Ah, the Antipodean Telephone Engineer. OK. Are you sitting comfortably?
Long, long ago on a continent far far away...
It was in the time before the internet, mobile phones, texting, sexting, dick pics and DEFINITELY before Mumsnet (we had to make do with Cosmopolitan - this is important)
Truly, it was the best of times and the worst of times.
I was working in the Antipodes. My place of work was having a massive and long-overdue upgrade to its telephone system. Antipodean Telephone Engineers (ATEs) were everywhere for weeks.
One particular ATE caught my eye and it was lust at first sight. To this day, I don't know why. He was most definitely not my usual type (and, to be fair, in those days I was quite spoiled for choice) It might have been the way he would climb into massive holes in the ceiling to footle about in the roof space. It might have been the confident way he manfully handled massive reels of cable. It might have been that I'd just changed my pill and my hormones were rampaging all over the place. Who knows?
Whatever, I was obsessed. I could think of nothing else. We would pass in the corridors and he'd give a lop-sided half-smile as I sashayed past with an extra swing to my hips. Nothing more, despite all my alluringness. We never exchanged a word.
I couldn't discuss it with my friends, who would have screamed with laughter, so I consulted the pages of Cosmopolitan, which told me that women of the 20th Century were confident, capable, could do anything men could. Why, they could even ask men out, instead of waiting to be asked! And then I read the fateful words:
"Try passing him a note with your phone number on it. He will be thrilled and flattered".
And so the next day, I set forth with a note in my uniform pocket with my phone number, name, and asking him to call if he'd like to go for a drink sometime.
Must have passed him eleventy-billion times before I somehow managed to say "I've got something for you", thrust the note at him and rushed off scarlet-faced.
I immediately thought "What have I done? What have I done?" and it was as if a spell had lifted. I went off him straight away. Cringed with embarrassment.
That evening he called. He was thrilled and flattered, as predicted by Cosmopolitan. He also had a squeaky little voice. For some reason I agreed to meet him for a drink. It. Was. Awful. Squeaky-voiced, conversational skills of a dead platypus and he turned up in his dirty ATE overalls. He also clearly thought he was on a promise. He was also married. I made my excuses and left, much to his bewilderment.
I was so mortified that I invented a family emergency back home in the UK. Took all my annual leave allocation and two weeks unpaid leave on top of that. Flew home for six weeks. Put flight on credit card. Took ages to pay off.
When I went back the telephone engineers had all gone. I never told anyone about it in real life.*
Yet, like some sort of Ancient Mariner, I am forced to roam the Interwebs warning women to heed my tale of woe. I wear an old-fashioned telephone around my neck, slung on a length of cable, to remind me of my youthful folly.
THE END
*Shortly afterwards I met the Argentinian Paramedic