Secrets and lies

Posted by Lucy Robinson at 08:28 on 3 Feb 2010

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I'm afraid I don't have a project update quite yet - project one will have to wait until someone decent comes along on the internet (at present I've only got Shane whose email starts with "HEYYYY!!!!! XXXXXXXXX Lookin good Lucy!!!!!!" - I won't carry on - and Mickey who wants to take me bowling. Bowling?  Does bowling still exist? I don't want to come over all snooty Londoner on you but this does strike me as a lamentably low-rent teenage idea. Yes I've had a bowling date and yes it was brilliant - Summer of '91; me, my boyfriend Tim and his Mum - but, like hurling yourself down the stairs on a tea tray, it just feels like an activity best relegated to childhood.) Project two rather depends on finding a man who a) isn't afraid of going on a very public date with me and b) is capable of writing something that you will understand. So bear with me.  I'm working on it, promise.

In the meantime, I would like to share the following memory with you and ask if any of you have ever been guilty of similarly ridiculous behaviour.

It was Friday night last week. Like all decent singletons I wasn't drinking cocktails in a glamorous lounge full of exquisite batchelors but instead was in the checkout queue at Tesco, wearing an old brown ski jacket, deeply awful jeans and big chunky gym trainers. I am too rock n roll for words, non? Anyway, my ipod was on shuffle and, just as I started packing my bag full of chicken thighs, a song by The Cribs started playing. As soon as I heard the opening guitar riff I went bright red.

Here's why. As you'll no doubt agree, it's pretty embarrassing.

For our second date, my ex had taken me to a gig in Brixton where The Cribs were playing - along with a whole load of other bands that I hadn't heard of - and I, slightly overwhelmed by his cool music industry credentials, downloaded each band's most recent album and put each one into my ipod. I listened to nothing else for days; the sole aim being to know all of the words and thereby impress him with my niche musical taste. I'm ashamed to say it worked a treat.

I remember, so very clearly, his astonished face when I started yelling "BECAUSE THE MAN'S NEEDS, MAN'S NEEDS, ARE FULL OF GREED...." alongside him mid-song.  He grabbed me and snogged me. The pattern continued throughout the night, to the extent that I actually knew more words and songs than he did, in spite of the fact that he worked in music and I was just a loser who had an actual Phil Collins album somewhere in her collection.

Granted, he was pretty love-struck at that point so he probably would have been grabbing and snogging me anyway, but the fact that I actually knew about these bands etherealised me, in his eyes, from average girl to heavenly deity. He literally couldn't keep his hands off me. In fact when we staggered into some bar much later on he looked at me and just whispered "you're completely amazing" in hoarse, worshipful tones.

I raised an inner toast to itunes.

I'm afraid it didn't stop there. Soon after, I emailed my sister's boyfriend and said "Hi. Can you recommend a website where I can learn about cool music?" He duly replied with a list of sites that are traditionally visited by men with tight jeans and fashion footwear.  I started logging on daily - it was a veritable goldmine of information on up-and-coming-bands and other cool stuff that cool people know about. Hell, you could even listen to the tracks online! They were mostly awful but who cared, they were cool and I damned well knew about them!  For quite a while I'd pepper our conversation with sage references to bands that even he hadn't even heard of. And he was always, always, always deeply impressed.

WHY? He liked me anyway! Scrap that, he loved me - why did I need to sing from the same sheet as him? Why couldn't I just be the Phil Collins Album-owning girl that he'd already fallen for?

That's the problem with the internet. It's so good at helping you to build a whole new personality for yourself. It's simpler than building a lego town for crying out loud - you just sit on your backside, work out who you want to be and a few URLs later, hey presto, you're a New Bands Expert or a trainee Orthopaedic Surgeon. I want to be a cool muso, I told the Google, and my wish was its command. I was an even cooler muso than my cool muso boyfriend for crying out loud!

God, I'm a tosser aren't I.

The only thing that makes me feel better about this is my knowledge of what he did to impress me the first time I stayed at his house. On arrival it appeared to be a textbook example of first-shag-with-new-girlfriend preparation: immaculate bedroom, clean sheets, a well-stocked bedside draw and a fridge full of organic breakfast ingredients. Oh and tell-tale signs like the smell of wood polish and a series of sponges and cloths drying in the kitchen that I never saw again.

As I said, all standard preparation; none of it surprised me. But what I wasn't expecting was his rather frank confession that he had emailed his best female friend for a list of things that he should do to prepare for my arrival and she replied saying "iron your sheets, scrub down your disgusting bathroom and most of all will you please make sure you get rid of your nostril hair, it's absolutely repellent." So, while I was rocking on to the beat of new bands online, he was wincing in the bathroom mirror with a pair of tweezers up his nose.

What a couple, eh?

Please tell me you've learned songs by bands you've never heard of? Please tell me you've speed-read books that will impress him? Please tell me you've done a full Wikipedia on at least three things that he knows about?

No? Just me? Oh come on, you've surely looked up the offside rule online, haven't you?

Still just me?

Oh dear.

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