Monday Mucky Muck

The weather in London today is foreboding, dark, and intermittently rainy with lots of looming dark clouds, creating the feeling of being surrounded by ominous-looking mafia bosses with slightly runny noses.

I have period pain, which is making want to cry and kill people alternately. I have opted for the sit very still and do neither option, which seems to be working so far.

I only have four more Monday-Morning-At-Works to bear before I stop for a while. This is keeping my chin up and my upper lip stiff.

On Saturday I went to watch Tom playing rugby. I have never really been able to understand people volunteering to play team-sports. I have never felt so overwhelmed by the potential for humiliation as I have whilst on a sports field, that sense of nervousness and terror is unmatched by any other prospect. I'm not unfit, I enjoy exercising when I get around to it, but the idea of someone throwing me a ball and expecting me to do something with it makes me want to run for the nearest table and crouch beneath it, and possibly begin rocking back and forth reciting some kind of calming mantra. Other people actually wanting to do it is a totally alien and utterly baffling concept for me, and getting up on a Saturday morning for it when you could be hanging around in bed is about as appealing as licking the testicles of an unwashed donkey.

As we got off the train and began walking towards the Hackney Marshes I began to feel slightly terrified, as if someone was going to mistake me for a sporting-type, shove some plimsolls on my feet and frogmarch me over to a rounders game. (I was in the rounders team in primary school for half a day before being forcibly ousted in the middle of an inter-school tournament, and I do not care to repeat the experience.)
I explained to Tom that I was having issues understanding the desire to go and be subjected to such levels of torture of a weekend. After thinking for a bit he likened it to the fact that I have been known to spend quite a large portion of my spare time hanging around with musical theatre types stepping enthusiastically to the side and back again and singing like I really really meant it, and that, perhaps, to other people that would be tantamount to having their toenails pulled out and fed to them, and I started to understand.

Sometimes people say that they are scared of going to the theatre or to stand up comedy in case they are suddenly and at random selected to be pulled up on stage and made to perform, and this is how I feel whilst being near sporty people. So, nervously I sat at the side of the pitch and watched the boys do sport. Shockingly, I soon grew not to mind this activity so much. They warmed up, Tom practised some kicking, they did some funny walking and jogging and stuff. They swore a lot and rolled in the mud seeming to be attempting to shake the metrosexual cloaks they are forced to wear during the week and reveal themselves as Real Men, Who Never Use Cleanser And Are All Hairy.

When the game began I found myself really getting into it, watching as they threw themselves places and shouted a lot. I didn't have the courage to stand up, as I was the only one on the sidelines, but I did start to think that it looked like quite a lot of fun. If only, I speculated, there weren't rules to follow. If all I had to do was run around and get muddy and throw myself places I'm sure I could do very well at this game. Shame.

As luck would have it, Tom was the one who had to kick the ball over the white posts (converting a... try?) which made it easier to identify when he did something I should clap prettily at. Another stroke of luck is that he is quite good at doing this, so I had more opportunity to clap prettily than I did to smile commiseratingly but supportively.

Then some other people came along, at which point I, the queen of any social situation involving the opportunity to ponce other people's beer, ponced some beer from them and they explained some of the rules. "My boyfriend's the kicker!" I announced, proudly, sipping my Ponced Beer. I think at that point he was being trodden on, but I didn't let that get me down. The game had really started to look up for me.

Anyway, they won, and I got some beer, and was standing up cheering by the end of the match with perfect strangers. Strangers who give beer, though, which are the very best kind of strangers.

At one point the ball touched my leg, which made me fearful that they were going to say, well, you've touched it now, you must throw it. We will all look at you during this throwing, and then we will laugh derisively. They didn't, though, I just froze until someone came to pick it up. This seemed to be alright.

It is Monday afternoon, my fifth last one at work. At this work, anyway. I am going to a birthday meal tonight, even though it is not anywhere near my birthday. I am determined not to drink, although I do know myself, and my own self-inflicted peer pressure is so much worse than any that my actual peers might throw at me. I will report tomorrow from the murky depths of a hangover, no doubt.

I am going to go and pep talk myself into refusing wine.