Pairing up

A night fairly long ago, this old broad and fellow single team mate (you know who you are!) decided to venture out into the sea of singledoom. We'd purchased, with our hard earned, tickets to a singles' night - it should be fun, fun, fun! The tickets certainly said 'fun' and the email enticement suggested a lot more than fun. And who were we to argue?

So the eternal optimists ... ventured forth.

Firstly going to a singles night, is portentious. Single in, single out. Not that I usually enter such a deal with unadulterated blinkered optimism, I mean I was there but it felt more than a little forced, many would say contrived. Of course, it has to be, it's a singles' night and let's face it, coupled folk our age, anytime after 8 of an evening, should be found as a curled up couplet under the duvet with their respective teeth in matching glasses on the bedside table. And they say romance is dead ... but I fast forward too soon.

The entrance to the 'venue' had been singlefied. Hope was draped sniggeringly over the entrance as fairy lights twinkled in feigned delight. It teased that it was offering all the fun of the fair ... sort of. Fun, although touted and exclamation marked on the ticket,  proved to be elusive. The fair analogy was a complete flight of fancy.

Walking into the bar, I immediately felt like I was the audience of one to a huge, but not very well sung, Welsh choir. As my head turned to survey the crowd, I was aware I was one of the tallest in the room. The crowns laid bare before me, proved that shallow-ness was not the sole domain of men. 

Then fear gripped me, as the first person to catch my eye, looked like a kindly soul but was also probably older than my dad. As I sipped on my 'free' flute of champagne, my eyes darted around the room trying not to meet anyone's gaze, which I agree is not probably a good strategy at a singles' night.

Hope ebbed faster than the champagne left the flute.

Devising an exit strategy, I found my wing-man and we waddled out, the curtain of hope long gone as we wandered back into the valley of singledoom.

We found a taxi in the crisp clear night, and zoomed off along the motorway, and homeward bound. 

And there it was, a singles' night. To be fair, I suspect that many of the singles were having a whale of a time, but as a fellow whale, on that particular night, my preference was beached.