The Extraordinary Nobody

I met Menna Pritchard in Cardigan. It started with an unexpected tweet asking if she was brave enough to ask me out for a drink.

I’d always joked about wanting a groupie, though in reality the only ones I ever seemed to attract were middle-aged men. If a real one had appeared I’d probably have run a mile. Menna wasn’t a groupie, or even a “band-aid”.

I’ve never really dated. I’m clueless about love and women — perhaps the legacy of an all-boys school. Women scare me more than any north face. Courtship, to me, has always just been ins and outs. Maybe it’s a Yorkshire thing. Maybe it’s self-protection. My heart is fragile. I tend to see disappointment before hope.

But I was single. I was lonely. My heart was broken and still breaking. So I tweeted back: “Why not?”

Life rarely turns out as planned. The beautiful woman you meet online becomes a seven-foot Nigerian conman. The perfect profile turns out to be an expert in Photoshop with three cats. (I have a rule about not dating anyone with a cat in their profile picture.)

So when I did the inevitable social-media stalking I was shocked. Menna was beautiful. She loved the outdoors. She had wild tattoos. I immediately braced for disappointment.

I saw she had a young child. I also saw sadness behind her smile. Like everyone, she had a story.

I assumed it wouldn’t happen. Something always derails these things. Once, another woman had tweeted asking if I’d take her out, only to clarify she meant her and her boyfriend climbing. I met the boyfriend. He said I could take her out — if I taught her to climb a big wall.

I can take loneliness. I struggle with disappointment. But I took a chance. Aren’t I meant to be bold?

The night of the talk arrived. No Menna. A tweet said she was late. I felt foolish for believing in whimsy. By half-time she still wasn’t there. I told myself not to expect fairy tales. Beautiful women don’t just appear out of thin air.

After the talk I stood in the bar with a glass of wine, feeling steadier. Then she walked in. Flustered. Nervous. The conversation I’d been having evaporated.

My first thought: she was so young. She told me she’d be thirty next year, though she was still twenty-eight. We went to a pub and drank gin and tonics — which make me feel like a Spitfire pilot — and she told me about herself.

I’ve always suspected men misunderstand what women want. Not endless vulnerability. Not a man exposing every demon. I suspect what many want is someone solid. Certain. Not blind to their flaws, but not ruled by them. Someone who doesn’t mirror their insecurity but quietens it. Someone who makes them laugh instead of collapsing beside them.

But I don’t know. I’m guessing.

Instead of being solid and mysterious, we talked honestly. I could see she was a little broken too. When she said she was single, I asked if she was mad. She said she wasn’t. I wasn’t so sure about myself.

At forty-three I had no money, no stable home, and serious doubts about my own worth. I was racing around the country smiling on stage while slowly unravelling off it.

When I asked about her life she said she was a nobody and I was a somebody. That hurt. In my experience, somebodies are often the dullest people in the room. Ordinary lives are where the real drama lives.

Menna had once been living a punk Brighton life full of promise. Then she got pregnant and chose to raise her daughter alone. She moved back to Wales, started a degree in Outdoor Education, earned a first, worked throughout, never asked for help. She carried her own burden.

When she spoke about it I could feel the mix of anger, pride and loss. A life cut short, then rebuilt.

When we hugged goodbye she held on longer than expected. I felt something loosen in my chest. For a moment, the pain eased. She gave me hope. Hope I could be happy. Hope I could be normal. Perhaps we could save each other.

We started seeing each other. Good food. Alan Partridge. Laughter. It felt like someone had opened a window.

Friends warned me not to rush. I hadn’t processed my break-up with Karen. I insisted I was fine. I wasn’t. Menna simply dulled the embers.

Ella said, “Nando’s makes me happy, but I wouldn’t eat there every day.” Others said she was too young. I didn’t listen. Life is long enough for mistakes, but too short for regrets.

We moved in together. Tried to build something normal. I slowly realised I might not be built for normal.

Then Menna was invited to speak at the Women’s Climbing Symposium in Glasgow. She was shocked. “What would I say?” she asked. “Look at who’ll be there.”

It struck me how easily we undervalue our own stories. A woman who raises a child alone, earns a degree, rebuilds her life — somehow feels lesser than someone who pulls hard on plastic or grit.

Why?

Perhaps because ordinary lives don’t look spectacular. They unfold quietly. But their theatre is just as grand.

The lorry driver who says the only thing he was good at was drinking and whoring. The man describing frostbitten toes peeling away in a police shower. The husband who rises above betrayal by choosing a higher road.

Everyone carries an epic. Most of us just fail to see it.

Maybe we should talk more. Write our stories down. See them as fables rather than footnotes. Every life weighs more than the one living it can ever know.