Fader’s Box of Christmas Chocolates

Life can be a bit of a variety pack at times, and by all accounts the past week has been something of a mixed bag for Experimental Dater Fader …. Depressingly, I’ve heard a very similar tale of cheating and promiscuity recently … and you wonder why we choose to be single?!

Miss Twenty-Nine xxx

According to a very famous film, life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get.

The past two weeks in Fader-land have been pretty much along these lines, except my “box of chocolates” has apparently been sponsored by Jeremy Kyle.

Last Sunday night I got a 12.30am to 3am phone call from friend. She’d just rung her boyfriend.  He’d thought he’d pressed the reject button. Instead he answered, and she heard him in bed with another woman. Wow.

After about three hours’ sleep followed by a hectic day at school involving a nativity practice with fifteen religion-loathing aspie teenagers, I was exhausted.

Nevertheless, my grumpiness wasn’t anything compared to what my mate was going through, so when she rang again the following evening I dropped everything to help.

She’d indulged in the highest level of Facebook stalking and was in possession of location services co-ordinates: the address of the boyfriend’s mystery ladyfriend.

Let this be a lesson to anybody who fancies saying they’re in one place whilst posting a message on Facebook from somewhere entirely different: it may well show up on other people’s smartphones.

“What are you going to do?” I whisper down the phone in hollow awe. This is it, I think. I am living in an episode of Eastenders.

“I can’t drive there. He’ll recognise my car!” she says. Cue me: a knight (lady?) in woolly armour (it was f*cking FREEZING that night; excuse my French). I pick her up on my valiant steed – a rusty W-reg Ford Puma the cheating scumbag has never seen – and off we go to the house in question.

To cut a very long story short, he’d been living a complete double life for seven months and the other woman ten weeks’ pregnant. He’d taken alarming amounts of money from both women, whilst also using both Badoo and the wonderful Tinder to hook up with multiple randoms when “working in London”.

He was entirely unrepentant and flounced off pretty early on, leaving the rest of us to flesh out the extent of his deceit.

We haven’t heard from the woman since, who was incidentally lovely – but we think this means she’s taken him back. I hope she’s been strong enough to tell him where to go.

I certainly don’t think all men are this unscrupulous when it comes to fidelity, but as I said at the beginning: Jeremy Kyle sponsored my chocolate box of life this week for a reason, and thus continues the saga.

When out for our first Christmas work do last week, I met an absolutely gorgeous chap– seriously, a legit 9/10 – and even plucked up the courage to talk to him.

All went exceedingly well!

I gave him my number rather than taking his; that way if he didn’t really want to text, he didn’t have to and that would be that. However, the next day – and all weekend – nice little texts were flying backwards and forwards, all instigated by him. EXCITE!

Then he drops this absolute turdshell: “Hey, I should probably have said this sooner, but I’m sort of seeing someone. You’re really interesting, unique and beautiful though and I’d like to keep getting to know you.”

Erm, HOW ABOUT NO.

He never had to text me in the first place!

He could have just left it as a nice chat in the bar, and that would have been that. Instead, he thought it would be appropriate to chat me up all weekend and hope that would be enough to maintain my interest when he slid in the fact he was actually seeing somebody.

I politely texted back that it was nice chatting and for him to enjoy Christmas and to take care. Didn’t hear from him for a day, then another text: “I really did mean it about wanting to chat more. You are so interesting.”

Did I reply? Did I hell. Ain’t nobody got time for dat.

Jeremy Kyle would then be very pleased to know that at our second work do on Friday night, I happily corrupted a wide-eyed twenty-three year old for no reason other than the fact I was drunk-horny and wanted a Christmas snog. He thoroughly enjoyed it and was quite up for it going further, but I am a Lady, thank-him-very-much.

The rest of the evening passed in a blur that might have well been an alcoholic rundown of the Twelve Days of Christmas: twelve Apple Sourz, eleven pigs in blankets, ten gin and tonics…you get the idea. The following day was more Alker-Seltzer and a Duvet rather than any sort of Partridge, that’s for sure.

Perhaps my blog name should be Cougar instead. Oh, God.

So, what’s coming up for Fader?

Well, I’m off to Bath tomorrow to catch up with my old schoolfriends, and I have a couple of other trips planned.

The most exciting news is that a literary agent is interested in my book and has asked for the full manuscript on an exclusive basis – YAY! – but unfortunately the full MS doesn’t exist yet – OOPS. When I queried, I thought I’d have a couple of months to finish the remaining 15k as that’s usually how long it takes to get a response, and even then it’s not a given they’ll want the full MS.

They turned around my query in THREE DAYS. Silly, silly Fader.

So, this holiday will mostly be spent writing and/or sharking around after men in Bath under the influence of red wine/cocktails/shots with questionable names.

Jeremy Kyle would be proud.