Why I Shouldn’t Be Left Alone on a Saturday Night

The Bloke has gone ‘oop North’ to visit his mother, so I’ve had the house to myself for the weekend. While I always miss him when he isn’t here, I don’t mind admitting that I was looking forward to spending a little bit of time alone – it has been quite a stressful couple of weeks at work and it was the perfect opportunity to catch up on some much needed ‘me’ time.

I started with good intentions – I did a bit of blogging, washed some clothes and met my best friend in the local pub for lunch. However, after consuming what felt like my entire bodyweight in veggie burger, I returned home with an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion and lost all motivation to do anything but lie on the couch and watch Columbo, which seems to still be a main staple of British television over the weekends. I fell asleep, and thankfully I had set an alarm on my phone to remind me to go and give Daisy, my diabetic cat, her insulin injection and then returned to my couch position, waking a few hours later. I worked out that I must had slept for about six hours in total and felt relaxed.

I decided that I was going to have a girlie night in, so I went to the supermarket and purchased various snacky treats to accompany a chick flick (yet to be chosen at this point) that would leave me feeling warm and fuzzy and happy with the world. The trip turned out to be quite an eventful one – a young couple were having a screaming argument, a middle – aged couple were kissing in the doorway, preventing anyone from getting past and forcing several people to cough and offer an awkward ‘excuse me,’ a man vomited on the pavement across the road and there were several young women who had obviously planned to spend their Saturday night in a similar way to me, their baskets filled with wine, pizza and chocolate. I live in a classy area, clearly.

Upon my return I temporarily forgot that I am 32 years old and decided to watch ‘A Walk To Remember,’ knowing only that it was a teen – flick. However, from the rave reviews it has received from some of my students I expected it to be a generic, cutesy film that would make me smile and finish with a ‘happy ever after.’ I was also swayed by the fact that it starred the lovely Shane West, who I have developed an appreciation for after watching him in several seasons of ‘Nikita.’ I then planned to have a hot bath and an early night to try and catch up on more sleep that I have missed over the last week.

How wrong I was.

At the risk of giving spoilers, there was no happy ever after and at the end of the film I found myself sobbing like a baby onto the head of a previously sleeping, rather disgruntled cat that had curled up on my lap. My expected feeling of warm and fuzzy had been replaced with a sense of temporary despair. I kicked myself as I swore that I wouldn’t do this to myself again after watching Steel Magnolias and flashes of the opening sequence to ‘Bridget Jones’ kept popping into my head as I realised that I was sitting alone on a Saturday night in my pyjamas, surrounded by confectionary wrappers and crying at one of the most depressing and utterly heartbreaking films I have ever seen.

Unfortunately, the marathon sleeping session that I had experienced during the day, combined with the consumption of a ridiculously high quantity of sugar resulted in me being wide awake, pretty much for the rest of the night. At 3.00am I gave up and put a DVD of Family Guy on, and this must have worked as my alarm woke me up at 5.45am, reminding me to go and inject the cat. However, after about three hours sleep I now feel more tired than I did yesterday…

Next time, the only film I’m watching will be Avengers Assemble…

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