Yes Man Read Online Free Page B

Garden Tube station. Is that okay?”
    “Yes, absolutely. I’ll see you there.”
    Great! That was easy! I had just successfully organised a meeting with my exgirlfriend. If there were such a thing as the Grown-up Scouts, I’d probably get a badge for that.
    Next I phoned Wag.
    “Wag! Waggle! Wagamama!”
    Sadly this is not me saying that. This is how Wag chooses to answer the phone sometimes.
    “Hey, Wag … I got your e-mail. I do indeed fancy a pint sometime. When and where do you recommend?”
    “Coool … How about today?”
    “Yes.”
    Oh, hang on, though. I started to realise that blindly saying yes to everything could well have its complications. What would I do if he suggested four o’clock for a coffee at Covent Garden?
    “How about seven for a pint at the Horse and Groom?”
    Thank God Wag was a bloke.
    “Done,” I said.
    This was all going very well. Very well indeed.
    Arrangements for the day made, I pootled down to the corner shop to buy milk and a newspaper or two. I was already starting to feel like a new man, which probably explains why I also bought a pot of natural yoghurt and some freshly squeezed orange juice. It was the kind of feeling that usually ends up with me considering going to the gym, or getting a dog and walking it a bit, and doing all the things that blokes in catalogues do. It was a feeling I hadn’t had in quite some time.
    Back upstairs I sat down with my tea and my newspapers and looked up at the clock. Midday. Just four short hours before I had to be anywhere. I could relax. Trouble was I didn’t want to relax. I wanted to get on with things. I wanted to say yes more. But there would be time.
    I started to leaf through the
Guardian
before realising that I was kidding myself, and picked up the Sun instead. I wish I was the type of person who could read the
Guardian
before reading the
Sun
, but even as a kid I’d want to eat the chocolate mousse before I attempted the healthy stuff.
    I amused myself with a piece about a young Scottish man who’d tried to take his kite out in a storm and ended up flying for three quarters of a mile, before I turned the page and saw, in a small box at the top of the page:
    DO YOU HAVE AN lNVENTION?
    I bristled with excitement. Now, technically, no, I didn’t have an invention. I had no invention at all. But this tiny advert was an opportunity. An opportunity to try my hand at something new. I could invent something! Maybe that’s why I was put here on Earth! To be an inventor!
    I tore the ad out and read it again. It had been placed by the Patents & Trademarks Institute of America, and it was offering to help new inventors get their brilliant inventions off the ground. Ace! All I had to do was phone them upand ask for an information pack. Five minutes later I’d done just that and had been assured my information pack was on its way to me. I could relax again.
    I finished off my copy of the
Sun
, picked up the
Guardian
, put it down again, and decided to head into town a little earlier than I’d planned.
    I could always buy the
Mirror
on the way.
    It was a sunny day, and it felt like a different city.
    London was bright and fall of colour. Even my walk to the Tube station, under deafening railway arches and down sparse streets, pavements broken up by tufts of dying grass and puddles of spit, had a certain beauty about it.
    But now here I was, walking from Leicester Square up to Covent Garden and feeling quite proud to be a Londoner. No more Yes Moments had presented themselves since I’d left the flat, but one was just around the corner.
    “Cup of tea, please,” I said to the man in the café.
    “Sugar?” he said.
    “No thanks.”
    “Fifty pence, please,” he said, putting my polystyrene cup in front of me.
    I reached for my change and realised I’d made a huge error. An error which I hope you will find excusable, based as it is on twenty years of habitual tea drinking.
    “Sorry, you asked me if I wanted sugar …”
    “Yeah,” he