Your Hapless Hero

People have noted that I, more so than others, seem to find myself in those awkward situations that are funny in retrospect. Perhaps, with a mixture of oddball humour and sadomasochism, I place myself in such situations. Beth has suggested that it’s not the frequency with which they happen but the way in which they are told. Or maybe I’m just that goofy. Either way, the following – unfortunately – really did happen to me. And all in the space of a few days.

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The weather has been unusually hot. Or so it seems. We Brits, I’ve noticed, are always surprised by the changing of seasons. It’s like we didn’t know it was coming. And although it’s June, generally considered a summer month, the warm and pleasant weather is a major topic of conversation. “Isn’t it hot?” we say to one another, and will continue to until around October when we’ll say, “Isn’t it cold?”

This past weekend was particularly hot and so I slept with my bedroom window wide open. As did, so it transpired, the girl upstairs. She’s pleasant enough and though we’ve not struck an immediate friendship exactly, we’re certainly on “hi” and “hello” terms.

I was most surprised in the morning however to hear her add another greeting to our phrasebook. “Good morning,” she said, followed by a yawn and the sort of creaking that I can only assume was her stretching in her bed.
“Ah,” I said, pleasantly surprised. “Good morning.”
Then, after another creak, this time louder, a third person added, “good morning.” It seems, further to my surprise, that she was not alone. I was, or so it felt, more so than ever and while my neighbour and her male friend continued their creaking I rolled over, awkwardly, and hid under the covers.

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More often than not my trips to the supermarket are long overdue and I find myself walking back with more bags than I can manage. On this particular morning I hadn’t walked far at all when two bags broke and twelve bottles of Becks smashed around me in a sort of fountain of beer.

I’d not even made it passed the car park and, since it was a Saturday, there was plenty in the way of unhelpful though entertained shoppers. One of whom was an old lady, so British in her unfriendliness that she stared at me as though I’d wronged her in some way. “That wasn’t very clever, was it?” she snarled. “Well, I wasn’t going for clever.” I quipped, before crouching down to pick up the pieces. What my motivation was exactly, I don’t know, but what happened next was an even greater mystery.

I’ve come to accept that the zipper on my jeans has a tendency to open by itself. I kind of view it as being playful, though at times inappropriate. (Again, my apologies to Shrewsbury High School.) But I’ve never known the top button to undo itself. That was until this moment, crouched in a pool of beer, when I stood out of my jeans. That’s right. I stood up. My jeans did not. And the little old lady suddenly fell silent. As embarrassed as I was, I was quite proud of that fact.

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No pride could be gleamed however from this story. Already embarrassed by the heat rash that the surprising weather had caused my face, it was with reluctance that I accepted an invitation to a barbecue with my friend Sïan. Told that – “rash or no rash” – I could not flake (though, if you saw my face, you’d beg to differ), I met Sïan after work and we caught a cab to the barbecue. I’d no sooner commented on the taxi’s clean upholstery when I had the sort of nosebleed that upholstery dreads.

To make matters worse nobody had anything to stop the bleeding. Well, that is nobody had any tissue. Sian however had panty liner, which she – in the panic and the rush hour traffic - shoved under my nose. Imagine the scene, if you will: I’m sitting in a stationary taxi, pedestrians wandering past, holding a bloody panty liner to my face. I’m sure the other guests were similarly charmed with the delicacy I brought to the barbecue. “Gosh,” one said, looking over. “Isn’t it hot?”