I’ve been wanting to share this short story  for a while.  Walking down the high street in a space suit is not easy.  It was rented from a  fancy dress shop called Who Do You Think You Are?  It was surprisingly heavy and worryingly airtight and made me sweat.  This bit of me wants to delete this story The visor steamed up.  I realized that this wasn’t such a  romantic idea as I wheezed up the hill to her house to ask her hand in marriage.  All my tenses are wrong. I was a walking sauna and I sounded like Darth Vader with a cold.  When the helmet locked I lost the plot and I badly needed the toilet.   Walking blind while dying to pee is not a romantic look and it looks worse in a space suit.   Finally,  wound up and, frankly, angry,  I arrived at her house. It took  10 minutes to push the bell. Firstly I couldn’t see the damn thing because my visor had steamed up.   And secondly I couldn’t get the right pressure on the bell because of the sausage finger padding of the suit. This was beginning to feel like a very bad idea. And it should be written in third person.

As I attempted rubbing the steam off of the visor she opened the door. I looked like a spaceman slapping himself.   I pointed at myself with both hands.  I am a man in a space suit outside my girlfriend’s house pointing at myself.  Then I could have more fun with it. She frowned. So I pointed at her and pointed at me.   She leaned forward.  Small droplets that maginified my manic breathless face started to form on the inside of the visor. Please I said to myself do not sneeze now. 

We’d had a big argument a week ago. I thought this would help.  It wasn’t easy to get down on one knee.  It’s a funny idea but’s not executed well. I used the red hat of her mothers ceramic garden gnome for support. It snapped in my chubby hands.  She bent down,  picked it up and gave me that look I had come to know so well. The Darth vader effect on my breathing was not conducive with the moment.  It’s potential is bigger than the actuality.  She stooped down, rapped on the visor then shouted each word with full clarity   “I said I needed a little space, man not A LITTLE SPACE MAN”.  And with that she closed the door.  All I could see were thousands of mini me’s spinning in each droplet invisible to her. I like the bit about the mini me repeating on the visor. I wouldn’t stoop to opening the letterbox on my knees and shouting through it. I have some pride.   I opened the letterbox  and shouted through it but it had no effect other than to burst my eardrums. I gave up the ghost and walked in the rain to the bus stop. SO I can’t delete it cause it’s gone out. I apologise for the wrong tenses and sticky sentences. I put it out before I should’ve. Anyway it’s written with love.