Snake bite and slushes - a love story - part 1

Mr Jones and I have been together for nine years this week and it occurred to me that in all the wedding planning and baby making news I’ve never told you the tale of how we came to be together. Of course some of you know all about it – because you were there – but most of you don’t. And even those of you who think you know it all probably don’t – because it’s a pretty complicated story full of friendship, betrayal and a whole lot of twenty-something angst, washed down with rose, snakebite and lime vodka slush. It might take me some weeks to get through it all – but I think it’s worth it in the end and I’ll have fun reminiscing even if you don’t have fun reading.

Let’s start at the very beginning. It wasn’t love at first sight. In fact I don’t actually remember meeting Mr Jones. Rumour has it that it was in the first few weeks at university in Hull – when you meet so many people it’s a complete surprise that you actually remember any of them.

Our first meeting was, reportedly, in a grungy pub called the Railway just down the road from our antiquated halls of residence. The regulars were a mix of local stalwarts and fresh faced students lured in by quiz nights and a cheap pint. On the night in question someone tried to down a yard of ale and was violently sick – you get the picture. There was a big group of us all together doing the quiz – boys and girls – but I don’t remember Mr Jones.

In fact I have no direct memory of when he entered my consciousness – he must have just filtered in, slowly and gently in his unpretentious way. I was going out with someone else at a time – well I say going out – but it could hardly be called going out – he lived in Hamburg and I was in Hull.

No, Mr Jones was just there – one of a group of boys that my friend Miss McMahon (now Mrs Williams) and I became rather attached to. Mr Jones had a girlfriend – we’ll call her Miss B, who visited from time to time and I said goodbye to the boyfriend in Germany and gave in to the attentions of someone new – we’ll call him Mr M.

At the time all it took to win me over was some champagne and red roses – I was fickle. I thought the fact that he knew my timetable off by heart and would pop up to see me in between lectures was sweet and I enjoyed the attention. With hindsight I start to feel the claustrophobia I felt two years later, when we split up, straight away.

It was never going to work. Mr M was too happy to please me – he agreed with everything I said and did everything I asked. When we went shopping he followed me around carrying my bags. I won every argument. It might sound great but that relationship made me arrogant – I was never put in my place. It made me mean – I used to pick a fight just to try to get a rise out of him. And it made me miserable –what 20 year old wants to spend their Friday night in playing house and watching Gardener’s World when she could be out with her friends?

For those two years Mr Jones and I were just friends. We shared a house together, argued about the heating and the state of the kitchen floor (I say argued – but what I mean is I got cross and everyone else laughed and shrugged and ignored my carefully drawn up cleaning rota). We went on double dates, we flirted (harmlessly) and on rare nights when the two of us were without our partners and tipsy on Snake Bite (Mr Jones) and Lime Vodka Slush (me) we discussed the shortcomings of our relationships.

I always had a good time when I was with Mr Jones. We shared a sarcastic sense of humour and spent our time tearing each other down. Miss B and Mr M hated Chinese and Indian – so they shared chips while we ate curry.

But never in all this did I think about Mr Jones being anything more than a friend – except in my dreams - literally. In the first semester in my first year I had a dream. I can still remember it vividly. I was running down corridor after corridor, the wind catching my hair and my skirt (odd because I never wore anything other than jeans) clinging to my legs as I ran. I was being pursued and was trying desperately to get away from Mr Jones who was trying to stop me with a fateful kiss. I woke up feeling bemused, but with a smile on my face. It wasn’t until New Years Eve 2000 that that kiss became a reality.