Evening begins thus: Large bound menu in Italian restaurant in Fitzrovia placed in front of me by Polish girl. I open it as I fill Roger in on the fated weekend in Italy, and I read longingly: Risotto con funghi, Spaghetti carbonara, Linguini con aragusta, polenta con gorgonzola e porcini… cotoletta alla milanaise con zucchine fritte… In Bergamo I had tagliatelli with white truffles – though only half a portion as Worcester insisted he couldn’t eat a whole one so I had to share his. I’ve eaten whole truffle menus in my past life, with matched wines. Sigh. And now I’m eating someone else’s leftovers. I can manage the full plate, believe me. My eyes are torn from pleasing my stomach and redirected to my hips as I reluctantly turn my fat wobbly cheeks on everything I really want and chose breseola and grilled fish.
‘Bresaola? Do you have any idea what the bacterial load on that could be…?’ Asks the biochemist.
Salata tricolore, then. I brace myself for some teeth sucking over cheese cultures in the mozzarella but it passes the lab test.
Damn it.
I nibble on a breadstick and tell him I’m going out on a date at the end of the week.
‘Aye, well did you know that the reported cases of venereal diseases are going through the roof? We’re the highest in Europe.’
I put down the breadstick.
‘Gonorrhoea, Chlamydia, Herpes… Even Syphilis is making a big comeback. It’s the post Aids generation – and that’s on a huge increase as well. It’s out of control.’
I am not sure he’s telling me this but I feel like I’m back at school getting the sex-education talk from my teacher.
‘It’s only a date not the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah. I was planning on having a couple of drinks, not an orgy.'
'Well you don't just have a relationship with the person you're sleeping with, you're sleeping with everyone they're sleeping with - they're whole sexual history.'
Publish Post
'I don't have a sexual history, or even a sexual present. I'm not sleeping, or staying awake, with anyone...'
'Just as well.'
Yes dad. 'How come you know so much about it, anyway?'
‘I used to teach STDs at Warwick as an introduction to the ways opportunistic bacteria transmit information and talk to each other because ... (I’d love to continue this sentence but mercifully I have absolutely no idea what his science-speak means, other than that it involves germs.) ‘Aye it was a great way to get their attention – slapping a picture of a syphilitic…’
‘Roger, I thought the main point of tonight was to have dinner. If you actually want me to eat something, you might want to stop about now…’
‘People our age are in the worst demographic by the way.’
‘I’m not doing anything or anyone, for goodness sake. Not likely to either. My weekends are spent watching celebrities in sparkly frocks doing the Cha Cha Cha. It’s hardly high risk sexual behaviour.’
I reached for my wine glass.
‘And another thing. Did you know that in ten years they expect deaths by liver disease to overtake that of heart disease. Can you imagine that? Heart disease is essentially a disease of old age, where as liver disease is really only related to alcohol abuse. There are people as young as 28 dying of cirrhosis.’
I took a tentative sip and set my glass back on the table. So, no sex, no alcohol, no animal fats, no carbs and cured ruddy meat – what else is left?
‘Any news on Christine’s man?’ He asks, before adding: ‘From what I hear he’s going to be taking the drug protocol that my colleague Jimmy developed in his lab the states. With that sort of Leukaemia, the secondary treatment is usually…’
Oh joy - how could I forget? Cancer!
Sod it.
I take a long swallow from my glass, dip a hunk of bread into a bowl of olive oil and change my order to ravioli with butter and sage, then I look around the room for someone who wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
Unfortunately, there is only Roger.
