Excuses made to self for not looking at fundraising spreadsheet – 8 (bad), Tinder messages sent – 8 (good)
First day at work without Angela. Opened the funding application spreadsheet. Closed it again. I don’t need to be on top of it on the first day, surely? I need to ease myself in. Steve must have sensed my anxiety because he’s put a meeting in the diary for next Monday for us to meet with the chair of trustees to get an update on all live and pending applications.
Swimming after work. I gave out leaflets for Thursday’s event to all the mums and the pool agreed to put up a poster and leave a little pile of leaflets on the reception desk. Between shouts at Jess to pay attention, stalked @simple_dorset_life. She had been making falafel burgers. The picture looked amazing.
‘Why would anyone want fast food when you could have these beauties?’ read the caption. ‘They’re so simple to make too – just blend a can of chickpeas, an onion, garlic, coriander, cumin and a big spoonful of flour. Tiny hands can enjoy pressing the mixture into burger shapes – everyone finds food more delicious when they’ve had a hand in the preparation. #familylife #simplepleasures’.
This is such a lie. I find food way more exciting if someone else has made it while I’ve been watching Tipping Point and drinking a glass of wine. Which never happens, obviously, apart from that time when I failed to notice the banging coming from the kitchen and Jess presented me with a ‘sandwich’ she had made using a saucepan, a bag of Quavers and an entire block of cheese.
After a glass of wine or two this evening I decided to take the bull by the horns (probably should be the giant fish by the fin on Tinder) and message some of my matches. Googled ‘what to say in a first Tinder message’ but most of them were for men, which backed up my theory that I really should be waiting for them to make the first move. Sod it, though: International Women’s Day around the corner and all that.
Apparently I need to reference some detail in their profile, so it’s clear I’ve actually read their bio and looked at their pictures and am not just sending out loads of copies of messages. Well sure, that would be fine if everyone wrote something vaguely interesting in their profiles, and not just stuff like, ‘My friends would describe me as easy-going and a good listener.’
Well, of course they would, they’re your friends, aren’t they? They’re not exactly going to say ‘he’s a total dick, I don’t know why I even hang out with him’.
‘Looking to find someone I can have a real connection with, someone to join me on the adventure of life.’
God. It’s hard not to sound like a dick when referring to life as an adventure, isn’t it? Still, I did my best and sent a personal, thoughtful but short message to each of my eight matches.
10.30 p.m.: no replies. Everyone hates me. Destined to die alone without even Ron for company.
We had a volunteers’ meeting at work this morning. I gave everyone leaflets for Thursday and they all promised to spread the word. Ditto all the unsuspecting mums at gym class this afternoon.
I had a reply on Tinder! It was from ‘Danny’, if that is his real name. I’ve heard you can’t be too careful. His profile read as follows:
Tall, glasses, books, coffee, vegetarian, able to count to twenty if I take my shoes off. Likes cats, libraries, eating two dinners, South Park, reading, comedy.
I let him off the South Park bit as he is a man. Eating two dinners I felt I could get on board with. Comedy – bit lame as a ‘like’? I mean, who doesn’t like comedy? Who would say, ‘Oh yeah, I really hate being entertained with funny stories that make me laugh, it’s my worst thing.’ Still, compared to one guy I quickly swiped left for yesterday, his bio was basically Shakespeare.
‘Love boobs and ass hourglass figure,’ said Leroy, posing in the front seat of his car. ‘Be warned, I’ve got a hang cock so preferably no virgin.’
Consider me warned, Leroy.
What really intrigues me about Leroy is whether or not he gets any women actually match with him? Am I just being old and naive? Are there hordes of women out there, swiping and swiping, fingers crossed for a penis the size of Leroy’s?
(I just tried it and you can swipe and cross your fingers at the same time. Also, I’m assuming a ‘hang cock’ means ‘well endowed’? Too scared to google it).
Perhaps there are women interested in Leroy getting his huge dick out for them in the back of his pimped Subaru, but I can’t think of anything worse. Anyway, Danny didn’t hint at penile dimensions on his profile, so I was forced to judge him based on character, interests, face, etc. You know, the old-fashioned way.
‘So what would your two favourite dinners be?’ I asked him. The two dinners thing had really stuck with me.
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he replied, ‘Coco Pops and double bacon cheeseburgers. How about you?’
A man of sophisticated taste, clearly, but I was eating Aldi’s own-brand onion rings and drinking wine out of a Cadbury Mini Eggs mug so I was hardly in a position to judge. Obviously, I didn’t want to let on about the wine mug though at this delicate stage.
‘I’m a bit of a sucker for a roast dinner,’ I replied, implying down-to-earth and hearty, ‘but I do like a good fish curry.’ The fish curry was to hint at an experimental nature. Like I might spontaneously have a group of friends over for dinner and cook a big curry and serve fancy beer in bottles with wedges of lime. (Note: I have never done that, although I like the idea of it. If the house was tidier and I wasn’t perpetually exhausted. Oh, and if I had a big group of friends.)
‘Fish curry, eh?’ said Danny, clearly impressed by my cosmopolitan tendencies. ‘That’s a very left-field choice!’
‘I’m a very left-field woman,’ I said, taking a swig of mug wine. This was my attempt at sounding seductive. Not sure how it came across.
We chatted for a bit and he seemed pretty normal, so you never know.
I have moved all fundraising emails to a folder marked ‘fundraising’, so excellent progress.
Bottles of prosecco set up at Chapter One ready for tomorrow – 8. Glasses of prosecco I wish I could drink to calm nerves – also 8.
I went around to Grape and Grain after work to pick up the prosecco. The woman there said she was going to come along in the afternoon too as she was really interested in finding out more about using social media to promote her business.
I took the prosecco over to the bookshop and Dylan helped me carry it upstairs and offered me a cup of tea. He looked as if he could do with someone to talk to, so I said yes. We sat in the two old armchairs he keeps in the A–L fiction section and he told me about his wife, Caitlin, and his daughters, Ellie, Sophie and Bonnie. Caitlin died a year ago and, although his parents moved down to Barnmouth to help with the practical side of things, he told me that he’s found it hard to know what to do with the grief.
‘My mum and dad have been amazing,’ he said. ‘They only retired a couple of years ago, but they’ve given up everything to move here and help with the girls. The trouble is that they think everything can be solved with a cup of tea, a casserole and a bit of hard work. They’re a different generation, I guess, made of tougher stuff than me. My dad especially. I feel like I’m failing because I can’t just oil the lawnmower or give the car a service and get over it.’
‘You’re definitely not failing,’ I said. ‘You’ve done an amazing job holding together a family and running your own business. I expect it’s just that they don’t know what to say. Maybe they even feel that they’ve failed you for not being able to make it all OK. Generally, that’s how parents feel, isn’t it?’
He looked thoughtful.
‘I’d not thought about it like that,’ he admitted, ‘but you could be right. I know, if it was me and something like this happened to one of the girls, I’d just want to be able to take the pain away. But I don’t suppose you can. Perhaps making a casserole is the next best thing?’
We sat for a bit and drank our tea and I stole glances around the bookshop. It is a mess, but it’s quite a beautiful mess, full of promising-looking nooks and crannies. The floor is wooden boards and the bookcases are wooden too, stretching from floor to ceiling. There’s a comforting smell – old books and warm dust. I noticed that, despite the chaos, I felt relaxed. My shoulders seem to drop a fraction each time I visit.
‘You know, you could turn this place into something really special,’ I said. ‘I’m not one for “vibes” generally, but there is a lovely feeling in here. It’s very welcoming.’
Dylan smiled. ‘Caitlin always used to say that,’ he said. ‘Her mum and dad owned the shop from when she was really small – we inherited it – and she used to say she felt as though the books were alive, as if they were filling the shop with an energy. She’d tell people that if you could be still and quiet enough you wouldn’t even need to worry about choosing a book, that a book would choose you. It sounds stupid, I know.’
‘It doesn’t sound stupid at all,’ I said. ‘It’s lovely. And I think she was right. It’s like the books are excited, just waiting for the right person to pick them up and read them.’ We sat for a bit longer. ‘How did she die?’ I said quietly. ‘If you don’t mind me asking?’
‘She was in a car accident,’ he said, looking at his hands. ‘A drunk driver ploughed into her when she was driving back from visiting a friend in hospital and she died before they could get her back there. The irony is not lost on me,’ he added.
‘Oh God, Dylan,’ I said, ‘I’m so sorry. That’s awful.’
He stood up then. ‘I’d better get home and make sure the girls are OK,’ he said. ‘My mum’s there, with a casserole obviously, but I don’t like not being around in the evenings.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Get back to your family. I’ll see you bright and early for a day of female empowerment. And don’t be so hard on yourself,’ I added. ‘You’re doing your best. It’s all we can do.’
Message from Danny when I got home asking, ‘What are the three best animals?’
Not my favourite animals, the three actual best. OK, so he’s a bit weird, but I quite like that. I said cats, seals and penguins, which he agreed were solid choices.
It’s 10 p.m., the girls are in bed and I’m drinking a glass of leftover prosecco. I know it was a bit of a last-minute thing, and I was never expecting hundreds of people or anything, but I’m so chuffed with how everything went today.
The blacksmith from Busy Beavers had to pull out at the last minute because her daughter was throwing up and her husband was away on a business trip, but everyone else who had promised to be there was.
The ex-Olympic sailor was incredible. She spoke about balancing a sporting career with having a family and about how her husband had gone freelance so as to be able to take the lead with the children. She was so inspiring – it made me feel a bit ashamed about all the excuses I make for driving to Tesco Express when it’s only a fifteen-minute walk away.
I embarrassed myself by volunteering to be a case study for the pension advisor, Ruth, and having to confess that in every job up until now I’d either not had the choice or had opted out of paying into a pension. I said I’d always thought it was something for old people, which was a nice springboard for Ruth to launch into a lecture about cumulative interest.
The social media talk went down really well. The woman doing the talk, Sam, was delighted because the owner of Grape and Grain now wants to employ her to manage their Instagram channel. I overheard Sam tell her that, ideally, she needed a professional photographer to take a bank of images for them, and perhaps have someone create some cocktail recipes, so I casually piped up that they should have a look at the photos we had on display as they were by a local professional. I’m sure Lou wouldn’t mind me calling her that – I know she never would herself but her photos are amazing.
The cheese went down a storm, too. Who doesn’t love a bit of free cheese?
My very favourite bit of the day, though, was when we were packing up. Everyone had left, Dylan was downstairs in the shop, and Jess was ‘organising’ leftover business cards in and out of my purse. Flo and I had one end each of a trestle table and she looked at me along the table’s length.
‘I’m really proud of you, Mum,’ she said. ‘You do a really good job of things, you know.’
I was so touched that I went to put my hands over my mouth, forgetting I was holding the end of the table, and dropped it on my feet.
(Note: corner Ruth at Busy Beavers and ask for some pension advice. Don’t want to end up one of those old woman who can’t afford to have the heating on and keeps empty food packets in the cupboard to fool visitors into thinking she can afford to eat.)
Emergency Jaffa Cakes eaten from office drawer when no one was looking – 3. Envelopes overestimated – 17. Number of times questioned self about talking to a man who would make me guess the number of envelopes in a tray – best not to think about it.
I was forced to take stock of the fundraising situation ahead of Monday’s meeting. Angela had told me that we have five big funding applications ‘in progress’, which I had naively taken to mean that we were waiting on a decision or perhaps just needed to add in a few key bits of information before sending off.
Oh, how wrong I was!
It turns out that ‘in progress’ basically means that Angela had downloaded application forms from various websites, filled in name and address details, saved them in a folder marked ‘in progress’ and added them to the spreadsheet. She might as well have just emailed me a gif of Beyoncé tossing her head back and laughing at me.
Danny sent me a picture of a wire tray full of envelopes at lunchtime and asked me to guess how many there were. I was tempted to zoom in and try to actually count, because I do like to be right about things like this, but then I realised that would make me as odd as he clearly is, so I just guessed 127. There were apparently 110, which he told me made me the best guess all day.
How many other people is he making guess the number of envelopes in a tray? Also, secretly very pleased to have the best guess. We have agreed to meet in person – based on more chat, not just the envelope quiz.
Messaged WIB details of upcoming date. They were very excited, until I mentioned the envelope thing and the two dinners.
‘He sounds like a nutter,’ said Sierra.
‘Also, Coco Pops are really high in sugar,’ added Lou. ‘He doesn’t scream “mature man of the world” to me.’
I sent them a picture of my wine mug and the onion rings.
‘But that’s OK,’ said Lou, ‘because that’s in secret on your own. You wouldn’t say it to someone to seduce them, would you? If the Coco Pops are the thing you felt you could say out loud, then you have to wonder what he does in secret that he chooses not to mention.’
She may have a point, but also he is the only person to reply, so I need to start somewhere.