Speed Dating London - At the Single Mingle by Kelly Robert

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At the single mingle

By Kelly Roberts
All rights reserved (C) 2005

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I sit alone in the bar, a book propped open in one hand, a cigarette held listlessly in the other, indicating the two most obvious of my addictions. I had been a devourer of books since my very early teens. The nicotine had come somewhat later, the last vestige of a relationship that had once consumed my soul and now simply threatened to consume my lungs.

The bar was one that would have been cutting edge a few years earlier. Nowadays it seemed slightly too metallic and minimalist, the drinks list and menu ever so slightly overcomplicated. I could have been anywhere in the British Isles, outside it could have been Dublin, Manchester or even Glasgow. It was however Battersea, London.

My props helped maintain the façade of a composed exterior, a mask covering the very real sense of dread developing inside. How had I let myself get involved in this, could the tattered shreds of my self esteem suffer yet another onslaught…I had allowed myself to get talked into the newest craze sweeping the nation, Speed Dating.

It was Josh who’d convinced me to go. Josh the ever persuasive, a guy who at college had always been the one to make things go his way. You probably know a guy like Josh, he’s the one who’ll talk you into having that last drink even if you know you’ll end up missing your last train or to lending him your last tenner.

For a while after graduation Josh and my life seemed to be on completely different trajectories. He went off and joined a large conglomerate as an accountancy trainee, trading a high salary for provincial life. There he acquired all the accessories of the young successful male of the 90’s. The slight paunch, a memory of too many nights in the union bar disappearing under the onslaught of the corporate gym. His t-shirts and jeans giving way to smart suits and designer casual wear.

After a couple of years he appeared to have arrived at a fully formed young adulthood. A first mortgage, a steady girlfriend and twice yearly vacations (never holidays) to the more exotic long haul destinations.

Whereas Josh’s life had been acquiring an increasing level of solidity, mine was an endless round of short lived jobs in short lived accommodation punctuated with brief rounds of unemployment and flight back to the parental nest.

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