Long, long, long, long, long distance

[AKA: "A Long Strong Distance Relationship On The B Side" - but I doubt anyone will get that.]

Mane, who has been touring Asia for the past few weeks, returns from his travels today. As we are sociable beasts, and most of us are teachers or students, and it's the holidays, we congregated yesterday evening to watch some DVDs in addition to talk about what we'd do when Mane got back. Mane's younger brother, who is taller, lankier and crazier, was supposed to be bringing Sharktopus. He didn't. He didn't even turn up.

Neither did my sister. Neither did Hairy Friend, or his American fiancée. In fact, so few people turned up that the DVD evening at Robinson's house was a rather subdued affair, compared to our usual fiasco. At least there was more food.

The young raver got a text from Mane's brother telling us that we may as well watch something since he may not have been coming. (It turned out that Mane's girlfriend had turned up at his house, and she was just sitting there waiting for him to return! Lord knows what she may have been doing!) We (that is to say, myself, a friend-who-is-a-teacher and Robinson's girlfriend) chose How To Train Your Dragon, which was a lot better than I thought it might be. The same two girls and me also volunteered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1), which the friend-who-is-a-teacher hadn't seen, even though she's read the book... for which I applaud her.

Anyway.

It was quite late in the evening when someone, the young raver I think, pointed out that Hairy Friend wasn't actually there. He had been at the pub the previous evening, and was quite keen to meet up again, so it took us a few minutes to puzzle out why he hadn't turned up, specifically since he would have his girlfriend to show off to people, in addition to the promise of Sharktopus (which, sadly, we didn't manage to see in the end).

It wasn't too difficult to work out, in hindsight, why my Hairy Friend and his pretty young long-distance American fiancée (who he hasn't seen for a month or so) didn't turn up to the DVD evening. Mane's younger brother, I don't know. Mane's girlfriend, I don't know. My sister, I don't know. But Hairy Friend and his SO - I can probably guess at the reason.

Robinson texted me today to ask if Hairy Friend had been in contact with me - he was purporting a trip to the pub this evening as well. But I haven't heard from him yet. Since they're both about 21, I can't say I'm too surprised.

"They're probably still in bed," I texted back, well aware that young lust was probably going to deny me another night out with my friends. Still, I can't really blame them, with the full knowledge that I'd be doing exactly the same. Still, for want of something to do, I did end up ordering Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. So that next time we have a DVD evening, we can have two films of shark/octopus carnage. With or without certain American girls.