So when slowly descending into desperation in front of my laptop on a dreary January evening, skimming hopelessly through EBay in search of a present for my girlfriend's birthday. A birthday which sits incidentally, just after Christmas. We had to move our anniversary because it was just too traumatizing.
I was just reaching breaking point. Friday afternoon maths lesson posture. Displaying to my computer through the art of body language just how disgusted I was to be sharing this time with him - my left arm spread across the desk, left ear folded and pressed against my shoulder, head horizontal to screen, while plodding noisily at the keyboard with the index finger of my left hand....when all of a sudden, up she popped.
I'm sure if I still had NHS bottle tops (instead of the acute pain of vanity, commonly known as contact lenses), they would of steamed up and cracked. Instead I blinked hard, yelped and tried to remember the opticians utterly liberating advice of- wait for it, look up and blink slowly.
The shiny frame the colour of blueberry slush puppies after swimming. The Roy of the Rover red and yellow racing stripes. But most of all, the gleaming white plastic alloys blurred into vision.
"I have to have it", I declared. "No, she has to have it", I corrected myself. She'll love it....what's not to like? Leaning back on my chair and folding my arms to try and push through the deal. I then consoled myself that even if I couldn't get my Jiminy Cricket legs under the handlebars, at least I could look at them.
It could be somewhere to hang out- by the Raleigh Burner in the hall. Somewhere I could linger between the bedroom, lounge and toilet. That's the useful thing about halls I thought.
Without further hesitation, well apart from a brief daydream of a few kids giving chase, which quickly escalates into a crowd, chasing and cheering as I freewheel through rubbish strewn streets, and bish, bash bosh, I'd ordered the eighth wonder of the world.
She was arriving within five working days from Stoke on Trent. When I checked the items I'd bought(won!) on my EBay account the next morning, I was dazzled all over again. Luckily it was too early for the painful reaction that brought the first time -my contact lenses were still lying in wait in the bathroom.
But then the panic began. With no clear guidelines to the size of the frame or wheels, I found myself staring at the garden the photo of the bike was taken in. Is that short grass and a tall fence...or tall grass and a short fence? I cursed the bike's former owner for his flippancy, while purring reassuringly to the Raleigh Burner on the screen that she was coming to a good home.
The following days were spent having discrete liaisons with my.....my girlfriends new bike in my inbox. Gazing at the wheels, trying to block out the looming Homebase fence in the background. I felt a bit like a lonely businessman who had just bought a Russian bride, blurring his eyes so he won't discover any unsightly moles on her profile picture.
With no reply from the seller regarding the bike's size, my nights were interrupted by hazy, panic ridden nightmares about those tiny BMX's with stabilizers, upside down in skips. I woke up startled in the darkness. My girlfriends eye line is roughly that of Ronnie Corbett's. Was I the same size as Ronnie Corbett when I was eight?
(To be contd....)
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