Agony Aunt Madge!

You will never guess who rang me up yesterday..... Janet Dibner! That's right, the total (and I mean TOTAL) geek of our tutor group.
Don't get me wrong, Janet's OK, she's quite brainy and stuff like that, but in terms of coolness, she is practically tropical! Her hair's always scraped back in an alice band - and I don't mean a fab, jewelled one with sparkles and stuff on it, I mean one of those old lady type things made of that gross stretchy stuff, and she never wears make up - not even a bit of lippy. Plus, her clothes look like her mum's knitted them from a 1950s knitting pattern. So it's really not good for my image to be seen hanging with her.

Anyway - yesterday we were still off school because the boilers aren't fixed, and I was round at Daniel's (this time without his merry band of lame mates, thank goodness!) when this strange number came up on my phone and it was Janet! Talk about step back in amazement.

It turns out she wanted my advice. (Didn't I tell you she was brainy?) She said, `I hope you don't mind me ringing you, Magenta, but Seema gave me your number.' (Ggggrr - I'm sure that contravenes the European laws of private information protection or something. I shall speak to Seema later.) `I don't know what to do...' She was crying by this time. `...I think my boyfriend's two timing me.'

Boyfriend? Janet Dibner? Really? Normally, if someone thinks their boyfriend's cheating, I'd tell them to dump the skunk but, let's be honest here, Janet can't afford to start dumping people.

So, after I'd listened to her snotting for about ten minutes, I told her, `You need to phone him up and tell him that you really like him and ask him what it would take from you for him to bin the other girl.'
`Really?' she said, perking up a bit.
`Absolutely.'
`You don't think I should ditch him?'
`Not unless you want to be a singleton for ever,' I reassured her. `Relationships are about compromise and your part of the compromise is to do whatever it takes.'
`But I don't want to look needy,' she said.

A bit late for that, I thought - although I didn't say it out loud.

Afterwards she was really grateful and I felt proud that I'd been able to help. It gave me such a warm and fuzzy feeling to think that I'd been able to offer someone advice and make their life a little bit better.
`Thanks so much, Magenta, ' she said at the end. `I must admit, I did ring Seema first, but she said she'd never been two-timed so wouldn't be able to empathise with me. She said you'd have a better understanding because it happens to you all the time.'

Did she now? And to think, I thought Seema was my best friend - not any more! Gggrrrr!