Free Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy by Lucy-Anne Holmes

idea.
    ‘I like this love story,’ Philippa whispers and she hugs me. But I shake my head. I’m happy with the love story I’m writing with Matt.
    Although the second time I met Matt couldn’t have been more different than this. The second time I met Matt was more weirdy weird than the first. Again it probably wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for the Smiling Fanny Manifesto. Point number seven is ‘do ten minutes of exercise every day’ and because of this, I now regularly go running. I say running, but slowly shuffling about in trainers might be a better term to describe it. I started just doing ten minutes like Philippa instructed, but somewhere along the line I found myself doing it for longer and longer and really starting to enjoy it. I loved that I could just drift away with my thoughts and suddenly find that I was nearly in Nunstone. I say nearly in Nunstone, what I mean is two miles out on the road to Nunstone. I should make that clear. Nunstone is after all seven miles away and then I’d have to get back again. Anyway, I normally go after work if I’m not doing anything else. It clears away the day and always makes me hungry for dinner, and I feel I’ve earned a glass of wine. So one evening I was slowly shuffling in my trainers along the Nunstone Road, which gets quite pretty once you’ve passed Homebase. I had just turned off the main road because I normally cut down a rural track and then do a circuit of a field and come back on myself. A car was parked against the gate to the field and I was quite excited that it might be some people dogging. So I slowed my pace. I’d never come across anybody dogging before and I’d been looking out for them. I’d hoped that might be another one of the endless benefits to taking regular exercise outside. So I slowed down and I realised that no one was dogging, more’s the pity, it was just a chap who’d pulled over to have a pee right by the gate that I needed to get through. Closer inspection told me that the man was on the phone. Not nice is it, to wee while you’re on the phone to someone? I don’t care how important the call is. Anyway, I had to come close to him to get to the gate so I ducked by him and went through the gate. But as I did so I looked at his willy. Because why not? And then I tutted. But it was very quiet. Tuts in the open air get easily lost, so I tutted louder.
    ‘It’s not nice to wee while you’re on the phone to someone,’ I said, but I didn’t look back.
    ‘I was on hold,’ he responded, a bit huffily. But then he added, ‘Nice legs, by the way.’
    I turned around then and looked, because I was single after all.
    ‘Oh, it’s you,’ I said.
    He looked disappointed with me too. But then, presumably because I was on that freaky high you get after exercise, I started chanting ‘You like my legs! You like my legs!’ in that sing-songy way that children do, and jumping about. And then he said, very seriously and stupendously sexily, ‘You have the most incredible legs I’ve ever seen.’ Then I ran off. But I was chuffed, because say what you want to about Matt, you cannot deny that he has leading-man good looks. I was so chuffed I ran much further than I normally do.
    But the second time I meet Joe King he calls me beautiful and sings a song to me. I’ll never admit it to Philippa but this is the sort of thing that happens at the start of a love story. It would be an easier one to tell your kids than ‘daddy was weeing by the gate and I ran past’. Not that I’m comparing Matt with Joe King.
    No, course not.
    You’ve met the bloke twice. He sings in a band. He’s probably got syphilis. You’re getting married. And, anyway, those sort of love stories are always beset by disaster. Pull self together, JT, NOW!

Chapter 13
    Whenever Philippa and I come across a new arrival in Tiddlesbury we give them one of our Tiddlesbury Tours. We love doing the Tiddlesbury Tour. Hence we are always on the lookout for people