Liz Rettig: Dating Disasters

To celebrate the publication of Liz Rettig's hilarious novel My Dating Disasters Diary we have an exclusive peek at the first chapter also in this bumper-blog we have a dating guide for boys and a dating guide for girls (both compiled by Liz) and real-life dating disasters from anonymous members of Scottish Book Trust staff and perhaps one author...enjoy!

To access your free downloads please click on this link which will take you back to the Scottish Book Trust website.

Our Dating Disasters

After a particularly heavy night out my boyfriend (at the time) stumbled back to my college halls and as happens when you have drunk a lot of beer he needed to pee in the middle of the night. But rather than walk into the bathroom, he walked into the cupboard and peed all over my college course-work and my shoes. He wasn’t my boyfriend for very much longer.

I had just started seeing this guy and was giving a friend of mine the low-down by text and I said that he was ‘quite cute in an ugly sort of a way’ but rather than send it to my friend, I sent it to him. Oops! Things didn’t work out between us…

I was asked out on a date by a bouncer as I was leaving a pub at the end of a very long night. Disregarding the fact that he probably used the same tactic on every girl exiting the establishment, in anticipation of an eventual acceptance based on the law of averages, I readily agreed to meet him the next week at the same pub. The day of the date dawned, and I pulled on my standard student first date outfit (unnaturally tight clothes and sky high heels.) Tottering along to the appointed place in the pouring rain, I was slightly surprised to see him muffled up in layers of clothes, wielding a single golf club and a huge umbrella. Bouyed up my new heels, quite literally, I decided to disregard the ominous signs and continued on the approach. 'We're going to The Open' he beamed at me. 'Lovely', I beamed back, disregarding the fact that the Open is known throughout the world as an international golf event, and assuming instead that it was a nice new restaurant.The peny dropped when we arrived at The Old Course, a seething mass of mud, golf umbrellas and small children wearing hats in the shape of tigers. Slightly disapppointed, but deciding to disregard the obvious practical complications arising from sky high heels and lots of mud, I went to follow him through the gate. A hand shot out in front of me, almost sending me toppling onto the 18th green. 'Hold on there lady, you'll need to pay first - that'll be £16 please.'I watched in disbelief as my date continued forward towards the champagne tent, flashing his single complimentary VIP pass at the stewards. Disregarding the fact that he would at some point presumably turn round and expect to find me wobbling along behind him, I turned on my heel and tottered home again.

It was the fashion for 'big hair' which in my case was achieved with upside down blow drying and the liberal addition of various hair products: mousse, gels, sprays - you name it I put it on my hair for my date that night. And it worked. I had BIG HAIR. I thought I looked fabulous although with my hair sticking out vertically about six inches from my scalp I probably looked as though I'd just had an awful shock. My date seemed impressed though and took me to a lovely restaurant where we dined by candlelight. So romantic. Until I leaned over the table towards him and my hair caught fire. I was unaware of it at first but he noticed immediately and was horrified. My hair didn't just singe but caught fire and kept burning fuelled by hair products probably as flammable as petrol. He lunged over to me and started slapping my head to damp the flames which infuriated me until I realised (along with other diners) that I was on fire. Oops.

I had made the effort to look smart and had turned up to the pub a few minutes early just in case she was on time. I ordered a drink and waited patiently. I waited patiently for half an hour, so I texted her to see where she was and she never got back to me. I wondered if she was ok or had I just been stood up. She never did turn up and to this day I still don’t know if she was ok.

Other News

Joan Lingard has been nominated for the West Sussex Children's Book Award.

Methphrog have been blogging about their Comic Workshops

World Book Day: what did you do?

It was World Book Day this week, so we asked a few top authors to tell us what they got up to on the day...

Cathy Forde

My World Book Day began with a morning session in Holyrood Secondary, Glasgow - their first author visit in years. I spoke to some lovely S2s. The afternoon was spent in Knightswood Primary School, Glasgow on the invitation of Eileen from Lost in Fiction Bookshop, Byres Rd, Glasgow. The entire school was celebrating World Book Day on a massive scale, with pupils and all the teachers in fancy dress, free coffee from Starbucks, competitions, and a head teacher disguised as Captain Hook. The enthusiasm for books and reading was as delicious as the cup cakes on sale. I spoke to all the P6 and P7 pupils about about my favourite book and told them how my snake escaped. It was a BRAW WBD indeed!

Annemarie Allan
To Musselburgh Burgh Primary to talk to two classes about Breaker, my new book. The children were delighted to hear about a story that takes place in North Berwick, so close to where they live. Not only are writers real people, but they write about real places. World Book day is not only international – it is local too! Then a short question and answer session with another class about my previous book, Hox. What they most particularly wanted to know was when I was going to write the sequel, so we spent an interesting ten minutes talking about that. I left them with the suggestion that they might like to write the sequel themselves and I am looking forward immensely to finding out what happened to my characters after the last page of the book.

K. M. Grant
On World Book Day, I will be in Rome, presenting a book to the Vatican. Not one of mine! In 1550, a beautiful book was created for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, grandson of Pope Paul III. Popes were quite naughty in those days, hence the grandchildren. The book was nine years in the making and illuminated with jewel-like pictures by a brilliant artist called Giulio Clovio. Eventually the book became known as the Towneley Lectionary, and before I married, I was a Towneley. A stunning new facsimile (a facsimile is an exact copy) edition has been produced and the publishers thought it would be nice if my father attended the Vatican presentation. He asked if I could go too. It is my most unusual World Book Day visit to date. Not sure if I'll see the present pope, but am hoping at least to catch a glimpse of his cat...

John and Sandra from Metaphrog
On World Book Day, we were hard at work on our graphic novel in progess, Louis - Night Salad, scripting, pencilling and painting, as well as cleaning up some pages of line art for a short story. Finally, we prepared material for conducting a visual storytelling and comic workshop at Perth High School the following day.

So that's a little bit about what some of our writerly friends got up to. Now we want to know what you did! Tell us about your World Book Day by adding a comment or drop us an email: teen@scottishbooktrust.com.