Actually, technically i'm not even drunk. Drunk is when i have to hold onto the grass to keep from falling off the earth as i make my precarious way home, and as that did not happen today - and the fact i have just used the word precarious - the signs are good that i am indeed not drunk, but am merely tipsy.
So here i am, tipsy but not drunk, and thinking i'll have a wee shot at this whole Gumtree lark.
A good friend of mine (he once trusted to a fart with disasterous results in a well-known London musuem - i promised i wouldn't tell anyone that, but as i'm not giving away his identity, really his secret is still safe with me) - Anyway, my good friend Ben met a girl through this site. She described herself as 'mad and quirky' and described her hobbies as 'the usual stuff'. I said to my friend Ben, 'Mr Fleming, you listen here, people who describe themself as mad and quirky rarely are. People who really are mad and quirky don't go broadcasting it. After all, you never heard of Peter Sutcliffe boasting about how mad he was, did you?'
But Ben insisted on meeting this woman. Her name was Felicity, and she was at least six years older and two stone heavier than in the 'recent photograph' she had sent to Ben.
But as i know how quickly weight can pile on, and of how aged it can make us, i kept silent. And they were happy...At least, at first...They went on romantic picnics, they splashed laughingly in lukewarm streams and frolicked under waterfalls, they ran barefoot through the forest, carving their initials into an oak tree before tumbling into one anothers arms and consumating their love (i know all this because i watched from behind a leafy bush).
And then, almost as quickly as it had started, it was over.
Felicity sheepishly explained to Ben that she had met someone else. In a cruel twist of fate, this other gent whom i shall refer to as Harry (because that's what Felicity had said his name was) had emailed her through Gumtree, and had captured her imagination, and then her heart, with poetry.
"Try to understand Ben," she had beseeched. "He works in the City."
I had been impressed. What shallow, superficial woman wouldn't have dumped hard-working, sweet, kind, funny Ben for a City worker?
Ben was distraught. "I'll never love again," he had sobbed as i had tried my best to console him.
Bored with Ben's tears, i had suggested a trip to the pub. Even in the pub he had continued to weep and wail (much to my embarrassment - there are some things grown men should never do - cry is one of them, fancying their mother-in-laws is another one). Sniffling into his pint, he whispered brokenly, "It was the best relationship i ever had. It only lasted 5 days, but it felt like 5 years." And then he said something so profound that i felt my own eyes mist with tears: "Some birds are not meant to be caged," he said sadly.
(He then went on the fruit machine, won 30 quid and treated us to a kebab after the pub, so it wasn't all doom and gloom).
However, Ben's experience has stuck with me. Could i, i wonder, ever find from Gumtree what Ben found?
A 5 day relationship which totally changed his life?
I wonder, i wonder...If it could happen to Ben then surely it could happen to me?
By the way, i'm mad and quirky and i like all the usual stuff.
