Love is in the air…

The text message came through at 11.30, ruining my attempts at bedding down for some sleep. “Oh no,” I thought, remembering the incessant phone calls at 1.30am the night before. “It’s another drunken message from Simon H telling me how much he’s sunk down his throat.” I blearily reached across to my bedside table and tried to focus on the message. It was from Elli.
“I’m engaged!”, it read to my utter astonishment. “Yes, really!” she finished, to counter any accusations that she might be joking. That woke me up with a start, and I immediately tried calling her. In fact, I tried for the next thirty minutes, but her phone reception defeated my chances of a congratulatory message.
So, this morning, I ambled into work (yep, I know its a shocker during the Christmas holidays…) and decided to forward Elli’s message to the rest of my phonebook and then call her. As I was tapping away at the phone keypad, my colleague Kate came in the office. “Oh, how are you, nice Christmas?” I asked innocently. “YES!” she replied, and immediately flashed her hands are me. In fact, what was actually flashing was the enormous rock on her engagement finger. “Dear God!” I said, “Not you as well!”. Any available females in the office immediately crowded round her and cooed at the ring while Kate recounted how, where and when her fiance asked her to marry him.
I’d barely recovered from the shock before I pressed “Send” on my Elli-based text message. Almost immediately, a text message came back, this time from David B, who I’d only seen on Christmas Eve. And this message, my dear readers, was the kicker – the one that sent me into a spin.
“Strange story,” the message said. “So did I.”
So, two close friends and a colleague have all got engaged in the last couple of days. Serious, hearty congratulations obviously goes to all of them (I give good rates for Best Man speeches, by the way) – but seriously, is someone trying to tell me something?