I was back in Newman St for the second time in two days, at a production company (Talkback) a couple of doors away from where we'd done the podcast, but it was too early for lunch so I walked past Abokado. Weirdly once I'd got to that part of the road yesterday I had assumed that we must be recording there and had gone to reception, only to find out that I was in the wrong place. The receptionist did not seem to recognise me as the idiot from yesterday though.
You go to Newman St twice in your career, once on the way up and once on the way down. Still yesterday was an amazing high. I had teryaki chicken noodles. So I don't mind that I'm heading back to the gutter where I belong.
On the way in I had been sitting opposite a couple of women in their late twenties. One of them was beaming and glowing and excitedly relating the details of what sounded like a date.
"Then," she said, "He took me to an ice rink. He'd hired the whole thing out."
"Just for you!" exclaimed her incredulous friend.
"Yes," the happy woman tweeted, "Only for an hour, from 11pm. But it was just us there. And the ice was strewn with roses. And then he proposed to me."
Wow, what a geezer. He's set the bar pretty high for the rest of us. Ice rinks and roses. And the tactic had worked. The woman looked like she couldn't possibly be more content, her friend was green with envy and pink with admiration - making her look a bit like Mr Blobby. And I looked down at her hand and saw a bit diamond ring on (what I imagine was) her engagement finger. All the expense and the organisation and the dead flowers had done the job. Who could resist that? No one. Ice rinks and roses. That's the answer to the question, "What do women want?"
All of them.
That and acts of extreme profligacy in their honour.
But I slightly resented this perfect man. Not only because he'd turned an ice rink - a place I usually associate with humiliation, gangs of bored kids intent on random acts of violence - into an arena of romance. But how are the rest of us men meant to compete with that? If I ever get engaged (which I don't think will ever happen) I'd just planned to go down the park with a plastic bag with six cans of lager, get my potential fiance pissed and then say, "How about it?"
But she'll be all like, "I heard about a bloke who'd hired out a whole ice rink and put flowers on it... why couldn't you think of something like that?"
"All right I will," I'd say, "Though I have to say I will be slightly concerned about the gangs of marauding kids who we'll be turfing out in order to bring about this money wasting and pointless act."
"No, you can't do exactly that," she'll say, "Someone else has already done that. You can't just do the same thing. You have to come up with your own one."
"Why?"
"So it'll be special."
"Can I just put different flowers on the ice?"
"No, it has to be a different place."
"Can it be the same kind of flowers?"
"Yes obviously."
"Why? Why do I have to think up my own location but don't have to think up different flowers?"
"It's obvious why."
"OK, I'll hire out a helter skelter, just for us to use for an hour and then put all roses down the slidy bit. And then when we have slid to the bottom on our door mats I'll get an engagement ring out of a toffee apple...."
"That's not as good. Plus you might get hurt by the rose thorns as you went over them. You'd at least crush them."
"All right, it can be some water slides at a swimming pool. That I have kicked all the other people out of. And the ring is hidden in an arm band I'll be wearing."
"It's still too similar to the ice rink."
"No, it's not. Water Slides are way more fun. Plus we'll be in our swimming cossies so we can have a celebratory shag much more easily. You couldn't do that on ice. You'd get burned by it. Plus skates take ages to get off."
"I won't be having sex with you the minute after we're engaged."
"Yeah and then once the ring's on your finger the whole sex thing will dry up completely, hey?"
"You know it doesn't matter if take me to a crystal palace that you've built especially for the occasion on Mars. I am not ever going to marry you."
"And if I did that you'd just say I'd copied Doctor Manhattan anyway."
"That's the second time you've mentioned him in a week. What's with you and Doctor Manhattan?"
"Nothing, I've just reread "Watchmen" and he is the character I most identify with."
"You are more like Rorschach, except more socially awkward."
"Come on you have to marry me. I'll never find another woman capable of making jokes based on graphic novels."
"No you won't. Including me. I am a fantasy creation of your imagination and even I don't want to marry you."
Sorry got a bit carried away there.
But the bloke who thought up the ice rink proposal is now set for life. You should have seen the look on this woman's face. He'd have to kill five children to get her not to like him. She'd forgive the first four senseless child slaughters. All thanks to the fucking ice rink.
And if at any point in their marriage she is pissed off with him he can just say "Remember the ice rink" and she'll be placated and back down.
I hate that ice rink and roses guy. He's ruined it for the rest of us. Ruined it.
