Something weird happened to me on Friday night - very weird indeed - infact freakily weird.
After I finished work, I decided to meet up with some workmates in the local pub. Upon entering, it was jam packed, and now that the smoking ban came in - smelt of wee. Disgusting. After a polite chit chat with my boss about ebay (I'm an ebayoholic - he prefers to be caught out shopping in Harvey Nichols and turns his nose on ebay slightly). I decided the whench of wee was getting too much and promptly left the vodka and diet coke (it was starting to infuse the external aroma) and jumped in a taxi home. After a discussion with the taxi driver (he told me that the smell of wee comes from drunk men who prefer to drip dry) I poured myslef another vodka and diet coke at home and checked my emails.

Let me explain, the night before a good mate who I haven't been in contact with for ages - sent me an MSN and text to check out page 90 in the January issue of Glamour. A good pal in university, he was always networking and keeping up to date with futures and the stock market. Needless to say he got himself a rather plush job in the city - howevever it all seemed to go pearshaped - don't know what happened - or the exact story - but it all went a tad pearshaped. I think the city robbed him of his personality - he appears to be too serious now and I am seriously considering whether the city drove him to a nervous breakdown.

Anyway - off I went to buy an issue of Glamour to find the following on page 90:

WE'RE TOO RICH TO GET MARRIED
These seven men are handsome, succcessful millionaires, but far from finding their wealth a bonus, it's proven to be a barrier to love. Could you be the one to change that?

"I'M LOOKING FOR AN ALL ROUNDER"
W, 31 is a freelance financial technology consultant from Chelsea

"My friends say I'm fussy, but I just want an attractive woman with a personality to match. I've worked hard for my money and make no apologies about spending it; my biggest extravagance was blowing £10,000 on a box of cigars. I hang out in M1nt, an exclusive London club that I part-own, However, having grown up on a council estate I like my pint at my locla,m so I'm looking for a girl who is an all-rounder.

I'm out of the country alot so I often meet women in hotel bars. I was in a New York bar recently and I got my Amex card to pay for the drinks and a girl asked,"Where's the black one?", meaning the AMex Centurion which has no credit limit. I'm not averse to treating a girl well but I don't like it when it is expected. I'm a self made man and the woman I spend my life with will be someone who doesn't expect handouts."

Right - my dear old me here did the usual thing of writing before thinking. You see I wrote a jokey email to him as follows;

"OK - just got the copy of Glamour (the ladies size I might add all the large copies were gone - so your picture is bijou in comparison to normal) . You don't really look all that happy - maybe it's a good thing I got the bijou version as the larger one might be quite scary and I would have to run for cover - You actually look constipated - maybe you smoked too many cigars. Maybe you drank too much tea... "

(n.b. we were msning about teabagging one day of which I did not know what the term meant - I was refered to wikipedia to look it up )

"... who knows.. but you actually look quite grumpy. Carrot juice my boy - carrot juice! Will spruce up that sallow complexion and put a sprint in your walk. Does wonders!"

"Ok, made me laugh.. :

Self Made Milliionaire. (well maybe you are - who knows?) - careful you might get mugged by 'those smelly people';

(I thought he'd take this as a joke - apparently he did not as we see later)

Co-owns a club. - you forgot to add you co-own it with 250 other members but nice touch

(I had checked out the M1nt site - apparently any member who joins becomes a shareholder)

and meet alot of women in hotel bars. ----- er dodgy...

Other than that - fantastic editorial - sure you'll get yourself a catch shorty!"

I had meant the above all in a light hearted joke - he should know me all two well that I like a bit of banter and piss take but really - not to take my comments seriously.

Anyway I received the following reply:

"L,

I didn't think that Glamour had any 'big' copies. I thought the whole focus of their marketing strategy was to emphasize the 'handbag' sized magazine format! Don't you know anything about photography? 'Happy pictures' are 'out'! (Or perhaps we look 'fed-up' after our encounters with money grabbing women). Actually we were told exactly how to pose and look. Those eight photos took an entire day to shoot. We were caked full of make up and then fed lots of alcohol. They took hundreds of shots! Personally, I reckon the photographer was going for the 'mean and moody' look for most of us. (She was a cute feisty little blond thing... but I digress).

As for the editorial.

1. I haven't found any of those 'smelly people'. I tend to avoid anyone with bad personal hygiene.

2. I do co-own a club! They are the ones who omitted the other owners. Anyway, I doubt that your average Glamour Magazine reader in the middle of Norwich/Wales/Essex will understand the difference anyway.

3. I meet a lot of women in bars... but they tend to be other business women in 5 star hotel bars. Where do you meet your men? The local Sainsbury's or the bingo club? At the moment I am working on an English estate agent and a lovely Polish cocktail girlie. How about you? Where are all your men?

W"

Oh dear - I thought - I am in the doghouse - suddenly I felt really bad - I had taken my pisstake too far. He was right - here I am Miss 30 something single who is currently scanning the speeddating section for Xmas - and jut my luck I would probably bump into Mr. Right over the frozen peas section only to find that Mr. Right is married with 2.4 children and is gay. Suddenly I thought to myself - I deserved it.

So I wrote back , tail in between my legs,

"Oh Dear,

I apologise - sorry, I didn't realise you would take the last email to heart - I was only having a joke - oh dear. Apologies, honestly - I wave my wee white hankie in surrender!

I must learn to think before I write . Bad L!

W my darling - you looked very handsome in your ad - you are a great catch and I am sure you have many women falling at your feet and many many more responding to the Glamour magasine.

Will sign off now before I dig myself an early grave!

Yours
Lx"

Needless to say I never got a reply. Oh bugger. I've just insulted another mate.

So, anyway after getting my bottom seriously slapped electronically I decided to venture onto the pub with my flatmate. We decided to do a pub crawl up the road towards the City Centre. The first was empty bar a large barmaid with a Xmas cracker hat on. It also only served pints of Guiness in cans.

"Well", I said to my flatmate "at least we are experiencing the local culture."

The next pub was livier with karoke. An old man about the age of 70 with a huge hump on his back and no teeth asked me to dance. So I danced. Crikey, I thought. I reached the age of 30 and dear W is right. A ned woman with a white shell suit and gold earing and no teeth herself was hovering around my handbag. I ran back to my bag, checked to make sure all the contents were intact and then we speedily went on to the next pub.

The pub or should I say bar - was better. But low and behold. I thought I started out a new life with new people and new friends. There in the corner was B. A great guy who I had met in Glasgow who was always like a brother to me. However, my ex thought differently. We would always meet up for a friendly pint after work and a chit chat and then one night I came home to an empty flat. An hour later, my flatmate K came in and gave me a bollocking that I shouldn't be going out for a drink with B. Apparently B told his mate N that he was going out for a pint with me and N decided to tell my lovely ex that I was going out for a DRINK with B. There's me thinking - I've been out for a pint with a mate and suddenly the whole world things were shagging or something. Certainly B would never make it sound like it was more than a drink? And that really made me think - would he?

A year later, my ex flew to Miami for a wedding. When he came back - there was something different about him. I knew something was up. Asked him how the wedding was and he told me everything in detail then mentioned a girl called Amy. When he mentioned her name, there was a change in his voice. Maybe I have dog genes or something but I detected this straight away. Something was wrong, I thought to myself. Over the next week his behaviour was different. The week after he was going on a stag weekend. I noticed he would stay up late at night on the computer. In the explorer site, lycos email kept coming up and I thought - why has he got this when he's got his hotmail. So put two and two together and that Friday, after he left I decided to hack into his email account. Easy really - His user name was just his first and last name and low and behold his password was my name. When I got in my whole world fell apart.

There were emails from Amy expressing her feelings towards him and there were emails from him expressing his love for her and how he couldn't forget that night even going down to the details. I felt sick. I felt so sick. And then I thought - he took pictures. He was going to get them developed. And I immediately went to his bag and there were the photos. I felt so sick. So sick. I couldn't breathe.

To add to that I was suppose to go an a girly dinner with his mother and sister that night. Ididn't know what to do. My mate, told me don't go - ferk the lot of them. But I thought - no - you know what I am going to go - it's not fair on them. They probably don't know about it . So I did, didn't mention a word but I went and I smiled and pretended nothing was wrong. To this day, I can't forget them saying to me, 'Oh you and R are a match made in heaven, bla bla bla bla bla" and at that moment, tears were wanting to swell in my eyes. Then I could feel the anger setting in. Something in their tone of their voice - I don't know what it was but it was something that smacked me in the face and made my brain realise. They do know. They know all too well. I still didn't say anything. I smiled, said my polite good byes. Went back to the flat. Thew some stuff into a bag and went to stay at a friends.

The thing was we got back together - and he was still writing dirty texts to her behind my back and I found out again and .. well I think that was the end of our relationship there. I think our relationship ended that night in Miami. Subconciously you can never forgive someone. The relationship went on for four more years, but they were all worthless in the end. Why I went back - I don't know. I remember my friend telling me not to go back and I said I wanted to give it another try. She just said 'My god, you really do love him - don't you'. And I did. It took me four years to realise that he never loved me. You're always thinking to yourself your not as pretty, not as intellegent and all those things from my past started to haunt me again - things I thought I had beaten. I just wasn't good enough. I'd never really be good enough. So maybe I should just stop trying.

Anyway - during the next four years we would have arguments about fidelity - the only thing he could think back to throw at me was what about you and B?

Well what about me and B? There is nothing about me and B! I purely thought of B as my brother. He was a good friend and pal - he was like my big brother. Never once did I think of B more than that. It made me so angry. Never once was I unfaithful in the relationship and yet the only thing he could manage to say was what about B?

The night I found the texts and I was so upset - R stormed out of the house and the only person I could phone was B. He suggested I come down to Oxford for a couple of days to take my mind off things. I was crying my eyes out and hysterical on the phone. God I was a blumbering mess. R came back home that night and went in a fit of rage when he saw B's new number scralled on a bit of paper lying next to the computer which I had found at the bottom of my handbag somewhere. So the conversation went onto the relationship between me and B. What relationship? I was screaming - he's like my ferkin brother!

Anyway, any arguments about fidelity and it would always come back to well what about you and B? Crikey one night R came back from a night out with his mates all upset. I asked him what was wrong and he said he bumped into one of B's mates who told him I was apparently stalking B. Well that's a new one seeing that he lives down in Oxford and the last time I spoke to him was when I was crying my eyes out over the phone a year before hand. R was so angry and me, I was so angry that someone could say such a thing that the only way to resolve the matter was to find B's number and call him there and then and try to resolve the situation.

So I did. I was apologetic and tried to explain to B that listen sorry to wake you up in the middle of the night but R is quite upset because he bumped into one of your mates in a club who told him I was apparently stalking you. B told me that was the first he has ever heard of this. I asked both to speak to each other to resolve this situation. Apparently, they both got angry at each other. R said he didn't appreciate that he was spreading rumours about his girlfriend stalking him. B was saying he didn't appreciate being called in the early morning to sort out a relationship dispute. I was sitting there fuming. I don't ferkin appreciate being labelled a stalker when the last time I saw B was two years previously and the last time I even spoke to him was a year ago.

Did we ever manage to resolve the situation - no. From that point onwards whenever I bumped into B in the pub I could only say hello , nice to see you how are you and the normal nicities. Even though I didn't do anything wrong, I felt I had to careful. Even from saying hello - someone might get the wrong impression. Crikey.

So I lost a friendship with a great friend. Some people say he wasn't a great mate he was only after one thing. Others say hes a good mate but slightly screwed up and R was making it up. Me - I've had enough of men. All trouble. You can't be a mate with a guy as (a) someone will assume that you are more than friends (b) he assumes that you fancy him and as soon as you explain you are not and you just want to be friends that your friendship gone. Apparently blokes can't handle being just friends. So I guess when you explain to another guy that you are just friends all men will just assume that really you are shagging buddies because men can't understand the concept of men and women being friends. Pure and simply.

Anyway - bumped into B that night. Haven't seen him in two years. New city, new flat, new friends, new start. And I bump into B. My first thought was crikey - don't say hello - he might say you are stalking him. And then I thought - fuck this - I will say hello. And I did. Turns out he lives a block away from me. Turns out he was also probably off his head on coke. I guess some things never change.