All Men are....a Big Fat Disappointment?

If you don't agree with the title of this entry feel free to prove me otherwise, but I must say in the past two weeks the evidence has been stacking firmly in favour of my theory. Where do I begin? Okay, here goes:

1) Date with Henley man finally happened last week after some drunken text persuasion when I was out (in Henley - funnily enough) the weekend before. All started really well with drinks, a bit of food, more drinks...cocktails....in fact, thinking about it, this might have been the point where we should have called things a night and parted with a lingering kiss, wanting to find out more about one another. Rather than going onto not one but two more bars, finishing at Sketch in Soho at about 2.30am in a pretty advanced state of drunkenness discussing our exes (bad BAD topic for a first date!) The following day, feeling pretty sheepish, I texted him in the vain hope of receiving some reassurance that the evening had been in some way a success. He did text back, granted, but not for a good few hours, by which time I'd convinced myself it had been a total disaster and he never wanted to lay eyes on me again. As it turned out, he wrote his full name in the text so I could look him up on facebook, and we've since 'made friends' on there, but it's hardly the love affair of the century given his 'acceptance' was the last contact he made (on Saturday, following his last text on Thurs) and he's now not replied to the message I sent him. Great. Another one bites the dust?

2) On Saturday, out of the goodness of my heart, I decided, along with my best friend, to put on a little drinks party for a good friend of mine's b'day. He was due to come up from Henley (maybe the disappointment factor has something to do with anything Henley related?) with three other friends (2 male, 1 female) by 7, but on Thurs they announced they had managed to get tickets to a music festival in London on the same day. Having been there before myself, I saw fit to point out they would most probably want to stay until the end of the event, thus meaning they wouldn't come to our bash too. I added I would rather know in advance if this were the case as there were other people and places I could have been that night, but they assured me they would leave before the last act and be with us by 9pm at the very latest. And what happened? By 9.30pm six of us were finishing off the last of the food my friend and I had spent the afternoon preparing (the homemade part may only have constituted two dips and a chicken and mushroom pie, but still, effort went in, and effort on a hangover I might add) when I received a text from Friend A saying they were trying unsuccessfully to tear the birthday boy away from the last act, but would 'keep me posted' (how kind!) Come 11.30 we had ventured to a bar around the corner from the flat when I got a phone call from the birthday boy himself. I told him of our whereabouts in what I felt was a very restrained voice given the circumstances, and he promised they would come and meet us immediately. Only they must have had a change of heart, given that an hour later there was still no sign of them and their car had disappeared from outside the flat. To make things worse still, they didn't reply to the text I sent asking if they'd gone home - in fact it wasn't until 7pm yesterday when I finally heard anything, and even then it was just a 'I was too drunk and had to go home' sob story, with barely a hint of an apology for the fact he'd stood me up at HIS OWN BIRTHDAY PARTY. Needless to say, I am furious, and also really quite gobsmacked that they don't seem to think they've done anything wrong.

Those are but two of the blood-boiling man-related incidents I have had to contend with of late (others, in a nutshell, include reports of infidelities left, right and centre involving, well, pretty much everyone around me it would seem, as well as a particularly galling conversation with the Ex's best friend on Friday night, during which he asked me what I would have seen fit to do on the contact front had it been the other way around. Answer? I wouldn't have done what he did to me in the first place. Ever. Because I would have respected him too much to cheat on him, especially in the underhand and scheming way he did), and I really have to say I'm getting rather sick of it. Where have all the nice men gone? The ones that call when they say they will, don't play stupid games or play you off against other women? The ones that are capable of keeping their you-know-what's in their pants!! Granted, us women are fussy so and so's - when men are too nice we're not interested, and when they're bastards we complain. But surely there are some that fall into nice-but-not-too-nice territory? Seems to me those men are getting fewer and farther between.

In other news, last weekend (after the night in Henley) I had a lovely catch up with my girlfriends from school (not quite sure how much of a part this has played in my subsequent man-bashing), and this Friday just gone my (male) friend had a dinner party at his to which a random assortment of people came (him, his friend - who used to live with my Ex, Me, my best friend, her housemate and a friend I used to work with). Turned out to be a huge success, we all got on famously and ate and drank until the (very) early hours. Only downside was the aforementioned heart to heart I had with The Ex's friend at about 3am, during which he told me the pair of them had discussed me at length only the other week. In some ways this made me feel better, as the hardest thing I've had to cope with these past few months where he's concerned is the feeling that he didn't care for me at all, but knowing that he does isn't really helpful either. It's not like he regrets his decision, he's still with the poisonous dwarf bitch isn't he? So really it's the guilt that's eating away at him rather than any feeling of missing having me in his life.

Oh dear, today's entry really has been rather a miserable rant hasn't it?! But I will endeavour to end it on a high with two things:

a) Yesterday I went to a free music festival in Brockwell Park, Brixton, with some friends and had a really lovely afternoon chilling out to reggae music, eating jerk chicken, and generally just being with my friends. It was nice. I felt happy (for a time at least). Note to self: must do these things more.

b) Only three days till Bangor!! Still most excited (and still a little nervous) about seeing my Welsh boy again, but at present he's most definitely the front runner where boys are concerned. And I just have a feeling we're going to have a lot of fun together, no matter what. So that's just brilliant.