Alert the paparazzi: I may end up having the squid roulade tipped over my head
It’s thrilling when a relationship gets so established that you can have proper arguments about “commitment” and “attitude”. Until recently I would have been hard-pushed to remember my accuser’s name. Not any more. Things are looking up.
Now I can go out to dinner with the beloved to discuss “us”. It feels so grown-up, I’m rather proud. The courtroom was an Italian restaurant in Tavistock Street. The gavel was a glass of house red. I was the accused and my boyfriend the prosecution, and the charges came under the general heading of "Julian's self-absorption". Who'd have thought there was yet another fascinating aspect to my personality? I did my very best to look solemn and contrite.
Always happy to talk about myself, I staged a robust and detailed defence but pleaded guilty at the last minute, throwing myself dramatically upon the mercy of the court. It worked a treat and I got off with a caution. Soon we were canoodling over the tagliatelle like Romeo and Juliet.
My analysis of my own performance took up the next hour. (He had the nerve to stifle a couple of yawns.) After a few more glasses of wine I started to yearn for another conflict. Harmony is boring by comparison, and I began to glance about me, looking for something to pick on. As I studied his carefully arranged hair an idea came to me. "I'm all for a drop of hair product," I said, "but running my fingers through yours feels like caressing a carpet covered in dried vomit." He was suitably affronted, voices were raised, a breadstick was tossed in my direction and the rest of the evening flew by. Bliss.
Now, of course, we face the exciting prospect of another post-mortem evening. I feel a centre table at St Alban coming on. The paparazzi had better be alerted - I may be sentenced to having the squid roulade tipped over my head. A well-timed snap could see me in next Sunday's Celebs magazine. My publicists will be thrilled. (One is a young mother called Hannah, who does a job-share with Stephanie, who spends half the week training to be a celebrity nutritionist. Thus I get emails asking me if I'd do a "My Favourite Nail Varnish" feature for a glossy, and how I'd rate the shape and size of my stools that morning.)
I spent a couple of days in Kent recovering from this turmoil. The badger that lives beneath my bedroom floor is back. He’s a little wheezy and he has some personal freshness issues, clearly (but then so does my boyfriend, and I haven’t got pest control in to remove him. Mind you it’s an idea). Live and let live, I say. It’s a bit like turning on the TV and finding Eamonn Holmes: it’s not what you hoped for, but seeing as he’s there now, he might as well stay.
Then suddenly it was Saturday and I had to make a difficult choice: go to Brighton Pride, or troll along to the Coliseum to see the Bolshoi Ballet in La Bayadère? Much the same thing, you might think. We opted for the Bolshoi, as we figured the toilets would be nicer.
The male lead, playing the role of Solor - a noble warrior who has two girls on the go, with seriously tragic consequences - had been much derided by the critics for not being heterosexual enough. Nonsense. (Who would they suggest? Jonny Wilkinson, or Keith Allen?) We thought he looked lovely in his lavender jumpsuit and matching turban. It wasn't a Mike Leigh film, after all. You can only work with what you're given.
But the real money shot was the corps de ballet's breathtaking Kingdom of the Shades dance, a perfect display of exquisitely hypnotic moves repeated with amazing technical brilliance, symbolic of some sort of eternal lament. After the next spat with the husband, I'm going to slip Ludwig Minkus into the CD player and seduce him with a 48-year-old homosexual knacker's version of this great scene. If I can get the anglepoise lamp right, he'll be putty in my hands.
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