We drive to Fishguard in the evening for a jazz festival.
By 'jazz festival' it means that one of the pubs on the main street has a three piece blues band that 'used to have a really good guitarist...'. We eat supper in a local restaurant and then stand shivering in the street at ten o'clock in yet another orderly queue to get into the pub. There's a bouncer on the door. I haven't done this since I was a teenager but it is not making me feel young. A small woman in black with a face like a pug and 'security' embroidered on her jumper holds her hand up and refuses us entrance.
Beside us throngs of local youth wearing no clothes promenade accompanied by men wearing tattoos. There are lots of mini skirts and strapless tops. Anyone would think it's summer.
'It is summer,' says Eva.
I'm wearing a frock, a cardigan, a pashmina and a big black mac.
It strikes me suddenly that I should also be wearing a handbag. Eva lent me hers and I know I had it a second ago as I just took out my credit card in the restaurant and paid for dinner. Unaccountably, however, it has vanished.
The queue shows no such tendency. Someone has to leave before we can enter. Inside it's jammed with semi-naked people and body art but it looks like we are to be denied the pleasure or rubbing piercings with the locals because I have to go back to the restaurant and see if I've left my bag there.
The waitresses look at us as if they have never seen us before in their lives despite the fact that we left less than five minutes earlier and were one of only three tables in the whole dining room. I feel like I'm in The Wicker Man, what with this and the nakedness. All we need is Brit Eckland writhing around singing and banging on the wall. I feel I could do with a good bang on the wall - I mean of the angry, frustrated sort. Obviously.
'Can I help you? Were you wantin' a table?' she asks.
'Erm, we just ate here.' I say. Her face shows no recognition whatsoever. I explain that I've lost my bag.
'Where were you sittin'?' asked the sweet-faced dark hairded girl who served us.
I point to the cleared away table.
She looks at it as though it had just sprung forth from the earth.
'Oh really? What tonight?'
'Yes, we just paid a few minutes ago.'
'Are you sure you 'ad it with you?'
'Yes I took the money and the card out of it to pay. Maybe you picked the bag up with napkins and it has been accidentally thrown in with the laundry?' I suggest. It was a very small bag.
'Oh, I'll check,' she says as the girl who took the credit card from us (and presumably the tip) walks past us as though we were ghosts.
There's no bag. Definitely no bag.
Eva decides to call the police just in case it has been handed in while I stroll down the marine walk (in the pitch black) to a point where there's a signal to call my bank.
Apparently my bank haven't heard of me either and I can't report the card missing because they can't find any trace of me having an account with them. Meanwhile Eva is talking to the local constabulary.
'Well it's my handbag, but it was my friends card,' I hear her say. 'She had a bank card (what was it Marion, Abbey National?) and some cash.' Pause for Welsh policeman's response. 'Anything else? I don't think so (Did you have anything else in it Marion?)'
'Yes,' I hiss, while getting extremely annoyed that my bank doesn't have me listed by my postcode or either of my surnames and seem to think I should have memorised my credit card number.'
'I also had a lipstick - bright red, Nars, in a black case...'
'...and a lipstick bright red, Nars, in a black case,' She parrots, 'Oh wait a minute. I think I put a tampon in the side pocket,' says Eva to the policeman.' Another pause for police response while I think that may be a bit more information than the local constabulary needed.
I want to take the phone off her and say it wasn't mine.
'So, yes, that's right - an Abbey National Card. Forty pounds in cash, a red lipstick, very red - a bit too bright if you ask me. And a tampon,' She repeats. I'm surprised she doesn't tell them the brand. 'No I don't think it was stolen. I think it must just have fallen off her arm in the street and somebody has picked it up.'
Presumably someone in garish lipstick who is menstruating...
