The drummer from Def Leppard's only got one arm

Fact.

He just drums twice as hard (and does some stuff with his foot). I think he’s a got a special drum kit.

Word of advice. Interesting as the musical ability of disabled percussionist Rick Allen may be to you, don’t bring it up on a date. Doesn’t go down well. The other person starts to wonder why you’ve brought it up at all. But I had my reasons. Oh I had my reasons.

I have written up my date from Thursday below. Date report from Friday night will follow on Sunday, as I’m sure you can’t be bothered to read about two dates in one sitting. And, to be honest, I still need some time to digest last night. It was tricky, to say the least. Very tricky. But that’s for tomorrow.


DATE NUMBER TWO - 13/06/09

Aha, so the lovely Emma.

Blue-loving, laughs-out-loud-a-lot, all photos taken from a worryingly long distance, Emma.

Turned out to be a perfectly normal and pleasant human being.

WHAT ARE ALL THESE NORMAL PEOPLE DOING ON MATCH.COM?

I’ll tell you what they're doing there - these are burned women. They seem normal at first but as soon as you scratch below their pathetically wafer-thin surface of togetherness, you realise that all that’s left of them is a tiny, barely beating heart and a pair of eyes that scream ‘oh god, please love me but, for the love of great gurning god, please don’t hurt me.’

Ok. So, we met in a pub in North London. A quite nice one. Barely had the first sip of my cool, refreshing, crisp pint of Kronenbourg (I’m not beyond product placement) tickled my tonsils when I found myself hearing all about Billy, let’s call him, her ex. Who had cheated on her. Quite recently.

Emma, very kindly, informed she would never cheat on me. PHEW. Weight off my mind. She also described herself as ‘the perfect girlfriend.’ Well, Billy might have a different take on that. Mightn‘t he, sweetcheeks? Does part of being the ‘perfect girlfriend’ entail endless nights sitting up staring at your mobile trying, with utter futility, to make it ring as if you were fucking Matilda or something, whilst the man you love is utterly incapable of picking up his own phone to call you as his arms are wrapped firmly round someone who actually makes him feel alive, when in fact she could be just about anyone, as long as she wasn’t you, as the sight of your pleading face now makes him feel slightly sick but he just hasn’t got the guts to dump you because he knows just how much it’ll crush you and he can’t face the idea that the rest of your life will simply be a succession of utterly humiliating yet frantically hopeful first dates where you bore the other person arseless talking about your fucking ex. IS THAT WHAT THE ‘PERFECT GIRLFRIEND’ DOES?

She also told me how amazing she was at her job. How great her social life is. And so on. It was one long big-up session.

But before you admonish her… I thought back about all the burblings that had come out of my mouth that evening. In mildly awkward social circumstances you tend to just let your mouth flap up and down with the filter turned down to ‘minimal’, blocking only racist jokes and outright insults, for fear of being drowned in silence. Silence is the killer. Silence means THINGS AREN’T GOING WELL. And it’s all your fault. Oh yeah. It’s because you’re a boring, slack-jawed playground botherer. So you talk and talk and talk. And it very quickly and easily becomes a mutual self-congratulation society.

So, I too talked about how great I am in relationships (I’m not - I’ve been reliably informed that it’s like dating ‘a less eloquent Ted Bundy’ - I don’t meet a lot of parents, put it that way), how perfect my job is, how cool my friends are (you’re not). Because you’re selling a lifestyle, yeah? Why have a relationship with someone? Because, apart from liking how they look, you like what they do. What they’ve done. How they conduct themselves. How they think. How they dress. How they vote. You like their lifestyle. It’s a good one. This person has succeeded, this person is a winner and, hey, they WANT YOU. No one else. You. So we want to hear about how every other aspect of their life is awesome. And you reciprocate. You sell your life to them.

Anyway, Emma was fine. But it got quite boring quite quickly. I tried to think of ways to liven the evening up. A while ago I read an interview with mildly-amusing gross-out frat boy rockers, The Bloodhound Gang. One of their songs contains the refrain ‘The drummer from Def Leppard’s only got one arm’, repeated over and over, for no apparent reason. When asked by the interviewer why they had done this, the lead singer replied - ‘We wanted to write the stupidest line ever written in music history. This line seemed like the stupidest, most pointless thing we could say.’

So, taking my lead from a band who mainly write songs about wanking, shit and wanking I decided I would try and interject into the conversation the stupidest, most pointless thing I could say. I soon realised that The Bloodhound Gang had pretty much got it sewn up. So.

‘And, yeah, so I don’t speak to Billy anymore.’

‘Right, right, yeah.’

‘But I’m totally over it now.’

‘Yeah, totally, yeah… Hey, did you know that the drummer from Def Leppard has only got one arm?’

‘What?’

‘You know Def Leppard?’

‘Er, yeah.’

‘Yeah, their drummer, Rick Allen. Only one arm.’

‘Right.’

‘Still drums though. Just twice as hard. And he does some stuff with his foot. I think he’s got a special drum kit.’

‘Are you a big Def Leppard fan?’

‘No. No, I don’t even think I could name a single song.’

‘Oh ok.’

‘Could you?’

‘What, name one of their songs or drum with one arm?’

‘Either.’

‘No.’

SILENCE. I had done something wrong. But what?


So I started talking about how great I am at my job instead.

Will I see her again? Well, I don’t really have any inclination to but seeing as most of my previous relationships lasted for as long as they did simply because I forgot to tell the other person that I had left them and they just KEPT TURNING UP AT MY HOUSE, yeah, I probably will see her again.

Eyes peeled for my second date with Victoria report.

Until then, keep the love ALIVE.