he must have figured it out. Please, please let this not be happening. I looked round quickly; luckily, the few people still there were too far in their own cups to notice us.
‘I just wanted you to know, my partner’s away for the weekend, if you …’ He seemed to lose the rest of the sentence for a moment. ‘If you wanted to share a taxi home.’ I noticed with distaste a gleam of spittle on his lower lip.
Fuck, what to do? It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive, he was; and it wasn’t that I had anything better to do, I didn’t. But say yes – and I was not filled with the overwhelming urge to do so – and it would be only a short journey to being the office bicycle. Say no, and, well, the guy sort of had my professional balls in his hand, so to speak, didn’t he?
‘It’s not my policy to mix business with pleasure,’ I said, moving away from the offending hand.
‘Tell me, then,’ Giles said, and teetered slightly, ‘what do you mix your pleasure with?’
He straightened and I saw his half-lidded eyes roll slightly as his body swayed. I put my hand gently on his shoulder and lowered him back to a sitting position on the sofa. ‘Afraid I have other plans,’ I said. ‘Sleep well.’
‘You’re a beautiful lady, you know that?’ he said. He pursed his lips in a drunken kiss and slumped over.
samedi, le 23 octobre
I love ice cream like some people love oxygen.
It’s also ace for a hangover. Today I had ice cream at every place I saw. That is, of course, unless I was already eating an ice cream, because stacking cones is not polite. I had a chocolate cone, mint and lemon in a cup, a luscious Spagnola cone, and vanilla.
I like vanilla. I don’t tend to eat it, though, because there are so many other nice flavours in the world. But this was good vanilla and it made me happy.
I had a housemate who would only eat vanilla-flavoured ice cream. Not because it was his favourite, mind. But because (he said) vanilla tastes the least of anything, so the companies use their best ice cream for the vanilla flavour. And the chocolate, he assured me, because it is so strongly flavoured, will be made from inferior ice cream.
Someone who believes a thing like that really does not understand chocolate. Nor the concept of food in general. He was also a vegetarian not out of love for the little fluffy bunnies superseding his desire for a juicy steak, but because, as he put it, you can feed thirty people on the grain it takes to sustain a single cow. Or something. Such people prove that taste is not an evolutionary advantage.
Woke on Sunday morning, stumbled blearily out of the bedroom, naked, to use the toilet and was startled to see a man sitting on the sofa reading a paper. But that’s another story and nothing to do with ice cream.
dimanche, le 24 octobre
It was N on the sofa. He has a set of my keys.
He’d spent Saturday night at a mate’s stag do, and as my house was closer to the party than his (and presumably Henrietta’s), he stumbled in sometime in the wee hours and slept in the lounge. Bless. But it gave me quite a start in the morning. To be fair, perhaps the fact that he didn’t burst drunkenly into my bedroom at half three and demand to come on my face proves him to be a gentleman.
I’ve been to a stag do or two in my time. Never in a professional capacity, though. Rather, I’m likely to be the only girl in a young man’s acquaintance who can be trusted to drink pints, buy inflatable sheep and wrestle my Playstation opponents into quivering submission as well as any born male. One time the party took place at a strip club, and neither I nor the men thought anything of having a hen in the coop. If there’s an etiquette to being the only XX at a traditionally XY party, it’s this: don’t complain, don’t be the first or last to go home, and don’t flirt outrageously (except with the strippers).
In fact, these rules could probably be expanded to life in general.
After breakfast we
‘I just wanted you to know, my partner’s away for the weekend, if you …’ He seemed to lose the rest of the sentence for a moment. ‘If you wanted to share a taxi home.’ I noticed with distaste a gleam of spittle on his lower lip.
Fuck, what to do? It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive, he was; and it wasn’t that I had anything better to do, I didn’t. But say yes – and I was not filled with the overwhelming urge to do so – and it would be only a short journey to being the office bicycle. Say no, and, well, the guy sort of had my professional balls in his hand, so to speak, didn’t he?
‘It’s not my policy to mix business with pleasure,’ I said, moving away from the offending hand.
‘Tell me, then,’ Giles said, and teetered slightly, ‘what do you mix your pleasure with?’
He straightened and I saw his half-lidded eyes roll slightly as his body swayed. I put my hand gently on his shoulder and lowered him back to a sitting position on the sofa. ‘Afraid I have other plans,’ I said. ‘Sleep well.’
‘You’re a beautiful lady, you know that?’ he said. He pursed his lips in a drunken kiss and slumped over.
samedi, le 23 octobre
I love ice cream like some people love oxygen.
It’s also ace for a hangover. Today I had ice cream at every place I saw. That is, of course, unless I was already eating an ice cream, because stacking cones is not polite. I had a chocolate cone, mint and lemon in a cup, a luscious Spagnola cone, and vanilla.
I like vanilla. I don’t tend to eat it, though, because there are so many other nice flavours in the world. But this was good vanilla and it made me happy.
I had a housemate who would only eat vanilla-flavoured ice cream. Not because it was his favourite, mind. But because (he said) vanilla tastes the least of anything, so the companies use their best ice cream for the vanilla flavour. And the chocolate, he assured me, because it is so strongly flavoured, will be made from inferior ice cream.
Someone who believes a thing like that really does not understand chocolate. Nor the concept of food in general. He was also a vegetarian not out of love for the little fluffy bunnies superseding his desire for a juicy steak, but because, as he put it, you can feed thirty people on the grain it takes to sustain a single cow. Or something. Such people prove that taste is not an evolutionary advantage.
Woke on Sunday morning, stumbled blearily out of the bedroom, naked, to use the toilet and was startled to see a man sitting on the sofa reading a paper. But that’s another story and nothing to do with ice cream.
dimanche, le 24 octobre
It was N on the sofa. He has a set of my keys.
He’d spent Saturday night at a mate’s stag do, and as my house was closer to the party than his (and presumably Henrietta’s), he stumbled in sometime in the wee hours and slept in the lounge. Bless. But it gave me quite a start in the morning. To be fair, perhaps the fact that he didn’t burst drunkenly into my bedroom at half three and demand to come on my face proves him to be a gentleman.
I’ve been to a stag do or two in my time. Never in a professional capacity, though. Rather, I’m likely to be the only girl in a young man’s acquaintance who can be trusted to drink pints, buy inflatable sheep and wrestle my Playstation opponents into quivering submission as well as any born male. One time the party took place at a strip club, and neither I nor the men thought anything of having a hen in the coop. If there’s an etiquette to being the only XX at a traditionally XY party, it’s this: don’t complain, don’t be the first or last to go home, and don’t flirt outrageously (except with the strippers).
In fact, these rules could probably be expanded to life in general.
After breakfast we
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