I for once obtained a seat on the 41 bus coming back from work as opposed to standing around being squished in like a sardine with someone’s laptop bag fighting somebody else’s Givenchy handbag in an endeavor to be the first to be jammed up my arse. As I sat there, listening to my song of the moment, “The execution of all things” by Rilo Kiley, ruminating on the miserable week I had had, which compromised incredible amounts of work, a distinct lack of sleep and falling sick, I realized the girl opposite me was checking me out and she was actually quite attractive.

Well I was pretty sure she was, unless she had spotted an extremely fascinating pimple on my face. What followed was around 20 minutes of sideways glances, quick looks away and half smiles, all very Hindi moveish, well minus the dancing around tea bushes. She got out around Polk and Union and was still checking me out, outside the road and crossing the road.

And what did I do? Absolutely bollocking nothing…here’s the thing. I am far from a shy person, well I thought I was painfully shy for sometime but since almost everybody I know develops a hernia laughing on hearing this, I have had to abandon that particular worldview. Unfortunately outside of a club I am absolutely no good initiating a conversation with a random girl. I generally need some kind of contact, for example the last time I was on a SriLankan flight I managed to chat up one of the airhostesses, but needed her to ask me something about my passport to get cutesy with her. That my sinuses were clogged solid, I was starved for oxygen and probably sounded like Barry White didn’t fill me with confidence about my chat up abilities at that given moment.

In a club and under the influence I can chat to anybody, well most of the time anyways, I do have off days and I try and avoid talking to tall girls at least standing up, you see I develop a neck crick pretty quickly I do. But then in a club I never really know what I say and I reckon the girl hardly hears it half the time what with the blaring music and all. I do have another trick up my sleeve to initate conversations outside a club by asking for a light/smoke, a trick that works pretty well actually. But how the hell would one initiate a random conversation on a bus? “Say do you think someone farted in the front or is that bum seated across us?” doesn’t really come across as a quality chat up line. This is an issue I really have to sort out, any constructive ideas out there?