Do you want this can of Coke?

I ring the buzzer at the front door to the close, I get buzzed in, and then Siobhan opens the door.  I'm drenched from the incredibly heavy rain outside.  I hold out my hand and say "do you want this can of Coke?".  She didn't, but the reason I had the can of Coke to offer to her in the first place was all part of my arrival in Glasgow, and not yet understanding enough about the place.

Having arranged to visit the flat to meet Siobhan, I confidently moved to Glasgow. I had enough cash for three nights in a youth hostel, and two flat viewings booked in.  In another demonstration of my youthful stupidity, I didn't see any issue with this.  I had a PhD bursary guaranteed, and I was sure that the university would give me an advance on my money as soon as I arrived.  

My first task was running round Strathclyde trying to get access to my bursary, probably one of my first experiences of these Catch 22-like bureaucracies, where I had to be enrolled to get my bursary but couldn't get enrolled without me having proof of my bursary from the finance department.  It probably wasn't as complicated as it seemed at the time, but I was naive, and assumed that people had organised the world in a way that worked.  Needless to say, I didn't get what I wanted right there and then.  

But there was no time to waste - I had a flat to view.  I'd worked out the bus route that I would need to get to the flat, I'd catch the bus on High St, and get off somewhere on Duke St somewhere near Roslea Drive.  I would ask the driver to let me know when to get off.  As soon as I stepped out of the university, it started raining so heavily that the you could see every drop bouncing off the ground.  The kind of rain that makes your trousers stick to your legs because they're soaked through so much.  But on I trudged to the bus stop.  

I just miss one bus and wait fifteen minutes for the next one to turn up, and I'm the first on:

"Duke Street please, along as far as Roslea Drive" I ask, and I learn that this will cost 84 pence.  I hold out a five pound note, and the driver gives me that look you get when you try to buy anything with a fifty pound note.  But surely, I think, you must have change for a fiver.  What I didn't realise was that the concept of change on a Glasgow bus didn't even exist.  For anyone who doesn't know, they simply have a clear drop box for you to put in any amount of money greater or equal to the fare, and they will happily take all of it.  There was a small queue behind me, and a paper shop right next to the bus stop.  

I'd try to get change as fast as I could.  So I ran into the shop and asked to change my five for five ones.  "Not without buying anything".  I look around and grab the nearest thing: a can of Coke.  Straight back outside and just manage to get on the bus.  I get off the bus and then have to walk up Roslea Drive, looking for the right flat.  Now absolutely drenched, I find the door, ring the buzzer, walk up the close to the door.  Siobhan opens the door, I hold out the can of Coke that I just bought, and ask "do you want this can of Coke?".

"No thanks," but how was I to know at the time, Siobhan only drank Diet Coke.

What do I remember about the first time we met?  Siobhan was wearing a top that had little hearts in columns, running the right way up and upside down in alternate columns.  She had a denim skirt on, and some sky blue chunky leather trainers.  She told me about how she'd come to be in the flat by herself.  From a distance, I could see CDs in her CD collection that we shared in common.  So I had a closer look, and there were Foo Fighters, Terrorvision, Ben Folds Five.  We talked about music for a while.  Lots of 90s bands we shared in common, it was nice to meet someone with similar tastes.  I remember seeing her electric wheelchair, in the study.  Her explaining that she needed it when she left the house to get around.

She told me she'd had a few other people viewing the flat, and she'd make up her mind in the evening.  I would phone her in the morning to find out whether I could move in.  I had another flat to view later that day.  I came away from Roslea Drive thinking Siobhan was going to say no, and that if she was going to say yes, she would have said it immediately.  So when the next people were super keen, I thought, well I'm probably going to be moving in there.  

But I was asking myself, if Siobhan says no, am I brave enough to ask her out on a date?  We had got on well.  But I think the answer would actually be no, because I'm not very brave.  So I'm lucky that when I called back from a payphone the next morning, she said yes and that I could move in.  I sounded surprised, and now had to phone the other flat and let them down, and for me that's actually a brave thing to do as well.  Having done that, I could now carry the two bags that carried my earthly possessions out of the hostel, and along Duke St to my new home in Dennistoun.  The hostel even refunded me for the two nights that I didn't now need.  I had succeeded in my unlikely mission of moving to Glasgow with no money, and finding and moving into a flat having paid no money up front.  Things were looking up.

I had met Siobhan in person for the first time.  Would I say it was love at first sight?  Probably as close to that as you will actually find in the real world.  It was only three weeks before we were a couple, and maybe if I was brave it would have been even sooner.

Love, Pete x