Love You Long Time

It’s not very often that I get emails via Facebook. Usually when I do it’s from friends passing on a new address or mobile phone number or sometimes an invitation to a party, or even to share the odd bit of gossip. It’s rare, in fact completely unknown, to get an email from someone totally random. Today I did, and I was a little surprised.

I received an email from a Chinese lady living in Ghana who was keen to know whether I was looking for love or whether some “lucky lady” had “won my heart”. Rather than wait for an answer she had obviously decided to crack on and state her case, explaining that I “look like a nice person and a man worth getting to know”. She obviously hasn’t been looking at my Facebook photos in too much depth as she would have seen me in various states of inebriation, often wearing a novelty hat on my head, or worse still, a video of me singing “I’ve got a Brand New Combine Harvester” on karaoke after too many cocktails.

Mind you she may be aware of my newly found sporting prowess. The running is going well. I say running, it’s jogging really, I’m not going to be mistaken for Usain Bolt anytime soon. However I can run/jog all the way from my house right up to the new Tesco (via a housing estate). This will mean nothing to most of you but it was only two weeks ago when I could barely get out of sight of the house before collapsing in a sweaty heap on the pavement. Anyone who has seen ‘Run Fatboy Run’ will know exactly what I’m talking about.

I have to say, the present Mrs Hayward is also running and she’s doing well, even if she keeps complaining that her legs hurt. She’s even started a Zumba class. I don’t really know why, we don’t know anyone who speaks Zumba.

Then there’s the swimming. OK, so I haven’t stepped into the murky waters of eternal doom yet but, a week or so later than I promised, I went to Bourne Leisure Centre to enquire about adult swimming lessons. Pleasingly no-one laughed at me either. I met ‘Manager Lee’ who cheerily told me all about how it worked and when lessons started.

Apparently there are two instructors, one who works with the improvers and the other with those who “are petrified of the water”. He gave me a knowing smile as if to say, ‘but of course you’re not one of them’. I pointed out that I was indeed in that camp, in fact the first lesson will most likely involve prising me away from the edge.

He suggested I might like to go along one Thursday evening for a taster session before enrolling for the new term in May. I agreed that this would be an excellent idea, especially as you have to pay for the full course up front. That’s £88 in one hit. That made me splutter and I haven’t even swallowed a mouthful of pool water yet. I guess it’s so that people who don’t like it after the first lesson keep going. Maybe it’s because they drown after a moment of bravado on week three. Who knows?

‘Manager Lee’ said that it was a good group and they often have little social activities outside of the pool environment. Maybe this is some sort of cult or swingers club, either way I’ll keep you informed. I’m not sure what my new future wife from Shanghai will think about it.

Talking of which, her email became a little forward at one point. She explained that we should get to know each other so I could make up my mind about her “and after that is when we can decide where we want to go with this”. To be fair there is no ‘this’ but she’s obviously not shy in coming forward, especially when she went on to explain that she was looking for “a serious relationship or marriage”.

I decided that I probably shouldn’t respond to the future Mrs Hayward without sharing this communication with the present Mrs Hayward. After all she was the one who “won my heart” first and I didn’t really want her to stumble upon this email by accident, wonder what the hell was going on, and decide to nail important parts of my anatomy to the wall. Seriously, if you'd read the email you’d think that the mystery lady and I were acquaintances of old.

As it was she thought the whole thing was bizarre but amusing. We looked through the photos of Miss Shanghai which evoked the comment “she’s quite pretty” from my good lady wife. I suggested that perhaps we could entertain some sort of bigamist relationship but Mrs Hayward doubted I had the stamina for it, and she’s probably right. Not with all the running and swimming and stuff. As for my shin splints….

So, whatever Miss Shanghai is, either real and weirdly desperate or an elaborate ploy to steal personal details off gullible men who believe that an attractive mysterious woman who posts photos of herself in a bikini are really going to be attracted to them despite not knowing a jot about them, she briefly became a talking point this evening.

Who knows, perhaps she’s genuine and just likes a man who enjoys a drink, sings out of tune and occasionally likes to wear a fez? After all, who wouldn’t?