True Love in London

I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a girl who went to London (I also know a guy who knows a girl who knows a guy who knows a girl who danced with the husband of Princess Margaret, but that’s a story for another time).

The girl in my story was an Australian living it up in London in the late 90s. As many an ex-pat in London has done, she had sampled extensively of London’s fine selection of warm beer and cold men and was starting to feel that perhaps life held more for her than these fleeting encounters.

A chance meeting with one of the 3 good looking native Londoners in existence flourished into a witty trading of comments disparaging the Marks and Spencer food counter and put the sparkle of destiny in her eyes.

When, with a roguish smile, her new acquaintance requested a phone number and a second encounter she began to wonder if she had finally met “The One”.

Every sensible girl knows that you have to make a potential One wait for a bit before throwing your dignity to the winds and your ankles in the air, so she hung on with gritted teeth through three dinners filled with sparkling conversation and uncomfortable but terribly flattering new shoes, before finally allowing him to sweep her back to his smurf sized flat for a night of rampant passion.

The One also knew how to play by the rules and for their third date had taken her out for a long rich meal and plenty of pints before the shagging like rattlesnakes part of the evening.

The next morning, as she lay glowing contently in his bed, he murmured all the right things into her receptive ear... what an unprecedented night it had been...what a stunningly beautiful woman she was…. what a small pert bottom she had… how he would definitely be calling her soon, if not tomorrow and finally, he kissed her tenderly and told her to sleep as long as she liked and to just pull the door shut behind her when she left.

Then he disappeared back into the wilds of central London office blocks.

Our heroine reposed for a while, then woke to the imperious call of the after-grog-bog. Realising that it was going to be a big one, she could only be grateful that The One had already left for work and she could perform her ablutions in peace.

On completion of her efforts she discovered that English plumbing had let her down and the huge and stinking turd nestled comfortably in the bowl was resolutely refusing to go anywhere, no matter how many times she flushed, or how much she begged the Good Lord to just make it disappear.

A combination of hang over and horror got the better of her at this point and she decided that if it wouldn’t go down it would have to come up.

She fetched a clear plastic bag from the kitchen, deftly scooped the elephantine turd from the bowl and tied the top of the bag, feeling quite proud of this eminently practical solution to what could have been a deeply distressing moment.

Giddy with relief, she danced off to the kitchen to write a loving note for The One to find when he got home from work, then picked up her handbag and shoes and left.

It was only after she had closed and locked the dead-bolted door of the 2^nd floor flat behind her, that she realised she had left the plastic bag and its noxious contents lying on the kitchen table.

Next to the loving note.

A sad hour was spent begging neighbours and local police to let her back into the flat, a more desperate hour was spent trying to break down the door, scale the wall or have some kindly deity cast the whole city of London into a giant fiery pit, all to no avail.

Eventually, exhausted and traumatised she gave in to fate’s decree that true love had passed her by and crawled home in shame, knowing that her could-have-been-beloved would never call again.

She was right of course, but if anyone within our six degrees knows the gentleman in question, please, please, please, write in and tell us his reaction to the loving note and its accompanying gift. It’s always been one of the great disappointments of my life that there was no-one in his kitchen with a video camera when he arrived home from work that night.