Charlie and Me. The Saga Continues

Charlie and Me. Chapter 11

Charlie gets to swear some more. It’s quite a long tale, because I’m going to be offline for a couple of days, and I wouldn’t want to leave you with nothing to occupy your minds.

This is dedicated to The Hook, blogger extraordinaire at http://youvebeenhooked.wordpress.com/, who paid me a huge compliment the other day. Cheers, matey boy.

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One morning shortly after the Len project came to a very satisfactory and bubbly conclusion, Constance, Haydn, and I had planned another Council of War on how to deal with Nigel Short.

Charlie had given me an idea before going away to visit her best friend Abby. They’ve known each other since college. Abby is not her original name. She was named after the place where she was conceived. The Beckhams later popularised this, but Abby’s parents were way ahead of the pack. Unfortunately they are hardcore twitchers who were on a bird watching holiday based in Aberystwyth. By one of those odd coincidences that fill my life, this is the place that Haydn calls home. She really was born and baptised Aberystwyth; one night when we were all a bit confessional she showed Charlie and me her birth and baptism certificates.

There is a bizarre aspect to Abby and Charlie being best friends. I’m not sure how to tell you this. And you won’t believe me anyway, since the coincidence involved is truly outlandish. I met and, to be frank, I slept with Abby before either of us ever met Charlie. How unlikely is that?

One of the unlikeliest aspects is that she wanted to sleep with me. Why do women bother with me? I just don’t get it. I’m thick, I’m average, I’m nothing to shout about. Why do they bother? Why did Abby bother? Why does Charlie bother? Women are strange.

Back to the story. When I was at university, I shared a house with a friend called David, whose sister came down to see him for the weekend. David wasn’t originally David, he was Daventry, so you can guess who the sister was. We got on well, we fancied each other, I could tell that. But I made the goodnights. Went to sleep. The next thing I knew was my bed was full of Abby.

It was a one off that rather surprised the two of us since we’re both serial monogamists. I was between monogamous relationships at the time and so was Abby. We weren’t stepping on other people’s toes.

It was the first and only one night stand I ever had. Well, strictly speaking, the second, but the first one happened because I was naive and expected more to come of it. I generally don’t do that stuff. Perhaps not surprisingly, given my ground state of generalised guilt, I felt very guilty the next morning. She breezed it off.

‘Dinnae fret. I don’t generally do that either; I’m no slapper. But we did. It was good, we both had a good time. Keep that in mind, remember the good, get rid of the bad. Two people enjoying each other is no sin. It’ll have to be a one off though; you can’t half snore.’

Stone me, she even spoke like I do. Except with a beautiful Scottish Lowlands accent, not my Lancashire/Essex bastard hybrid.

So it was a bit of a shock for me when she turned up later as Charlie’s best friend. A bit of a shock for her, too. We did tell Charlie. It was too weird a story for us to keep to ourselves. It just isn’t likely, is it? It happened.

Have you ever been to Aberystwyth? I can highly recommend it. It’s a nice town, but it has a one-way system of such labyrinthine properties that Theseus would have run out of thread before he got as far as the Minotaur.

‘Ariadne! Ariadne! More thread!

‘What?’ Can’t hear you very well.’

Aberystwyth gets so gridlocked at peak times that if I lived there I’d need another shave before I got home.