A weekend in need of cleaning

Last weekend I went to Whitby for a dirty weekend. Rough Stuff observed beforehand that the phrase "a dirty weekend" does not translate into any other language; that our friends in Europe would interpret our break from the city as a weekend in need of cleaning. He may be right literally speaking, but it turns out that it is Girl on a Barge who needs a good rinsing clean of the questions floating round in her emotional maze of a brain.

The weekend itself turned out to be anything but dirrrrty. Despite the torrential rain that had me anxiously checking the forecast for four days before our trip, the sunlight was radiant from the moment we got up and it stayed with us throughout the three hour car drive. On arrival at our blissful seaside abode, we began to explore. Walking along piers, climbing across cliff surfaces (particularly rewarding in ballet pumps and a sparkly top) and sharing scampi in many a seaside cafe made for a rather innocent yet extraordinarily intimate weekend. He was honest with me about The Ex (who rang him while we were away. What is it with ex-girlfriends wanting to be "friends" as soon as their exes are happy again?). He has told me more about his past than I will ever be prepared to tell him about mine. He bought me a flashing keyring with my name on that is guaranteed to last for ten years without changing the battery (how DO they do that?)

So why did the questions continue to rain down on me?

• There are the completely unjustified questions such as When Will He Hurt Me?


• There's the plain stoopid questions which focus on something completely insignificant which I manage to blow out of all proportion. These tend to start with an assumption based on a fact. For example, Rough Stuff is in a band. Rough Stuff is fit. So When Will He Cheat On Me? (this is particularly unfair because - do I dare immortalise these words in print - I trust him implicitly to never cheat on me


• Then there's the downright inexcusable questions which centre around whether he too will change into a knife-wielding psycho like an ex of mine who would hold a knife to my neck if the kettle "boiled too noisily"

And then, something altered. The shift in me was so small that I barely knew it had happened, and yet it couldn't be ignored. Sitting in the corner of a traditional tea-room sharing a cream tea and a coke float, I felt it click. Pachelbel's Canon, a piece of music that over the years has sewn itself into the fabric sleeve of the soundtrack of my life, was playing softly in the background. Rough Stuff was slurping the remaining ice cream out of his coke float. It was an enchanting moment. Click. It's time to remove the quotation marks encasing the word boyfriend, it's time to stop being hung up about events goneby. We're a blank canvass, we are delightfully new.

We are clean.

Is it better to receive?

Last week three of the girls in the office where I work received flowers from members of the opposite sex. It transpired quickly that they were being wooed by ex-boyfriends who had serendipitously decided to send flowers in the same week. One bunch came with a helium balloon which floated above her desk declaring "Love" in its own unique shiny foiled way. One bouquet - the most beautiful lilies I ever did smell - was tied up with ribbons and held a card with sentimental prose from an ex-lover.

Today I myself have been wooed. It has been building for a while - he has chatted to me more and more at my desk, smiled at me in the corridor and last week he told me that he had a gift for me. Despite my protests of having a boyfriend*, he brought the gift in for me today. A box of 20 fags. Benson and Hedges to be exact.

My friends' gifts were wrapped in vibrant paper and pretty bows. Mine came with a label telling me that I was risking ageing of the skin and infertility. Still, I have displayed them proudly on my desk the way one would a vase.

* Please note the distinct lack of quotation marks when referring to the boyfriend. It's amazing what a plate of scampi and a coke float can do for the soul. But more on that tomorrow. For now I have a box of cigarettes to smoke whilst I plan how to let Mr Loverman down gently.

Bums on seats

This may be a somewhat biased stance given the fact that I work for an arts organisation based in Manchester city centre, but to me Manchester is the cultural heartbeat of the UK. Whether you are an apathetic arts attender whose annual arts experience hinges on the latest Corrie dropout starring in the Opera House panto, or a budding creative type searching for a platform from which to bear your inspired soul this city has something to offer you.

One of the many perks for those of us fortunate enough to be working in the industry is that our diaries are crammed full of (often unused) invitations to press nights, openings, private views and previews. We are drowning in a canal of social engagements issued by marketing managers in the vain attempt that their event will be so spectacular that we will do nothing else but talk about it to whoever we meet for the next month. In reality, this is simply not the case for the vast majority of us who take our positions for granted. More often than not we decide not to attend at the last moment, throwing caution to the wind and our complimentary tickets in the bin as we head off to The Bayhorse for a quick pint and then a chippy tea.

Isn't it time to rethink who we invite to press night? We are living in a city that includes some of the most deprived areas of the country. Arts organisations, or Arts Council England North West at the very least, play at jargon tourettes: community engagement, audience development, increasing participation from "BME's" (the most despicable term I have the misfortune to work with).

If we must cheapen participation in the arts by dissolving it down to "bums on seats", can't we at least be a little more intelligent (and do I dare say it, but CREATIVE) about whom those bums belong to?

Three Little Words

Attracting chaos and hilarity is something I do with relative ease, and for the most part I enjoy it. Friends can rely on me to regale them with stories of birds hanging themselves from my balcony, ceilings falling in, The Actor force-feeding Herbert cheese and other such nonsense that seems to hurtle my way on a daily basis. However it would be rather pleasurable to occasionally enjoy life's finer moments without an attached farce. No such luck. After meeting my friends tonight for the first time, and enjoying a rather fine evening at the Royal Exchange Theatre to watch Henry V, Rough Stuff provided the slapstick.

After tenderly gazing into my eyes, Rough Stuff announced that he was "gonna just say it."

"Oh Christ," I thought. The concussed conversation outside Mojo's about falling in love minutes after I had literally fallen several feet came flooding back to me.

Rough Stuff: "I love you."

I looked at him intently, then looked away, and then back at him. In my mind, this flirtatious eye dance lasted a mere nano-second but by the time I looked back at him his face had crumpled. Before I had the chance to respond, Rough Stuff did his best:

"Well I don't love you, but I could love you someday. But not now. Obviously. No, I don't love you at all. Forget I said anything."

He high-jumped over the back of The Circle Club sofa we were sitting on and disappeared off into the toilets for at least twenty minutes, leaving me to wonder whether I should feel relieved or rejected. Over the years I have been subjected to every kind of line from men - some romantic, some downright dirty. Never has a man told me he loved me and then retracted it with immediate effect. He may as well have issued a press release with an embargo of "until further notice."

After twenty minutes he reappeared looking like he had been shot. I allowed him to ramble on for a further twenty minutes before announcing "Look, I love you too."

"Thank fuck for that" he sighed as he visibly crumpled in relief, and squeezed me so hard that the under wiring of my bra popped out of its cotton cover.

And they say romance is dead.

Get Rich, Get Shoes Quick

It may be somewhat naive, but I have always prided myself on the fact that I am not a frugal person. For instance, being economical with the truth has never appealed.

Mam - "Does this make my bum look big?"

Me (innocent four year old) - "Nope, your bum is just big."

Playing it safe equals not playing at all. Perhaps that's why I married at 20, divorced at 25, paid £400 for a tortoise when I was struggling to make the rent. Mostly I think my life is richer for it. If only I could say the same for my bank account.

When my fellow students were holidaying at V Festival, I was honeymooning in Barbados. While friends who earn thousands of pounds more than me are wondering if they should take another tenner out for a dirty burger on the way home, I'm slapping the credit card down and ordering champagne all around. Not any more. Yesterday I issued myself with the ultimate commination - if I don't save a percentage of my income each month I'm not allowed to buy shoes. The responsibility on my shoulders is immense - if I'm not careful I could single handedly destroy Top Shop Shoes. My hands are shaking nervously as I type. There is nothing else for it. I have to find lucrative ways to earn more money and quickly. My Get Rich, Get Shoes Quick Plan is shaping up reasonably well.

Five weeks ago I lay mine and Herbert's home wide open when I added my name to the Royal Exchange Theatre's digs list. Less than a week later The Actor moved in. Home has quite simply not been the same since.

I've also decided to wrap my car. Unfortunately this does not involve wrapping it up in shiny paper and giving it back to the finance company with a small but perfectly formed bow and gift tag reading: "With love, you robbing rascals." Instead, I have applied to have my car wrapped by an advertising company. For a whole twelve months I could be driving around Manchester in the form of a one woman marketing campaign, promoting anything from Stella Artois to Durex. Oh dear. The things I will do for shoes never fail to astound me.

Falling Down

Last week's impulse to run back to the staff stairs in Mojo's and hide from the world turned out to be misguided, foolish and potentially perilous. I will not, under any circumstances risk life and limb by going up to the staff staircase ever again. Not even for the Mary Poppins-esque view of Manchester rooftops that impressed me so much the first time.

I blame the entire episode on Rough Stuff. He texted me on Saturday evening to tell me he was in a beer garden in Salford with the lads. Would I like to meet his social family, he asked quite casually, with no apparent notion of the turmoil he was inflicting upon me. What should I wear? What if they didn't like me? Does this mean he's serious about me? How serious is serious? Should I be concerned that he may be getting a bit too heavy? But hang on. Weren't we supposed to be going to the cinema? Does the idea of spending an evening alone with me repel him already? Oh God, he's gone off me and he's using his friends as a shield to resist my advances?

So of course I went along. I needn't have worried - Rough Stuff's friends are almost as genial and as engaging as he is, and they made me feel as though I had known them for much longer than a couple of hours. The evening was going well so we decided to move on to Mojo's, at which point I realised it was exactly one month since the first night Rough Stuff and I had got together. There was nothing else for it - as soon as we arrived we raced upstairs, tried the door... perfect! It was the first opportunity I had had all evening to be alone with him, so I wasn't going to waste any time in not kissing him.

Unfortunately it didn't take long for a member of staff to disturb us. She was less than impressed, so we mumbled an apology and headed for the door. Never one to let the opportunity of turning an embarrassing situation into a complete state of mortification and humiliation, I turned back to let her know that it was our one month anniversary and the staff stairs were of utmost importance in the blossoming of our relationship. However by this point in the evening I was on the slippery slope otherwise known as JD and coke, and multi-tasking was becoming more arduous. Forgetting that I was wearing flat shoes (they will be the death of me) I misjudged the step.

Proceedings become somewhat sketchy at this point. I can remember plummeting through the air with my head directly in line with the cigarette machine. I can just about recall having a premonition of how embarrassed I was about to become when I hit the floor. And then nothing. The next thing I remember is lying on my back with Rough Stuff holding my head and two members of staff hovering over me calculating how this was going to hold up in court.

Fortunately I walked away from the incident with little more than a bruised arse and a squiffy air of concussion. Feeling a little shaky, we went outside for some fresh air (i.e lots of fags - after hitting my head so hard on the fag machine that I momentarily passed out, I was insulted to have to pay £5.8o for 16 cigarettes from the sturdy little bastard). With a face brimming with care and concern, Rough Stuff took my hand in his and without the slightest trace of irony whispered:

"I'm finding it difficult to stop myself from falling for you."

With Mojo's staff stairs firmly blacklisted, I'm running out of places to hide.