Booze, love, men and trying not to sound like a twat

The trouble with being in love is that movies have clichéd the emotion, and every expression of it, to the point of absurdity making any serious conversation an experiment in cringe making. So to talk about it you really only have several choices.

First you can ignore the problem entirely and end up talking like an over sincere early eighties Tom Cruise movie. This is problematic because serious moments can be ruined by the distraction of your partner wondering where she heard that before, eyebrows knit as your darlings eyes glaze as they stare at you, breathlessly they whisper.
“Was that in Cocktail or Top Gun, you know, the one in the cars?”
“Days of Thunder?”
“YES! That’s it; anyway, you love me or something?”

The second option is verbally dancing round the clichés. Of course you end up talking either like a bumbling Hugh Grant or a stuttering retard as you grope for the right word, and then its not guaranteed that you will FIND the right word, remember that: inclination, obsession and infatuation can all be synonyms for love but can mean wildly different, argument causing, things. I imagine all over the western world they’re men banging on bedroom doors shouting.
“Darling let me in please, it was a syntax error!”

Thirdly you can both acknowledge the cheesy lines by including them in air quotes, but this spoils the mood so much you might as well vomit on the table in front of you and draw “I heart you” in the mess, and, of course, there is the scientific fact that 97% of people that use air quotes are insufferable wankers (its science people, there’s no arguing with science)

I’m on my way to see one of my best friends, and one of the plethora of people I have managed to piss off in the pursuit of love. The stations rush past; Hinckley, Naurlbourgh, South Wigston and The Shire – it seems to get to Leicester you have to pass through middle earth first. Talking about love is doubly hard for men, recognising that you have any other emotion other than anger is like rolling on your back and bearing your throat. Luckily the exception to this rule is through the medium of booze, where, not only is it allowed, but actively encouraged to have the broadest spectrum of emotions – from love to hate to disgust to sympathy to despair and back again in the space of a minute and quite often over a bag of crisps. Again whatever problem that life throws at me, is answered by drink.

“It all comes out in the wash” is the received wisdom from our grandparents, which is good advice borne of years experience and worth ignoring the fact that most of that generation spend there days weeing themselves and watching Countdown.