Toby and Lois are the protagonists of Advanced Fun. They are a couple struggling with their new mortgage and decided to take in a lodger to help for a bit. That lodger is Lois's cousin Mark. A guy who's just recovered from illness and is only now at 27 for the first time able to get out and actually enjoy life.
Toby and Lois on the other hand are staring at the precipice of leaving all that behind. Lois just hit 30, Toby's not far behind. One of Lois's best friends has a kid, most of them are married. Although another couple who were engaged has just split up. They feel a bit caught in limbo: babies to the left of them, parties to the right.
They've been together for 3 years. Not forever but it's been serious from the get go. They met on a blind date, set up by Toby's good friend Seb (this is basically the same Jack from The Thing about Jack).
Although the first date was a disaster he managed to persuade her to go for a second and from then on all went well. Within six months they were de facto living together and they moved in officially after a year. They've just bought due to Toby coming into some inheritance. It's somewhere suburban. It says, we could raise a family here. But they still feel uncomfortable. When we first meet them they're having the first people round who have kids and they say what a great place it will be for the kids. Lois and Toby are insistent that it's good for parties too. But when they have a housewarming that night everyone leaves at 11 o'clock citing being so far out but to be honest it's just not a kicking party.
Toby is quite loud. Not desperate to dominate but never going to be in the background. He can be a little touchy, a little unsure about new people he meets- can definitely take to someone quickly but has a very low tolerance of pretension.
He's a primary school teacher. A really great one. Boys at the slightly rough school he's at really respond to him. He's large, athletic but rather sweet looking. Someone who looked terribly pretty at 18 and his face hasn't been really sure what to do since. The upshot of this is he has a LOT of girl friends and is not remotely scared of having kids. Although at the same time, they're not there yet.
He was definitely looking for someone serious when he met Lois. He's been going out with a teacher from school for a long time. It wasn't right, they weren't really making each other happy yet he kept pushing for it to get more serious, for them to move in together.
She called it off because he didn't have the guts to do it himself. She loved him way more than he ever did.
He's sporty- and sport time is his time. There's a school team and a his own sunday football team and with both of them Lois is distinctly not invited. He hates people watching him- hated it as a kid, hates it now.
The other his time, despite the fact that he was the one who introduced him to Lois, is Seb. Seb is his best mate from school and is always around. Seb is impossibly trendy and always seems to be busy, off somewhere doing something cool. But he's always got time for Toby.
Lois knew how to have fun. First it was booze and boys. Then it was drugs and men. She was never out of control- she underperformed academically but she got away with it and now works as a commissioner of the slightly higher brow of reality television. She's lived off the buzz of making them for ages but just switched to commissioning. She's coming down and while she knew that she needed to stop, she's still adjusting to the loss of adrenaline. While she was frenetic the calm, sweet humour of Toby was exactly what she needed but now she's calmer she's started to think. She doesn't want to lose Toby. He's the one. She knows that. But she's become scared. That much stability means he's not letting stuff out. He's never had fun like she has. And she's becoming increasingly convinced that if he doesn't get it out of his system then he'll have a midlife crisis.
So when Mark proposes it she suddenly gets very excited. This is what they need. This is what Toby needs. Not that she ever says any of this to Toby or checks how he feels about it. She's not totally wrong but she's going about it the whole wrong way. And she's going to push him far further away than she's ready to do.
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