Let me guess... you're Aries aren't you?

Posted by Katy Regan at 13:56 on 20 Jan 2010

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I've made a new friend. S is very cool. I'm sure she won't mind me saying that we met in a rather unconventional manner in the local Waitrose when she patted me on the shoulder to say that she'd very much enjoyed the column I used to write in Marie Claire.

This has only ever happened to me once before - also in a supermarket (Sainsbury's, Dulwich, South London, December 2006, not that I remember it that well or anything) and both times, I experienced the following:

1) Ridiculous overexcitement that I had been recognised, in public, like a sleb and everything!
2) Massively flattered that someone actually read the column and liked it.
3) Massive embarrassment that I looked about as much like shit as it is possible to look: Parka, no make-up, pre-menstrual spots, haggard from dealing with child who is stampeding around supermarket demanding things whilst I bark "No! You cannot have another packet of plastic animals!. SIT in the trolley NOW!!!"

Then I realise someone is talking to me.

If I remember rightly, on the occasion I met S, my son then tried to engage her son (littler than mine) in a sort of swimming session on Waitrose floor, only without the water whilst S and I tried to have a conversation. We agreed to Facebook each other.

S writes too, has a small child, has a fear of becoming 4X4 driving, Boden-wearing mummy from the Home Counties who has nothing better to do than go to yoga, chat with other 4X4 driving, Boden-wearing Home Counties mummies in coffee shops before going home and making homemade macaroons then ordering another Venetian glass table from Laura Ashley. Not that there's anything wrong with that, in fact come to think of it, it sounds quite nice when you write it down like that!  It's just that's not how our lives turned out I suppose.  Anyway, we have things in common.

So S and I have got together a few times now, for coffee and wine (not together). She makes me laugh with her stories of mother-on-the-edge who (shock horror) buys her child family-sized bags of Maltesers in order to watch telly all afternoon before being invited (real shock horror) to a mother's house where she is offered homemade organic biscuits that have been iced, with child, whilst she and her child have been working their way through family-sized bag of Maltesters and watching TV. (Read all about it on her blog: http://crummymummywhodrinks.blogspot.com/.)

I think I made her laugh with what I call my ‘Breakaway Biscuit' policy of having very low standards from the start when you move to a new place and meet new people ( i.e. only having 99p per packet Breakaway biscuits to offer them rather than organic, homemade iced-by-child ones ) so that then when you perform over and above those expectation (say offer them a Jaffa cake)  it's a bonus rather than a given.

S and I have so much in common - could talk hind leg off a donkey (together I reckon we could talk his front legs off, too) bloody-minded in the pursuit of the things we really want, complete inability to pretend like everything's ok when it's not, turned off by people who pretend like everything's ok when it's not, cry at everything, have penchant for wearing Gap clothes with stains down the front,  even have a soft spot for the same boy in then video shop that I'd begun to wonder if we were related in a past life... or something. Then is dawned on me (bear with me, this is a new development in my life, a very recent one. One I am very disturbed by): "Oh my God, when is your birthday?" I asked her.

"April" she said.

"I knew it!" I said. "You are Aries woman too!" And then I stopped. I gasped. Did that actually just come out of my mouth?

"Did that just come out of your mouth?" she said. By this point, she was laughing her head off at me.

Then I had to make my confession: that day, in the library, I had been so desperate for distraction from working that I had actually gone to the computer, PAID to use the library computer and typed ARIES WOMAN into Google. (Can't believe I just admitted that). Then, I then mentally ticked off the qualities: passionate (tick) can promise adventure in relationships (yeah, I'd say tick...), fire burns hot but not for long (fickle bitch. Not sure I like that one). Influential and inspiring (oh God, yeah..) appalling with money (most definitely), driven and ambitious (I'd say! This was amazing!), can often only see universe through her own eyes (that is RUBBISH surely everyone see that?)

Mmm. Can't believe have just reeled those off for you and felt quite excited. So, it's true. From being someone who could count on one hand the number of times in my life I have read my Stars, I have become a person who pays to type Aries Woman into Google. More worryingly, I have then become a person who says things like, "What's your birthday? It's September isn't it? You're a Virgo, aren't you?" Only for them to say: "No, I am Scorpio. Now bugger off you weird Crystal Healing type person"

Jesus Christ. I need help. Do you think I may have ruined a flowering friendship? Thankfully, S saw the funny side.

But then that's because she is a Ram and the Ram has a wicked since of humour.

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