Living for Disco

“…blah, blah, blah, you know men don’t normally notice these things.”

I tune in at this point because I am curious to know what men don’t notice – I think perhaps I can use it to my advantage at some point in the distant future, if ever an attractive man should hove into view.

“What?”

“You know, men don’t notice these things, neh, so I don’t know why she was so upset.”

“What things? What are you talking about? I wasn’t listening.”

“OK, let me give you the picture, neh? What would you do in this picture, OK?”

“OK.”

“I went to a party, neh? And I met a girl there, and I had sex with her, and so forth.”

I involuntarily raise my eyes to the ceiling, and he misunderstands me.

“Safe sex, don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Anyway, neh, I am in the sushi place. I like the sushi place, you know, I’m there a lot, a lot of times. And then, yesterday, I’m in there, and I realize the girl in the sushi place who always serves me, the one she always talks to me, and now she’s not talking to me any more, and I realize that this is the girl I had sex with, and I didn’t notice.”

I groan inwardly.

“So, now I’m thinking, what? What is she thinking of me? What would you think if it was you?”

“I’d probably think you were a total wanker,” I say, disappointed that as far as he is concerned, the things that men don’t notice are women. I don’t know why I’m surprised.

He pauses and looks thoughtful.

“Is that good or bad?”

I’m quite excited. I’m about to go and join the gym.

Never before in my entire life would I ever have put those two sentences together. I loathe gyms. I never remember how to use the machines properly, so I end up sidling up to them, trying to remain invisible in my ropey old t-shirt, putting them all on the wrong settings and then affecting an expression of ‘of course, I meant to do that. ahaha.’. It’s all pointless anyway; no-one cares - they’re all too busy examining how they look in spandex, or sniffing their own armpits.

The last gym I joined, in Clapham, I went to three times before giving up the ghost, at what amounted to an average cost of
£47 a pop. This, despite the fact that I quite liked it, because I went there one lunchtime, and was relieved to find that instead of the blonde, sweat-free bints on the running machines, the only people there were two men, with intimidating muscles, carnivorous-looking tattoos and bad teeth. They got on the step machines next to me and the beefiest, most elaborately painted man suddenly opened his mouth and, to the guy next to him, said the following sentence:

“Darling! I completely forgot to tell you! Roberto invited me to his villa in Italia! He’s such a little tart.”

Anyway, I digress.

Here, the gym appears to be the social hub of Windhoek. Everyone is a member, as far as I can tell. One of my friends regularly meets men there, not that this is a draw for me, you understand. I am now convinced, in any case, that there are no straight men left in Windhoek. I’m resigned to another year of celibacy.

The main pull for me, however, is that the three things I actually like - swimming, squash and all classes including yoga - are included in the membership fee.

So, I’m quite excited. About joining the gym. Weird.

My friend has lent me his car while he is up north doling out polio vaccines in remote communities.  He works for the UN, so I have been driving around in a super-shiny black Toyota with tinted windows, and UN license plates.  I love these plates.  They give my pathetic ego a sense of gigantic importance.  They say “Hey, I work for one of the largest and most bureaucratic organisations in the world!  Bow, insignificant minions”.  It makes a change from the impression you make in a cycle helmet.

As importantly, displaying them gets you waved through all of the roadblocks on the way out of the city without having to stop and irritate anyone within a 2 mile radius with a futile search for your driving license, which is somewhere in your bottomless handbag.

Mind you, the car has an alarm remote so sensitive that if a mosquito so much as breathes on it, all hell breaks loose.  Last time I borrowed it I ended up standing in my driveway, in front of my landlord’s entire extended family, shouting ‘Shut UP! Shut UP! God’s SAKE!’, while the car beeped and yowed and blinked and inspired all the neighbourhood dogs to take up opera, all because I’d put the remote in my jeans pocket while I shook someone’s hand.

It’s a bit nerve-wracking.  I’ll be out and about, sitting in the cinema, for example, unable to concentrate on Antonio Banderas dancing the tango because I’m worrying that if I move in the wrong way, I might unwittingly unlock the car, which is half a mile away, and come back to find the stereo and all the leather seats have been forcibly relocated, and I’m in debt to the tune of N$80,000,000,000.

So, I’m quite glad, in all, that I have to give it back tonight.

I’ve been tasked with sorting out the organisational budget for the whole of the next three years. I’ve already done half of it, because I was given a three day deadline by a large and influential donor. I spent days crouched over my laptop tapping astronomical numbers into excel, cross checking them, and howling ‘Gaaaaaaaaah, SHIT. Now I have to start all over again.’ No-one ever appreciated the depth of the trauma I suffered at the hands of my maths homework every single week of my pre-A-level life. Likewise, no-one will appreciate the horror I am now fearfully contemplating. I am so misunderstood.

Anyway, now it’s time to do the other half. My boss asked me on Monday if I would be able to produce something by the end of the week, so of course I’ve been spending every waking hour between then and now resizing photos for the organisation’s lovely new website, of which I am in charge, composing funky website copy, writing to-do lists, trying to think of witty and fascinating blog posts, making cups of tea, and attempting to block out the bilge washing around my ears that these days passes for office banter (I do this by repeating the words ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘What?’ in that order in the hope that one day it will become obvious that I’m not listening).

Now I have an hour in which to do a month’s work. Which is obviously why I’m writing this.

Desperate times, people. Desperate times.

Lordy, I wish I could get hold of some jaffa cakes.

Also, just in case any of you think that I’m whinging about the cold because I’m a pathetic wuss with a self-confessed aversion to temperatures under 25 degrees celsius, check out this news story.

I thank you.