HOW WOULD YOU SPEND YOUR FINAL 100 DAYS OF BEING SINGLE?

This is the 100^th blog post of the Quack!

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Skip introduction at 2:46.

So, picture this,

You’re in the supermarket and are as single as a belly button. You start your weekly food shop for one…Frozen peas…Frozen berries… Walnuts…Pita bread…2 Avocados…5 Bananas…5 Satsumas…you reach for the marmite and touch a hand. You look up, and the most attractive creature you’ve ever seen is also reaching for the same British savoury spread.

Thunder!

Butterflies!

…And you are never single again.

Here is the golden question. If you knew you were going to meet the love of your life 100 days from now, how would you spend your final 100 days as a single person?

The need to travel came out on top of my research. (That is, me asking my board of singleton friends). There is something about a looming relationship that makes us all want to flee the country on solo trips. I had originally thought that this was because whilst you’re single you have nobody to miss when you’re travelling…but I soon discovered it was more about sex.

When I put the question to Canadian Trevor, he said he wanted to go travelling.

I said, “Wouldn’t you just want to shag about?”

He said, “Wait, what? What do you think I’m travelling for?”

The girls were no better. When I asked my friend El, she had a plan to go to Monaco to hunt down men in hotels and casinos.

So…not so much about missing your loved one then.

The worst thing about being single is the loneliness. Sometimes on a Friday night, you can’t help to think that there are eight billion people on this planet, and not one of them wants to sit with you on your sofa.

If a penguin is waddling alone in an Attenborough documentary, then we would all be crying for that penguin, wishing another penguin would just give it a chance.

“The colony of penguins have rejected this female penguin, so she has to migrate alone.”

However, if you knew your loneliness had a 100-day limit, you would relish in your alone time.

I would enjoy my morning Swiftie showers* without worrying I was waking up my boyfriend. And I would spend the rest of my evenings alone, rewinding and replaying the part where Marlon Brando puts on his t-shirt in A Streetcar Named Desire….

* Swifty Shower – Showering whilst listening to your favourite Taylor Swift playlist.

All in all, I would appreciate having the freedom to spend my time however I choose without guilt or disturbance.

Also, last thing on this point, a lonely weekend is FAR better than a weekend with a partner’s family who is obsessed with playing Monopoly – a game which loses all fun, as soon as you have bagsied the west highland terrier and called it a funny name.

A big part of being single is trying not to be single, and with that comes dating. Dating can be awful; the mental whiplash between hope and disappointment can leave you paralysed on your sofa, crying to Marlon Brando films all weekend.

On the other (ringless) hand, having the freedom to date can be pretty great.

For one thing, it’s heart-warming when you receive an animated rose on your phone, telling you that an account man named Josh believes you’re the hottest girl he’s seen… in the last 24 hours.

Oh, that’s nice, you think, and then go back to plucking your toe hair.

Your friends, who are happily-boringly secure in a relationship, need you to entertain them with your dating antics. It’s like they’re watching you as you fight it out in the Colosseum, cheering you on one minute, covering their eyes the next. You open your Hinge in their company, and you suddenly hear them breathing over your shoulder.

“Oh, look he’s talking to you, Mary! What’s he saying?” asked smug Emily from under her boyfriend’s arm.

“He’s just answering my biscuit question, saying he’d be a jammy dodger.”

Emily leaned in further “So, tell me. Why did you match with him, and not the other guy?” she asked, as if trying to work out the rules of the game.

“Because this guy is a snack, plus I like the way he uses brackets,” I said.

“Oh, look he wants to take you on a date.” Emily jumped, (getting very excited because she hadn’t quite grasped the easy-come-easy-go rules that the apps have created). “This could be the one Mary.”

Maybe Emily, maybe not.

Of course, there is this warm feeling of ‘what it all could be’ before a date, something only single people have the licence to feel. But if it doesn’t turn into DEATH DO US PART, then at least you had the opportunity of crossing paths with somebody that you would have never known existed otherwise.

I’ve been told some brilliant stories that I would have never heard. And spotted an endearing quirk that distinguished that person from anyone else I had ever met. In fact, I don’t regret any date.

But as it goes….

We display a snippet of our lives for three hours, the bill gets paid, and we go our separate ways into the world.….

(And this is when Attenborough pipes up again).

“The two penguins waddle away from each other, choosing a single life, than one together. And so, the female penguin can continue her Swiftie Showers in peace.”