Night school

It goes like this. I'm sitting minding my own business at work, taking a break with a cappuccino and The Guardian crossword, thinking nothing but anagrams, when Kate hurls herself into the armchair opposite. She exhales loudly. Papers swirl upwards on the air current then drift slowly back to earth as she takes a deep slurp of her coffee, burns her tongue, swears and then leans back in her chair watching me.
"You know what you wanna do, don't you?"
"Eleven across?" I'm going to at least try to refuse to be drawn.
"Night school."
"I've got a p and g but I can't see what could go there".
"Y'know, evening classes."
I'm waiting. I know what comes next.
"Languages - why don't you learn a new one? Or, ooh, I know, how about doing one of those Italian cookery ones. That's what I'd do. Or pottery."
I'm still waiting. Any minute now. Wait... Wait... Here it comes....
"You might meet someone."

And there it is. The line that concludes every discussion about evening classes. I want to ask if the teachers are specially trained in advanced matchmaking; I want to know if the adult education prospectus is really written in some weird code like the personal ads that you need to know how to crack if you are to find the person of your wildest dreams and not a dangerous psychopath; most of all, I want to be left alone with my anagrams. But oh no, we're really warming to the theme now.

"Your trouble is that you don't put yourself out there".
I'm starting to crack, I can feel it, but I keep staring firmly at eleven across.
"And you've got lots going for you really."
The pressure builds.
"I mean, mad, socially dysfunctional, and a bit scary at times, but underneath it all, you're quite nice."
That was on purpose.
"Will you stop trying to get me shacked up with some Billy No-Mates who goes to Pottery For Beginners to pull?"
"Ha! I knew you were listening! And will you stop imagining that every single bloke left in the world is a dangerous psychopath."
"I never said that!"
"You were thinking it, though. Weren't you? I know you were!"
"Anyway, I haven't got time."
"Hmph. That's because you're always working."
"Maybe I like working. Maybe I find it more interesting than making polite small talk over a lump of clay."
"Well, don't say I didn't tell you so."
"Tell me what?"
"I tried."
"Tried what?"
"It's Asperger's."
"I'm not that bad!..."
"Eleven across."

But it's funny how things change when you're alone in the country. Don't get me wrong. I'm entirely happy with my carefree life as a single person, washing up when I please and having to deal with nobody's laundry crimes but my own. But within two months my next door neighbour I chatted to over the fence about plumbers and gardens, and the jolly secret service agents over the road, have both moved away. Was it something I said?... I'm not looking for love, I've got plenty of friends (albeit very few within a hundred mile radius), I've got more than enough projects on the go in my life, but it is weirding me out that I can go for weeks on end with no human contact after 5pm. You don't run into anyone when you're new to a village.

So, I thought, remembering all my evening class conversations with Kate, maybe it's about time I got over my prejudice and just kinda, y'know, gave it a go. I have tried in the past. I decided I really wanted to learn something solid about plants and gardening, having spent most of two years of O Level Biology classes learning how to put a prosthetic leg on, this being the teacher's preferred method of mixed ability classroom control. If you can't beat 'em, gross 'em out. Especially when it's your own prosthetic leg... So, I signed up for an evening class at the local horticultural college. Large wads of cash changed hands; I lasted precisely three weeks.

Maybe it was the homework looking up the price of fishponds in gardening magazines that did it... Maybe the lesson spent counting the number of seeds in a flower head... We did some mathematical calculations to show how long it would be before your entire garden was choked to death by aforementioned flower. Point? I'm sure there was one...

Anyway, undeterred by my past experience, I logged on to the village website (now that's cool!...) to check out my options as the new academic year got into gear. Amazing!! Within a ten mile radius of my house, I can do just about any course you could think of, including seven options for beginner's Latin which I couldn't do for love nor money in Eastbourne. Within a five minute walk of my house, I can do Latin Dance as a Workout (yikes! scary!), Dutch conversation (what, are the dike-builders still working here?...) and Cheese Appreciation (that fat milk stuff, not bad TV drama). Wow! What a programme! I can also join the village campanologists, ecologists and volunteer librarians. I had no idea adults did all this stuff in their spare time!

So, I've joined two things in a bid to get to know more people in the village. After all, I do live here... It'd be kinda nice... Wouldn't it?...

First up is the Gardening Club. Just typing those words makes me want to run and hide under a blanket, yelling "no, no, don't make me go!!" But I've done it now, I've joined, and there is nothing to be done for it. It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

I have no objection to admitting that I love to garden. At school, I did one of those computerised career choice things, where you answer a ton of questions and it tells you your destiny. Landscape gardener. I didn't remember that until after I'd dug up the third garden, completely relandscaped it with broad terraces, gravelled sweeps and architectural planting. But I've never been in a club. That was all Jill and John's fault, inviting me perfectly innocuously to the Open Day of all the gardens in John's village, organised by the village gardening club.

It was a perfect summer's day. Sunny, bees humming mildly, condensation running down glasses of cold lemonade. And while John showed people round his garden, Jill and I trekked off round the village, nosing in other people's gardens, whispering "I wouldn't have put that there", and trying very hard not to whip out the secateurs and take a few cuttings. At least not when anyone was looking. Perfect afternoon, made even better by a large sherry on our return.

So, I'm sure you can see, it seemed a perfectly splendid, perfectly reasonable thing to join the village gardening club when I moved here. But oh dear, I hadn't figured what else it might involve. Let's face it, in one heady rush of enthusiasm based on a single summer's afternoon, I hadn't bothered to find out! So far, item 1, a visit to a local toff's garden with no plants in it.

"I do vistas and structures", he said, sweeping his arm over his vast swathe of private landscape.
"I've paid £4 to look at gravel and a wrought iron gate?! You're 'avin' a laugh, mate!" I nearly said.

Item 2, talk in the community centre on barn owls; item3, a sunflower growing competition; item 4, a whose got the biggest marrow vegetable show. I rest my case. Ah well, at least my membership has got me a 10% discount card for the garden centre in the next village.

But I'm an eternal optimist and not one to be deterred easily. So now I've started Beginner's Italian in the school in my village.
"Told you you should learn a new language," Kate says inside my head, crossing her arms in circumstantial proof.
We'll see...