...Gang aft agley...

An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!

A hand stretched out to caress the neck, politely but definitely removed. That’s all it takes, a tiny little gesture, no words required. So this occurred quite early into our picnic, and it didn’t wreck the afternoon. We even walked along holding hands later on, and when we parted at Belsize Park tube there was a chaste but very affectionate kiss on the lips.

But I really wasn’t happy. Six months of my life invested in a mirage, ah well.

You have to treat these things with non-attachment – if it goes well, OK, if it goes badly, forget you were ever interested and be friends. Except I probably don’t need to forget this time; I think I can get away with still being interested; after all this is a mature woman who can take interest as a compliment, not a foolish teenager who’d be embarrassed by it.

Anyway, because she’d said she wanted to go on a picnic and drink champagne, this is what we did, I checked Oddbins’ website, picked the best £25 bottle I could find (Demi-Sec because I thought she’d appreciate a touch of sweetness), went to John Lewis and bought some flute glasses & a champagne stopper, bought some little speakers and CD’s because she’d said she wanted music, got my hair cut, stopped off on the way to work to get strawberries and cream, dashed out just before leaving to buy some ice because she’d forgotten to bring her wine cooler and we were ready to go.

She was very impressed by the glasses - I admitted to her I’d bought them "in a sale", but didn’t mention that I’d also bought the micro-speakers, flowers for my flat, a new fridge to chill the champagne back down if there was any left by the time we got there, and a new mattress. Really you only want people to be impressed with the lengths you’ve gone to if you’ve been successful, if you’ve failed it’s just embarrassing.

She told me I’d appeared in one of her dreams last Thursday - we’d all had to stay overnight at work because of a terrorist bomb on the underground, I’d been there in a top hat, we’d all sat around talking all night and it had been great fun...I said she’d appeared in one of my dreams but it hadn’t been work related. "I was trying to kiss you, and you weren’t having any of it", I said. "Did I slap you?" she asked. "No, but you definitely weren’t interested. It must have been one of those prophetic dreams. They all mean something, don’t they? Although I’m not sure what a top hat means."

A shame when everything else she said sounded so promising - she was bored with her husband/with being married, if she had her way they'd live in two separate houses, she was going away for the weekend with her girlfriends and they'd had to sign a contract saying no-one was allowed to talk about their kids of mention anything that happened while they were away...

I also mentioned as we were on our way off the Heath that I’d thought this was going to be our day for a long lunch, lasting until late at night and incorporating a trip to the cinema, which she’d suggested in the tube on the way back from the restaurant we went to last week. She’d forgotten all about this idea unfortunately; I suppose I wasn’t clear that this is what I was expecting, and it became apparent on arrival in the park that she was expecting to get home by early evening. But when I mentioned my mistake she said she felt really guilty and would feel bad all weekend. Well, she really needn’t, I said. I think she’s also excused me from the horse-riding excursion, presumably because she’s realised that I only agreed to it on the assumption that we’d be having an affair.

Finally, when I asked what she planned to spend Friday doing (she’s booked a day’s leave) she looked a little sheepish and said she was having lunch with someone. "And that would be a long lunch, would it?" Hmph, I’m pretty sure I know who she’s having this long lunch with. Failing to get someone because they’re a chaste Gujarati housewife is one thing, but failing to get them when they’re up to all sorts of misbehaviour with someone else is a whole other story.

So anyway, I’ve written this now while the moment’s fresh. I still had a nice time, I still think she’s lovely, I don’t feel too crushed, but we’ll see how I feel in the morning.

Oh, and while we were picknicking a dog ran up and while I was trying to fend it away from Indira (she hates dogs) it ran off with my sandwich. A minor detail, added later, but it relates, as you'll see...