Coming up on a Century and Why Women Feel the Need to Fix Me

So this is my 97th blog post. I'm going to write a post each day this week until Thursday when, if all goes to plan, I'll have written 100. Huzzah!

I have a favour to ask of you all then. Let me know what you want me to write about please, it would be really cool to hear your ideas. (Also, seeing as there are about three people who actually read this blog anyway, it'll be like a little party).

Until then however, I'll let you in on a little phenomenon that has dogged (or helped) me for the past few years. You see, I come from a city that has a 2:1 ratio of girls to guys, I went to a co-educational school (again full of girls) and my course at uni was about 80% girls, which is a big huzzah for all the sisters out there who claim that the legal profession is sexist. Put simply, I've always had quite a high proportion of female friends, and they've always tried to fix me.

Now, 'fix' implies 'broken', or as some of the ladies would imply, merely sprained. No matter what way you act, dress, romanticise or cook, one of them will come up with suggestions.

The best by far was a girl called Nadia. N is a friend from uni who I haven't seen since graduation. She is a tiny wee thing and used to be able to verbally browbeat me into submission, berating me with kindness until my viewpoint changed or I had adequately acknowledged her displeasure. We would go and drink mint tea, and she would frown, then cringe, then give a helpless laugh as I told her about my misadventures around college.

It still happens today of course, but I have fewer friends in London, so it's not as often. There's TV Girl, of course, who wants me to get into TV writing, and who tries to 'fix' that about me, there's VideoGirl, whom I speak with online, who I think might find me a bit of a downer sometimes, and there's Posh Friend, who recently met me in a bar with big news.

"I have two friends I want you to meet"

I enquired about the two, was told I should only ask out one. That's the way girls fix you. PF has taken up matchmaking recently, and is trying to get me to no longer be single, and doesn't like the type of girls I usually date. I think the combined mixture of years of me being single (or in and out of weird relationships) and her desire to see me mature a bit, coupled with, let's face it, boredom, does the trick.

I'm not complaining of course, because I love my friends dearly, nor am I making fun of anyone. It's just remarkable how girls can make a project of someone. Almost every girl I know tries it to some respect. It's a wonderful trope in the female being.


So, to you ladies out there. Do you ever try to 'fix' guys? I mean, is every guy a project, or are you happy for the men you know to be sad, single, stupid and scruffy?

Guys? I won't ask you the question, because you'll probably only get the answer wrong.

As ever, you can email all questions to radiogael@googlemail.com

Voice Work and the pleasure of one's own company.

The weekend! Huzzah!

End-of-days tiredness aside, this week has been pretty good.

I got promoted at work, which was cool. I'm now a Technical Delivery Consultant for the office stud (read: highest earner), Mack Daddy. MD's actually a really cool bloke, and is the old man (at 40) of the office, so he's a really laid-back guy and is helping me out. My new job is basically resourcing, and I spend most of my time either surfing the web on jobs boards (like Monster or Total Jobs) for candidates in the public sector. MD deals with social housing and social renovation, so the projects are sort of interesting, and vaguely in the 'I don't feel bad about my job cos people are getting jobs and building homes for people with no jobs' job spectrum of jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Steve Jobs.


Also there's a wee bit more money, which will help me buy heroin, and keep the struggling Drug-counsellor-and-methadone-manufacturer Sector afloat.

That's right, I'm saving the economy. Steve Jobs.


I also did some weekend work! Some videogame company had me in doing a bit of voicework (for v/activated software, not an acting role unfortch) so it was nice to be doing some of that without it being in the fuggy realm of soft-core audio erotica. Had breakfast at Borough Market in Southwark (near work) and then went home to spend the rest of the day writing.


So two wee anecdote-ettes about yesterday.
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1) I met a friend of mine in the Market, she's from back home and is training to be an opera singer. She's extremely pretty. Anyway, I was walking along, eating little free samples of everything from ostrich meat to passion fruit muesli, when I passed her in the queue.

Me: "Hi _____"

She: "Hi, Con, what are you doing here?


She: (looking around behind me) "Are you here on your own"

Me: 'Yup, I just came down for a spot of breakfast"

She: (unsure) "Oh...cool"

And soon after went on my way.

My question, is it weird that I like to spend a lot of time on my own? I mean, I go to the pub on my own occasionally, and like to eat at restaurants on my own with a book when I can, but is that one step away from complete loner-dom, or is it natural. What do you guys think?


2) I went in one of my favourite coffee shops, Best Italian, beside the market, because I'm secretly in love with the waitress there. She's French, and of course when I found that out, I spoke French, and made an idiot of myself. I went there with the Polish girl from my office (the Tank Commander one who taken on a big-sister role) and she almost frog-marched me up to the counter to ask the girl out when she saw me looking at her. I didn't go up, and somehow managed to stop her going up too, but when I went back in yesterday and saw her again, I wasn't sure at all, for some reason the entire vibe or athmosphere or whatever of the place and seeing her didn't lend itself to the pervy droolery of the day before. How variable is the old visual attraction these days? Wow. Obviously she's a stone-cold fox and out of my league anyway, so it just became a scientific observation, but it's interesting how a tiny set of variables can affect something like attraction.


ANYWAY:

My lil broheim is over a-visiting with his pixie girlf Beccy, so I've been showing them some of the sites (pubs) in WHamp and Kilburn. It's really good to see him, even if he is the annoyingly good-looking one and much much cooler than his older dearthair (he's studying to become a music producer and sound technician) it's nice to catch up. The three of us got absolutely shitfaced last night, then had a vid-chat convo with my girl Lopez. Good times.


I'm going to write a separate post about Valentines Day now, because I feel like ranting a bit.

Stay classy.