Imagine me in my Essex chic:
Pterodactyl wing collar shirt;
Apple core pendant nestling
In my Brut scented chest hair.
Trousers with flares
Wider round the ankle than my waist.
And I was four inches taller
In my platform shoes. Tasty.
See me lounging by the jukebox:
Glass, bottle; bottle, glass.
Bacardi and Cokes like
An abandoned Tommy Cooper routine.
Eyeing up the handbag dancers.
Who knew about political correctness?
As the secondary brain in my pants
Did all my thinking for me.
Watch her approaching through my eyes:
Hair like an explosion in a liquorice factory
With its gleaming carapace of lacquer.
The hypnotic sway beneath her tank top.
Small, winking star at the top of her legs;
Between her denim thighs, the flex
Of girly muscles above her kinky boots.
Glance back up at the cherry lip gloss.
Listen to the music playing:
Her return from the Ladies coincides
With an orchestral crescendo and a piano stab,
So our opening words are lost
And I do an Eric Morecambe mime
With shaking hand, like I've got the DT's,
As I try to read those fruity flavoured lips.
Same again? I ask with my eyebrows.
Register my pained reaction:
As I take our glasses to the bar,
Catching the smell of Charlie, but no Angels,
The music fades into a piano coda
And a mysterious ringing phone.
"Smiff's Cheese'n'Onion," she calls:
Exotic cry, like a parrot's screech
From the hothouse jungle of Barking Creek.
Eavesdrop on my thoughts:
You got it right, Dave old son.
You might as well ask
If there's life on Mars,
When there's bugger-all here on Earth.
"D'you like Bowie, then?" she asks.
"Does that mean you're gay?"
Come here and I'll show you
How gay I am, I think - unable to resist.
