And it’s going to get better. There’s so much cool stuff coming up in the next few weeks for me to look forward to, it’s hard not to be a giddy kipper really. What’s on the agenda you ask? Well…

Rugby with Jules next Saturday, in our specially made T-shirts. Pictures of which I shall furnish you all with at some point I’m sure; so that you may revel in their majesty. Even Grace is going to be doing her bit for the Cork contingent & wearing hers too!

Given that one of us ended up vomiting blood & the other got knocked off a stool and subsequently, a concussion after the last match, we’ve vowed to avoid the shots this time though… yeah.

St Patrick’s Day, obviously. Always a giggle

Dan‘s birthday. *bumps* A shoe-in for a fun night.

Then it’s the Blog Awards over in lovely Galway. Which I still need to sort out a frock for.

A visit from my cousin, Nicola.

Last time she came over we danced the night away to cheesy 80′s tunes and laughed like the drunken twats we were, in no small part because of this guy either…

So that’s bound to be a giggle. Girls, you shall be rounded up to join us for some sherbets that weekend!

Then the weekend after, my ma & pa are heading over to see me. I won’t have seen them since Christmas and am already well overdue a dose of parental TLC. By, “parental TLC”, I mean chatting about anything & everything over several pints of stout.

And then, finally at the very end of April, Jules & I are at it again. This time perving over, ahem, I mean watching the rugby down at the Kinsale Sevens. Rugby & seafood & boozing, oh my! There’s rumour of another shirt being acquired for the trip too.

So, yes, lots to look forward to. I’d promise blog posts about it… but I have been unashamedly shit at updating my blog of late, so shall make not guarantees. However, if there’s news that’s worth sharing and which I can share without fearing the wrath of anyone, then I’ll do my best.

Assuming I’m still alive & not awaiting a liver transplant by the end of it all, that is

He wasn’t.

He was low-res. A classic example of low-res man. Nice from a distance, but a bit shocking close up.

I have no idea where I found this image. If it's yours, soz.

So I quickly averted my eyes and continued walking home. Had this song stuck in my head ever since. I’ll never forgive him for that either.

Life lesson? I guess some things are always going to be better from a distance.

So, what have I been up to? Mainly just chilling out back in England with the family over Christmas and then ripping it up in Ireland with friends new & old so far this New Year.

Christmas was lovely – just what the doctor ordered in fact. After a pretty stressful end to the year, I was very much looking forward to getting home & back to Walker Mansions.

It was especially lovely to be met by my gloriously bonkers mother at Manchester Airport, hit the pub with her and my Dad, watch the snow fall & see my Sister and her boyfriend, along with my Auntie, Cousins & pseudo-nephew Dylan too and eat my (ever increasing) body weight in pork pies and red onion chutney. Good times.

Then, in stark, yet superbly enjoyable, contrast came New Year shenanigans. After landing back to a somewhat blustery Dublin (& by blustery I mean gale-force, but 2010 is the year of the understatement don’t you know) I caught up with my two favourite boys, Dan & Alan and my new favourite hearthrob Sam Worthington when we went to see Avatar (and yes, I am VERY excited at the prospect of seeing him in Clash of the Titans – hottie in leather, fighting - what’s not to love?!).

Then came New Year’s Eve, a trip to Funderland with John, cava with my aforementioned favourite boys, vodka, Panti Bar, lots of laughs, some dancing, kissing the bouncer (the only straight man in the village after all) a house party, walking in the snow, another house party, a Toulouse Lautrec impression, walking in the snow, more drinks & then finally, sleep.

After a day of enforced rest, due to the wintry weather we’ve been having of late and Dublin City Council not knowing their gritted arse from their ice-ridden elbow, I headed over to Kinvara to meet up with some of my favourite girls – shares a knowing smile with Caroline, Jess & Lisa.

Cue a night or two of showing the small, rural Irish town how four girls from a not-so-small English city like to throw booze down their necks. Apparently it was impressive as we made some more new friends – tips hat to Mousey, Ger, Tommy & Fintan. Thanks for the giggles boys!

Along with the visually pleasing calendar by the boys of Kinvara United FC (see below), getting said calendar signed, many pints of Guinness, way too many vodka & red bulls (and subsequent caffeine induced heart palpitations), lock-ins & moon-walking.

The rest of the story is embargoed, frankly because it’s more than my life’s worth to tell you. Needless to say, MANY laughs were had and stories will be retold and in-jokes referenced in times to come.

So, all in all a very good couple of weeks and just what I needed. Plus, now that my techno-pipes are working again & allowing me to commit my every mildly interesting thought & whim to cyber-paper, you’ll be hearing a lot more from me (& Dan can stop nagging me to blog more).

PS – Yes, I still have the calendar & yes, it’s getting pride of place dans ma boudoir.

PPS – Happy new year everyone Hope you have a good’un.

I have been on precisely two dates in my entire life; one because I felt mean turning someone down when I was in 6th form and the second about 2 years ago as a “training date” to get myself “back into the game” after breaking up with a VERY long term boyfriend. The rest of the time I’ve just met people, hung out with them and either got it together or not. Standard.

Anyway, I’ve been single for a decent while now and naturally my thoughts occasionally turn to the idea of, well, not being single. Unsurprisingly my friends and I discuss all of this kind of stuff; comparing notes on the boys we meet, sex we have, dramas that unfold, heartbreaks, disastrous dates and all that jazz. There’s not a lot we don’t tell each other really.

Some of my friends have been single longer than me and are pretty keen to find a bloke, some are more laid back about it, but on the whole they are all  a LOT more pro-active than I am about finding a “significant other” (there’s a fair chance this post will be littered with wanky phrases like that by the way).

They’ve all given the whole, speed-dating, online-dating, blind-dating thing a whirl with more than a few cautionary tales to share as a result. Only a couple of months ago 5/6 of my closest girlfriends were all giving the online dating thing a whirl; the other one in a new relationship, so had suspended her membership. All of them were telling me to do the same and were fairly shocked at my outright rejection of the idea.

The problem I have with the notion of online dating is many-layered.

To begin with, for me there’s something inherently unattractive about a bloke who puts himself on a site like that. I’m aware that this is a huge prejudice and in no way grounded in fact – some of my very good male friends have been online dating, and with a modicum of success. Each of them is also definitely on the above average side of attractiveness too. However, I can’t help feeling it’s not a very masculine thing to do (my male friends aside obviously! ).

Plus, I think it’s cheesy, like super-naff. Pre-tinterwebz I wouldn’t have gone to a dating agency either and I don’t really see the difference. Less of the awkward interviews with agency people & cringy video making perhaps, but still, not good.

I am also incredibly cynical (though not quite as much as the hilarious Camiknickers just yet) and am not really great at judging tone when it’s written by someone I don’t know very well. I’d veer from feeling hugely creeped out to thinking I was having the piss taken out of me.

The final reason is that I’m just not that bothered. I don’t believe in “looking” for someone. I’d rather just let nature take its course. People also, largely seem to think you either have to be single or in a relationship, with no middle ground, which fucking TERRIFIES me!

This is where, perhaps, the American dating culture has it right – what’s wrong with going with the flow and just seeing where life/love/lust takes you? Surely if you meet “the one” (wanky phrase no. 2) or even “the one you like most for know” (wanky phrase no. 3) then you’ll simply forego the other people you’ve been seeing; but until that happens, you can just see who you meet & want to spend time with, and hopefully have a hell of a lot of fun along the way. That’s my plan anyway.

Now, just to figure out how to do it without the whole, awkward dating element :-/

Further more, my memories of that weekend are seriously patchy in part, as my age is catching up with me and I now have a brain that turns to swiss cheese when I’ve been drinking. But here goes…

First of all let me introduce the key cast members*:

Fergie – Co-Lead

Martha – Co-Lead

Leona – Co-Lead

Anne – Co-Lead

Al – The Bar Tender

Lovely Jim

Noah – Boat builder

Hot Dude – a hot, er, dude

GAA Boy

Joe – GAA Boy’s Younger Brother

The Krankees – Teeny, tiny couple that we saw everywhere

The Captain

Rowley Birkin QC

The English Rose – Al the Bar Tender’s GF

*All names have been changed to protect the guilty

Now, I’m going to split this over a few posts because it’s just too long to put into one overall post – what can I say, we crammed a lot in.  The chapters will be thus:

Friday – It’s Groundhog Day

Saturday – Coo Coo Ca Choo Mrs Robinson

Sunday & Monday – 15 Hour Party People

Try not to judge… it was probably much worse than I’ve been able to relay here.

Actually, that’s not strictly true. I’m not addicted to flirting, I just do it a lot apparently. With friends, people on the phone, the bus driver, the 70+ year old dude I bought a packet of smokes from at the weekend, the list goes on. The point is, I’m pretty much an omniflirter – my flirting is utterly lacking in any form of discernment at all. It’s what you could call a pretty scatter-gun approach.

Therein lies the rub though. People misunderstand my flirting and mistake it for more than it is. I don’t flirt in a predatory way though, AT ALL, especially as I’m more than likely to be totally oblivious to the fact I’m doing it. In my world I’m just being friendly and bubbly and all that sort of jazz, but in the eyes of others I’m being flirty. So, to figure out how to reign it in I guess I should look at what constitutes flirting exactly?

According to “sexpert” (and oh my f*cking word, what a claim to fame that is, I don’t think) Tracey Cox, you know a woman is flirting when:

“She’s attracted if . . .

(Source: Superflirt – Tracey Cox http://short.ie/tvjvca )

Now, I’ll admit to being a tactile person, that’s just me letting you know I’m comfortable with you more than anything, and I do massage my neck a lot, but that’s mainly because I am REALLY overdue a visit to the Osteopath to sort out my shit posture. I don’t however, go around standing with my legs apart, lightly stroking my own thighs, that kind of stuff can get a person arrested! And I don’t invade people’s spaces with objects – nor am I aware of any of my girl friends having ever built a wall of clutter around a person to signal their interest in them.

So the mystery continues. After ooh, about 3 minutes thinking it over though, I think I am considered flirty for the following reasons mainly:

• I’m fairly tactile
• I like to look people in the eye when talking to them and smile
• I have a total love of mischief
• I have a fairly pesky sense of humour
• I just am – it’s clearly part of my DNA or something

I’m not about to change any of these though, they’re a basic part of who I am, especially the DNA bit. What does this mean? Well, I’m going to carry on flirting my way through life really. The day’s always that bit nicer with a bit of flirty banter though, I reckon. Sod it, it er, perks me up anyway. Meanwhile, people are free to mis-interpret it all they want too; and they do, but that’s fine. While the world thinks I fancy everyone I come across, I know when I’m genuinely interested in someone, as ironically enough, they tend to be the people I get the most shy around & wait for them to make a move – kind of like the female equivalent of “Field of Dreams” I like to think, haha.

So, in conclusion. I’m a flirt. I like being a flirt. A mischievous, funny, harmless flirt. And I shall continue flirting in my own inimitable way. I will not however, be standing legs akimbo & stroking my own thighs, whilst simultaneously building a woman-made wall made of randomly found jetsam around a person – all sounds like too much effort for me.

And to the next person I clam up around totally – I’ve built it, the rest is up to you.