away with the actual word (that sentence cleaned up for the benefit of my mother) and get a bigger laugh.

And trust me, the actual word gets big laughs. If you know how to use it. I do.

So, since that's clearly not what I'm talking about, in the way that the first couple of hundred words are very rarely what I'm talking about, what am I talking about tonight?

I passed this girl in the street. 5:45ish on the way to the station. Late twenties-ish. That's unimportant. What's important is this:

She was the same height as me. In flat shoes.

I'm 6'1". Ish.

There was this night in 1986. Somewhere in that space between meeting J on a night out with mates and actually ringing her up (at work, at lunchtime, we've done this, haven't we? Look at the original blog, look at the day I won Valentines Day forever. Probably Feb 14th I'd imagine). I was thinking about J a lot in that month but I didn't actually expect to ever see her again so I was continuing in a hapless and hopeless Saturday night State manner. And I was dancing with this girl. Who was as tall as me. She lived in London, I remember that much. At least, she said she lived in London; even then, naive and gullible as I was, I doubted it was anything resembling the truth. She wasn't even vaguely interested. I knew how to recognise that attitude, I'd had a lot of practice. She was tall, though.

And it struck me as that other girl passed me on the corner of North John Street that the girl from the eighties would be in her fifties now. After all, I am and time, on the whole is pretty linear and, talk about Einsteinian relativity as much as you like, we're all currently moving ahead at equal speeds.

I wonder what she did with her life. Wonder what she does now. Wonder if she's still with us; I mean, we've left people behind over the years and life happens to you sometimes. She could be anybody, I never knew her name, I've no way of finding out:

"Hey Siri, that tall girl I met in the eighties in The State? Can you check up on her for us? Just to see if she's okay." That'd be some tech that.

I wonder what happened to Marie who I copped for one night in The State in 1985. There was kissing by a phone box. I gave her my number. Think I didn't want to take hers because that would mean I'd have to make the call and I didn't know if I had the courage for that kind of thing right then. She rang. I kind of mumbled uninterested platitudes let her know I wasn't interested without saying so. "Well, there was no harm ringing, was there?" she said, politely and with more kindness than I probably deserved. "No, no harm ringing." I answered. And that was that.

I think of that at times. Think about the fact that wasn't very nice.

Don't think I've ever told J that. Amazing the things that come out when you just start writing.

Wherever Marie is, I hope it's all been good. Everything has to happen for the right reason and we weren't the right reason for each other.

I was waiting for something. Had no idea what. Knew I was only ever attracted to girls who were clearly out of my league. Knew I was only ever attracted to girls who were never attracted to me.

I wonder what happened to that girl from the shop down the road from the Kwik Save in Walton Vale. My mates reckoned she was besotted with me. And there was a taxi after a party where the girl I wanted to pull for hadn't turned up. A taxi where I got out near ours and let her go on to hers. Again, not covered with glory there.

I was waiting though. I knew I was waiting then, I had no idea what I was waiting for.

I was waiting for something fantastic, waiting for somebody out of my league.

And that's what I got.

Turns out I was waiting for nights like tonight. I was waiting for thirty years of nights like tonight.

Just like tonight's blog, you've no way of knowing where you're going to end up. But when you get there you'll know it was where you were supposed to be.