Shacking Up - An Update

After reading my last blog, Niece and her Man decided to relieve me of the suspense, and bring me out on Thursday night.

I was delighted, almost beside myself with the thought of being out in the Big Smoke after half past eight in the evening, wearing make up, if not heels, and very excited about meeting this man who Niece has fallen in love with so quickly.

He’s lovely.  I had no need to worry so much.  And very patient, I thought.  And they’re lovely together, so much so that instead of referring to them as Niece and Man, I’ll now be calling them Romeo and Juliet, for obvious reasons.

One of the things I liked most about him, was that although he's obviously mad about her, he's not too eejity to see the wisdom of those of us who've known her for longer.  He's absolutely refusing to put her on his car insurance, for instance, when the moving in together is complete.

We started the evening with just me and her having a drink, I suspect she was taking the opportunity to try to get me to behave myself for the evening. I thought that maybe she wanted to give me a list of questions she’d like me to squeeze in as the night progressed.  It turns out that she hadn’t warned him about a couple of my little quirks.

Like the fact that I’m very very nosey indeed.  Not that I want to know how much a person earns, or what their mortgage costs, although if they want to tell me that’s fine.  But I definitely want to know things like how couples meet, or what they’d call their children if they had any, or why they’re getting so serious with my niece so quickly.

Poor Romeo, he probably thought he was just joining his girlfriend and her auntie for their regular after work dinner.  I doubt that he had any idea that I would be more or less interviewing him. 

Actually, interviewing him mightn’t be an accurate description.  I interrogated the poor soul.

And he must be stone mad about her, because instead of telling me to feck off and mind my own business, which he had every right to do, he answered every question, and I honestly believe he was telling the truth.  Of course, I’m not stupid enough to believe that there was no gilding of the lily when I asked him, for instance, about his alcohol consumption or whether he’d ever tried illicit drugs, but I came away from the night believing he is a good and honest man, which is exactly what I’d hoped for.

And if my niece is going to say that she wasn’t remotely interested when I started questioning Romeo about previous relationships, how long they’d lasted, who’d ended them, and who, if anyone, spent a month crying into their cornflakes, I’m sorry to say I don’t accept that. 

I’d have absolutely loved someone to come along and ask His Nibs his entire life history a couple of months after I met him.  It took me about five years to find out everything Juliet heard last Thursday night.

That’s the thing about being a martyr to nosiness.  You always have to apologise for it.  Everyone seems to think it’s a character flaw, it’s never given the benefit of the doubt and counted as a virtue.  I find myself, when I get talking to people at parties or in the post office queue for that matter, and I get one interesting nugget about their lives, informing them that I’m frightfully nosey and will now ask them a series of questions, and to tell me to mind my own business when I go too far.

The funny thing is, people very rarely tell me to mind my own business.   Maybe I have an inbuilt filter that stops me before it’s too late, but I doubt it.

I once met a friend of my brother’s at a party, and asked him about his children.  He had a number of them, (four if you must know), all by different mothers.  So I asked him what his mother thought about his getting so many different girls pregnant.  Not that I particularly cared, I just wondered how far he could go before his Irish Mammy gave him a belt in the ear for himself.  My brother, our host for the day, was absolutely horrified.  But his friend told me honestly, his mother wasn’t impressed, she was always going mad over the whole business, but loved every one of her grandchildren with all her heart. 

At the same party another friend of my brother’s informed me that he was still living with his ex and their child, but that he slept in the spare room.  He didn’t have to tell me that, I didn’t ask him.  Maybe he’d heard about my chat with the first lad, and knew what to expect so he just thought he’d spit it out, I couldn’t say.  Anyway, I informed him that I didn’t believe him, he had quite the twinkle in his eye and I knew by the look of him that he was enjoying certain benefits that he didn’t want to admit to.  He’d admitted all within minutes.  My brother couldn’t believe it, his friend had been denying all this to him for months.  And he never hosted a party in a pub again.  Or at least not one I was invited to.

I know nosiness isn’t a great thing.  I know I should try to control it.  But I hate being told half a story.

I honestly don’t want to know how often people have sex, how far in arrears their mortgage is, or whether they eat their five a day.  It’s the human interest stories that fascinate me.  I like to think I’m a people watcher.  People are the most fascinating things on earth. 

In restaurants and pubs I stare at the other couples and wonder why they’re not speaking, or what he just said to make her raise her eyebrows like that,  or why they’re holding hands and being so romantic when they look like they’ve been together for twenty years.  Although that might be jealousy more than nosiness.

One way or the other, I can tell you Romeo’s full work and romantic history,  how he gets on with the different members of his family, and even how his parents met.  But I won’t.  It’s private.  Don’t be nosey.