So many cool prompts this weekend in the #weekend-engagement, I decided I couldn't miss this one and it was a hard choice between Romance and Sexy or Brainy.
I think that I once was romantic. Or at least I had a romantic notion every once in a while. It manifested itself in different ways with various activities through the years. None of them really were over the top, just small gestures of love and appreciation.
They certainly weren't badly received - well, not all of them at least.
Out of the couple of things that I remembered one particular one came to mind that was kind of cute but also kind of a fail moment. It was a long time ago now and the memories are all a bit faded due to my brain fog memory. I'm certainly no elephant lol.
This is now decades back and my partner at the time and I were touring the UK and camping in some of the more isolated spots. We didn't want to go the usual tourist vibe and decided that we wanted to get into the real countryside. While going through Wales, we had arranged to camp at a little farmstead where you could get a stand for practically nothing, like 拢20 or something for three nights.
Back then, every penny counted and we were on a shoestring budget. More on that in a second.
It was planned to coincide with his birthday so I had to try and sneakily plan something without him knowing. I had bought him a gift that I thought was cool at the time but now in retrospect was actually rather shite.
We set up camp and I convinced him that we needed to go into town to get some gear and food. Neither of us could speak Gaelic but figured that people there must speak English. Hmmm, not so much. We made it work.
I managed to get him to go look for something random that we probably didn't need and then I made a mad dash for the delicatessen.
What the bloody hell? They don't make cakes in this fucking town? You have to be kidding me.
Running low on time and hoping that whatever random thing I had requested was enough of a challenge to keep him busy, I settled for a muffin. I think it was blueberry but I can't be sure. I paid and then had to hide it surreptitiously in my bag and hope to bloody hell that it wouldn't get squashed.
I then went in search of birthday candles. We really were out in the boonies because this presented a challenge all its own. I managed to find some eventually and set about finding my partner who had luckily got horribly sidetracked with ideas for dinner.
We finished our meagre shopping and set off back to camp. I slept like a log and struggled to wake up the following morning. While rubbing my eyes, I looked outside the tent to where he was already busy with breakfast. Half asleep I went out to say good morning and start rummaging around for coffee.
Then he exclaimed
Come over here and give me a big birthday hug
OH FUCK! JUST SHOOT ME NOW PLEASE - I HAD WOKEN UP IN SUCH A ZOMBIE-LIKE STATE THAT I HAD FORGOTTEN 馃槪
Of course I gave him the biggest hug and said Happy Birthday, then went and got him his little muffin with a lit birthday candle set in the middle. I didn't sing for him because I didn't want the poor guy to die on his birthday.
He was thrilled that I had managed to squirrel away a cake for him without him knowing which made him smile. That made me smile. I then gave him his gifts too.
Talking about shoestring budgets...we had been looking at a lot of camping gear and the like and while browsing an army surplus store, he had become rather taken by a really pretty looking rope. I don't know what it is with guys and their rope
The rope was expensive as fuck so I couldn't get it for him, but I found a pair of boot laces that had the same patterning and gave him those and some other little knick-knacks that I thought he'd like. Then we had breakfast while looking over the countryside and had a nice hike through the woods.
I have been better at romance than this, but now days, I reckon if I was going to be romantic it would be experience based - going places that speak to my soul, taking funky photos and just being a bit of a fun. But what do I know - I've been single for ages and romance is the last thing on my mind right now.
What's your take on this feeble attempt? Let me have your brutally honest opinions down below 馃憞