There’s nothing like essentially calling someone a giant loser to start off a winning streak of a working week.

This morning I was minding my own business when a man in a suit started chatting to me. Man in Suit had engaged in what he thought was a harmless spot of small talk with me, not knowing what he had unwittingly stepped into a vessel of tragedy, much like the ill-fated French friend of Leonardo DiCaprio’s in The Titanic.

Like Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ill-Fated French Friend, Man in Suit thought he was innocently stepping onto the potential to for a life-changing adventure (or a way to pass the time by doing something more interesting than cleaning underneath his nails, some thing really) but instead he was travelling full-steam ahead to the conversational equivalent of a 18.9 metre-high smoke stack (I actually just Googled, ‘how big were the smoke stacks on The Titanic?’ and then had to use Google again to convert 62 feet into a more logical/metric way of communicating the length)falling directly onto his face.

He was telling me that he was somewhat of a locum, saying that he usually did temp work because we was able to.

That last few words should have given me the indication that Man in Suit was romantically unattached. Any normal person with actual social skills would have interpreted this throwaway line as a flashing motorway sign with capital yellow letters flashing “DO NOT IN ANY WAY ALLUDE TO RELATIONSHIPS OF ANY KIND BECAUSE SHIT’S GOING TO GET UNCOMFORTABLE” over oncoming traffic. But because I’m Dannielle I must have thought this meant he had a super flexible rental situation and a goal to wrack up a shittonne of Frequent Flyer points instead. Or at least that must have been what I thought, because that’s the only way I can explain what follows:

Man in Suit says he’s been to 44 different towns in the state for work.

Me: Over how many years?

At this point it is all going swimmingly. I’m asking appropriate questions and seem to be absolutely nailing the professional-casual vibe I’ve been channelling for a few years now. I was actually feeling confident.

Man in Suit: “About four.”

Me: “Do you send a lot of post cards?”

Man in Suit: “There aren’t a lot of postcards *makes joke about postcards and small towns in wording I can’t remember* … I have no one to send them too.”

So here is where most people would show a bit of tact and change the subject and direct the conversation to a smoother course of ocean distracting him from his apparent solitude by maybe joking about the weather or asking about which work station he liked the most. Instead I decide not only to go as fast as my industrial-era boat will take me into waters littered with figurative icebergs of emotional blows, but I also decide to throw the fucking binoculars into the water from the damned crow’s nest just for good measure.

What I didn’t know was at this point in the conversation, an English sailor somewhere was ringing a bell and screaming “iceberg, dead ahead”.

Me: “You could just send them to yourself.”

Around about now the whole fucking crew were freaking out, dramatically closing gates and sealing their colleagues off to a terrible, watery death. I, like everyone else on the damn ship, felt the rumble of the contact with the floating continent of ice, but I chose to respond like the father and son up on deck kicking ice around. I chose to believe that everything was fine.

A few mumbled exchanges had passed by this time, so I channelled that guy with the moustache and ordered a brandy, continuing going about my business.

Little did I know the musicians were gathering to play their mournful tune up on deck.

Me: “You could be like the episode of Mr Bean where he sends those Christmas cards to himself.”

“Actually, that’s really sad!”

And that’s when it finally hit me. There was no way this voyage was awaiting a happy dock in the land of the free. I realised that there was no boyishly-handsome penniless artist around to save me; I’d have to find my own damn floating door or push some selfish 17-year-old clinging to a frozen man off one myself.

Just as things were becoming increasingly desperate, the person/lifeboat we had been waiting for to come back did indeed come back, interrupting the conversation like the poetic metaphor for hope that she was.

She wasn’t holding a torch or shouting in slow motion, but inside I was blowing that whistle with all the strength my half-frozen lungs could allow. And I was saved from those icy waters.