Deviating away, temporarily, from the Copper and Cuffs, an internet forum caught my eye last night. On it, the original poster was explaining a tale of a rather lack-lustre pursuant performance from A Bloke.

'But I've texted him,' she'd say, 'and got back "Hey babes!" What could that possibly mean?'

The thread ran on for far too much bandwidth and on each post, the (mainly) female cyber-pals would go

'That means he really likes you! Now, at 4.45pm exactly, you've got to pretend you've got another bloke on the scene to pique this other guy's interest further! Then, make your way down Oxford Street with half a lemon in your pocket - I read this in Cosmo, it must be true - and......'

or

'Right! Now, you've got to completely ignore him! DON'T reply to his e-mails. DON'T reply to his texts. Maybe accidentally let a mutual friend know you've got your eye on someone else and can be found at the STD clinics on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And finally, key his car, steal his ID and get drunk. He'll realise then that you're The One!'

(blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah......)


Since when did women become so dumb? Just what happened to us? Since when did we decide that the only possible way that we could get the truth out of a guy would be to nick an Enigma machine, wait for a full moon and with a snippet of his hair for good luck, and his last text held in your palm, somehow extrapolate the truth whilst wolves howl around you and Tim Burton spikes your hair up into a punky mess....?

Suddenly modern dating etiquette would have it that all men are speaking Urdu through a funnel in an underwater shed. But in no other walk of life do we afford ourselves this same luxury of ambiguity.

Girl asks bloke: What do you want to drink?
Bloke tells girl: A pint of lager
Girl rushes to the toilets to text her best mate - 'He's ordered a lager! Surely he means a whisky? What's going on?'
Bloke chats up barmaid. Enjoys lager. Gets earful from girlfriend.

I'm a woman and don't like to do my fellow females a grand disservice, but it's time to throw away the Linguaphone and interpretative software and take a 'no' as meaning just that.....