Blind dates. Or rather, short-sighted dates.
When you’ve only seen a rather hazy photograph of a person it’s not always easy to know who you’re meeting. But hey, I’ve done this sort of thing on a professional level. I know only too well what it’s like to walk into a restaurant or a bar and not have a clue what the person looks like or even who they are, although in case you think I’m coming over all Billy Piper, offering speciality services to those who prefer the older, more mature sort of hooker, stop right there. I mean that when I lunched for a living I often arranged to meet people I hardly knew. It made the business of eating less tedious.
Tedious? I hear you say, probably even more shocked than you were at the idea that I might be conducting a secret life of prostitution. And yes, tedious.
You would be surprised how dreary it is going out to lunch with the same person all the time. It’s sort of like marriage, pre-abandonment, when you are still taking each other for granted and you’ve already talked about the kids, the house, the summer holiday plans and then start bickering so that you forget what you ate or even if it was any good. If you’re having too much of a, ehm, scintillating conversation, you just don’t pay attention to the food. Going with a stranger means that you can both concentrate on what you’re eating, they get to bore on about all the other meals they’ve had and ‘Great-Restaurants-They-Have-Know, beating you into inadequacy with their superior knowledge of culinary terms and as a result you always have something to talk about. Or at least they do. Letting someone else patronize you is a great way to make a lunch just fly past.
This is how I came to go to a seafood restaurant with a 4’11”(I’m 5’10”in heels) Jewish chap from Golder’s Green who arrived in a red sport’s car, glanced at the menu and then told me he liked to keep Kosher and that shellfish were, of course, treif. This is also how I ended up sitting in a greasy spoon café with the comedian Phil Jupitus eating bacon and eggs. And, then again, how I found myself at a posh grill called cringingly ‘Grand Prix’ without another customer in the room, entertaining a boy of 19 who arrived in crutches after breaking his back in a, wince, car accident.
Happy days. Well one of them was, and I’ll leave you to work out for yourselves which it was.
So difficult and potentially embarrassing encounters with strangers are something I’m used to.
Nevertheless, as I entered the French café and looked around at the other customers I was suddenly unsure what the person I was supposed to be meeting actually looked like. Tall. I thought. But people lie about their height don’t they Mr Red Sport’s Car? So next distinguishing feature. Mmm – couldn’t think of one. He didn’t have a ginger beard like the last one who was pretty easy to pick out of the crowd. Nor was he black like the one before. Otherwise he had pretty anodyne features. But then I had a eureka moment and remembered that he had very short clipped hair, the sort of hairstyle, or lack of hair style that men adopt when they are approaching baldness and have got close enough to pick out the landmarks.
That ought to help, I thought scanning the room afresh.
Yeah – you would think, wouldn’t you?
Except that Sunday morning in the French café seemed to be the unofficial gathering of the West London Branch of Slapheads Anonymous.
There were three men in the café and they all had tightly clipped haircuts.
I happened to be standing next to one of them in the queue. He was incredibly good-looking, French, with shy brown eyes and the body of a fit thirty-five year old. So not him then. Damn it. But he smiled at me, beatifically, and I smiled right back, eagerly. Very eagerly, because one of the folicly challenged was looking at me, none to appreciatively and, god help me, he was dressed in tennis gear and wearing very, very, very short shorts which, from where he was perched on a high stool gave me a rather intimate preview - not what you want to look at first thing in the morning over a cappucino unless you've gone home with it last thing at night.
Worse, he rubbed his hands over his head and what I had thought was a tightly clipped haircut suddenly flopped over his forehead in a cascade of fuzz. It was, in fact, a stringy comb over just begging for scissors. Oh please, please not him, I prayed to the God of Lonely Hearts.
He leapt up out of his seat and strode over to the counter, still looking at me in a disapproving manner, jumped to the top of the queue and… handed over his bill which he paid and strode off. I was weak with relief until it occurred to me that he could still have been ‘the one’ and having taken one look at me, had decided non grazie.
Oh well, never mind, I decided I would get a coffee, sit down and enjoy the sunshine. And there was still another candidate. This one was squat, stout and worst of all, had a camera. The man I was supposed to be meeting had talked about photography being a favoured past-time but he hadn't mentioned he was built like Christopher Biggins. Nor was he looking around him with any sense of anticipation.
I was wondering if I should go up and say to him, ‘hello, are you Jack?’ when I turned round and yet another crew cut appeared, also with a camera slung round his neck.
Okay, so now it’s getting creepy. We're into West London Chapter of Slaphead Photographers.
But this one doesn't hesitate. He smiles and stretches out his hand which grips mine in a surprisingly firm handshake.
Phew.
Of course it doesn’t make it any easier that I’m no longer blonde like I am in my photograph.
