I have seen some unusual things during my years of networking.

Business cards.

PowerPoint presentations.

Photographs of people's dogs.

More pictures of grandchildren than I could possibly count.

But there was one networking conversation that resulted in me accidentally seeing rather more of a man than I'd anticipated.

It started, quite innocently, with his new hip.

Or at least, I thought it did.

Would you like to see my new hip?

I'd known this particular man through networking for a while.

We'd chatted plenty of times and, as often happens when you've known people through networking for years, conversations weren't always strictly about business.

On this particular occasion, he'd recently had a hip replacement.

And somehow - I can't remember exactly how we got onto the subject - he offered to show me the X-ray.

Now, I've always been quite fascinated by things like that.

So of course I said yes.

I was expecting to see a shiny new hip joint.

And I did.

I just saw something else as well.

That's definitely not your hip

He showed me the X-ray and there it was.

The new hip.

Very impressive.

Modern medicine. Marvellous.

Except my eyes had also registered something else on the image.

Because the X-ray didn't just show his hip.

It also showed a rather unmistakable outline of his...

Well.

Let's just say it wasn't another bone belonging to his leg.

😂😂😂

And suddenly I wasn't quite sure where I was supposed to look.

Do I continue staring intently at the hip as though I haven't noticed?

Do I acknowledge the other thing?

Do I ask a sensible question about recovery?

“So... how long before you were walking normally again?”

All while my brain is shouting:

I CAN SEE YOUR WILLY.

But then I noticed something else

He didn't seem remotely embarrassed.

There was no sudden:

“Oh God, I forgot that was visible!”

No attempt to snatch the X-ray away.

If anything, I had the distinct impression that he was watching me.

Waiting to see what I'd do.

And I remember thinking:

You know that's there, don't you?

Now, I could be doing the poor man a terrible injustice.

Perhaps he genuinely was just extremely proud of his new hip.

Perhaps he'd shown that X-ray to half of Worcestershire and never once considered that people might notice anything other than the replacement joint.

But...

I'm not convinced.

To this day, I'm not entirely sure the hip was the only thing he wanted me to notice.

Was he flirting - or was I imagining it?

And that's actually what makes me laugh about this story all these years later.

Because flirting isn't always obvious.

Sometimes somebody simply says:

“I fancy you.”

Lovely. Nice and clear. Everybody knows where they stand.

But quite often flirting is much more subtle.

A slightly suggestive comment.

A joke that could be completely innocent...

or not.

Standing a little closer.

Holding eye contact slightly longer than necessary.

Finding a reason to touch your arm.

Saying something and then watching very carefully to see how you respond.

And sometimes it can feel as though somebody is putting a tiny little feeler out there.

What happens if I do this?

If you respond warmly, perhaps they go a little further.

If you don't, they can retreat without ever having openly put themselves on the line.

Which, when you think about it, is quite clever.

And also how you end up wondering whether somebody just flirted with you using an X-ray of their pelvis.

We don't always know when somebody is flirting with us

For somebody who has spent years working around dating and relationships, you might imagine I'm brilliant at spotting when somebody is interested.

I'm not always.

Because when you're inside the interaction, it's different.

You can analyse somebody else's situation beautifully.

Then somebody smiles at you across a room and suddenly you're thinking:

Was that a smile-smile?

Or just a normal smile?

Did he touch my arm because he likes me?

Or was I standing in the way of the sugar?

And after 50, some of us are coming back to flirting after years - sometimes decades - of not having to think about it.

We can feel rusty.

We might second-guess ourselves.

Or worry that we're reading something into an interaction that simply isn't there.

The truth is, one little signal rarely tells us very much on its own.

It's usually the combination that gives us a better idea.

The eye contact.

The smile.

The attention.

The body language.

The way somebody keeps finding reasons to continue the conversation.

And, occasionally, their willingness to show you a surprisingly comprehensive medical image.

Flirting doesn't have to be complicated

I actually think we sometimes make flirting much more intimidating than it needs to be.

It doesn't have to mean strutting across a room like some sort of irresistible seduction machine.

Thank goodness, because I don't think I could pull that off without falling over something.

Often it's simply showing somebody:

I'm enjoying talking to you.

A smile.

A little humour.

A genuine compliment.

A question that keeps the conversation going.

A moment of eye contact.

Giving someone just enough encouragement to know that if they take another tiny step towards you, they're probably not going to be horrifically embarrassed.

And if you've forgotten how to do any of that — or the thought of flirting again makes you want to hide behind the nearest pot plant — I've created a free Flirting Guide with simple ways to make flirting feel much more natural.

Get the Free Flirting Guide

No X-rays required.

And the hip?

As far as I remember, the replacement was doing very well.

As for whether the rest of the X-ray was an innocent oversight or an extremely creative flirting technique...

I still don't know.

But I do know that if he was testing the waters to see how I'd react, he certainly succeeded in getting my attention.

Just perhaps not quite in the way he'd intended.

And years later, I may have forgotten many of the business conversations I had at networking meetings...

But I have never forgotten that hip.

Well.

Technically, that's not entirely true.

It wasn't really the hip that stuck in my mind.

Have you ever been left wondering whether somebody was flirting with you — or whether you'd completely imagined it?

Or even better...

Have you ever realised years later that somebody had been flirting with you and you hadn't noticed at all?

Please tell me I'm not the only person who occasionally needs flirting to come with subtitles.

Jaq x