Was too difficult to reply as fingers were frozen, had to put glasses on to read tweets and simultaneously run after sledges to stop collisions, etc., so just left it for a while, savouring the feeling of being the last one to receive a message and @_Roxster wanting to have a date with me!
As it got later, more and more people were on the Hill, and it started getting icy so we all came back to our place, had hot chocolate and supper together and it was really very jolly, and while Rebecca was watching the kids I snuck off to my Twitter for five minutes, glancing briefly in the mirror and realizing tonight really would not be a good night for a date with a toy boy.
In the midst of all the incoherent stream of tweets about snow and the M4 there was another one from @_Roxster.
You see, straightforward, authentic communication! That’s the way. Tweeted back.
OMG. Was Roxster reading my tweets back in the days of Leatherjacketman?
Headed back down to the kitchen beaming. Everything is marvellous! Have date with gorgeous, funny, hunky twenty-nine-year-old toy boy and house full of rosy-cheeked children, sweet-smelling food, sledges and willies (I mean wellies – where did that come from?).
DO NOT TWEET ABOUT DATE DURING DATE
Sunday 20 January 2013
Twitter followers 873, tweets from @_Roxster 7.
11 a.m. Tweeting is going sensationally. More and more followers have come since the whole #twunkbirds thread thing. Cannot help noticing that Roxster has gone rather silent since the agreement about the date. But maybe, being a man, he feels that a level has been accomplished, as with Xbox, and there is no need to keep on at it.
11.02 a.m. Actually had better just send a tweet to let everyone know what’s going on.
11.05 a.m. OMG, have lost two followers. Why? Why? Was there something in the tone? Had better send another one.
11.15 a.m. Great, have lost three more followers. Must remember not to overtweet in the morning. Or maybe at all since seem to get more followers when do not tweet than when do tweet.
Roxster has tweeted! You see, this is my reward for epic self-control.
Then another:
9.45 p.m. Immediately went into meltdown. Leicester Sq. tube?? Leicester Sq. tube?? But it’s freezing. Then remembered the key dating rules.
JUST GO ALONG WITH WHATEVER HE SUGGESTS
You see? You see? So much better than trying to manipulate the situation.
9.50 p.m. Suddenly in panic re meeting stranger off Twitter at Leicester Square tube when am single mother.
9.51 p.m. Just called Tom, who is going to pop round.
10.50 p.m Unfortunately, had to wai
t for opinion as Tom was having meltdown of his own about a Hungarian architect called Arkis. He insisted on showing all the texts and pictures and Arkis’s messages on the Scruff app on his iPhone. ‘Scruff is so much better than Grindr. It used to be Beardy but now it’s got more Fashion Beardy, small clothes and big glasses, but not in a George Michael sense.’
‘So what’s the problem?’ I said, in a crisp professional manner, as if I were the psychotherapist and not Tom.
‘I think Arkis might be all text and no trousers. He just keeps sending really flirty, sexual texts late at night but nothing else.’
‘I see. Have you suggested meeting?’ I enquired.
‘I said I’d like to get to know him better but I sent it at 1 a.m. because I was looking for validation and I just got the opposite of validation because Arkis didn’t reply for two days, then didn’t mention it and just started talking about my Scruff pictures again, and now I’m wandering around with this horrible pain below my ribcage because I think he thinks—’
‘I know, I know,’ I said eagerly. ‘It was exactly like that with Leatherjacketman. It’s like the love interest assumes this huge power – like a giant standing over you in judgement, possessed of all the rules of dating competence, and about to mark you down as a desperate stalker.’
‘I know,’ he said sadly. ‘But he did say he wanted to see Zero Dark Thirty.’
‘So? Suggest you go! Durr!’ I said loftily. ‘Otherwise it’s like a staring competition of who’ll blink first.’
Once Tom appeared satisfied with the psychological underpinnings of the plan, I moved smoothly onto my own worry, at which he said crisply: