If the showbiz rumour mill is to be believed (AND IT IS. ALWAYS.), Lady Gaga was one of the women to step up and make herself an honest woman this leap year by proposing to her Vampire Diaries lover, Taylor Kinney. But ladies, before there is stampede to the nearest H.Samuels in loyal, blind following of the Gaga’s freaky footsteps, remember that this is a woman who also didn’t think twice about donning a sirloin as a dress and a crustacean as a hairpiece. What’s more, it wasn’t until her third music video featuring her wearing nothing but bondage knickers that the world actually began to believe she didn’t have a ‘gigantic donkey dick’: so whether she’s followed the gender reversing leap year tradition, or is in fact just another dude in love, we’ll never know.
In fact, it is my hope that the majority of sane women of the world have had slightly more pressing things to occupy themselves with this year than hopping about with their matrimonial legs crossed, trying not to piss themselves in hope that their boyfriend will one day put them out of their singleton misery and seal the god damn deal. The tradition crutch which marriage lamely hobbles around on these days may suggest that any single woman older than Miley Cyrus is a desperate spinster who sobs snot bubbles over My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and licks images of Kate and Wills in Hello magazine in hope of ingesting some good romantic fortune, but it’s my suspicion that most are too busy cackling over their fifth bottle of Prosecco on Thursday evenings and joining the cougar-crew by taking advantage of Harry Styles lookalikes on the weekends to actually give a flying fuck about the naked state of their wedding finger,
However, ladies, if you do want a good reason to cram in a last minute proposal, let it be this: a law passed in 1288 in Scotland decreed that, should the lady be rejected, she should be entitled to fine the unlucky object of her commitment starved affections to the value of anything from a kiss to £1, to ‘the silk from which to make a gown’. Amazing. A man proposing on any other day of the year is left with nothing more than his penis protracting back inside him in brain bleeding embarrassment. Personally, I couldn’t wait to propose to my bewildered Post Man this morning, only to frog-march him down to John Lewis to compensate me with twelve pairs of lambskin gloves which I will use to spank his balding head for the remainder of the year, as per the Dutch reimbursement folk tale (minus the noggin spanking). Now surely, when ambitions and opportunities are endless and you could be out glove shopping with Posties and sipping £1 shandies over half drunk compensation kisses, there is suddenly a lot more to life than planning a wedding?!
So, men, as much as you may have enjoyed teasing the woman who toils next to you in the office about stocking up the kitchen cupboard with enough Gin to drown their impending marriage rejection: BEWARE. For she is likely to 1) knee you in the jugular until you SHUT THE FUCK UP or 2) trick you out of an easy quid. As men across the world pruned their pubes in pant wetting anticipation of some post-engagement celebratory sex, perhaps they should have considered that not all women are foaming at the mouth with one-sided marriage hunger. In fact gents, there’s probably a better chance of Britain winning the Olympics than you winning a wife this leap year.
If you are privileged enough to not need to wade through hoards of plebs as part of your expedition from warm bed to cold hard desk each weekday morning then you can probably stop reading now. I have a small rant to let loose which I'm sure many fellow commuters will relate to if, like me, they've been wound up to screaming point by the tribulations involved in getting from A to Office whilst trying to retain some sanity, a small degree of composure and (oh please God) without breaking a sweat.
My major issue here lies in a particular sub-section of Londoners who make me feel like I would rather not 'Mind The Gap' but instead use it as a disposal unit for these most annoying of people clogging up the transport system: yes, I'm looking at you COMMUTING COUPLES.
Don't even think about it you two....
Let me just start by saying what I have been dying to let out for almost half a year now: "Fuck you, commuting couples. Go home." You have tarnished countless mornings with your sleepy, weepy dough eyed fixations on each other. I've tried to ignore you. I've looked away, read the newspaper, dug my nails into my palms in an attempt to distract myself from the fury you induce. But whatever I try, as soon as raise my head there you are, clinging onto each other with fear as 8.24am looms with the intention of tearing you away from one another for eight, whole, heart aching hours. The sad longing in your faces is too much to tolerate: as if the working day was just a cruel idea conjured up by dark, empty souls who wanted to see early morning lovers torn apart.
If it looks this good (and the train is this empty) then it's ok....
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for the love. I'm the first to fling my arms around my closest of friends as we unite for post-work drinks, and with lucky boyfriends of the past I have had no reservations about sneaking in a little public weekend smooch should the moment take us (following the obvious rules of no tongues, no inappropriate groping and ABSOLUTELY no noises. Bleugh.) My main issue here is that to enjoy any form of physical contact on the tube is simply perverted. In an environment where there is a strong likelihood of having your cheek pressed up against a stranger's armpit whilst the guy behind you 'unintentionally' gets his hand wedged up against your derriere, to flaunt your pleasure at being squashed up against your commuting comrade is just sick. Think of the productivity you could achieve if you perhaps left the house 3 minutes before your partner? You could actually read something en route to work or you could use your un-held hand to text one of the many friends who you inevitably neglect or even just indulge in some independent thoughts perhaps?
Look at how shocked Boris was when I told him about the issue. Poor Boris.
I'm not just idly ranting here, I actually have a well devised solution of this pandemic: TFL simply need to introduce a 9am watershed on romantic interaction. Perfect. They ban petting in public swimming pools so why not ban necking on the Northern Line? It makes perfect sense - anything that could help London's worker bees to be a little less tense has got to be worthwhile. I bet Boris would love it.
So, Commuting Couples, snap out of it and stop tripping me up with your combined width when I'm racing though Victoria or the petition will be set into motion. If I'm expected to keep my porridge down in public then I expect you to keep you tongues to yourselves.
So I don't just spend all my time job hunting, facebooking and ranting about car boot sales on here... I cruised a little further into the internet-o-sphere this morning and found something which made me giggle my socks off and very much reminded me of some good (well, mainly good) old days.
It's a blog post by 3 highly witty girls who all figured out they'd had the same first-song as each other with their first boyfriends. They've each written a little letter to their first crushes and it's a must read, check it out here at the Fabricly Blog.
Now, I too am going get a little blast from the past fired up now, so you should probably play this link while you're reading the rest of this post, to set that 1990's ambience (and for other reasons which will emerge later...)
It got me rummaging around the dusty corners of my memory trying to recall what my first ever boyfriend-song was, as I thought this would be a pleasant thing to share on here: or at least it would give my mates a bit of a laugh (I do believe I made some rather questionable decisions in my school days, and my taste in music was a bit crap too...)
Now, I honestly don't believe it was due to any kind of scarred emotional mind block of jittery brain butterflies but I came over all foggy and really was not sure how to determine who my first REAL boyfriend was. I mean, pinpointing your first love is a doddle, I can remember that as vividly as the trauma of the first time I broke a bone (vaulting over a gate, aged 12) or had the crushing realisation that we are all going to die... eventually so what is the point in... anything?!?! (watching the film Beaches, aged 11) or failing my driving test (yeah I still can't drive... I'll write a whole post about this heart break eventually).
But between kiss chase, holding hands and being 'asked out' in secondary school - but never actually going anywhere at all - it's seems it was just as hard to determine what the parameters of an actual girlfriend/boyfriend relationship were back then as it increasingly is now...
Going with the instincts of my earliest recollections, there was a particular pale, unintimidating boy from Year 6 who I definitely agreed to go absolutely no where with. He never kicked the ball at me full pelt in the playground and didn't blatantly pick his nose and eat it in the class room (although I do have theory that ALL men are culprits for this throughout their lives and once I have the stats and photographic evidence I will blow the lid off this...) so by my 11 year old standards he was a grade-A-dreamboat. As with all men, however, it did prevail that this man possessed one unavoidable flaw: his 1990s polyester Hanson wallet, which was decorated with an image of the three boys, looking vacant and approapriately bored with their lives, printed across the front and back.
Not the exact item in question, but a very good example.
Oh my, I TOTALLY want one of these now....
Yep, he was a die hard, HANSON fan. All these teeny-bopping Belieber's who think they are unique in their besotted fixation on the young helmet-haired Justin Beiber clearly have no knowledge of the powerful allure of the 1990s boy band. For those who can't recall Hanson, they are those dorky kids who looked like girls with long flowing blonde mops of hair but made music which made you feel like everyday was a Saturday, and who you should be listening to right now if you were obedient and clicked the youtube link above.*
Anyway. Inspired by the brilliant girls on Fabricly, I am going to write a short letter to my first boyfriend, who I will keep anonymous in case by some freak chance he ends up actually coming across this...
* F.Y.I. I'm pretty sure the middle one, you know, the one who was neither oldest nor youngest and always stood in the middle... has now matured substantially into a rather a hot ticket, hair cut and everything. Actually, I'll try and find a piccy using the wonders of the internet.....
If the showbiz rumour mill is to be believed (AND IT IS. ALWAYS.), Lady Gaga was one of the women to step up and make herself an honest woman this leap year by proposing to her Vampire Diaries lover, Taylor Kinney. But ladies, before there is stampede to the nearest H.Samuels in loyal, blind following of the Gaga’s freaky footsteps, remember that this is a woman who also didn’t think twice about donning a sirloin as a dress and a crustacean as a hairpiece. What’s more, it wasn’t until her third music video featuring her wearing nothing but bondage knickers that the world actually began to believe she didn’t have a ‘gigantic donkey dick’: so whether she’s followed the gender reversing leap year tradition, or is in fact just another dude in love, we’ll never know.
