LET’S DO LUNCH

My younger daughter used to have an imaginary friend called Monny. Whenever it was convenient she would blame Monny. She thought that she could get away with anything because Monny was always there to take the rap. Of course we just thought it was the sign of an active imagination, and as the youngest she could get away with murder anyway. We were actually upset when we realised that things were being broken and Monny hadn’t been round for a while. Our little girl was growing up.
One day last week I got a strange e-mail from a girl I used to go to school with. Her brother Rob had been in my class. To tell the truth I had all but forgotten about him, but her face is indelibily printed in my brain. I had only briefly gone out with her, Liz, but she was my first serious girlfriend. I say gone out when I really mean the opposite. She was from that stage when you walked home from school together and had a quick snog in the park half way. At school he’d always been the boy whose lunch money was most under threat, but I would like to make it clear that his lunch was never under threat from me, apart from anything else I wanted to stay on the good side of his sister, and anyway I soon found out that his Mum gave him Bovril sandwiches. It turns she was in Australia to on secondment to a city stock broker in Melbourne, (no doubt on some astronomical salary with six or seven zeros after a couple of large numbers.) She had somehow tracked me down, not that I’m a witness protection program or anything but as we haven’t spoken for about 15 years I was to say the least surprised.
I have arranged to see her for lunch.
The last few days have gone badly. I’ve been working with the assistant to the assistant to the sub-vice dogsbody on a little educational literary project that potentially promises to be a profitable little side line. Very exciting but if you can’t see anyone who can give their opinion or make any sort of decision what’s the point. Also the guy’s ‘aftershave’ smells like Carlton Brewery’s slops bucket. I’m not against a drink myself, on a warm day you understand, but I try to remain sober until lunchtime. I know I should be more excited, it’s a great opportunity. If this goes right I could be able to cut back on the actual teaching (although I enjoy it most of the time) and do other stuff. Unfortunately I just keep looking at him thinking – what’s so dreadfully wrong that you have to get pissed before work. The one thing that has gotten me through the week is the thought of seeing Liz again tomorrow.
I went to a school reunion once. At the time I was touring with of a well known recording artist, I won’t mention any names suffice to say she was a soap star before her pop music career. Everyone else had real jobs, builders, bankers, a lawyer, a nurse, the school bully Nick had even become a Policeman (Nick the Policeman not a bad name). I say I was touring with a well known recording artist because it sounds better than I carry the speakers for well known recording artist. Actually not everyone else had jobs: there were a couple unemployed, a couple of housewives and Claire Reynolds. Claire made a living by tying knots in pieces of string and attaching then to collages as well as constructing displays of pieces retrieved from peoples dustbins with labels attached like “comb missing three teeth found 3 June 1997 - Aston” just like museum exhibits from some far future archaeological dig. Her favourites’ were potato peelings that sprouted and then died under a film of furry mould. She said she never sold a piece to anyone who understood it – only to pretentious idiots who didn’t. This rudeness to potential clients had apparently given her a cult status and made her “collectable.” Anyway apart from Claire who was on a different planet, I didn’t feel anyone in the room had done better than I had, at least not in any way I envied. They may have had more money or a nicer house but I hadn’t sold out to the Man and I knew what was more important. Now perhaps because I was older and wiser the thought of seeing Liz, who I knew had done better than any of us made me very nervous. It was like I had let her down or something.
Liz had been my first girlfriend. Her opinion matters. If she thinks I am a waste of space there would be no one to blame, no imaginary friend called Monny, just me.