Yes, Dennis and his huge digger are parked outside my bedroom window again. I bought this cottage on a quiet lane next to the park in order to get a bit of peace for writing, but returning home one evening I found Thames Water digging up the lane including a huge trench right outside my bedroom window, and there was Dennis, fit, 26, slinging this huge fork lift thingy up and down the road. I flipped out, literally, doing my impression of a crazy woman; well the half French bit of me is pretty fiery, calling the water board all the names I could think of, before marching into the house and slamming the door. Half an hour later there was a quiet knocking at the door and there he was 6’3’’rugged and rangy and apologising in a quiet Northern twang.
There was that indefinable thing called chemistry between us, buzzing in the ether, but I studiously ignored it, after the Italian last year I have decided to be slightly more careful, my body will just have to be reasonable about its needs!! Over the next few weeks we chatted on passing, and every night in a roaring of wheels and flashing of blue lights he parked his truck outside my window. Then a few days ago seeing me driving down the lane, he whirled the digger into reverse careered backwards down the road, pulled across my front bonnet, slammed the brakes on and leapt out of the cab.
I was impressed!
He sat down on the wall and started chatting. His side kick (the dumper truck driver) came up with the most adorable little rhyme (not!) Barnsley boys are bad in the head but good in bed… That put me off again. He asked me out for a drink, I declined; well I had so many dates lined up from TBW I was feeling a bit picky, and anyway the thought of it going wrong and having to watch him dig up the road for the next six months was not edifying. But Dennis didn’t give up, his brother Chris, (who drives the Thames Water Board Van, a Shrek look a like) had already informed the neighbours, ‘that one at number 59 and my bro’ are an item. ‘
Not good.
Then he stuck his telephone number on a scrap of paper through the front door and I gave up and decided to let him take me out to dinner. Well it was his birthday, and I can always put it down to research, also I needed to know if he could keep my interest for more than five minutes, if he was good kisser and if he could keep quiet at the appropriate moments. That’s unless he can speak Russian which always does it for me. My best friend said that I would live to regret it but I thought she was just being melodramatic, and a cow.
He asked me to book a table and so I did, in a good Gastro Pub nearby, and at 8pm sharp the front door bell went. There he was, all showered and damp without his digger truck clothes on, my heart skipped a beat. I just didn’t fancy him in his H & M striped hoodie and his Lynx body spray or whatever the hell it was. I was suffering from, ‘Fireman syndrome’, which I never have believed in till now. Dennis was only fanciable with his 10 metre long digger, the normal Dennis was a sweet lad from Barnsley that somehow I was going to have to get through the evening with. We drove to the pub in his McNicholson van; I’ve been in Aston Martins, Jaguars and Porsches, Horse Lorries and camper vans but never a Utility van.
I now know a lot about diggers, his quad bike, his Mum and the Thames Water Board schedule of having to lay 7 km of new pipe in the next month or the government won’t give them funding, but I am in mourning for the old Dennis. I must have done ok, he asked me out on a vodka binge the next night but I thought it best to call it a day, one peck on the cheek was all I could manage. In a way my girlfriend was right, I should never have gone out for a date with him, I should have just left Dennis as a fantasy, roaring and revving his digger outside my bedroom window. The thing is………. after I turned him down he never came back, I suppose he went and parked outside someone else’s bedroom window, and I hope this time he has better luck.
I’ve been toying with the idea of sending him a text message telling him that next time he goes out on a date to keep his work clothes on ……..
Victoria Mosley (Siren Song) has two collections of poetry available from Amazon .co.uk The Dry Season (1998) Crazy Love (2002) and a cd downloadable from Idyllic Ipodcasts
