Unmatchable chat up line

I've just returned from a trip Up North -- to Manchester for work, which happily also allowed me to visit N&D and their nearly upon-us bump, and then to Lytham to visit the parentals and little sister.

She and I went out to the pub on Friday night, where I was happy (as I always am) to sink a few pints with Mr P, whom I have had a bit of a thing about for about the last fifteen years. It's been a mutual bit of a thing, but it's never really gone anywhere: I am 100% sure we would be a disaster as a couple, and he is for the most part in agreement with this assessment of the situation.

But it's never been quite as simple as that, and every now and again he tries to get me into bed. It's kind of a ritual we go through. I think he sees it as a form of chivalry, and I take it as a form of flattery. Roles are defined and the outcome is always the same. (Except once, but that's another story.)(Well, twice. Kind of. But we're older and wiser now.)

The obvious rebuttal -- that I'm already in a relationship -- cuts no ice. He knows M, and they get on well, but he has, as he says himself, the morals of a pole cat.

Any attempt at the 'we're much better as friends' argument is held up as cheesy (which when you're pissed, it is) and he points out that he's not offering lifelong, just night-long, and he'll still respect me in the morning. Which is true.

So my latest and most successful tactic is to point out practical barriers. No, I can't come back tonight, my parents want to see me. Tomorrow then. No, I can't, I've got to get up really early to get to Preston to catch the train home.

Look, you come round tomorrow night, we'll do mad passionate whatever and on Sunday I'll run you back in the van.

What, to Oxford?

Yeah. I can set the diesel off against tax.

With a line like that, I said, I'm almost tempted.

joella