Say it with Lego

Biscuit

Silly spontaneous presents are brilliant, whoever they come from. Unless the present is a secret scorpion in your pants drawer or a restraining order.

A great thing about relationships is that you have someone to get silly presents for all the time. They don’t have to be deep and meaningful or expensive to be a good present. They just have to make you grin or cry (in a good way, like when you get a new best gun in Borderlands).

The cool thing about them is that the better you get to know someone, the more the presents relate to a  personal joy, secret pleasure or just appease the 5 year old inside.

I recently bought Jen a Lego minifigure. It was sealed in a pack so I didn’t know what I was buying and was in pieces so you couldn’t even stand at the display squishing all the packets to guess what it was. I remembered that I had it in my pocket when we were on the tube so gave it to her.

Disproportionate glee isn’t the phrase to use here! It made me think that I should get her a Lego engagement ring, one with one of those little transparent square one-block micro bricks as a diamond. It would be a lot cheaper but I’m not sure if that’s the sort of area where girls appreciate a quirky gift.

It’s fair to say that she got her money’s worth out of it.

After taking about 3 minutes to open the packet, she then spent about 5 minutes assembling the 6  pieces. Some of this seemed to involve throwing bits of the man on the floor. The figure was one of those soldiers with the massive bearskin hat that guards the queen. The kind that tourists try to get to move.

Eventually, after some gentle coaching on how to fix the gun into both his hands simultaneously the piece was finished and later took pride of place on the bedside table.

Because Jen is awesome, I picked her up yesterday and she said “do you want your present now?”. As I didn’t know there was even a present to be had I said “YES!” through the gritted teeth of excitement, closed my eyes and held out my hands.

On opening I discovered in my hand a packet of mother-loving Star Wars lego!!! YES!

I wanted to play with it then but didn’t think that I had time to put the spaceship together. Jen did say that it wouldn’t take long but I pointed out that a single figure had kept her occupied for about 10 minutes.

In conclusion, Lego is amazing. Girls who buy me Lego are amazing. Girlfriends who buy me surprise Lego are the best girlfriends of all.

Do you reckon that anyone has ever had a Lego themed wedding before?

Jen moves in

Toast

Big News! Jen is moving into the house with Biscuit and I! Shocking eh?

Well it’s not forever, just for a couple of weeks in-between moving up to London. She has to wait a couple of weeks for her new place to become available and the lease on her current place expires before then.

Biscuit had a chat with me about it to see if I was fine with it. Of course I was, but I thought it would be excellent opportunity to set Jen some tasks on a condition of her moving in.

So far I have

1) Defeat The Theatre producer at a 3D computer game
Something shooty, she hasn’t got her head around modern 3d games yet so she can’t play Biscuit’s beloved Borderlands with him

2) Make us a pie
Pies are excellent

3) Force Biscuit to update the blog more often
Although since she doesn’t know about the blog I’m not sure how I’ll organise that one.

Riding rollercoasters with a girl

Biscuit

Bank holiday Monday, Jen suggested that we go to Thorpe Park. We set of from hers early(ish) in the mornin after she had cooked me excellent eggy bread for breakfast. The journey provided an amusing insight into girl logic.

We were angling to get there just as it opened so left fairly early on Jen’s promise that it was only 20 minutes away. She needed to stop off at the start of the journey so she could grab some fags and cash so pulled into a garage before hitting the motorway. She was also low on fuel but decided not to get any. Obviously any man would think ‘need fuel… tank empty… buy now’, but this is a not man logic.

5 minutes down the motorway she decided that we needed fuel so took a 10 minute diversion to find a garage. I was incredulous! Proper open-mouthed amazement! Thankfully it’s charmingly mental so I’ve just filed it under ‘endearing idiosyncrasy’

An hour after setting off, we arrived at Thorpe Park and set about the serious business of riding roller-coasters! If it was a game we would have won a gold medal at it. We made the front of ALL the roller-coasters with impressive efficiency. There was a lot of pulling fierce animal faces for the cameras so I bought her a fridge magnet of our speed face-lifts as a memento.

All the spare moments between making ourselves dizzy in the rides we spent stuffing food into our face holes. Foolishly we left the Tidal Wave until dark clouds had covered the sun and a chilly breeze picked up. As you may guess from its name, the tidal wave makes you wet. Very wet. In retrospect I’m not sure why I thought otherwise.

The force of the water when we splashed down was so strong it took Jen’s sunglasses off her head, which meant I leapt head-first back into the car after everyone had got off and fished around in the footwell until I found them floating.

I may not be able to conquer citadels for her, or name a new species of flower after her, but I can fish around in murky water for her much loved floral sunglasses and that makes her happy.

Being wet on a cold day can put a bit of a dampener on things (literally) so we decided to call it a day and retire to the warmth of the overpriced coffee bar for steaming hot chocolate. Even when she’s half drowned I still fancy her. Even when she banged her head in her car door after calling me a retard, I still fancy her.

Marriage percentage: 70% – She loves riding the front of rollercoasters AND stuffing her face all day long. I can see this being a very fruitful partnership.

Don’t mention the war!

Biscuit

The day after taking Jen and her chum to my favourite night out, we had  her friend’s birthday party to go to. Faced with 9 hours of people I didn’t know I went prepared with my usual social crutch to make friends: balloons.

Thankfully Jen’s chirpy Irish friend from the rock club the night before was there with his boyfriend who was German and lovely. Jen was awesome at introducing me to to everyone. After doing the rounds I settled with the person that I seemed to be most on a level with: the small child who wanted ALL the balloons.

I taught her all about static electricity by sticking all her balloon swords to the celiing where every one was safe from their squishy jabbing.

The party was mostly in one largish room with the usual inexplicable crowd also in the kitchen and an area in the garden for lounging in the sun and supping chilled summer wine.  The weather had another idea and had instead prepared a chilly and cloudy day with a brisk wind.

There was even a hookah, with strawberry tobacco jammed in  and some charcoal balanced precariously atop. They taste nice, a bit like eating an invisible strawberry made of dry, and as long as you don’t try to talk whilst exhaling you wont spend the next few seconds spluttering on the smoke.

Primal man

Jen had been great and had been cuddling up for warmth in between putting cigarettes into her face. Since there was a big game of kickball on the tellybox most of the people crammed themselves into the party room for 90 minutes of men in shorts chasing a toy round a field and left me to manage the firepit.

Suddenly I had a purpose. I was no longer at a polite suburban barbeque but was the very emboidiment of Cro-Magnon man, tending the fire for vital warmth and to roast the day’s slaughtered mammoth. Our mammoth’s may only have been marshmallows but that’s not the point.

At one point I smeared soot into warpaint stripes on my face. I can’t remember why but it was very important at the time.

I got chatting to the German boyfriend who was very intelligent, well spoken and entertainig. In fact he was so well spoken that I didn’t realise he was German. This may explain how I blundered into a conversation about the Nazis.

There really is only one topic of conversation that you should avoid with Germans and somehow I had grabbed it firmly by the scruff of the neck and dumped it into the middle of our rather pleasant dialogue.

It was at this point that I sudenly realised he was German.

In my attempts to backpedal and force an implausible segue to a friendlier non-Nazi conversation, I was making things worse and infact talking MORE about Nazis.

Thankfully only one of us was embarrassed.

After that the kickball finished and the people came back outside. There was a man with a guitar who sung songs that all the other people knew and joined in with. Not long after this I, Jen, her chum from the rock club and his boyfriend all left for the train.

Hairy Irishment are surprisingly insightful

On that journey back there was a telling conversation. There was some talk of exes and Jen’s chum asked me how long it had been since I had been with my last girlfriend. I told him it was almost two years and he said “wow, she must have really hurt you”.

This caught me off guard a little but he was right. I was just very surprised that he drew that conclusion so quickly.

After the seriousness there were more japes involving secret text messages and high fives. It was a saisfactory end to a day that had been very low key due to all the drinking the night before.  Jen’s two chums from the train are like little teddy bears of fun and I really looked forward to seeing them again.

It’s important to get on well with at least some of your girlfriend’s friends because  you’re likely to be spending a lot of time putting booze in your face with them.

Marriage percentage: 68%

For those about to rock, we salute you

Hello all, this is Marty McFly, from the distant past! Well, ok, it’s Biscuit but it does feel like I’m from the distant past. It’s not that I don’t love you any more (promise) I’ve just either had NO time to write or Jen has been here, making it a bit difficult to do!

I have a few important accounts to write up, then there’s gonna be something of a montage post to bring us up to date. Here’s the first (from about 2 months ago it seems):

My favourite night out involves a lot of vodka Red Bull, several hours of rock music and dance moves to make your dad cringe with embarrassment. I had been promising to take Jen there for ages and eventually (sometime around late May) I made good on that promise.

She rocked up from work in a black leather jacket, tight jeans, and a figure hugging black vest top. First stop was the warm up pub wherewe were due to meet a friend of Jen’s who was due to join us.

They say “first impressions last”. The friend’s first impression of me was when I leant over his shoulder at the bar, whilst Jen was still looking for him. He heard a tall man order “4 double vodkas, straight, over ice” then follow with “Oh, I’ve left my money in the cash machine, I’ll be right back” and thought “glad I’m not out with him”.

But, lucky boy, he was out with me!

Once we’d all become acquainted we drunk a lot of vodka mixed with contraband Red Bull smuggled into the pub down my pants and made balloon models for strangers. After the customary spazzing around we hit the club.

I’m the kind of person who gets all fretful about plans until I’m settled in wherever I’m supposed to be. Because of this we were in the club before most other people had got there. The friend was wondering what sort of barren warehouse party I’d brought him to.

The magic of the place is that you don’t really notice it filling up or time passing until you look round and realise it’s rammed with long haired occupants dressed in black and throwing their best air guitar.

Jen was totally at home and did me proud.

We all got drunk. Very drunk!

At one point a boy sidled up to Jen when I was away at the bar and tried some terrible cheesy line on her. He was still there when I got back, which I found quite amusing, but my masculine imposing figure must have scared him off.

That, or the fact that I was wearing colours and he shuns the gaiety as a vampire would garlic.

Eventually, it was time to pack the air guitar away and join the nocturnal zombies on the streets in search of a ride home.

We said goodbye to the chum (we were now best buddies, the vodka incident just fuelled my mythos in the end)  and made our way home for a lot of painkillers and very little sleep.

Marriage Percentage: 68% - Being able to rock out with your metaphorical cock out is an absolute MUST and Jen can flash her imaginary penis with the best of them!

A weird thing about dating blogs

Toast

A chum has noticed something weird. The girls that Biscuit and I are currently dating are eerily close to our mentioned weaknesses in our profile pages. (Who is Toast, Who is Biscuit).

I wrote 18 months ago:

Key weaknesses:
Tall brunettes with striking features and a slightly fiery attitude. Toast is aware that ‘a slightly fiery attitude’ is often code for ‘total mental bitch’.

And Biscuit wrote:

Key weaknesses:
A glint of trouble in the eyes and a wicked grin. Also short cute girls with coloured hair. Also bunches. Bunches in combination with any of the above are a DANGEROUS and IRRESISTIBLE force.

These are pretty reasonable descriptions of The Theatre Producer and Jen respectively. Although I’m not saying that The Theatre Producer is a mental bitch, I’d never say that, she’d stab me. (joke)

It’s interesting, you seem to get what you asked for on the Internet but there is a part of me that wishes I’d mentioned a weakness for ladies with spaceships or pet dinosaurs.

When the Theatre Producer Met Jen

Toast

Biscuit has some posts that are almost ready to go up but he is a little busy so I’m going post some stuff and the he will do a catch-up post.

It was the first weekend of the Theatre Producer and I being an item so you know, I wanted it to be good. Also Jen was going be around so it would be the first time since the challenge had started that both Biscuit and I had girlfriends at the same time.

Yes, we’ve never managed it before.

On the Saturday the Theatre Producer went to a wedding, Jen and Biscuit were out drinking so I had the entire day to clean the house and get things ready. What actually happened is that I watched most of season 3 of the Wire and I did one wash but forgot to put it out to dry.

The Theatre Producer was going to come around after the wedding so she was going to appear at around 10-ish slightly sozzled and in a fancy frock. This is a good way to arrive.

I used the time waiting for her to arrive to watch another episode of the Wire and to cook some oat biscuits (cookies).

Yes, I’ll make someone a lovely housewife some day.

She arrived rather sober, but luckily I had put together a puzzle for her.

It consisted of, a glass, ice-cubes,  Hendricks gin, tonic water and a cucumber. She soon solved the puzzle and we got to enjoy a lovely gin and tonic.

After a few hours of chatting and catching up, we retired to my bedroom. Before we could even discuss who was getting which side of the bed a quite drunk Biscuit and an absolutely mashed Jen appeared.

They weren’t being stealthy and seemed in an excellent mood so we went downstairs to say hello. The first ever hello between the two girls was quite boozy and happened on the stairs.

It went well because soon we were all sat in the garden drinking more gin or in Jen’s case half a bottle of rum. We stayed outside chatting about stuff until it started to get light again and then everyone went to bed. Well almost everyone. Jen wanted to sleep in the garden but I’ll leave that story for Biscuit to tell.

A good Sunday

The next morning I woke up ages before the Theatre Producer. She definitely wanted to sleep longer so I set some brioche to rise and went for a run, when I returned she was still asleep but Biscuit and Jen were awake. Jen was feeling a bit sorry for herself. Biscuit made her drunk some of his special make-hangovers-go-away drink and then sent her off to bed.

It was a really hot day so we had decided to treat our ladies with a BBQ. Biscuit and I went to the shops and got loads of food and loads of booze.

When we returned Biscuit fired up the BBQ and I got the brioche out of the oven. The Theatre Producer appeared and we ate fresh brioche with posh jam. Jen appeared too,  she and the Theatre Producer were both wearing long floaty summer dresses.

After the brioche we put some chairs out in the garden and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the sun eating too much and drinking. It was an excellent way to spend a day, even the naughty pigeons who spent the whole time fighting in the tree couldn’t spoil it.

In the evening The Theatre Producer and I had a dance-off. I won, but she showed promise. I pulled together a bag of stuff and we went back to her place for the night.

We ate salad while watching Flight of the Conchords. I felt like such a grown-up.

She really is terribly nice.

Marriage Percentage: 57%

Say it with Flowers

Biscuit

Flowers shouldn’t just be for special occasions or to say sorry, they should be for any time you want to put a smile on your lady’s face.

During the course of this wager Toast has had occasion to buy flowers a number of times. I, by contrast, have bought none. This has been because, up until now, there has not been a lady I thought deserving enough.

Despite my lack of foliage presentation to date, I am no stranger to buying flowers. When I was with Cupcake I regularly bought her flowers, every week or three. In retrospect she was entirely undeserving of the majority of those!

Since things have been rosy with Jen (see what I did there?) I have been looking for the ideal time to buy her flowers. She stayed round recently on a last minute arrangement because work had unexpectedly called her to London.

She was incredibly grateful but I insisted it was a pleasure to see her. After all impromptu sleepovers go with the boyfriend/girlfriend territory.

That morning, I left the house first and knew she wouldn’t be in when I got back. She had been so awesome, as usual, that I had decided on taking her flowers when I saw her at the weekend. She sent me a big thank you text during the day and I was secretly pleased with myself for my cunning weekend plan.

On arriving home after work I walked in to discover, in the middle of the coffee table, a beautiful bunch of flowers from Jen with a note of thanks on.

I only gushed a little bit.

Snoop Dogg, Boobs and Balkan Brass

Biscuit

This is something of a ‘highlight reel’ to bring you up to date with the present situation. It’s been tricky to find time to post during may as I have had a lot of work stuff on (over weekends too) and have mostly been either knackered or seeing Jen. Since it’s probably a bad idea to write up posts whilst she’s visiting I’ve slipped rather far behind.

Fake sex injuries

The first time I saw Jen as boyfriend and girlfriend I looked like I was covered in serious sex scratches. No, this wasn’t a repeat of my ill-fated date with Indy. I had been to a very moshy ragga-metal gig the night before.

She is an excellent ’concerned girlfriend’, wincing over my wounds which meant I could nonchalantly parade my war scars and feel extra manly as she hung at my arm like a medieval maiden (minus the pointy hat, those things are dangerous with the height difference between us; she could have my eye out).

We got to spend most of the day lounging around in bed with absolutely nothing to do, it was amazing. It has struck me since that that’s the first time we’ve really had the time to do it because we’re usually bolting from one place to another.

Feeling fake boobs

The following Friday Toast and I were busy at the Dominatrix’s birthday. Jen wasn’t actually coming but there was a telling incident involving strangers’ boobs.

Somehow the conversation got round to fake boobs and out of the table of four of us, I was the only one who had never felt fake ones. The friendy dominatrix (is that an oxymoron?) at the table decided that it would be her mission to rectify this for me as there were plenty in attendance at the party.

Now, I did think about this as it’s the sort of thing that tends not to go down well with girlfriends. I reasoned I could easily do it and just never mention it but that 2 things stopped me:
1) I don’t want to start down that road of little deceits.
2) If there were any good stories then I wanted to share them with Jen so we could giggle together.

I politely thanked the dom but said it would be bad form as I had a girlfriend. Then I text Jen to tell the amusing tale of enhanced norks offerings. The reply I got from her says a lot about why she is an awesome girlfriend:

“I say go for it, for science. But you are not allowed to do sexy feeling, more perfunctory”

Sadly I didn’t get to follow through with the offer but it’s reassuring to know that, in an emergency, I would be able to grasp firmly onto pumped ladybumps. Maybe for floatation.

Meeting the chums (…again)

The following night I had made plans to join Jen in town with her friends on the Saturday. Although she’s hung around with my chums a few times this was the first big friend test for me. Although I’d already spent the night drinking with her chums in the town where she lives, it turns out most of them were only casual acquaintences. Tonight it was the real friends.

No pressure then.

I’m usually fine so I pretty much just had avoid developing sudden explosive tourettes or backing myself into a conversational cul-de-sac about the Hitler Youth. By the time I arrived in the first pub all the friends were assembled and clearly curious to see who it was that had snared their diminutive friend.

Everyone was very friendly and played the ‘new boy’ game with me for a bit of pretending that different people were in couples, which was made all the more confusing as there was one gay couple there too. In all there were 6 friends there so I refused to let anyone move seats until I had all the names down.

The chums then took it in turns to quiz me about various tidbits of information that they know, much to Jen’s cringing. It turned out that her most recent ex was universally disliked amongst her friends for being a cock.

So far so good!

The main event of the evening was Eurovision so we all grabbed a cab to another bar which had a whole floor dedicated to the fiesta of trash pop. As I wasn’t bothered about standing shoulder to shoulder craning at screens of bad music performances I chatted to the few of Jen’s friends who remained when the others ran upstairs to see how our entry was performing against the competitors.

Towards the end of the evening as everyone was leaving, one of the chums leant over, slightly drunkenly, and whispered in my ear “well done, you’ve passed stage 1″, then gave me a knowing wink.

Dancing to Snoop Dogg

Very early on we had been on a date to see a filthy electro rock band. This establised the very important precedent that Jen is an excellent gig partner. Immediately after this we booked tickets to see the king of gangsta rap: Snoop Dogg.

We arrived at the venue much later than intended as Jen had a journey worthy of Ulysses on our much delayed public transport network so I was expecting to walk straight in and have to weave through the crowd to a good spot. Instead, we were faced with a queue that ran the entire length of the building, around the corner and the same length AGAIN.

When faced with so much time to kill there is only one reasonable course of action. Jen volunteered herself to run to the shop to grab some beers. THAT is the mark of an awesome girlfriend!

The gig itself was great and once again confirmed what a compatible gig partner she is. Music is a really important part of my life and being able to share that with someone who might be a potential wife is really important.

Love and Balkan Brass

The following Sunday we had one more gig planned. Toast was supposed to come too but couldn’t.In stark contrast to Snoop Dogg, This was a Balkan Brass Battle. We were late getting there (again) so necked a couple of drinks from the off licence on the way there. The bands were amazing (I thoroughly advise you to check out  both of them) and we danced our way through most of the 2 hours.

The more we drank the more I was convinced I had authentic gypsy dancing down to a tee… in retrospect I probably just looked like a spaz waving his arms around and gyrating badly but we both had a euphoric time!

Towards the end Jen needed to pop upstairs the terrace for a quick fag so I joined her for a rest from the dancing. The next bit is, sadly, a little bit of a blur but it unfolded something along these lines.

We were sat roof lined by flower filled planters and I was just filled with the joy of being out with someone who has proven to be consistently awesome, funny, tolerant, exuberant and an absolute delight to spend time with. Because I’ve rushed into things in the past I’ve been trying really hard to be measured and slow about this but that evening I felt like a freshly shaken bottle of pop and was having to try hard to contain myself.

It’s strange opening up to someone again after being burned so badly by Cupcake but I really feel like I can trust Jen. I would lend her my lightsabers and everything.

I gave her a massive hug and, with a big grin on my face, I looked into her eyes and said “I do love you!”. She hugged me back and said, with palpable relief, “Oh I love you too. I’ve loved you for weeks.” I’ve even talked told my mum!”.

I told here that I knew (about how she felt, not about her mum… her mum asked her what was wrong with me since I hadn’t been married or had any kids by the age of 3… but she is from the north), I could tell and tell that she was holding it in. I said that I didn’t want to say anything when I had been drinking as I didn’t want her to think that it was just because of the booze.

We made our way back downstairs for the last of the band and eventually left the venue hand in hand, buoyed along by amorous bliss and alcoholic exuberance.

The ills

The following morning we both had the day off work to lounge around, have sexy times and generally be work-shy hedonists.

What actually happened is I was ill. Very ill. There were lots of visits to the toilet as my body punished me, somewhat unreasonably, for the relatively meagre amount of booze I had drunk.

Jen was just really concerned and kept asking if there was anything she could do to help. Grimly I professed that there was nothing she could do until I weathered the storm unless she wanted to sit and stroke my feet for hours as that’s the only thing that seems to ease the pain.

She was just really happy to be ably to do anything to help so sat at the far end of the sofa stroking the soles of my feet as I suffered behind a pair of sunglasses, occasionally softly weeping to myself that I didn’t want to be ill any more.

I love booze, but occasionally we fall out and I always come off worse.

Eventually I stopped planning my will and improved. Jen was amazing all day and still loved me when I looked like I was suffering with cholera. This is one of the many reasons why she is awesome and why I am keeping her.

Marriage percentage: 65%. She has no problem with me feeling boobs for science, grabs beers in an emergency and will play Florence Nigtingale if I’m ill. What more could I want?

Biscuit is a sucker for girls with purple hair

Biscuit

On the Tuesday before the May 5th B-day* Jen was in town for work so came to stay for the evening. During the day she had been giving me a running commentary on her recent hair dying attempt.

She already has a kind of burgundy red hair but a hairdresser friend of hers had promised to dye it permanent bright red. Regular readers will know that I have a serious weakness for short cute girls with coloured hair. Actually, ‘weakness’ is probably not strong enough. ‘Total mental handicap’ would probably be a better explanation; mouth part open, tongue half out, powerless arms limp at my sides.

The appointment with her friend fell through (due to having an actual paying client, how selfish!) so Jen had decided to dye her own hair with a home kit instead. She did dye her hair but also died a lot of other parts of her too. In her own words: “It looks like I’ve been wanking off a Care Bear”.

Amazing.

I demanded pictures of the final results expecting usual camera phone closeups of her head. Instead I was treated to some rather well posed risqué ‘myspace’ shots. Blimes!

When she turned up that evening I couldn’t keep my hands off her hair. The plan for the evening was to watch The Human Centipede (true romantic fodder). Unfortunately despite two attempts to  *ahem* ‘borrow’ the film from the internet we gave up in the end and watched a couple of episodes of “The Tick” followed by Casino Royale. This was an appropriate mix of macho and ridiculous, although the lack of German scat fetish was lamented.

After all the ridiculous drinking and partying dates this was the most ‘couply’ thing that we have done so far. It kind of feels a bit like we’re dating backwards, starting on drinking, dancing, gigs and boxing shows and finally finding time for a quiet night in, which feels more like a third date than a 8th (or whatever we’re on).

In celebration I promised Jen that next time I’d take her out for a ‘second date’ meal and then next date we could make smalltalk and exchange a slightly awkward ‘edge of mouth’ misjudged kiss at the end.

Of course, the next date was decision time, so if there’s any time to go out for a lovly romantic meal it was then.

Naturally, as I am such a spaz, any attempt to do anything romantic will probably result in me accidentally taking her to a Star Trek fans’ regional meet or the filming of ‘Shemale Bukkakke 3′.

Marriage Percentage: 61%. Still solid and a good run up to our 3 month dating anniversary.

*Boyfriend day