Being nice to the lonely girl:The conclusion

This is what I hope to be the conclusion of the story of my unwanted admirer.  I left this story at the point of myself reluctantly adding the girl in question back to my facebook friends list, knowing it would probably end in tears (for her that is). Despite the fact I had gotten into a relationship at this point this still didn’t stop her from messaging me, albeit a little less frequently.

After ignoring her for a while she seemed to have got the message, perhaps her head was turned by a knight in shining armour? People she had died? Whatever the reason was I was happy without the dozens of messages from her each day.

A few months past and she started up again. One particular series of comments came just after I had gotten engaged “you should be with me and not her”, “I can make you happy”, “choose me instead” and so on...all of which were public. Let’s just say my partner wasn’t best pleased, I didn’t blame her either, I was pretty shocked myself.  Why couldn’t my stalker just leave me alone?? What was it about me that she obviously found so irresistible that she could not restrain herself from commenting? Every tactic I could think of hadn’t worked. I just continued to ignore her.

My relationship didn’t work out and I felt the lowest I had ever felt in my life. As soon as I made this information public on facebook and she became aware that I was single she sent me a message within minutes of this announcement asking me out on a date, and telling me I should be with her.

Can you believe this girl?? Was she serious?? I had just broken up with the girl I was planning to marry weeks before the wedding day and she was buzzing around like a fly around a turd (although I don’t usually liken myself to a turd) Why would someone even dream about asking someone on a date who was in my situation?? I certainly wouldn’t do it. It was clear to me that she had little or no idea about relationships, how to talk to people generally. Did she have a mental illness?? I didn’t think she does, but there was something not quite right.

I got a gift voucher off her for Christmas last year, full marks on persistence, but if she thought that was going to swing the deal her way then she was very much mistaken.

The amount of times late last year she would ask me to go down south to see her I had lost count of. I told her I didn’t have any money, she offered to pay for my train tickets. She invited me to all sorts of activities and events in her town. I was just not interested. Why wouldn’t she get the hint?? How many years had she wasted her life on me now. I felt uncomfortable, I grew angry towards her. But I was too nice to say anything and would reply occasionally, because I find it difficult to ignore people as I hate being ignored myself...so I let the frustration build, and build and build.

Eventually early on this year it all came to a head. I was getting good morning texts, good night texts, hope you are having a nice breakfast, lunch and dinner texts and everything else in between.

“i really fancy you”, “you are hot”, “i love your muscles”, “what are you up to”, “you ok?”, “have i upset you”, “what’s wrong?” , “please text back”, “I’ve just had a cheese sandwich” she kept going on...and on...and on...

This was typical of the text messages. However on facebook, well let’s just say I’m surprised my laptop didn’t explode with the amount of inboxes I was getting from her.

Enough was enough....I snapped for the first time. I lost my cool. I sent her a message telling her a few home truths. I wasn’t nasty but I told her a few things that she needed to hear, for her own benefit. That she was overbearing, way too full on and that is probably why she had never got close to getting a boyfriend in her nearly 30 years on this earth.

5 minutes passed and she wrote a status.

“Am I allergic to men?”

I commented, I told her that if she read my message again she would understand that unless she changed a few things men would run a mile.

Then her family and friends got involved. I was getting abuse from them. She was a perfect, wonderful, lovely girl and I was a ‘bully’ I had led her on and ripped her heart to shreds apparently, so she had been telling them all. She was the victim; I was a horrible man who should keep his opinions to himself. Brilliant, I try and help someone and get all that back in return.

I blocked her from facebook and asked her not to contact me ever again. She said that she just wanted to be my friend. As if I would believe that. It’s been a few months now since all of this.

I am not sure what the morale of the story is but i hope no one ever has to have  an experience like I did. 

Paris 2009, an interesting experience.

Rachel and I arrived in Paris with no idea where we were going to stay, but that actually added to the excitement. I remember walking up the stairs of the tube station to be greeted by the sight of the Eiffel tower, which was a very surreal moment, to be in the shadow of such an Iconic landmark that until this moment I had only ever seen on television.

 The people at the tourist information point were very helpful in terms of providing maps of the city and they gave us a booklet of all the youth hostels in the area, being on a budget I wanted to find the cheapest one in there, and so once we spotted it we headed on over there, I don’t think either of us envisioned how long the walk would be, plus the heat was sweltering and our bags, although not exactly big were quite heavy. Paris in June is so hot!

 Four hours later we were still none the wiser as to where this hostel was, did it even exist? But due to the fact we pretty much had no money and so needed the cheapest we could find we persisted on the search. After some particularly bad directions from the locals we surprisingly found it and booked ourselves in for the same night, eighteen Euros for the room which in all fairness was actually a stationary cupboard with a bunk bed in. We then bought a 3 day metro ticket and decided we would use it as much as possible, so get our money’s worth, and to save our legs from dropping off!

 For as long as I can remember I had wanted to climb the Eiffel tower.  It had always been on my ‘to do’ list, so that is exactly what we did. We took the stairs half way up and then took the lift to the summit, those stairs are so tiring!! I’d say you have to have a decent level of fitness to climb them, in fact on the way up we overtook a morbidly obese American man who was struggling to get up, I actually felt quite sorry for him and as we were coming down he was still half way up, and we were at the top for quite a while.

 The Louvre was just amazing! I really was in awe of some of the magnificent paintings; I have always had a love and appreciation of art.

I have no idea why the Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings in the world; if I’m being honest I don’t think it’s that great, it is protected by bullet proof glass and two security guards. It is actually quite eerie. However I would still recommend going to see it.

 The whole first day in Paris was magical; we managed to learn how to get around quite quickly after a questionable start. We passed a nice looking restaurant, in fact it was really quite posh but we thought we just have to experience was it’s like to eat in a fancy French restaurant so we just did it. Plus, we had hardly eaten a thing all day and were actually starving. I had a really nice duck dish.

 One thing I noticed pretty much straight away about the French is that they just looked a whole lot healthier than the English do, and I didn’t see a single obese French person.

 So after a great day, we decided to go back to the hostel and sleep, now this is where it gets interesting...

We arrived at the hostel around half eleven if I remember correctly, no problems finding it this time luckily. We asked the man at the desk for our room key to discover after a lot of fumbling around behind the desk that he had actually given our room away to someone else!!!

We told him "Well you'll just have to go into our room and tell them that you have made a mistake and that they have to get out because we booked it first"

"I can’t do that, they are sleeping" he said

"Well wake them up! We booked our room this morning! Our luggage is in the storage room! Here is our receipt!! Look!!"

"I made a mistake" he said” but it’s no longer my problem, it’s your problem"

When he said that I was fuming as you can imagine, and so was Rachel, we were not going to go quietly, someone was sleeping in our room that we had paid for, we were knackered and all we wanted to do was sleep.

Rachel was so funny!! I found it hard not to laugh

"je suis annoyed!" she quipped

"je suis tired" I added

"je suis screwed" we both said in unison as we looked at each other

He kept on saying "it’s not my problem, now it’s your problem" so we threatened to call the police

It was far too late in the day to find someone else to stay; we couldn’t roam around Paris all night!

We were prepared to stay at that desk all night arguing with this guy till he was forced to sort out the problem that HE had created.

In the end we ran up the stairs when his back was turned and found a room with two spare beds! That wasn't actually too difficult, we had somewhere to sleep! An hour or so later we were drifting off to sleep then two Chinese girls came in the room, “what are you doing in our beds?"

*now this was one of those really awkward moments as you can imagine*

er..."the guy at the desk gave our room to someone else so we decided to find some spare beds, we didn’t realise they were yours"

"Well where are we going to sleep? They said nervously"

"er, well okay, I’ll go and sleep in Rachel’s bed with her if you two sleep in this one!! Don’t say anything to anyone about this" I told them, "keep quiet!"

So reluctantly these two girls had to share a tiny bed between them, and Rachel and I slept in the other one.

The next morning I was awakened with a pretty horrendous sight, a morbidly obese American girl completely naked standing above my bed, not a pretty sight, to this day I have no idea what she was doing there.

The next morning we sneaked downstairs and went to the desk, it was a woman there this time, she was a lot more reasonable and understanding, Rachel told her that because this knob had given our room to someone else we had to roam the streets of Paris all night, and she actually believed us!! So she agreed to give us the second night for free! All’s well that ends well, so they say.

The red light district

Amsterdam is a pretty wild place to visit. The last time I visited was 4 years ago in the summer of 2009 with my cousin Rachel. We went into a weed shop where we were offered ecstasy and Viagra, we went on a boat ride through the city which lasted around an hour, where a drunk guy was throwing up behind us constantly, in fact I remember turning around to witness him throwing up through his nose at one point, nice! :S

We were hungry and so were looking for a nice restaurant to eat in, so we asked a local if he could direct us to a nice place to eat, whether purposely or not  (I'm still not sure) he directed us to the red light district
It was really quite a disturbing place to find ourselves in unexpectedly.

I looked into what I thought was a shop window and saw what I thought was a mannequin, quite a lifelike mannequin, when her legs started to move I realised this was no mannequin,it was a real woman in her underwear. I thought, 'that's strange' but casually carried on walking, I looked to my right and saw a few more girls, standing behind the windows, practically naked waving to me through the glass panels, I don't know why I waved back but I did, out of naivety perhaps?.  

I soon realised that these girls were trying to attract my attention for more than I had bargained for, everywhere I looked, there were girls in the windows flirting with me, waving, licking their lips and blowing kisses.

At this point I think it was completely the wrong time to take my camera out and start checking through my photos, one of the girls in the window saw me with a camera in my hand and thought I was taking a photo of her and stormed out of her window, wearing just a thong and a bra and ran straight towards me, and pushed me hard in the chest! and everyone was looking!! Having got a closer view it appeared it was a transvestite :S why me????

All I wanted to do at this point was get the hell out of this place, no sooner had IT disappeared back into her window to try and drum up more business a tall muscular Dutch man grabbed me by the shirt and threatened to break my neck if he caught me taking photos of any of his girls again!! he checked my camera but obviously I hadn't actually got any pictures. The only thing I was guilty of was being naive, but a word of warning to anyone who ends up at the red light district, do not have your camera on show, you may end up dead!

Being nice to the lonely girl

I'm a nice guy, lets not beat around the bush here. However, sometime, without perhaps realising it  I'm the architect of my own downfall. this story all started when I spoke to a girl over a breakfast table at a convention, if I'm being perfectly honest I didn't particularly feel like speaking to anyone that day, but she seemed a bit lonely so I struck up a conversation, which lasted well probably no more than 5 or 6 minutes at the very most.
Then she asked the question, "can I add you on Facebook??"  and I was like, "sure". Anyway, about 10 minutes later I checked my phone and sure enough I had a friend request from her, that was quick!. I accepted the request and logged onto Facebook later that day and had a fair few notifications, it's always nice when that happens isn't it? I thought I had suddenly become Mr popular. But no...the half dozen or so notifications were all from her, okay, not really a big deal .I guess most people do a bit of 'investigating' when they meet someone new, I didn't think too much more on the matter. I had a few days of her 'liking' every single bit of FB activity I was involved with and commenting on more photos than I even thought I had. Then all of a sudden it seemed to just stop.

A few months passed and I had completely forgotten about her, then a few weeks ago there was a convention, infact it was the same location where we had met last year, all of a sudden she was back on the scene "Are you coming to the convention?" she asked on FB chat 'i'm not sure, i may be at some of it but i have my x factor audition, so we'll have to see" I responded.
The next day she popped up again on FB chat. The conversation went something like this...
"are you coming to the convention?"
"I DON'T KNOW YET"
" why don't you know?"
" IT DEPENDS ON WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE X FACTOR"
" I really want you to come so I can give you a kiss!!"
"ER, PARDON?"
"can I have your phone number?"

*now this is the point where I went wrong, I must have been insane in the membrane but I gave her my number

"THERE YOU GO!, ANYWAY, I HAVE TO GO NOW! BYE!" I said trying to end the conversation as quickly as possible.

Then I went for a bath. When I got out of the bath maybe around 15 minutes later I checked my phone, TWELVE TEXTS!! yes TWELVE texts... "hi how are you?" "is everything okay babes?" "what you up to now?" "why haven't you texted back?" "text back" "I haven't offended you have I?" "what you doing later?"

*at this point I knew that I had a very serious problem.

I logged back onto FB chat, I had literally put the last digit of my password in, and there she was, chatting to me!! "hi, how are u? I have something i want to tell you, I really really like you!! there!! I've said it!!!"
I think at this point I quickly changed the subject. I simply just didn't feel the same way, I didn't find her attractive, but even if I did, well this type of behaviour really puts me off!!
Obviously she is lonely, and had very little experience about how to win a man, or even how to speak to anyone, but this was pretty extreme.
On the Sunday I had a nap which lasted about 2 hours, I awoke to 3 missed calls and a voice message from her. As soon as I listened to the voice message I received a call on withheld number! I don't normally answer unless I know who is calling, but this time I did. Yes, you guessed right, it was her, full marks for persistence on her part I must say. I finally got rid of her on the phone, literally 10 seconds after I hung up I received a text "you have a really nice voice, I want to kiss you and hug you" . I didn't respond.
In fact from then on I didn't respond at all to anything, so she tried a new tactic...she sent me a birthday card with money in! you've heard of the song 'money cant buy you love' well she had obviously not listened to it, then again, she is deaf, so that's hardly a surprise (was that too harsh?) I felt like I had to had to acknowledge in a text that I had received it, so I said something along the lines of, "thanks for the card but you really didn't have to".After I had thought more on the situation, I was troubled!! HOW THE BLOODY HELL DID SHE GET MY ADDRESS???
I needed to do something to make it clear that I really wasn't interested.. I thought all night on how best to deal with it without breaking her heart. I sent her a text the next morning which I thought was really nice but she took it really really badly, and I received a barrage of texts and missed calls all day. "why does everyone hate me?" she said, "you are the second person to break my heart" I felt bad, but really, I didn't lead her on, I didn't give her any reason to suggest that I was remotely interested. You would have thought that would be the end of it, but no...I have since received an Easter card (I didn't even know they existed) and a postcard. I then deleted her from Facebook thinking maybe that she would get the message, within the hour she tried to re-add me. I don't know about you but if someone deleted me I wouldn't make a desperate attempt to add them back. Now, I know I shouldn't have done this, but I accepted her request (I'm just too nice) and she became my FB friend once more.The stalking took on a new level, comments, likes, wall posts, you name it, she was on it. I then told her that I had got a girlfriend, this still hasn't deterred her. So there we go,that's the latest, but I know there will be more to come...

The morale of the story is, don't speak to the lonely social reject over the breakfast table because you will never have a moments peace in your life from that moment onwards, take note people.

"That bird is trying to kill my mother in law!!"

There was a robin in our warehouse at work, and it had been there for quite a while. It couldn't be caught or tempted outside into the big wide world, so a bird of prey was needed to chase and frighten the robin outside. I'm not sure if the bird used was an eagle but it resembled one. After a few hours of shelf stacking I had completely forgotten about this situation, that was until one of my colleagues appeared quite hysterical and was running around sobbing her heart out and shouting "that bird is trying to kill my mother in law!!" I assumed I had misheard her, and then she asked me to stop this from happening. well I didn't know what to think, how would I be able to fight a bird? and where is this mother in law??. I couldn't get any sense out of her, but finally she told me that her mother in law had told her on her deathbed that she would come back as a robin. :S

Garlic bread??

I was asked the other day if we sold some garlic bread without any garlic in, I took a step back and tried to figure out what this morbidly obese woman could mean, after doubting my own sanity I replied, "you mean normal bread?" she said, '
"no...garlic bread, with no garlic in", I was perplexed, so I asked her to describe it to me, "I'm not sure what it looks like, but it has bacon and cheese in" now I was really confused, "are you sure its actually bread?" I responded, She went on... "it might not be bread, in fact I think it might be a microwavable burger".At this point I made the decision to look for another job :S garlic bread? microwavable burger, yeah obviously the same thing.

Gormlessness

I've often been guilty of slagging off the British general public, and after what amounts to over 5 years of working to serve them through a string of retail jobs I think I have every right to be fearful for the future of the human race, the gormlessness (if that's a word) I experience knows no bounds and just when I feel that the pinnacle of gormlessness has been reached, something will happen which will totally eclipse it, volumes upon volumes could be written on the subject but I'm going to give one example that has happened just recently.

An obese middle aged woman had the fridge door open and her hand was on the pineapple juice, she asked, 'why is there no pineapple juice?' to which i responded, 'you have your hand on it' to which she replied quite sharply, 'no, thats apple juice' in a desperate attempt to convince her, I told her 'look, theres a picture of a pineapple on it' she then took hold of the juice, held it up to the light and then said 'if you say so' as she sheepishly walked over to the tea bags.