Commercial Gain

Today, for commercial gain, I spent the best part of the morning posing for photographs dressed in a variety of knickers and t shirts. Actually, I say ‘for commercial gain’ but really I only did it because I know you worry about me revising all the time.

This is all much less exciting than it sounds and I have an aching lower back from holding ‘perky’ poses for longer than you would in real life. (In real life I don’t do ‘perky’. I specialise more in ‘distracted’, ‘startled’ and ‘sullen’.)

Still, I needed to get out of the house, which D has filled with his illness like a creeping miasma of gloom. I’ve tried making helpful suggestions, like painting a plague cross on the front door, but for some reason this doesn’t seem to have helped.

I’ve cheered up a little bit since my last post as I’ve had a letter with the results of a blood test I had six weeks ago. There’s a whole sub-section of potential crossness in contemplating why it took six weeks instead of the one week I was promised, but I’m choosing to ignore that for now as it (a) confirms I’m not allergic to latex after all and (b) seems to be the only thing my surgeon can possibly have been waiting for before setting my operation date. And I could actually confirm this last theory if I could ever persuade his secretary to return my calls.

To celebrate this tiny step forwards, I headed off to Hamleys in Regent Street in search of modelling balloons, partly because I need no longer fear them and partly because balloon animals seemed the logical next suggestion after a plague cross. Well, there was not a balloon animal to be had in the whole of Hamleys. Instead, I had to spend an unreasonably long time for a woman of my age mooning over the Sylvanian Families. It’s not just that these are complete little nuclear families of mice and rabbits with their own bicycles and tea sets, it’s the names. It’s someone’s actual job to sit at a desk and decide that the pig family will be called Constance, May, Hugh and Richard E Grunt.

Balloon-less, I drifted down to Fortnum & Mason where I drooled over things I can’t afford like Lulu Guinness handbags. Because I feel morally obliged to shop, I went to Trumper’s in Jermyn Street and got D some West Indian Lime aftershave. I have shopping ambitions above my income bracket.

It was also on Jermyn Street that the most beautiful, chiselled, polished mahogany, black man, in a bespoke pinstriped suit, silk tie and Italian shoes brushed past me, trailing an expensive scent of sandlewood on the air behind him. I frankly turned round and gawped and, clearly sensing he was being stared at, he glanced back over his shoulder, did a double-take and then laughed shyly and strode away. If I’d had a moment’s more self-possession I’d have called after him, “Come back, beautiful man, I have a boyfriend who isn’t servicing my needs and shopping ambitions above my income bracket.”