Sink or Swim
My Nan sleeps with a picture of my Grandad by her bed. She kisses him goodnight every evening.
My Nan is 81, and my Grandad died nearly 29 years ago from cancer. He was just 54. So my Nan was far from ancient when he left us, and yet she has never sought the love of another man. She feels she belongs to my Grandad and she is completely content in that knowledge.
This, for me, is a real-life fairytale. This is why I refuse to give on the idea that there are people out there who truly belong together. Though I’m still struggling with putting myself back into the dating game. I think the pressures I’m putting on myself are somewhat overwhelming.
There’s the time pressure re having children, which at 38 is impossible to ignore. There’s the pressure of actually finding someone who could love me enough to kiss me goodnight years after I’m gone. And there’s the pressure of pitting myself against every other woman out there searching for exactly the same thing. The vast majority of them don’t have a ticking time bomb in their womb. Or 75 excess pounds of blubber. Or desperation written all over their dating profile… Hmmm.
I have one particular friend who is desperate for me to be dating. She has met random men while walking the dogs and married us off instantly (in my absence). In fact, she’s rechristened one poor unsuspecting fellow’s boat after me: the Lady Anna. She’s even sent me pictures – of the boat, not the man. The idea of her asking him to pose so she can take a snap to send me is pretty entertaining, and not beyond her, but I am grateful that she refrained on this occasion.
The fact that I really don’t like boats hasn’t put her off in the slightest. And I REALLY don’t like boats. Or do I? What I really hate is the water. That’s entirely Spielberg’s fault. And whilst I’m (fairly) confident that there are no 12ft long man-eating sharks in the Kennet and Avon canal, it’s still a boat deterrent.
That probably seems a fairly unreasonable excuse to turn down a date: “Thank you for the offer, but I’m afraid the fact that you own a boat moored on the canal raises my chances of being savagely torn apart by Jaws beyond my acceptable limits.”
Not that I actually have a date. The chap doesn’t even know I exist. We’ve never set eyes on each other. But he’s in the rejection pile already. Perhaps all men are. Perhaps the pressure is enough for me to create these irrational excuses.
But then I look at the photograph of Grandad, and see the love that still sparkles in my Nan’s eyes, and I can’t help but consider how useful my excess 75lbs would be while wrestling canal sharks… The Lady Anna does have something of a ring to it. Whether it’s a diamond one is another matter. Time to sink or swim.
