Seven months in to London living and it turns out that full time employment is rather time consuming – I know the clue’s in the title but it’s only when you start working that you realise just how much time you had as a student. Suddenly, I was hit with not only work-based commitments, but social ones as well. The lack of twenty-something year olds in Cumbria had meant that other than one or two exceptions a week, my schedule was largely free to go on as many disastrous dates as I pleased and spend endless hours in the bath sifting through my various vacuous cyber conversations.
Suddenly my diary was filled with drinks, dinners, drinks, theatre trips, drinks and the very occasional evening at home, which was entirely necessary purely to make sure I had a supply of clean underwear and packed lunches. Exhausted, exhilarated and downhearted, I started to worry that I was never going to find time to keep up my promise of moving the blog to the Big Smoke.
For my first two months in London I was living with a good friend of my sister’s from uni who, for the sake of this post, shall be called Ed. Ed had already been living in London for two years and was totally au fait with juggling sporting, social and professional activities. Two weeks in to our flat-share and it became clear that he also found time to squeeze the odd evening of female company into his schedule. One Thursday he nonchalantly asked what my plans were for the following evening. I thought our cohabitation was working out quite well so was rather taken aback when he let out a variable sigh of relief at the news that I had plans. The reason for this soon became apparent. He had invited a girl to the flat for dinner. Having met her whilst adventuring in the Serengeti, he did not want his culinary masterpiece of ostrich steaks, intended to carry them back to their evenings under the Sub-Saharan stars to be rudely interrupted by his bumbling baboon of a flatmate. Hint taken. I dragged out my plans the following evening for as long as possible.
Eventually, I had to call it a night and headed back to the flat. As I put my key in the lock I could hear girly giggling coming from the kitchen. I felt it would be rude to not make my presence known so tentatively knocked and entered. Within was a candlelit scene of romantic perfection. By this point the ostrich steaks had been devoured, and the pair had moved on to the rather less exotic apple pie and ice cream. Not wanting to rain on the re-enactment of their African parade, I kept niceties to a minimum before heading to bed.
I awoke in the morning to the noise of gentle chatter, like monkeys in the canopy, and concluded that the ostrich steaks had had the desired effect (who knew ostrich was up there with oysters as an aphrodisiac!). The three of us passed a very pleasant breakfast together before Ed’s friend, Flambae, headed back to her neck of the woods.
By this point this is probably starting to feel like a bit of a non-starter of a blog post, and you are all probably wondering as to why Flambae has got her name. There is a part of the story I have not yet divulged. At around 2am, I was woken from my slumber by a sudden need to use the facilities. The journey from my bedroom to the bathroom took me past the kitchen door, which had been left ajar. Although the chitter-chatter of the lovebirds’ cooings has since faded to the floor above, I noticed that Ed had left the kitchen light on so nipped in to turn it off.
What a sight I was met with…. the candles remained on the table, still lit, but around them, strewn across the floor lay a wide variety of clothing. Clothing that looked very similar to that which my flatmate and his guest were wearing earlier in the evening. They say a leopard can never change his spots but it would appear he can at least remove them at great speed. The remaining components of the meal had been flung to one side of the table and all I can say is that in their haste, the pair were lucky that their apparently naked bodies had not come into contact with any similarly naked flames. I blew out the candles, folded up the various items of clothing and left them neatly on a chair before returning to bed.
I decided it would be animal cruelty to bring my late-night safari up at breakfast so made polite conversation as we munched our eggs (hen, not ostrich) and bacon. It was only once Flambae had left that I revealed my discovery, leaving poor Ed as flushed as a flamingo!