small worlds and big men

It’s a small world. But some people are take up more room in it than others. For example, a guy I used to hang out with called Matt Skelton. 6ft5 of prime heavyweight championship Thai boxer who has since gone into Queensbury rules (normal boxing) and was set to fight, amongst others, Audley Harrison. (yes I know you will google him you nosey sods). Because we even went on a date or two, but in the third round I rang the bell. Nice enough chap though, although he did break an unnerving amount of furniture just by sitting on it.

I remember the first time I met him I’d started a new Thai boxing gym. My initiation (because I had come from rival gym) consisted of me standing in the ring and getting the crap kicked out of me by a variety of professional fighters, just to see if I’d fold. I didn’t. And the last guy on their list to try and freak me out was Matt. I weighed six and a half stone (41 kg), he weighed 19. So I ran at him with all my might and tried to grab his neck and get him into a grapple, then sort of hung there like a fairy necklace for several minutes before he said to our trainer: ‘Nigel…. Get her out the ring, I can’t do it mate.’ Praise the Lord for that. And thus a friendship was born.

Well now it seems that he is coming to fight in Istanbul and I have been asked by my old newspaper to cover the match. Unfortunately it coincides with the time my mum is here so I’m not sure I can. But it would have been priceless to see the look on his face when I sauntered up with a notepad.

I’ve been thinking a lot about old boyfriends. Actually mostly I have just been doing memory exercises, and since I have probably had more failed relationships than there are Turkish verbs and it seemed like the bigger challenge to try and remember them all.

In amongst my repotoire I can count:

The one who fathered a child while we were dating but hoped that my maths would be so bad I wouldn’t be able to count back for 9 months. (he nearly got away with it too)
The one who turned gay
The psycho
The stalker
The desperate to get married guy (no matter to whom)
The serial cheat (actually that category covers some of the above)
The crushing bore
And the one that got away whilst I was too drunk to notice.

It all sounds rather hopeless, until you count the number of years I have actually been single because of the number of eejits I have actually turned down. Then you realise that I actually got off lightly – I could have just met the one and stayed with him! Instead I have managed to weave all of the rejected threads into the rich tapestry you see today (errrr.....).

Married men are the worst. It always annoys me when the press, and society alike, paint a terrible picture of ‘the other woman’. Like she deliberatly set out to wreck a home, and poor defenceless hubbie was so wooed by the evil bint, that he lost leave of all his senses. In nearly all cases when you finally find out a man is married, he claims it is the first time he has ever done it…. And inevitably you always meet a random girl in a pub afterwards who thought she was his only affair too.

Double standards never cease to amaze me. I sort of find myself quite often agreeing with uber-femministic Germaine Greer columns in the Guardian, which is sort of scary. It may not be long before I start burning my bras and insulting chaps who hold doors open for me.

Why am I rambling on anyway? Well its that time of year when yet another round of friends is orf getting hitched. Many more are breeding and spawning. Rutting season. And I’ve been looking around at Turkish men who are very cute, but having spoken to many expat women, I have realised may just not be culturally compatible. Or maybe its because expat women are a certain breed. We are usually fiercely independent, have seen enough crap to have a clear idea of what we can and can’t tolerate, and usually (having lived independantly for so long) find it absolutely impossible to deal with a man who leaves used tea bags in the sink and doesn’t shut the fridge door properly.

This does not go down well with the male species who generally like to feel at least a little bit needed. But after being told by a former Serbian special forces soldier once that I was ‘too cold and independent’ (wtf!?) I have been experimenting with my feminine side. Sometimes I pretend that I can’t open bottles or assemble Ikea furniture, and by crikey it seems to work! Men’s chests go all puffy when you ask them to do stuff. Who knew? The goddamn times I have put my back out lugging furniture and suitcases up 6 flights of stairs by myself because I didn't think any guy would really want to help me.

The other thing I noticed last week, after a couple of guys from my department started using the office gym, is that they were not overly impressed that I was lifting heavier weights than them – especially now that I only weigh 50kg. In fact I understood (unbeknownst to them) that they were actually giving a rather incredulous commentary on how fast I was running on the machine to the rest of the gym. I may well be a source of embaressment in a male dominated environment. Which pisses me off because I even try to wear lipstick sometimes these days (although to be honest it usually ends up on my chin and my teeth which is a grisly sight to behold).

I try not to tell guys that I am a boxer or that I can probably lift heavier weights than them. I have even tried holding children in public without shaking or dropping them (well it worked for Tony Blair). Strangely kids seem to like me (either that or they are intelligent enough to spot a fake and are pissing themselves laughing).


And so I can conclude that being a strong woman and managing to be attractive only works if you are Angelina Jolie, who stole Brad Pitt from that chick in the frightfully twee American sitcom ‘Friends’. Hussy. It also got me thinking that the only guys who are not scared of me, tend to be British. So as much as it pains me, there may well be a time I have to return to that soggy, miserable, expensive island. On the bright side, with British lasses being more on the portly side, I wouldn’t have to worry about going to the gym and staying in shape any more. Although being fit enough to outrun them when I find out I've been unwittingly dating their lying scumbag of a husband might be a wise idea.



By the way, if any of you are reading this, do feel free to comment. Seems awfully quiet on this side of Venus.