Stella - She’s A Bit Misunderstood

In the car for the second day in a row because I’m going down to Sewage Central (Maidstone) again this evening.

It’s manic at work as we get ready for the presentation we have to do tomorrow. This isn’t helped much by the fact that we have three power cuts during the morning. Ah, the joys of living on a building site. The power cuts keep knocking out the email, the internet and the air conditioning, as well as crashing my PC. Luckily we’re preparing the presentation on a battery powered laptop.

When I get home, time is short so I help myself. Act now, ask questions later. L doesn’t seem to mind.

I get picked up by my work colleagues and we head down south. Last time I was in Maidstone I got a bit too friendly with Stella. She’s a bit misunderstood is Stella. She often gets mistaken for being French but she’s actually of Belgium heritage although she now lives in not so sophisticated Wales. She’s sometimes been described as ‘reassuringly expensive’ but the irony is that Stella is actually rather common and she’s anything but expensive. In fact, she’s always offering herself cheap in our local supermarket.

L quotes Jamie T to me ‘Sheila goes out with her mate Stella; it gets poured all over a fella’.

I decide to dump Stella and get my hands on a Boddingtons instead. Extra cold. Brrrr. Chilled to within an inch of its life, lack of taste guaranteed but it’s better than Stella.

My colleague is currently into the second half of the dating game (life is a game of football after all). The first half is played when you’re under 25 and everyone is pulling each other, playing the field. Well it never really worked out like that for me but that’s the theory. What I didn’t realise then but found out later and what he’s just discovering is that there’s a second half, a second field to play. This is when all the divorcees and single parents with kids come out to play. All who are now in either their dirty thirties or their filthy forties. The trick, of course, is not to fall in love with the first one you meet, which is where I went wrong (I mean right). He’s already on his second, good man but then again he’ll probably never have the good fortune to meet anyone as brilliant as L.

I wonder if there’s extra time when you get to 50?