Secret Note Night and the Northern Lights

I’ve not written anything about my love life recently, and when I say love life, I mean the intermittent saga of being widowed and single in your middle years and wondering if I will ever have someone special to share them with.

Granite Man was so long ago – sigh! ...because everybody needs a hero...

On-line dating seems like a non-starter. Scarily Honest or Honestly Scary

And yet I found some very depressing stats the other day that 60% of couples meet on-line these days.

Screenshots taken from a video on Instagram - so very random dates
My parents met in the late 60 - through family connections
Andrew and I met in the early 90s through church

I still think we should start a trend of meeting people in bookshops with the opening chat-up line being - “Have you read this book?”

Until that day a local bar, (well local enough to me but far enough away so I don’t run into people I already know or went to school with – that’s what school reunions are made for) holds Secret Note Nights for singles to meet up the “old fashioned” way, in person.

Originally this started as Single Social and I’ve written about that before… a message to the two men at the bar

There wasn’t a great deal of mixing at Single Socials but this new idea has injected an element of fun and causes much hilarity.

On each table is a small note book and pen, the idea being if someone catches your eye you can send them a secret note, delivered by the hostess for the evening – I shall call her Emma. 

With a glint in her eye and a way of getting information out of people, she can recite who is sitting where, what they do and where they live. She also mixes a mean cocktail – this woman has skills MI5 would kill for!

On Thursday I went with a school friend – we have known each other since we were 5 and have both been on our own for several years. We are not desperate for love but some kind of companionship would be welcome.

We chatted with a gentleman in our age bracket, invited him to join our long table but he obviously wasn’t interested in either of us, saying he preferred to loiter by the bar and keep his options open. Fair enough, it was a polite refusal – we ordered food and carried on our own conversation.

Until 2 young men asked to sit at our table. They were both good looking and utterly charming but alas of a similar age to our children.

However, the one beside me slid a note along the table with a cheeky grin.

PLEASE HELP I’VE BEEN KIDNPPED!

I thought for a moment and looked at the remnants of my cheese platter.

I can pay the ransom in half tomatoes and a piece of cheese.

He was very quick witted; I really admired his style.

            Throw in a parsnip, and you have a deal!

Then I wrote the line that perhaps betrayed my age.

            Is your name Baldrick?

We laughed and they did know who Baldrick was… maybe.

But I need someone who understands jokes about counting beans, Mrs Miggins Pie shop and why Bob and Bernard are such great names Darling. I want someone who will pander to my every whim as If I were Queenie.

We left and on our drive home, the moon looked incredible, a perfect arc criss-crossed with wispy clouds. I would have loved to stop and take a photo, but photos of the moon never look as magical as the real thing. Just a smudge in the sky.

And yet I came home to all these photos on Facebook of a magnificent Northern Lights display.

I went out into the garden and starred up at the sky. There was a slight pinky glow but I couldn’t be sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me. I remembered hearing you usually see the colours clearer through a phone lens, so I took a photo. It was RUBBISH! A totally black screen.

Feeling cold I gave up and went indoors but still couldn’t resist another peek, hanging out of my bedroom window looking northwards – I had to check that on Google maps first, my windows don’t face in the right direction, except a bathroom one with frosted glass that opens out to see next door and not an inch of sky in sight.

Defeated I decided to go to bed with a good book, but life would be so much different if I had someone else here. Someone who would encourage me to go out on a midnight walk around town together, even venture further into the countryside, holding hands, marvelling at God’s creation.

But I just have to face facts – some of us don’t get to see the Northern Lights, however much we pursue them. Maybe we are not patient enough, or circumstances conspire against us, we are just never in the right place at the right time.

You can live a perfectly fulfilled life without – even marvelling at the photos on social media. You can be happy for everyone else and their sightings.

At the end of the day, I am content that once I did see them.

We took a family day trip to Lapland at see Father Christmas when the boys were small. Andrew was working away that Christmas so this was a special treat. We never took photos but I do remember the colours dancing, the magic covering our family of four.

Maybe one day I will see them again but until then…

stolen from a friend on Facebook