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2 September 2008updated 11 Sep 2021 6:37pm

Speed dating

It occurred to me my personal equivalent of speed dating is, in fact, the hotel fire scare. In many

By New Statesman

I am writing this on a train – to be precise, the train that I had to buy a ticket for when it turned out that the train I had a ticket for didn’t exist as a result of obscure and perhaps satanic influences – or simply because it’s a British train and therefore one small, but highly effective, part of a multi-layered plan to make travelling by public transport impossible.

So I spent two hours of this afternoon huddled in a hot corner of Kings Cross, eking out a soda water and lime and waiting to climb aboard what these days constitutes my office. No one phones me on trains, no one faxes me, no one can email me (because the advertised wi fi doesn’t work) I can drink cups of appalling and vaguely stimulating milky tea (my intolerance to both caffeine and dairy making this a heart-racing and phlegmy thrill) I cannot distract myself with household chores, or minor acts of self-harm (except for the tea) and I can actually get some work done.

The only story I’ve ever had accepted by the New Yorker was written on a train, the short story I am currently writing is being written on a train, this is being written on a train – dear God, I had exactly one day to deal with my washing, ironing and post after returning from the Fringe and then I was off again – on a train – and now I’m heading back – on a train. Before being off some more. I may never find out what’s in my own freezer again. If I had enough time, I might find it alarming that spending a month surrounded by showpersons, comics and diseases while performing at least once a day constituted a restful burst of sanity and a chance to bond and chat with people I hadn’t made up earlier out of my head.

The lunacy of my current existence was recently brought home to me when I considered speed dating. Not as a thing I would have to be drugged, handcuffed and forced to take part in at gunpoint – just as a concept.

My innate shyness, alarming sense of humour, twitches and ridiculously high boredom threshold effectively prevent me from dating, even at a moderate pace, and should I suffer a personality-transforming head injury that makes me want to sit at a table opposite a succession of sad-eyed Brians and Dereks, my being semi-permanently on a train would prove a grave obstacle to nervous glances and whatever “small talk” might turn out to be.

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It occurred to me the other night that my personal equivalent is, in fact, the hotel fire scare. In many ways, piling into a damp car park at 3am with a load of strangers is an ideal way to meet new chums. There you are, united by adversity, with plenty of amusing grumbles to share and ample opportunity to check out the night attire of potential mates – will you nod enticingly to the flannel pyjamas and anorak, or the bare feet, jeans and pullover, or go for the mysteriously rakish overcoat and ankle boot combination?

Being more that a little paranoid, I’m comforted by knowing how someone will react in a crisis. And, being a night owl, I do tend to shine in the small hours – especially if I’m the only woman present who doesn’t look as if she’s been regurgitated by a killer whale – even more especially if I happen to be in a sharp suit and my lucky shoes. Not that my state of enviable readiness would in any way suggest that I might have left some smouldering leaves in a vestibule for some reason and forgotten to smother them with sand.

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