Sweet dreams of pussy

13st 8lb; 6.0 units of alcohol yesterday; 1,364; by the banks of the silvery Dee.

I decided to set myself up for the day by grilling and eating a thick gammon steak that had admittedly been sitting in the fridge for some time, but was only marginally past its use-by date. I don’t know whether this was the proximate cause, but something certainly induced an outbreak of flatulence on the scale one might expect if one were rash enough to down six pints of Bass to create a bit of an appetite before one’s attempt on the Guinness Book of Records world title for baked bean consumption. It’s not really what you want when you’re driving 220 miles in a confined space to see the person who might (but for this sort of thing) become your girlfriend. How I wished I had brought the convertible instead, though the resulting miasma might well have caused a multiple pile-up that would have kept the emergency services of several counties fully occupied for the rest of the weekend. You know things are bad when you spot the Border terrier on the passenger seat giving you disgusted looks.

Still, although a pretty major setback, this was at least the only one on my long drive across the country in pursuit of Lurve. The LTCB proved to live in a very open plan conversion of a small, terraced, mill worker’s cottage. Now I come to think about it, I can’t actually imagine what, if anything, was supporting the upper storey. But it’s an old building so perhaps it just stays up there through force of habit, like the van faulting of Lincoln cathedral (and, yes, I do realize that the theoretical inability of that to remain in situ may be another one of those urban myths, like the “fact” that a bumble bee cannot possibly fly).

At any rate the money for the conversion evidently ran out halfway through, as instead of a staircase the builder had left a wooden ladder propped up in the middle of the living area. Anyone attempting to negotiate it in (a) high heeled shoes, or (b) after a skinful, would be almost certain to have the sort of horrible accident that would make one of those “no win no fee” solicitors salivate. The LTCB promised to show me her bruises later, if the evening went well.

The good news was that the LTCB proved to have an attractive younger sister, which will add a welcome air of verisimilitude to the proceedings if the LTCB and I ever get to know each other well enough to play “Rodeo Sex” (in which the gentleman becomes friendly with the lady in the doggie position then calls out her sister’s name, and awards himself points depending on how long he can stay on board).

While the bad news – though I was warned about this – is that she has two formerly feral cats which do not care for Border terriers one little bit. Still, given that they live mainly upstairs and my dog cannot negotiate a wobbly ladder, this does not look like a deal-breaking obstacle.

We took the dog for a walk along the banks of the river, reminding me of the time a respected journalist was taken to visit a client of mine just up the road and kicked his piece off with “By the banks of the silvery Dee in bonny Scotland …” Even allowing for the fact that he had got there by private jet rather than scheduled public transport, it seemed a touch bizarre that he had mistaken Chester and Flintshire for Royal Deeside. He claimed that he had thought the Welsh road signs were Gaelic. I think he might well have had a bit of a drink problem.

The first thing I noticed about Chester was the abundance of Top Totty. Every bloke out for a walk had a high class blonde on his arm, and some of them even had roots of vaguely the same colour, which is not the sort of thing you get on Tyneside. I pointed this out to my small brunette companion, who said she was not going blonde for anyone. So that’s one route to my desired goal closed to me, then.

Later we drove to a restaurant somewhere in The Wirral for the 40th birthday party of one of the LTCB’s friends. I was a little disconcerted when the driver took her hands off the wheel to produce a Cheshire society magazine from the floor at the back of the car. She then proceeded to read it over my shoulder, pointing out a number of exciting and relevant features. When I enquired who was actually in control of the car during this interlude, she waved both her hands in the air like one of George Mitchell’s Minstrels and yelled, “Look! It’s fine!”

When we got to the restaurant, the first thing anyone asked me was who had been driving. Next they nodded sympathetically and said, “You’ll be wanting a stiff drink, then.” While someone else nearby chipped in with “And earplugs!” Truly the LTCB’s reputation goes before her.

The host of the party appeared to be the oldest person there, apart from me, and there was much hilarity about his incredible age. Someone had presented him with one of those framed charts containing scarcely believable information about the year of his birth, and people were chuckling about bizarre facts like the fact that beer only cost 2s 9d a pint in 1968 (whatever 2s 9d meant). I started chipping in with corrections from memory, including the fact that beer was considerably cheaper than that on Tyneside at the time. Then I caught the LTCB giving me a slightly odd look so, in a rare moment of good sense and diplomacy, I shut up.

It was a very good dinner, marred only by the fact that I am such an ancient valetudinarian that I can’t really eat dinner at all without lying awake all night with chronic indigestion. Luckily I had the foresight to counterbalance this by consuming vast quantities of alcohol, so that I fell into a coma the second my head hit the pillow. I was then roused from it at 4 a.m., when I found my face being gently nuzzled by something warm and moist that smelt of fish. Sadly it proved to be a cat called Megan. The LTCB apparently decided to name her cats after the Brontë sisters, but I’ve already told you that English literature was not her strongest subject at school. (She thinks Jane Austin was related to the famous car maker.)

I now can’t wait to form a closer acquaintance with Maria, as this is apparently a very special and desirable pussy from Brazil. Where the nuts come from. And where, with any luck …