A green beer bottle, label torn off, deposited in a defunct devotional niche. At the bus stop my reading interrupted by the incongruous sound of a man whistling Land of Hope and Glory.

I could not resist knocking on the Welshman’s door. Spectacles perched on his nose, he sits hunched over his designer black keyboard all day and well into the evening.
“I’m a role model, setting an example for all and sundry”.
My unkind reply: “You could put that reading on it, but you could equally well assign it to the sad bastard category”.
I brought him a cup of lemon tea to compensate. He does know it is futile seeking deference from me. A first-generation intellectual, Baptist by upbringing, Marxist by persuasion he has allowed himself to slide into the corrupt morass of bourgeois pleasures (his wine cellar legendary): ”A few years ago now I would have frowned upon all this,” he grins, “but it has its compensations”.
He complained bitterly about the arrogance of Professor K, recently confirmed in his appointment as head of faculty. “What does it matter to him whether his lot have one more or less? All his talk about weaker departments not deserving the substitute, who does he think he is?”.
At social events, Professor K’s outfit never varies: blue shirt and light brown trousers, last evening’s Summer Ball being no exception. As H pointed out, this makes for easy recognition in case any of his supervisees forget what he looks like.
Having discussed modern English comic novels (notably David Lodge whom we both adore) I revived the flagging conversation by raising the issue of the academic ineptitude at self-promotion through power dressing, including my theory that the convention-flouters are usually best given a wide berth.
“Yes, whenever I meet Professor Swagger [a conceit to paper over my instant forgetting of the real name quoted] in his expensive suits at conferences he makes me feel like a worm. How do they do it? All the handling of dusty books and the ink stains. You see these amazing individuals in the centre of town, walking through the streets like eighteenth century gentlemen. You expect them to cast a few gold coins down to the pavement at the feet of the grubby plebs”.
My true errand had been to remind him of his invitation to go for a drink during his annual fortnight of freedom.
“Who else should we ask along?” he queried brightly. Message received and understood. I retreated, leaving him to complete his eight dictionary entries.

At the Ball I felt like I was in drag, wearing a skirt for only the second time since coming here. The air was balmy, the magnolia in the cloister discarding curled leaves. Tables had been set up all around, a competent yet dull jazz band played in the background. M who had persuaded me to purchase a ticket had not yet arrived, so I headed for the bar for a still mineral water. A late night and alcohol would not have mixed. The only intoxicating beverages available were wine and beer, spirits being smuggled in past the security guards by the hard core drinkers. Plates of untouched sandwiches slowly wilted on the yellow tablecloths. My reservations about the degree of formality were, as M had assured me, unfounded. Not a single Chanel gown or bow tie and dinner jacket in sight. The lawns had been carefully sprinkled, each lush blade trimmed to exactly the same height.

I spotted M towering above a bevy of alluring girls in black with shawls carelessly slung over their milk-white shoulders. Undaunted, I strode towards him, flattered by his warm smile of greeting. He stood with a glass of red wine filled to the brim, unflinchingly patient whilst I poured out my frustrations. Having expressed my curiosity about the upper gallery, he chivalrously accompanied me there recounting how much he had enjoyed using his workstation in the corridor before the administration reclaimed the space for offices. Natural light illuminating his contemplations it had possessed an appropriately spiritual quality. Stepping through the doorway on to the roof-beamed terrace, a fragment of fresco in one corner of the wall the entire city bared itself to our admiring gaze. It was the perfect vantage-point for people-watching, although canopies rudely blocked our view of those immediately below. I suppressed the mischievous urge to throw myself over the edge, knowing that they were too flimsy to break my fall.

Descending back into the throng, M was borne away on a tide of affection whilst I withdrew from the vicinity of the loudspeakers pounding out the in-house rock group’s cover of Psycho Killer, displacing for a moment the lyrics of OMD’s Enola Gay that have been rattling through my head for weeks on end. The last bus back was uncharacteristically populated with slender middle-aged women in long dresses and high heels.

Leaves rustle outside and a finch hops on the gravel whilst I ponder the mysteries of sexual chemistry. The words of AT sting me still. Having offered me his broad shoulder to cry on after a messy and painful split, the solution he proposed proved as comforting as the notorious “short, sharp shock treatment”: “It’s like the wheelchair Olympics. I always switch it off. All those people pretending to be normal, competing in events that strip them of their dignity. They should give up, they should resign themselves to reality. It’s the same with you. There are some women out there who are just not attractive to men. Instead of throwing away your self-respect chasing after something you can never have, you should just get on with your life and forget about it”.
His wife once confided in me that she and her sons prefer it when he is away from home on mission.

JMCD by contrast, he of the possessive pronoun from the family of impoverished Central-European gentry whose thousands of acres of forest land had been gambled away in a single session of card games and whose great grandfather committed suicide out of boredom at the age of ninety two by blasting himself in the temple with a revolver, described my beauty as a quality that would never fade as it went far deeper than my looks. He specialized in damaged women, his previous mistress having escaped from a batterer who would throw a mattress over her before taking aim with his steel toe capped boots to keep the bruising invisible. JMCD funded a holiday for her and she ended up marrying the coach driver. I hope that he is right, the memory of my Mother giving me comfort. Waiting for the bus into town, outside the paper shop, wherever she went men would swarm around her, dancing like little dogs on their hind legs until she rewarded them with her smile. In all their years of marriage she never once betrayed my Father, not even in Oostende where she travelled with her mother-in-law (my Grandfather’s second wife) who encouraged her to let her hair down, a young Flemish suitor constantly by her side. What I recall is how boring it was being made to stand and listen, tugging at her shopping bag. Her gift to me the energy that overwhelms when kindled by desire, the restless inspiration of a Muse skipping through endless hay fields, daisy chains hanging carelessly around her shining neck.