I'm in the park with warmLuke. There are a crowd of school kids who look like they go to St Debenham's with my daughter in what seems to be the international uniform for sex perverts of floaty crop top with visible bra, bare midriff and cut off jeans, showing the lower buttock cheeks clad in black tights, Ugg boots, and Brigit Bardot hair (obviously we're talking early Bardot, not animal-lover...) One of them with pre-Raphaelit blonde ringlets and apple cheeks who is much too pretty to dress that cheap, is engaged in a very physical game of touch rugby with several flobby haired boys called Tarquin and spends most of her time being thrown to the grass as one or another leaps on top of her. It's like gang rape masquerading as a sport, except she's giggling.
'Would you seriously like your daughter to go out looking like that?' I ask Luke.
He shifts uncomfortably on the grass - not unsurprisingly - it's lumpy - and scans my face for the right answer.
'No, you wouldn't.' I supply.
'But surely it's harmless, they just want a bit of attention...'
'Yeah, the wrong kind of attention. That girl can't be much older than 13.'
Still neither of us can stop looking and we watch like it's on pay-per-view as girl after girl turns up in exactly the same outfit, with minor variations, and some of the Tarquins peel off leaving Lolita with only five animals, I mean boys, hunting her.
We finish the tortilla and the wine and the strawberries dipped in melting chocolate that I will polish off later in bed, eating from the jar with my finger, and with nothing else to do - neither of us bought books - he puts his arm around me and gives me a kiss. It seems rude not to reciprocate. Until from the circle of junior tarts I hear one of the kids shout:
'Vintage porn... get a room!'
And though I laugh, I can just imagine Tarquin saying to Giles: 'Would you like your mother to go out looking like that?'
And so, very quietly, we gather up our stuff and go home.
Chastened.
