Blue Collar Read Free

– and I’m talking twelve or thirteen here – I was on
     holiday in Gran Canaria with a couple of my mates when I met a really nice girl. I can’t remember her name, I’m afraid, but
     she ticked my romantic job sheet down to the last box and had my insides doing loop-the-loops just smiling at me.
    I met her on one of those stupid jeep safaris that drives you up into the mountains and takes you on a tour of the island’s
     accident black spots. She’d sat next to me in the back of the last jeep and we’d got on really well. Everything I’d said came
     out as funny and fascinating, at least to her it did, if not to the other passengers, who had to endure seven hours of merciless
     giggling and flirting – the poor bastards.
    Anyway, after our day in the mountains, me, my mates and the new love of my life’s mates all met up for dinner and a night
     on the slates. We had some lovely food, a few gallons of Harvey Wallbangers and danced into the wee small hours, jumping up
     and down and making up our own lyrics to ‘Come On Eileen’ when we gave up trying to work out what Kevin Rowland was singing.
     It was a really great night. Really really really. Then, at about four, the club closed and it was time to say goodnight.
    By this point, me and my sweetheart were all but inseparable. I know it sounds stupid but I’d grown genuinely close to her
     over the course of the evening. To me, this wasn’t just some silly holiday romance or a one-off knee-trembler, this was the
     start of something real. Something life-changing. Long after this holiday was over, I was going to see this girl again. And
     again. And again.
    And as luck would have it, she only lived in Hertfordshire, so this was more than just a pipe dream. That day, on that mountain,
     in that jeep, and under that sun, I’d met the girl I was going to spend the rest of my life with.
    So when my mates, her mates and her discussed the idea of going on to this little twenty-four-hour bar down by the beach to
     get in a few last drinks, I told them I was going home. Seriously, I said this.
    ‘It’s been a fantastic night but I’m dead on my feet and I’m going home. Have a couple for me and I’ll see you tomorrow,’
     I promised my confused future wife, giving her the gentlest of little kisses before strolling off into the night like Sir
     Galahad with a particularly bad case of concussion.
    What an idiot!
    What a dick!
    So why had I done this? Simple – because I desperately wanted to see her again and I didn’t want to go ruining everything
     by getting really drunk and cheapening our love by trying to hang out the back of her on our first night together. I was more
     than happy to wait and utterly convinced that I was doing the right thing by her and that she would recognise my honourable
     intentions. Coming from a typically proud working-class family, I’d been brought up to believe this sort of nonsense.
    I reiterate, what a dick!
    Almost inevitably, both my mates banged her in the bog while I was tucked up in bed back at the hotel thinking noble thoughts
     and I never saw her again.
    Both of them? I mean, I could’ve just about understood one of them, but both of them? And in the bog?
    ‘She was well up for it,’ Paul and Andy had explained the next day. ‘I think you loosened her up a bit, know what I mean.’
    ‘How could you do that? You know I liked her.’
    ‘Well, you went home. She didn’t know why you did that and was all confused.’
    ‘What, so you both gave her one to clarify my position?’
    ‘You should’ve come along, then, mate, if you liked her an’ everything. You were well in there, you were.’
    ‘Oh, what, you think all three of us could’ve banged her, then, do you?’
    This was a real wake-up call for me, and from that day on I dropped my naively chivalrous gentlemanly tactics in favour of
     striking while the iron was hot. It’s unfortunate, but that’s just the way it is these days. Because if you’re not