Thursday 10 July 2008

Too few to mention?

I've been having a recurring dream. And, let me tell you, it's a welcome change to my usual one where I have to wait ages in the toilet queue of a busy club, only to find when I get to the front that the only available cubicle has no door, so everyone has to watch me having a wee. But I digress. In the recurring dream of the moment, each night a different boy hears from someone that I've got breast cancer, and so takes me out on a date (so far I've been to the pub with a former date, the football with a former colleague and a swanky restaurant with Marco Pierre White). Then at the end of the night the boy kisses me meaningfully, as if to prove that he's cool with the C-word. Last night was the best yet: Dave Grohl took me to the Hard Rock Cafe in LA to which, inexplicably, he had an adjoining apartment that looked a bit like Al Pacino's office in The Devil's Advocate. I like to think of this particular dream as a dress rehearsal for the real thing (the meeting-and-kissing-Dave-Grohl part, not the questionable date venue or scary apartment), when one of you brilliant buggers organises said meet-up as a pre-chemo treat (so get a wriggle on, eh, we haven't got long). And if you're about to refer me to the 'I've never cheated' part of a previous post, save your breath – Dave Grohl is on my 'list'. At the top, as it goes. Laminated.

Not that I'm into analysing dreams (or pretending know what I'm talking about here), but perhaps this mini-series has got something to do with my fear of becoming completely unfanciable when all the hair-loss and steroid-swelling fun begins. Not that I'm any kind of Beyoncé pretender now, you understand. But it's a concern that's rapidly scaling the worry charts (CT scan still holding its own at number 1).

P jogged home from work yesterday and mentioned when he got back that some girls sitting on a bench had commented on his legs. And of course they did. P's gorgeous. But I'm obviously not the only one to have noticed his charms (go near him and I'll scratch your eyes out, right?), which is something that has come to play on my mind. Let's be honest here – balding, bloated lasses aren't suddenly going to become his thing, are they? And definitely not balding, bloated lasses who are unlikely to give him a child of his own.

At the risk of later kicking myself for worrying about this now (I'm not supposed to be concerning myself with what's around the corner – and if you've met me, you'll know how frustratingly difficult that is), but is the no-kids thing going to become a huge regret for P? Might he one day wish he hadn't got me up at 6 that Thursday morning, with the promise of a wonderful life together and an enticing Tiffany box? He's hardly got what he signed up for, has he? And there's always going to be some bench-bitch with a compliment on his legs, ready to divert his attention from his once-beautiful bride.

I don't really know what it feels like to have major eat-away-at-you regrets; mine are more like loose ends I really wish I'd tied up when I had the chance. I wish, for example, that I'd been tougher on a former flame (let's call him the Almost Boy) and made him explain his mumbled references to love and ships passing in the night, before walking away from me on a kebab-wrapper filled street in the cold for the last time (an exhausting pattern that had lasted for a few years in some form or other). I wish I'd let that woman know exactly what I thought of her, and done something to avoid the trouble she caused for me and my friends. And I wish I'd never shelled out my monthly travel budget on those unfeasibly high shoes in haste before a friend's wedding. Not only were they toe torture, they also gave me pins like Miss Piggy's and were never worn again.

But back to the issue. P & I had, of course, previously been forced to consider a life that includes just us two. For the record, it mostly involves us watching cricket all over the world, lots of four-poster-bed weekends away, buying a second house in Spain, always going to Glastonbury (in a pimped-up camper van, naturally) and owning a ridiculously child-unfriendly zone 1 apartment with a massive roof terrace that's perfect for parties. This isn't a distant-second-place existence – you should know that I LOVE the thought of this life with P. (Jeez, I love the thought of any life with P. Stick us in a hut in Hull and we'd still have a better time than most.) P, of course, says the same about our alternative future, but lately it's been difficult to figure out when people are being honest or avoiding the tricky stuff and instead telling me what they think I want to hear. Whatever it is, it's important for me to know that P isn't later going to regret once taking advantage of a drunken colleague in a Hammersmith pub. (That 'don't-worry-love-I'll-get-you-home-safely' line is a corker, ain't it?)

2 comments:

Eoin said...

From the bench I'm on Pete's legs look like two milk coloured pipe cleaners rammed into ill-fitting tennis socks. much like my own.
No offence!

Anonymous said...

Oh the guilt! I keep finding myself apologising to my husband that he married me. I've even sobbed and listed alternative bride options who remain cancerless.