The Ageing Lothario of the Forest?

Gradually I became aware that Ali was leaning forward, peering at me from her position on the other side of the sofa. Then her eyes flickered back to the television, so I followed her gaze. And if you’ve been working non stop for the last forty odd years and were wondering (Ok, you probably weren’t, but run with it) whether daytime TV had improved since Eamonn Holmes was a fresh faced tea boy in the staff canteen, well, erm no, things are no better in today’s balm of mediocrity on the screen in the corner of the living room. It seemed that the latest piece of breakfast attention deficit filler had caught Ali’s attention. A crack team of hungover students with no essays to hand in until next Tuesday had apparently used the latest artificial intelligence software to create a portrait of what they declared to be the archetypal love rat. Quite how they’d done this was of about as much interest to me as it was of use to anyone else in the world, but what did rather surprise me was that the picture on the screen could have been my twin brother. Ok, perhaps my twenty years younger twin brother, but the resemblance was quite striking.

 

Whether this bombshell was about to change Ali’s view on our relationship remained to be discovered, so I shrunk ever so slightly in my half of the sofa and went back to examining the 3D map of the south west coast of Ireland on Google Earth, looking for interesting sea stacks in remote places. Just as all love rats surely do - in their coffee stained pyjamas at eleven in the morning. Sometimes it’s more than enough work maintaining one significant other in your life. All of that deceit seems like an awful lot of effort to me. I’d fall at the first hurdle and get my burner phones mixed up. And frankly, when you get to an age of ahem cough, you’re lucky to have one person out there who still loves you. Well she says she does anyway. Even though she’s had a tracker fitted to my car now. I consoled myself in the knowledge that half the men in the country of my current demographic look very similar to me. Quite frankly I have neither the energy nor the guile to enter a life of duplicity, so I reassured her that there was no need for alarm. At least not until the day Louise Redknapp comes knocking on the front door asking whether anyone in the house can teach her about seascape photography, that is.

 

So in the full knowledge that my car was under hourly surveillance, I headed out in my other vehicle, a low slung rakish sports model with a soft top, I mean an elderly red mud spattered van, and set off for the woods. It was a perfect day for the woods. Not much chance of bumping into anyone there today - I’m really not helping myself here am I? - but with a soft misty rain filling the still grey sky, here was an opportunity to try the contents of the package that had landed on the doorstep while we were on holiday in Menorca. And if you’re still dwelling on the first paragraph, no it wasn’t a bucket of Lynx Africa, guaranteed to make angels fall from the sky. It was a new filter that I’d decided to add to the armoury to try on a grungy day in the forest. With a firm intention not to meet anyone at all - including unattached ladies - I arrived at an almost completely deserted Ladock Wood, a few miles on the other side of Truro, nodded to an elderly man who appeared to have forgotten what he was doing here, said hello to a couple walking back towards the car park in the company of a very nervous looking poodle, and disappeared into the canopy, where I saw not a single soul for more than two hours.

 

If any wandering female with amorous intentions had decided this was the place for an assignation with a tall dark and handsome stranger, she’d have been disappointed to discover the only person in the forest was a short, balding middle aged love rat-alike, wearing a pair of sludge covered wellies, looking confused and ferreting about his backpack only to produce a circular piece of smoked glass instead of a bunch of red roses and vouchers for an all you can eat breakfast at Smokey Joe’s. She might have been equally dismayed to discover that instead of angels falling, his “bouquet” was rather more likely to have them turning pale and passing out. I think it’s fair to surmise that this wasn’t really the place for funny business. Not unless you count standing in the rain taking pictures of trees as funny business that is.

 

So hopefully you’re now assured that despite looking like several male members of the cast of Eastenders, which last time I watched it appeared to be a love rat merry go round, I’m not really the type for furtive shenanigans in the forest. At least not unless Louise Redknapp suddenly makes an appearance wielding a bag full of camera equipment and demanding tuition, which I accept is quite unlikely. It was difficult enough trying to find the stand of Alder trees that had caught my eye three years ago. When I did eventually stumble across them, I discounted them almost immediately. But I did like this grouping. The black mist filter did too. I wonder if those boozy science students have ever tried to create an AI photofit of an oddball in the woods. I’d probably look like him too. Mind you, don’t all photo fits look a bit like the oddball in the woods rather than the ageing Lothario?

Done