Thursday, 1 April 2010

Sometimes I flatter myself that if I were to lose a limb in an accident, or half my pension in a corporate scam of some kind, I wouldn’t make a hit West End musical out of the experience. I don’t think I’m deceiving myself when I say that I think I would handle most of the textbook life disasters with reasonable equanimity and grace. But the process of rendering oneself invulnerable to the world is like chasing bubbles through a carpet. However much I try, I am never completely level. I could be unravelled in the simplest of ways, and a challenge that wouldn’t worry a mayfly would bring me crashing to the ground.

I generally prefer hosts at parties to be slightly drunk. There is a danger of them showing ungentlemanly perspicacity if they stay sober. Tonight I innocently stumbled into ‘Captain’ Jeremy’s kitchen just in time to see him waving a still full glass of red in my general direction. I thought for a moment he was offering it to me, but no – he was just indicating my proximity to couple of his friends. His drink, though it had travelled from room to room, had barely been disturbed all evening.

‘He doesn’t care about anything,’ said my host of me, laughing; and he’s right. I guess that I don’t.

Here’s the thing though. I did, though – I did care. I cared a lot, in the old days. Unrequited caring, you might call it. It didn’t work out.

So I smiled, apologised to my hosts, and left. It was late, and I was tired. It was a lovely meal, I said, because it was; only now, my evening was soured. I saw a stain on my smart shoe, a stain inside it; that stain was me.

I ended up home and slumped in the chair by the kitchen table, with no memory of how I came to be there, of crossing any of the roads on the way home, and I wondered how many of those roads I walked straight across without looking left or right, and why that was, and whether there wasn’t a little part of me that didn’t mind either way. But it’s OK, because apparently, I don’t care about anything.