...holy crap

Well, this really is incredibly lazy of me, but I seem to be getting chatted up on Twitter. By possibly the scariest-looking man I’ve ever seen.

This guy started following me on Twitter (the real me, not the Twitter for this blog – plug plug) a few weeks ago, but since Twitter’s a general follow-fest, unlike Facebook, where you generally know the people befriending you on there, I didn’t really notice, or check out his profile or anything. But the other day, in response to a tweet of mine, he sent me a private message, which I returned. This went on all day, getting to know each other – or at least getting to know as much as you can convey in 140 characters.

He seems quite pleasant actually, and hasn’t gone straight down the route of blatantly trying to hook up, and demanding my phone number, which is quite refreshing. But still, he seems quite apparently interested, and eventually asked me if I was on Facebook (which I am). So, the appropriate clicking and accepting was done, and I read a bit more about him. He’s my age, he lives quite near me in London, (although based elsewhere in the country during the week) and he’s a Royal Marine.

Now if you’re not exactly up to speed on military personnel (I wasn’t), this is what the Royal Marines do:

'The Royal Marines are the marine corps and amphibious infantry of the United Kingdom and, along with the Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary, form the Naval Service. They are also the United Kingdom's specialists in amphibious warfare, including the operation of landing craft; mountain warfare; and Arctic warfare. (...) highly trained as a commando force. It is trained to deploy quickly and fight in any terrain.' (Wikipedia - the font of all knowledge)

In other words, they’re big buggers who you’d rather not be on the wrong side of. And with that in mind, I then had a look at this particular Royal Marine’s pictures of himself. One of which (well, many of which, in fact) was of him with his shirt off.

Holy. Crap.

The words ‘brick shithouse’ are woefully insufficient. Confronted with this guy, an actual brick shithouse would run away back to its mummy brick shithouse, tail firmly between its legs. I have never seen anything like it in my life. His pecs are bigger than my head. His arms are wider than my thighs – and trust me, those things are WIDE. Around one of said arms is a tattoo that, if cut off and rolled out, may well be enough to cover the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. All in all, he looks like he could quite easily march uphill 100 miles a day in full body armour, fight tooth and nail to defend Queen and country, and kill me with his bare hands.

Anyway, once I’d popped my eye back in their sockets and resumed breathing , I decided to share the picture with my good friend H, a long admirer of the male form. And admire it she did, in a conversation that alarmed me to my very soul.


  ‘Ooooh, a Royal Marine!’ she said. ‘They’re mental, aren’t they?’


  ‘...I don’t know!’ I squeaked. ‘Are they?’


  ‘They are completely mental,’ she continued cheerfully. ‘They’re like soldiers but very, very brave and complete hard nuts.’


Someone hold me.


  ‘Still, wow!’ H said, poring again over the photo of The Marine. ‘Look at the size of those arms! Don’t think I’d say no if I were you!’


  ‘Hmm,’ I hmmed. ‘We’ll see what happens. He hasn’t even asked me out yet. But if he does, for the moment, I’m picking a busy, well-lit place and not going back to his. Seriously, he looks like he could crush my head with two fingers.’


  ‘Really?’ H agreed. ‘But just think about that stamina...’


Stamina indeed. The merest glance at the training regime undertaken by your average marine was enough to leave me exhausted, so if he’s capable of that, God knows what he’d do to me. Anyway, numbers have been swapped, so we shall see what comes of this. 

Crush injuries, probably.