Stumbling about in the dark

‘Didn’t you phone her at the time to give her your number and to check you’d got hers down correctly?’

Everyone who heard my sorry tale posed this same question. Well, as I’m sure you can guess by now, the answer is, no, of course I bloody didn’t. Why?

a) I was trying desperately not to come across as the kind of person who expects a girl to give them a fake number. So much for wanting to appear relatively cool and relaxed.

b) I was under the impression that keying a few numbers into a phone without making a mistake wasn’t beyond me. Obviously I was mistaken.

‘What do you know about her?, asked Si. Just the bare (oh, so very bare) facts.

- Her name is Justine.

- She is Irish (or at least capable of adopting an Irish accent good enough to fool the likes of me)

- She lives in Kilburn.

“Surname?” I am asked.

Err, no.

“Job?”

Nope.

“Anything else traceable?”

Sorry, but no. Well, not unless there is a database of Cliff Richard impressions I can peer through.

“You do realise there is another track and field night on at the Luminaire tonight - you could go and check to see if she is there? I’ll go to the pub with you if you’d like.”

Why the heck not? Good idea, Don Simon. If you are going to go out on a whim, you might as well use all your limbs, as my mum used to say.

I decide to get to Kilburn tube early and-somewhat creepily-stand in the corner of the ticket hall peering over my (purposefully purchased) copy of Private Eye. Tube upon Tube upon Tube arrives and disperses. If I do see her, what the hell I am going to say anyway - “Hello, I meet you last night, lost your phone number but I’m an optimistically romantic, nay desperate, type of character so I decided to venture north for a stake out. Fancy a drink?” I consider how I’d feel to hear this.

However, it is academic as, a) she doesn’t go past; and b) after an hour my jaw locks with cold rendering me speechless. Simon rescues me and buys me brandy in the pub. No sign either at the gig.

Back to the pub. More brandy.