A Brand New Me: The hilarious romantic comedy about one year of first dates. Shari Low

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СКАЧАТЬ her. Let’s just get this out of the way–he’s a fireman. No jokes about large hoses, sliding down his pole or relighting his fire, please–that kind of shallow innuendo does nothing but demean the role those courageous men play in today’s society. But he is a big hunka hunka burnin’ love who could set any female’s knickers alight.

      Anyway, they got together after he was called to her apartment by a neighbour who spotted thick smoke coming out of Trish’s window. A few bee-baws later he was carrying a semi-conscious Trish out of her front door while the plug-in, hot-wax kit that she’d inadvertently left on after trimming her bikini line burnt down her kitchen. Electrical fault, apparently. Thankfully, she was fine, but when she regained consciousness while waiting for an ambulance, Grey asked her why she was wearing boots with a nightdress. They’ve been together ever since that moment and she vowed right there and then that she’d never again wear floral prints, men’s boots or well-trimmed nethers.

      Now her wardrobe is more Kate Moss on a slightly lower budget–a hip, eclectic and edgy combination of vintage and high-street jeans, T-shirts, waistcoats and various other chic pieces that definitely shouldn’t work together but somehow on Trish they just do. Meeting Grey also brought about the last of the Mohican. Her hair is now a screaming shade of scarlet and shaped into a razor-sharp asymmetric chin-length bob, a style that’s maintained in pristine fashion by our mutual best chum Stuart. Another college relationship that’s lasted the distance, we met Stu when he advertised for hair models in the first month of his hairdressing course. Trish and I, fuelled by the combination of permanent bed hair, cheap cider and empty bank accounts, went along, and despite the fact that he bestowed upon us crew cuts that made everyone around us view us in a whole new light (if you’re reading this, Julie McGuiness, thank you for the k.d. lang poster), we’ve been friends ever since.

      Oh, and just in case you were doing that whole stereotype thing, Stu is as straight as Russell Brand with the horn. However, he is…

      ‘That’s great news, Leni! I’m so proud of you! But stop the hugging, honey, because this virus I’ve got might be an airborne one so best to keep your distance.’

      …a hypochondriac. Or should I say, the post-millennium version, a cyberchondriac. First sign of a sneeze and he’s on the computer inputing his symptoms into medical websites, and the next thing you know he’s claiming bubonic plague and ringing a bell before he enters the room. Still, much as the web does invariably throw up the most dramatic diagnosis, we’re glad he’s finally binned the old-fashioned medical dictionary. When he was addicted to that he’d get stuck on the same letter for days and go into psychosomatic meltdown. That terrifying week back in 2002 when he contracted piles, pleurisy and pregnancy will be etched on my memory forever.

      We keep hoping that he’ll meet his perfect woman and the security will rid him of his morbid obsession, but so far all attempts to set him up with a member of the nursing profession have met with a premature end. He once got as far as a third date with a geriatric nurse but she dumped him in the middle of an episode of ER when he asked her to talk him through a prostate examination. And not in a good way. It’s a shame really because, neurosis aside, he’s a grounded, cool, entirely macho six-foot-tall specimen of gorgeousness with close-cropped black hair, piercing green eyes and an abdominal rack so tight you could play bongo drums on it. Of course, he’d never let you for fear of cracked ribs, punctured lungs and internal bruising.

      Oh, and he’s successful. Courtesy of his achingly hip salon, he’s a rising star (vertigo, altitude sickness, anxiety) in the hairdressing world (nits, life-threatening finger cuts, inhalation of toxic perm lotions). He styles Chelsea mothers, precocious teenagers, a few daytime-telly celebs and does the weekly makeovers for What?!! magazine. Trish has vowed that she’ll get him the Great Morning TV! slot one day, but that often involves whisking viewers off to sunny climates so he’ll have to overcome his fear of flying first. Not only is he terrified of the actual big steel tube/plummet to death scenario, but he’s phobic about germs since he heard that aircraft ventilation systems simply recycle the air, spreading everyone else’s bacteria. On the plus side, his in-flight panics often have a silver lining–if first class is quiet, he regularly gets upgraded because the stewardesses are worried that the sight of a terrified grown man sweating in a medical facemask might upset the other passengers.

      I hopped onto a bar stool next to them–but not close enough that Stu’s highly virulent Ebola virus could kill me before I’d had a large glass of wine and a packet of Nobby’s Nuts.

      I gave them a full debrief and they were, by turn, astonished, enthralled, proud and…horrified.

      ‘You have to what?’ Trish almost spat her vino across the table.

      ‘You’re not doing it,’ Stu commanded, like a stern parent forbidding underage drinking, discos and any contact involving the pelvic region.

      ‘Right then, Dad, I won’t–but only if you increase my pocket money this week.’

      ‘I mean it, Leni, it could be dangerous. Twelve men? Do you know that statistically at least two of them will be carrying a sexually transmitted disease? Not to mention that there’s a high chance that at least one will have a criminal record.’

      For a macho guy he really did get hysterical sometimes (anxiety disorder, raised blood pressure, wrinkles).

      Now that he was looking at me with an expression that sat somewhere between horror and disbelief, with a helping of concern thrown in just to make me feel even worse, my teeth started to grind. Of course he was right. And deep down I knew it. Taking this job would be utterly insane. Dates? I couldn’t go on twelve dates. I’m the woman who takes weeks to decide to try a new washing powder–and even then I feel bad for the old one. But then…My mind flicked to the pile of books at the side of my bed. Shouldn’t I feel the fear and do it anyway? Shouldn’t I fake it until I make it? Shouldn’t I take those ten steps to a new me? Aaaaaargh! Shouldn’t I stop reading bloody self-help guides and actually put some of their theories into action instead?

      It was time for me to get a life–one that I actually bloody liked. I could do this. I could. I was feeling the fear so it was time to get on with it.

      I decided to bluff bravado.

      ‘Stu, I’m not going to sleep with them, I just have to date them. You know–dinner, bowling, art galleries and stuff like that. And how bad can it be? Look at my track record in picking men. Ben? Married. Donny? The Olympic World Champion in the field of Unmitigated Boredom. Gary? Ran off with my chiropodist. Goliath? Tried to snog Trish at last year’s birthday barbecue.’

      ‘I warned you not to go out with someone called Goliath–bound to have inferiority issues,’ she piped up.

      ‘Thank you, Dr Jong,’ I replied curtly.

      ‘You’re still not doing it. It’s way too dangerous, and besides, you’ll hate every minute of it. This just isn’t you, Len,’ Stu demanded, thumping his bottle of Bud on the square pod we were gathered around.

      He was so, so right–so irritatingly, bloody annoyingly right. My emotional pendulum swung back from ‘fearless’ to ‘realistic’–there was no denying that when God doled out adventure and ambition, I had refused with a, ‘No thanks, I’ll stick with consistency and predictability.’

      I threw back a few of Nobby’s finest to break the emotional tension of it all. Take the job. Don’t take it. Take the job. Don’t take it. I used to be indecisive but now I wasn’t so sure. Once again, aaaaaaargh!

      ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake stop being so dramatic,’ Trish argued. ‘She’ll be fine. She might even meet someone who’s slightly СКАЧАТЬ