The Education of Esmeralda Houghington

'Well then, MDF: now that we're safely on the far side of the non-coded postal border, I gather I am finally at liberty to re-pose the question I so untowardly broached on the near side thereof.'

'You gather aright, DGR. Pose away.'

'Thenkyaw-stroke-ahem: "In precisely what spirit did Esmeralda greet your Arsenalophobic unregerenate-ness (assuming that you saw fit to make a clean breast of the matter upon your return to London)?"'

'To which reposeage I am at last at liberty to rejoin: "Firstly: I did see fit to sani-hoover me tits clean of every particle thereof; and, secondly: she greeted this sanihooverage in an altogether not-uncharitable spirit-stroke-attichude."'

'Hmm. I see. It's all a bit unhelpfully and ambiguously litotic this rejoinder of yours, seeing as how it might plausibly signify anything from, on the minimal end of the charitable spectrum, her granting to YFBT a two-minute grace period of voluntary self-quittance of her residence against the phoning-in of a YFBT-restraining asbo; and, on the maximal end, her setting of, say, a ten-pound limit to her personal outlay towards the bibulous expenditures of the next convention of North London Arsenal Bashers.'

'TBS, DGR, I am more than sensible of the unhelpfulness and ambiguity of the rejoinder as it now stands; but you'll just have to hold your olde spectrum-pacing horses till I fill you in on the on the informing context thereof.'

'Which informing context consists in-stroke-of...?'

'...Well, it consists, first of all, in my Greenwich-clock-certified return to Esmeralda's place a full ten minutes shy of our beforehand-agreed-upon rendezvous time of 11 pm sharp.'

'And when you got there...'

'...And when I got there, I say, I found the ground floor of the place three-quarters darkened, and Lucy whining and pecking at my knees with all the desperation and relief of a dog that's been bereft of human companionship for the best part of a canine day.'

'From which sure signs you inferred that Esmeralda had not yet returned home.'

'Assuredly, and therefrom garnered an altogether warm-'n'-fuzzy-stroke-borderline-cuntish aura of smugness at having assumed, for a change (albeit de facto), the mantle of the responsible, early-retiring, dressing-gown-'n'-slippers-donning half of the couple. And so, basking in that selfsame aura, I self-congratulatorily cracked open a Hoegaarden from the fridge and settled down on the front-room couch, with Lucy curled up alongside me, to treat myself to a spot of telly courtesy of Esmeralda's newly-purchased global-map-sized flat-screen set (doubtlessly a full-scale replica of the model now gracing Mum and Dad's FR).

As luck would have it, a few button-clicks of the remote carry me to the perfect televisual after-dinner-mint to my Arsenalophobic triumph: viz., the opening seconds of the rebroadcast of a '92 Arsenal-ManU match on Sky TV Classic Sport. TBS, the Gunners are (or, rather, were) getting their arses reamed throughout; indeed, to such a monotonous mind-numbing extent that, come the 45-minute-mark, my attention starts to wander; that, indeed, I start to worry if Esmeralda and Tamsin haven't, after all, met with some mishap...

...but evidently these worries never get the better of me; for, the next thing I know, I'm alone on the couch and being rudely roused from a slumber of indeterminate length by a coupla Lucy's gruff 'Intruder Alert'-signifying barks, hailing from the vicinity of the front door. I'm just getting round to attempting to reconcile the discrepancy of the threat signified by these barks within with the familiar jingle-jangle-and-clink of keys without when the door is flung open and the mystery solved by a sudden influx of paired feminine voices, the one being immejiately identifiable as that of Esmeralda, the other unknowable from that of Eve. Fortunately, as mother nature has seen fit to hard-wire Paranoiac Self-Preservation as Subroutine No. 2 in her Rude Awakening Programme, I manage to grab hold of the remote and zap it ahead a coupla channels well in advance of the alightment of this selfsame still-gabbing (and as-yet-invisible) feminine vocal pair at some indeterminate site well to the arse of the couch; by which point the identifiable, Esmeraldan one of the two is saying:

'--for 1500 a month.'

'Oh, no! [spake The Alien One-ess] It's simply Colloseal the amount of space you've got here. And how nicely turned out it is, too. I tell you, we moved to the County to save money, but if I'd had any idea you could nick a place like this in London for a grand-and-a-half a month, we never would have shifted--Hullo! This must be Nigel!'

No sooner has my inaugurally-christened name been spoken than I feel a butcher's-quarter-dozen manifestly artificial fingernails scuttling none-too-gingerly-ly across the breadth of me right shoulder like...well, I was going to say like the talons of a rabid turkey buzzard, but let's face it: the natural diigits of a mere pathologised bird of carrion can scarcely compete with the unnatural ones of a phizless blokess in point of dilating a hapless bloke's schphincter with sheer gormless terror. All the same, you've got to roll with the punches, haven't you? So I do my level best to sublimate my terror into a ghastly, ear-joining, copraphagic grin before craning my head and right arm backwards and upwards towards the conjectural source of the scurriage, and exclaiming 'And this must be Tamsin!' (the syntactical reflectiveness of this exclamation constituting, N.B., a sublimation in its own right of my subsidiary stroppiness at having been singled out and presumably gawked at like some sodding exhibit in a museum of mummified freaks).

'Indeed!' says the afore-named blokess, mercifully disburdening my shoulder of her claw before mercilessly impaling my right hand therewith in a clasp of Vaderesque magnitude. 'How d'ye do? I've heard so much about you.'

'Ah, well,' I says, rising without letting go her hand (as if I could do!) and swivelling round the back of the couch with Travoltan aplomb so as to finish up erect (non-schlongwise, of course!) and phiz-a-phiz to her, with a chaste square metre or two of carpet between us. 'I've heard lots about you, as well. [Here, I stop short upon descrying out of me old PV, and through the crepuscular gloom of the kitchen-illuminated dining nook, the glint of a pair of Esmeraldan ocular daggers, just in time to add:] All of it favourable, of course.'

'Ah, how endearingly diplomatic of him to say so! I'm beginning to like this fellow already.'

(Just as I, concurrently-stroke-for-my-part, am beginning already to dislike this fellowess , in view of her by-now-apparently-habitual disposition to refer to YFCT in the third person.)

'So,' I quiz, availing myself of the preeminent (albeit not sole) prerogative of the first-arriver, 'how was your night out?'

'Oh' gasps Tamsin, at last withdrawing her mitt from mine for the sake of its participation in a flawless impression of a Chinaman with an acute case of appendicitis, 'it was simply wonderful. We went to to this pub just round the corner from here, name of The Busy...no, The Industrious...no, that's not right--'

'--The Sedulous Ape,' Esmeralda cuts in, accompanying her intervention with a combination of hand-and-head gestures that, in their shorthand implication of the full-on waist-to-floor imamic bow, call to mind all too vividly and pathetically my comportment in the presence of Mike Ayhern.

'That's right: The Sedulous Ape. Do you know it?'

'Yes,' I reply (herewith unsheathing a pair of Esmeralda-orientated ocular daggers of me own, knowing full well that these will be received not as a manifestation of the primal source of my resentment [viz. Esmeralda's preemptive appropriation of one of the prime patches of me stomping grounds, into whose mysteries she should by rights have been initiated solely in the company of YFCT qua cicerone] but rather as a manifestation of a secondary (but no less devastating) quibble centring on the self-evident SOA that at no point in the evening had she felt herself arsed to mention that she'd first heard of the place from me, 'As a matter of fact I do know it: intimately.'

'Well, as I was saying, it was simply wonderful. We were waited on personally, hand and foot, by the proprietor, this most charmant Frenchman--'

[YFCT, cutting in, asserting his territorial prerogative:] '--Ah yes, that'd be Mr Sedule.'

'Would it be? Well, I can't speak for Esmeralda, but as of now I'm not on a second-name basis with him. No: as of now, I know him only as...Pierre.'

'Hang on a bit,' I says, voicing my putting of 11 and two together less out of abstractly-blokish resentment of the apparently limitless chronopaghic power of tits, or out of concretely-blokish suspicion of post-Simian feminine high-jinks, than out of concretely bloke-neutral anticipation of a personally-beneficial, H.M.-licensed Simian windfall, 'Last I heard, the Ape closed up at 11 sharp, with a watertight prohibition of lock-ins on weeknights. Whereas it's now, what...?'

'...Five past one, roughly,' Esmeralda announces, her ocular daggers now transmogrified into a cuntishly smug array of eponymously scintillating gem-glints.

'Well, apparently,' Tamsin says, 'this prohibition is still very much in force. "Mais pour vous, mes petites ouiseaux," Pierre said, once he'd sent the rest of the punters packing, "I make a one-time especial exception." And the next thing I knew, the three of us were downing our third lock-in'd round of cognac, "sur le maison, bien sur," and if it hadn't been for the all-too-timely intervention of my trusty right-hand woman--[here she cuts a decidedly ambiguous look Esmeraldaward]--by now, for all I know, I'd be launching into my fifth or sixth round thereof--if not into the first or second round of an altogether more kinetically-exacting pleasure.'

'Well, erm, I don't know if we've got in any cognac' I says, not knowing bloody well what else to saya by way of cleansing me mental visual palate of the image of Sedgie's apron-stringed arse vigorously thrusting athwart Tamsin's spreadeagled legs atop me favourite table, 'but I fancy we'd be able to make up for those lost rounds of yours in some fashion.'

'Oh, how frightfully thoughtful of you, Nigel. A white wine spritzer would certainly do--or, failing that, a beer of more less the same blond hue.'

'Say, a Hoegaarden?'

'The very imprint I was thinking of! I tell you, Merle, this fellow can read my mind; we've got a connection--'

'--I'll get it,' says Esmeralda, preempting my first shuffling movements towards the kitchen with a homing-pigeonesque dash thitherward, and thereby vouchsafing me, for cor only knows how long, the jubious pleasure of a tit-a-tit with Tamsin.

'I see,' she says, uninvitedly settling down on the couch and picking up the remote from the coffee table, 'that you were watching one of my favourite programmes when we barged in. Do you mind [i.e., if I switch on the sound (which YFCT had decorously seen fit to mute during the same thumbflicking session that witnessed his changing of the channel)]?'

'Of course not,' I rejoin a bit absently, what with my belated efforts to suss out from the chubeal goings-on at least the genre (and, at most and ideally, the precise identity) of the programme I'd purportedly been so deeply immersed in a scant ten minutes earlier. The first (non-sound-accompanied) gander I get is a close-up of a pair of feminine hands cupping a butcher's-dozen off-white, sponge-textured, grape-shaped-and-sized thingies, which immejiately enables me to suss out that this is a cooking show. Then there's a cut to a long shot of the blokess in question uncupping the thingies into a transparent bowl half-full of milky liquid and saying (now that we have sound) '--into the rosewater-and-coconut marinade.' Next, she dips one of her hands into the bowl, extracts one of the pseudo-grapes therefrom, and inserts it into her gob, subsequently fluttering her closed okie-shades in a manner which I've grown all too accustomed to (and shagged-out by). 'I apologise for the delay,' she says, after swallowing and opening her eyes, 'but whenever I'm working with mountain oysters, I simply can't resist the odd taste-testing of the raw materials. They're just so scrumptious, so nutty.'

'So,' says Tamsin, glancing over her shoulder up at my doubtless transparently horrified phiz, 'I see that you, like me, are a fan of The Stiletto'd Margravess?'

'Well,' I says, immejiately doing my best to substitute a mask of blushing self-deprecatory candour for the afore-more-or-less-alluded-to one of pallid transparent horror; and simultaneously opting for the former's verbal counterpart (viz. the three-quarter-part untruth as against the outright fib), 'I wouldn't exactly call myself a fan. Let's just say that, for reasons of economy, I'm trying to swot up my culinary skills. You see, it's a bit of a financial drag, our dining on takeaways most nights, given that Esmeralda alone of the two of us can cook--'

'--I'll say she can do. Her Thai tofu-kimchee jambalaya was the toast of our last party. She'd brought, I'd say, a good hogshead of the stuff with her; and yet, once the last dollop of it had been served and consumed, there were still cries for more!'

At this point, YFCT-rejoinder-wise, a certain ethical-cum-epistemological Rubicon was crossed; inasmuch as anything I might have subsequently said in endorsement of Tamsin's appraisal of Esmeralda's cooking would not have had so much as the flimsiest of bases in a genuine SOA (which SOA, WRT the preceding near-fib, consisted in my sincere self-interested desire to avoid Esmeralda-concocted dinners for the duration of me natural). Luckily, at this very point--a point when, incidentally, I was beginning to wonder why it was taking her so long to uncap a bottle--Esmeralda rushed back in, bearing a pint glass of blond beer, garnished with an anorakically mandated freshly sliced wedge of orange, and thereby resuced me from my plight and solved the mystery of the delay at one go.

Tamsin took the glass from her, peered into it, crinkled her nose in fart-huffing disdain, and said, 'Now, really, Merle, this is quite unacceptable.'

'You mean,' said Esmeralda, with all the mingled rage and desperation of a printer's devil who's spot-checked the dotting of every eye and crossing of every tee before handing in the proofs to his-or-her master, 'there's something wrong with the beer?'

'No, I mean it's quite unacceptable for you to evince such untoward neglect of your partner in bringing back only one drink, especially in view of his most chivalrous efforts to take up his share of the domestic slack. Now, see here: I categorically refuse to quaff so much as a microlitre of the contents of this glass until your dear Nigel has been served in kind. So if you'll just turn round and--'

'--I'll get it!' I exclaim, meteorically dashing into the kitchen before I've quite known what's hit me. It takes me a good half-minute of elbowular communion with the front edge of the kitchen sink to unmask the true identity of the hitter, viz. Tamsin's self-consciousness on the score of her being the only genuinely blotto'd-cum-cup-bearing member of our trio. TBS, that bit about Esmeralda's 'neglect' of YFCT doubtless had some pseudo-foundation in their official-political relations, as well as in Tamsin's menopausal yearnings; even so, the upshot was that she was falling back on this pseudo-foundation a fuckofalot sooner than she would have done if the three of us had met on equal bibulous terms from the get-go. Accordingly, although I've long since sussed out, on the evidence of Esmeralda's hair-trigger alertness and hyper-paranoia, that she has long since privately declared herself out for the count drinkwise, and that she is positively aching for the whole triadic chinwag to be adjourned Aesop, and although I (now) suss out that in procuring a drink for Esmeralda I should only be adding a flagstone to Tamsin's pseudo-eff, I at last-stroke-arse conclude that the only hope of transmogrifying this as-yet-horrific night-in into some semblance of an occasion for elbow-jostling-cum-back-slapping fond reminiscence consists in repositioning all three of us at the starting line. So I extract, first, from the cupboard, a pair of plastic tumblers (the sole genuine glass of the house being already bespoken); next, from the fridge, a pair of 'Gaardens (the last two, as it so happens) along with Esmeralda's three-quarters of an orange; and set to work at the pre-primed cutting board, before returning, at last, five minutes at the inside from my moment of departure, to the front room, where I discover Tamsin seated to Esmeralda's left, plumb in middle of the couch, gabbing the latter's left oriole off and ceding to me by default the last free patch at her (T's) left side.

'We were just talking of,' says Tamsin, breaking off as I hand Esmeralda her tumbler (which she accepts with an inscrutable whisper of Thanks) 'or, rather, speculating as to--well, firstoff, as to how soon we might expect you to grace one of our tables with your inevitably idiosyncratic take on the Margravess's mountain oyster pilaf; and, secondly, as to the outcome of your appointed philosophical dialogue with my husband.'

'Well,' I says, settling into me aforementioned LFP, and immejiately draining half me tumbler by way of fortifying myself with a hefty dose of Belgian courage qua anti-truth serum to the whopping fib I'm about to tell, 'as to the first point of speculation, I'm afraid it's going to be a while yet before I can whip up a vat of the old MOP, inasmuch as, as the Margravess happened to let slip before your arrival, the high season of mountain-oyster harvesting is in late March--you know, the primetime mountain-goat rutting period, when the oysters are in their ripest--that is to say their most, erm, distended and engorged.'

'But surely in the meantime,' Tamsin says, echoing my half-glass-draining sally, you could procure a tinful of last season's harvest.'

'Uh-uh,' I rejoin with a gravely emphatic head-shake, 'It's utterly out of the question. For, according to the Margravess, nothing but fresh-from-the-farmer's-market, newly-harvested oysters will do. "If you're thinking of going the tinned route," she says, "you might as well save yourself a couple of pence by substituting with olives or water-chestnuts."'

'Isn't it admirable, Merle, this culinary purism of his?' says Tamsin, glancing over to me girl.

'Oh, most admirable indeed,' agrees Esmeralda tepidly, facelessly, from behind Tamsin's menacing full-body profile.

'But what,' Tamsin says, turning back to me, 'of our second point of speculation, which issues, after all from the whole raison d'etre of this gender-bifurcated evening?'

'You mean,' I says, glancing yearningly at my 200 millilietre's remainder of Belgian courage, yet not daring to avail myself of it for the time being, in anticipation of as-yet-more-exigent traumas to come, 'erm, as to how things turned out between Cuthbert and myself?'

'That's right.'

'Well,' I temporise mindlessly, desperately and fairly inarticulately, 'it's all a bit complicated, I suppose.'

'Nonsense,' she says soothingly. 'There's nothing complicated about it. Either he won the argument or you did.'

'Well, erm,' I re-temporise no less desperately and even more inarticulately, albeit slightessly less mindlessly (for, having by now sussed out that Tamsin would prefer to hear that I'd won rather than that I'd lost, I am now weighing the pros and cunts of revealing the true SOA vis-a-vis Esmeralda's estimation of YFCT; inasmuch as such a revelation would constitute, at one and the same time, a setback to Esmeralda's Rugger-reforming project and a seeming booster to her career-advancing prospects), 'I dunno.'

'Come, now: you're amongst friends.' Here Tamsin lays an unambiguously imploring-cum-seductive hand on me right thigh.

Talk about your dromedarial-back-breaking straws! Mind you (and here I call upon my then-utterly-deflated, pinkie-lengthed schlong as my witness), this has got nothing to do with the merest soup's son of an attraction on my part to Tamsin; but all the same, I ask you, DGR, what self-respecting bloke could suffer himself to remain clammed up in face such an offer?

'Well, in all candour, Mrs Todd--'

'--Tamsin, please, Nigel dear,' she interjects whilst giving me thigh an admonitory-cum-reassuring squeeze.

'Well, in all candour, Tamsin, I gots to admit that...'

'...Yes?'

'...well, that I--' [here I break off to quaff a rhetorically-exigent (albeit corageously gratuitous) half-pint, which acts on me like a tinful of Popeyean spinach, injuicing me to rise from the couch and triumphantly proclaim, with fists, chin and tits thrust heavenwards, AFF:] '--that I done whooped his pathetic, mealy-mouthed, lily-livered, droopy-drawered Goonerly ass!'

Of course, no sooner have I ejaculated the above, than the gratuitous Belgian cardiac injection has run its course, and I've started to feel the wee-ist bit self-conscious and accordingly glanced rightwards and downwards for the obligatory two-cut reaction shot. Firstoff, I see that Esmeralda is cowering against her corner of the couch, with elbow mounted squarely atop armrest and thumb and forediggit thrust pain-injuicingly into okie-sockets. Next, I cut to Tamsin, peering at me over her raised pint glass with eyes-'n'-brows bespeaking equal parts astonishment and curiosity. Well, I dare say I could have done a fuck of a lot worse reaction-wise.

Casting my cue-taking lot by default with Tamsin, I piss away the next ten seconds or so waiting for her to finish off the last of her ’Gaarden, during which interval I begin to feel positively ridiculous in maintaining my de facto art-class nude-model’s posture; but, to be fair to her, it’s only ten seconds, and at the end of them she wastes no time in setting her glass down on the coffee table and summoning my arse couchward with a militaristic series of palm-raps on the vacant left patch.

'Firstoff, just to clear the air: am I right in assuming that you didn't literally--or at any rate, figuratively but physically--flog my husband's bottom earlier tonight?'

'Of course you are. I swear to cor I never laid a ha--[come to think of it I did pat his shoulder, and I am under oath]--I mean, a fist, into him all night.' Courtesy of certain unmistakeable phizzionomical signs (knitted brows, slouching mouth-corners &c.) I instantly surmise that my brazen phrasealogical back-pedalling has conjured up in Tamsin's mind's the Looney-Chunish image of YFCT rope-a-dope-ically palm-slapping or karate-chopping Cuthbert into a chirping-bird-halo'd coma; but, hey, what can I do? It's all water over the eight bridges of Kingsborough, innit? All I can do is press on (AFF) and hope the cumulative weight of contradictory particulars sets her straight and spirits away that image well clear of the remotest precincts of plausibility: 'What I meant, of course, was that I'd won the argument hands-down.'

'You mean you managed to persuade him that your hatred of Arsenal amounted to an, erm, to a philosophically tenable position?'

'I dunno. You'll have to ask him. What I do know is that by dint of sheer down-'n'-dirty philosophical footwork, I got him to show his true Goonerly scarlet-'n'-black colours; whereupon he pretty much instantly voided the pitch, kicked over the old scrabble board, or what have you--which sort of behaviour, in my books at least, amounts to a de facto ceding of victory to your opponent. Mind you, in all immodesty I must admit that for a while there he had me squarely on the keeve-eve for some shin-music, with me arse-cheeks fairly brushing against the cage; and, indeed, that had his Arsenalophilic passion not got the better of his philosophical right reason, he might very well have soundly trounced me--for I am, after all, merely a humble accountant with a mere undergraduate term's worth of philosophical schooling to his credit, hardly the equal of a--'

'--So you're saying you didn't know from the outset that Cuthbert was an Arsenal supporter?'

'No, of course not. Why should I have done?'

'You mean she didn't tell you?'

Obviously all hemming and hawing on Esmeralda's behalf is in vain at this point, now that I've made the revelation of Cuthbert's 'true Goonerly colours' the centrepiece of my account. Which isin'tersay I'm not on the point of launching into a spirited bout of such hemming'n'hawingage, for want of a more honourable alternative; but luckily, before I've got round to aiming the pistol thereof at my (at arse, our) foot, let alone firing it, Esmeralda hits upon a last-ditch foot-saving manouevre that--given enough temporal, Tamsin-attention-divertive padding--just might work, which consists in her rising from the couch, stretching her arms and ejaculating, through a theatrical yawn:

'If you two will excuse me, I think it's high time I was getting to bed. I can hardly keep my eyes open.' [Of course, 'I can hardly keep 'em closed' would be nearer to the truth.]

'So then,' says Tamsin, 'you don't mind if Nigel and I stay up a bit longer? You see, I'm most desperately keen to learn the particulars of his philosophical bout with Cuthbert.'

'No, of course I don't mind. See you both in the morning.' In the ocular sector of her sunnily retreating phiz I fancy I can descry the merest glimmer of a pair of bodkins signifying 'You'd better watch yourself, mister!' (there is, after all, only so much information you can get across to one pair of okies without betraying your purpose to the other pair), to which I see fit to return a pair of ocular-cum-browular somersaults signifying (I hope) 'Believe you me, this ain't no picnic!' before turning back to Tamsin and pseudo-recommencing as follows:

'Now, as I was about to say: Cuthbert's main line of attack centred on this thought experiment that he called the Swampman Scenario--'

'--Before we go any further,' she cuts, whilst balefully gazing down at her empty glass, 'I'd like to ask you, is there anything else to drink?'

'Well,' I says, mentally-ocularly canvassing the interior of the fridge, and alighting on nothing but the empty 'Gaarden-carton, 'I suppose there must be.' But then, upon making a further, aurul-cum-tactile mental sweep thereof, I recall that when I went to fetch the beers, I was met armwise and earwise with a cannon-ball-esque tumbling and rumbling hailing from one of the lower door compartments, which I now surmise could only have issued from that half-full bottle of vodka left over from our (E's and YFCT's) last private schlongtail hour, dating from some two months back. 'Do you have any objections to vodka-based drinks? Specifically--' (Yes [I now recalled]! That orange we sacrificed to garnishes was but one of a dozen secreted in the crisper.) '--to screwdrivers?'

'Oh, no of course not,' she says. 'Indeed,' she continues, with a most cuntishly lickerish half-smile-cum-pair-of-okie-crinkles, 'I fancy I fancy a well-mixed screwdriver at least as much as the next girl.'

'Right, then!' I says, whilst bounding up from the couch. 'I'll be back in a jiffy. Or, rather,' I suddenly think to add, by way of preempting any kitchenward incursions on her part, 'two jiffies. It takes a bit of time, you see, to, erm, squeeze the oranges...'

'...Ah yes,' she nods, her lickerish mask still well in place, 'squeeze the oranges.'

So, anyway: here I am back in the kitchen, glad to be alone for the nonce, and de-fridging the bottle, which turns out to contain a mere two-thirds of the originally-estimated volume--viz., some 200 ml, or, roughly, three shots' worth. Now, whilst I've originally repaired hither fully intending to mix the two of us a pair of equally stiff 'drivers, out of the sheer spirit of chivalry-neutral English fair play; it now occurs to me that, as an equal division of the contents of the bottle will inevitably eventuate in a pair of decidedly flaccid schlongtails, whose divided consumption may very well eventuate in turn in my staying up a good bit longer with Tamsin than I've a fair mind to do (which may very well in turn eventuate in fuck knows what), it would be better for all parties concerned if I devoted the whole of the bottle's contents to the manufacture of Tamsin's drink, and solaced myself with a mere Minnie Driver, thatistersay, a screwdriver hold the vodka--'

[DGR]: '--In other words, a glass of orange juice such as one might imbibe in the course of a typical buffet breakfast at an English country house.'

'Indeed? Since when at a typical buffet breakfast at an English country house did one take one's orange juice with ice?'

'Why, since--since never, now that I come to think of it. Touché, MDF, touché.'

'Thanks, DGR (and thanks also, BTW, for keeping your arseings-in to a minimum)--'

'Not atoll, MDF, not ato-'

'--I said, Thanks for keeping your arseings-in to a minimum. Now, if you'll skewed me, I've got a paira schlongtails to finish mixing.'

Apropos of which (in case you were wondering, DGR, just how I managed to make a Minnie Driver pass for a twin of its dipsomaniacal elder sister): I divided the eventual orange-squeeze yield betwixt the two highball glasses [Yes: in conformity to girlish folkways, Esmeralda's cupboard is abundantly stocked with these, in contrast to its relative dearth of pint glasses] according to a three-to-two ratio; that istersay, by topping off Tamsin's glass with three fifths of the juice, and mine with the remaining two fifths (along with a squirt of water from the tap for the sake of volume-cum-hue-saturating equalisation).

Then it's back to the living room, where, in the meantime,Tamsin has made herself, as they say, a bit more comfortable: she's now sitting plumb in the middle of the couch, with both feet de-shoe'd and propped up, 'neath crossed, stocking'd legs, on the coffee table; and with arms spreadeagled across the full upper breadth of the couch's back-cushions. And there's more: for, to my immeasurable horror-cum-relief, I descry, sprouting from the diggital-furrows of her right palm, the cottoned pleasure end of a fag.

'Now, now,' I admonish her, whilst setting the drinks down on the cunt-hair's-breadth of tableage as-yet-uncommandeered by her plates (and whilst she languidly draws her fag-bearing hand gobward for a fresh drag), 'house rules explicitly prohibit the consumption of ignitable tobacco products on the premises.'

'Oh, is that so?' she imperiously exhales, as I take my seat at the far left side of the couch (and thus, given her plumb-mejiate situation, delineating a mere half-square-foot of inter-arseal no-man's-land). 'What a pity, then, that I didn't think to bring along my snuffbox. Still, now that I've lighted up, would you care to partake?'

I.e., in virtue of the fact that she hasn't seen fit to accompany this offer with its usual complement of an open case or pack, Would you care to share my fag with me? Now, I've always shied away from fag-sharing as well as I can do, not so much out of hygenic or sexual-political squeamishness as out of aesthetic squeamishness on the score of its inevitable, well-nigh-photographically-mimetic conjuration of the phoney fellowship of joint-passing hippies; but when in barbarian-sacked Rome, one must do as the barbarians do, no? So I take the fag from her and give it a tug, whilst she in her own right gives a hefty enough tug to her highball. I do my best to synchronise the two tugs such that I'll be in a position to return the fag to her no sooner or later than she's finished for the nonce with her drink, but to no avail: long after I've flicked my ash into the de facto tray (viz. her empty pint glass), she's still working her way through her first swallow, amid much panting, gasping and coughing.

'I'll say,' she says, whilst at last laying the glass back on the table and taking the fag from me, 'you really know how to mix a drink.'

'I'm sorry. Did I make it too strong?'

'Oh no! Not atoll! I like mine strong. It's just that I wasn't expecting anything of the kind from--'

'--From what or whom? From a North Londoner? From an accountant? From Esmeralda's bloke?'

'Well,' she says, through a wry, pursed-lipped smile whose self-possessed, well-nigh-irresistable, repartee-baiting essence bodes decidedly ill vis-a-vis my original plan of rendering her comatase Aesop, 'from any of the above, I suppose.'

'Well,' I says, whilst downing a full half of my MD, amidst much lower-key (i.e., more masculine) mimicry of her highball-swilling panto, 'admittedly, Esmeralda's something of a borderline teetotaller; and, admittedly, us accountants have something of a deserved reputation for temperance; but, as far as us North Londoners go--why, there I draw the line. I'll have you know that, in point of mixological uncompromisibility, there's not a barman within a 50-mile radius of Charing Cross who can compete with my mentor, Jimmy Phipps of the Sedulous Ape right here in Woodside Park. Jimmy'll have no truck with your automatic pourers. Trust me: if you ask him flatly for a Jim Beam and Coke, upon delivery of the drink, you'll be lucky if the soda-nozzle has been properly introduced to the bottle in the meantime.'

'Hmm. Well, as I'm sure you will remember, Esmeralda and I were at the Sedulous Ape earlier tonight, and I assure you, nothing we were served was half as strong as this.'

'Ah, well,' I says, suddenly recollecting Jimmy's late relocation to the Milton, 'I dare say the Ape of today is but a pale shadow of the Ape of yestermonth. All the same, my original point in vindication of North London's bibulous prowess stands, if only from an historical povey.'

'Of course it does do, of course it does do,' she reassures me, with a schpincter-dilating-cum-schlong-shrivelling round-the-shoulder knee-pat. 'But back to our original subject: your quarrel with my husband.'

'Right, erm: as I was saying, Cuthbert's main line of attack centred on this philosophical thought experiment that he called the Swampman Scenario. Mind you, I don't want to waste your time with a retread of familiar territory--as it's just now occurred to me [as it in fact only just now had done] that you're probably well enough acquainted with the whole Ess-Em-Ess already...'

'...Howdjermean?'

'Well, I mean, it's just that what with your being married to Cuthbert...and that, well, from a bloke's point of view, it's hard to imagine keeping any hobby horse of mine a secret for long from the woman in my life...'

'...Speak for yourself, Nigel. On our end, Cuthbert has never encountered the remotest difficulty in concealing his professional hobby horses from me. Far from it! He knows too well of my utter lack of curiosity on their score even to dream of letting one of them loose in my presence.'

'Save, self-evidently, at some philosophical hobby-horse-fancier's convention held chez vous,' I might very well have rejoined, with uncompromisingly snarky justice. Instead I wisely opted to rejoin, with equal justice, and a mere fraction of the snark, 'Nonetheless, you have managed to learn at some point along the way of the existence of his Arsenalophilic hobby horse.'

'Yes, but firstoff,' she corrects me briskly (or, at any rate, as near-briskly as one can do when tottering at the threshold of alcohol poisoning), 'I was speaking of professional hobby horses, not amateur ones; and, secondly, Cuthbert's Arsenal-fandom hardly qualifies as a mere hobby horse. If anything, it's he who's the horse and it who's the rider. And, in any case, this whole innocent, idyllic, nursery-room metaphoric complex hardly does justice to my feelings on the matter.'

'Oh, no?'

'Indeed not. I prefer to think of it--I mean, his passion for Arsenal--as a kind of ghastly spore straight out of one of those 1950s horror or sci-fi films. Do you see what I mean? On one's initial contact with it, it seems harmless enough--as did Cuthbert's Arsenal fandom when we first met at college, long before he'd even qualified as a reader in philosophy--but then, gradually, it starts to take over one's organism, until finally, come 20 years later, there's n-nothing else l-left!' [Here, she takes the decidedly unwelcome twin liberties of wrapping the nearer half of her couch-spanning embrace round the nearer of my shoulders and of burying her forrid in the corresponding collarbone-nook. And then, gormlessly addressing me left nipple:] 'I confess, dear, sweet, innocent Nigel, that this was all a bit of a set-up on my part, this pre-arranged pitting of you against Cuthbert. You see, I was hoping against hope that, on having finally met his match on the opposite side--I mean, someone wholeheartedly, philosophically dedicated to to the lot of opposite sides rather than to some particular club other than Arsenal--he'd see the light of reason, and eventually devote some significant fraction of his spare time to something other than match-viewings. Even more desperately than th-thaaaahht [from the wind-gusted pricking of my nipple, do I detect a yawn?], I was hoping against hope against hope that I might eventually meet this philosophically-inclined Arsenal hater, who might (who knows?) prove to be my knight in SHHNN-NNMM MMM-MMBH [the unintelligible transcription of these last two words registers the fleeting--and, presumably, involuntary--collision of her gob with my shirtyfront, and the pectoral hummer administered thereby] who would rescue me for good from this Gunnerly hell I've inhabited for the past decade or so. Little did I dream, though, that I would be fortunate enough to meet him so soon.'

With this last sentence, she disengages her head from my CB and cranes it back just far enough to force me to take in her lash-wide stare-cum-lip-wide gape, along with the invitation it unequivocally signifies. Suffice it to say, by this point it's a bit too late for me to rally the D. Hoffman-esque hard-to-get-playing rhetorical troops. Luckily for me, though, by this selfsame point Tamsin can hardly manage to keep her pre-assembled A. Bancroft-esque seductive troops in formation, inasmuch as, after a good butcher's-quarter-minute of sustained staring, her gaze starts to lose its my-ocular focus, and is interrupted by the intermittent lid-flutter; and, a good butcher's half-minute after that, the okies have to all appearances shut up shop for good; and, a good butcher's full-minute after that, on the evidence of a coupla hearty snores, she's fast asleep.

Not that my Tamsin-sitting duties have by FA's stretch of the imagination been fully discharged as of now: if anything, this marks the advent of the most cuntishy gruelling segment of the gig, consisting as the latter does, firstoff, in the extrication of my person from hers without awakening her; secondly, in laying TT out on the couch in a decent--thatistersay, comfortable yet none-too-corpse-like--posture; and, finally, in fetching and disposing the full round of cooter-mints to which, in her capacity as guest, and a fortiori, as Esmeralda's boss, she will have felt herself entitled come the next cold, sober, unerotic broaching of bourgie dawn's arse-cheeks: viz. pillow, duvet, water-carafe, tumbler, travel-toothbrush and 'profin-stash.

Upstairs, in the bedroom, I am greeted by the most salutarily placid bit of scenage I've any right to expect, given tonight's events (and given the prospective catastrophe of the day to come): the lights are out and Esmeralda's in bed--her long tresses rather than fair phiz turned YFCT-ward--and, to all arserly-cum-darkly discernible appearances, fast asleep. But no sooner have I stripped down to my usual slumber ensemble of string vest, shorts and socks, and have parked me arse on the edge of my (left) side of the mattress, than she's switched on the torchère lamp sited to her immejiate (right) side--bypassing, I might add, its more congenially romantic settings in favour of its full-on, Stazi-certified, 200-watt capacity--and, having apparently turned round, is posing to me (or, rather, me shoulderblades), in a stroppily peremptory tone, the question, 'OK: so what happened?'

Shocked as I am by the preceding ocular-cum-oriolular onslaught, I can hardly (again, in view of tonight's events) consider myself surprised by it; and so, without condescending to crane me neck her-ward by so much as a minute of arc, I reply: 'Do you mind if I make myself a bit more comfortable before answering that question?'

'Erm, well,' she stroppily concedes, 'I guess not.'

So I draw me legs under the covers and prop meself up on one elbow, Roman-patrician style, before finally locking okies with her and saying, with Roman-patrician-worthy placidity, 'The answer to your question is, of course, 'Absolutely nothing happened.'"

'What do you mean, "Nothing happened"? Of course, something must have happened!'

So implacable is her ceritichude on this score that I can't help doing a quick ocular scan of my visible person for some telltale evidence of such a non-happening, which scannage quickly brings to light a bright scarlet lipstick smooch staring blurrily back at me from roughly midway between me neck and me right shoulder.

'Ah, well!' I ejaculate through a volley of disingenuous chuckles. 'That's easily enough explained. You see, whislt Tamsin was handing me my drink, she happened to slip and fall, thus bringing her face into collision with my--'

'--I'm not talking about the hickey! For Chrissakes, I know where that came from: you decided to get her drunk off that half-bottle of vodka, and once you'd managed to do that, she started getting all lovey-dovey with you, and smothering your face and neck with kisses.'

'Now look here: in the first place, it was only a quarter-bottle, and in the second place, it was just a one-off acccidental peck.'

'Allow me to reiterate: I'm not talking about any of that. I knew then and know now that you weren't and aren't interested in her.'

'Then what, for JFC's sake,' I ejaculate in genuine, wholehearted bewilderment-cum-cuntsternation, 'are you talking about?'

'I'm talking about the outcome of your narration to her of your philosophical chinwag with Cuthbert up at Potters Bar.'

'Really?' I ejaculate in genuine, wholehearted bewilderment-sans-cuntsternation. 'But why-- and mind you, I'm asking you this not as if to say "Mind your own bidness" but as if to say what I'm actually about to say--why should any of that concern you?'

'Every bit of it concerns me because in my capacity as her subordinate, both as regards things I've already said and things I might eventually say, I have to know where she stands on this issue--I mean, I have to know whether she's fundamentally pro-Arsenal or anti-Arsenal.'

'You mean you didn't gather all along by default that she was pro-Arsenal on the basis of the fact that her husband was an avowed Gooner?'

'As if I could have done! As if she'd ever breathed to me a word of his persuasion in one direction or the other!'

'So you're saying that when Tamsin said You mean she didn't tell you she was--'

'--she was saying the thing that is not, either out of inebriated forgetfulness or by deliberate fabrication.'

Here, as they say, the scales suddenly fell from me okies. 'I see. So, at work, throughout the whole run-up to tonight's philosophical chinwag you were behaving on the assumption--'

'--on the assumption that the absurdity of your anti-Arsenal animus was a fait accompli. Yeah, I was all can you imagine?s and he even goes so far ases in her presence, for two or three weeks running. And she sucked the lot of it up in apparently sincere approval. But then, tonight, when she suddenly let slip that Cuthbert was an Arsenal supporter, and so ardently expressed a desire for a blow-by-blow account of your discussion with him, I couldn't help surmising for the first time that things weren't particularly rosey between Cuthbert and her, or worrying that she might after all be firmly of the opposite camp; i.e., your camp.'

'Well, I'm sorry to have to inform you, darling, that both your surmising and worrying were all too well-founded.'

'You mean that her marriage is on the rocks, and that she's an Arsenal-hater?'

'Indeed. And, what's more and worse, that it's something of a chicken-and-egg problem to try to sort out which of the two passions--I mean, her Cuthbertaphobia and her Arsenalaphobia--is the governing one. You see, by her account, she married him 20-some-odd years ago knowing he was a Gooner and thoroughly disapproving of that fact, and yet hoping against hope that it would all clear up over time; whereas, in fact, with time, it only got worse--such that now she can't stand the sight of the bleeder.'

'Alas! I'm done for and undone! Oh, Christ! How did I ever come to be dragged into this mess, this whole fucking mess?'

'Well, as I'm not privy to the goings-on up at Occuvision, I can't very well say. But now that you've asked, I might as well take a stab at a forensic reconstruction of the initial shitball-levering scenario, as follows: you staggered into work bleary-okie'd, 20 minutes late, of a...let's say of a Thursday morning, and Tamsin asked you "Are you all right?"--which, as we both know, is bosserly shorthand for "Where the fuck do you get off showing up a half an hour (sic) late without ringing in beforehand? Oh, I see. You were out painting the town puce last night and punching the snooze button like it was a telegraph key this morning, and when at last you saw fit to drag your arse out of bed you were thinking 'With any luck, if I skip me usual douche and manage to catch a post-rush hour green wave, I might just get in at a fudgeable ten minutes' lag of me official starting time. Well, let me tell you, Missie and/or Mister, such shenanigans are not kindly looked upon by the middle brass of Company X"; and so, seeking the path of least exculpatory resistance, thatistersay, the bloke-stigmatising one, you replied, "Yes, I'm fine. It's just that I couldn't get a wink of sleep last night. You see, Nigel--that's this bloke I'm seeing--insisted on keeping the telly on at full volume into the small hours so he could take in a two-month-old replay of a football match, an Arsenal...Chelsea (or was it Manchester United?) match. Oh, well, anyway-stroke-TBS, he hates Arsenal, does my bloke; he's always going on about how cun--erm, how front-bottomishly unscrupulous they are--'

'--As a matter of fact, darling, it was just the opposite--or, rather, the exactly complementary--scenario that got the whole shitball rolling: you see, it was she, Tamsin, who staggered into the office bleary-eyed some 45 minutes late, and I who asked her "Are you all right?"--which, as we both know, is subordinately shorthand for "Where the fuck do you get off, &c...Well, let me tell you, Missie and/or Mister, vis-a-vis your mid-level executive position, I'm in the cat-bird seat"; and her explanation for her tardiness-cum-bleariness was that Cuthbert had kept her up all night watching a--I remember this quite distinctly--a replay of an Arsenal-Liverpool match. "Oh, he's a rabid Arsenal fan, is my bloke," she said. "You can't get him to shut up about how cuntishly enterprising they are."'

'So Tamsin was right: you did know all along that he was an Arsenalophile.'

'No. Or, rather, yes; or, rather, no. I mean I did know it at the beginning, but then the conversation took a more general turn and started to polemically centre more on blokes and their all-round, team [sic]-irregardless [sic] passion for football, and then, finally Tamsin happened to mention Cuthbert's book, and the objective philosophical light it cast on the whole subject--'

'--In short, your inductive-tending pedipilophobic passion got the better of your deductive common sense: you were so eager to pitch upon a stratagem for curing me of my Arsenalophobia that all remembrance of Cuthbert's Arsenalophilia, along with Tamsin's repugnance therefrom, was obliterated in your desperate flounderings after the book qua general pedipilophobic life-preserver.'

'Yeah, I guess so.'

'And am I right in surmising that having mooted Cuthbert's book qua &c., Tamsin from then on out kept completely mum on the subject of his Arsenalophilia?'

'Yes, you're right: from that day onwards she never once broached the subject again.'

'OK. So upon the foundation of this additional bit of evidence I will hazard to build the further surmise that she successfully entrusted to the so-called winds of time the task of obliterating from your memory every footprint-trace of recollection of her initial mention of Cuthbert's Arsenalophilia, thereby facilitating her enlistment of my prospective interview with him towards the realisation of her own petty Arsenalophilophobic ends.'

'So, in a word, you're saying that I, that you--that we--have been serving as mere pawns in a kind of cat-and-mouse chess match between Cuthbert and Tamsin?'

'In a word, yes--or, rather, maybe; inasmuch as, at the moment, I'm having a hard time ascribing any degree of cat-or-mouse-worthy sagacity to Cuthbert's enlistment in the match--'

'--Be that as it may, the chess-match metaphor still holds up. And seeing that it does do, it seems to me that the two of us, pawns though we may be, could have held it at a stalemate if you hadn't scuppered every possibility thereunto by engaging in that Arsenalophobic triumphal Navajo raindance--'

'--Which performance would have been obviated altogether if you hadn't seen fit--for cor knows what reason--bring her round to your place after hours.'

'Oh, come off your "for cor knows what reason" high horse. You could see full well from the moment she walked in that she was in no fit state to drive.'

'Oh, TBS, I could see as much. But surely it would behove you to affect at least a smidgen of humility in dismounting your "you could see full well" high horse long enough to beg the twin questions, "Why did we opt for a chinwag-point sited within staggering distance of my place rather than of hers? [Did you ever think, for example, of Cuthbert's local, the Slow Loris? As you knew we were to meet at the Oakmere you must have known that it was unbespoken by him tonight.] And why, out of the butcher's-half-dozen such stagger-worthy potential points of chinwag did we happen to alight upon the Ape? Mightn't we have at least done Nigel the paltry decency of avoiding a pub whose door he is forbidden to darken, dearer than all other pubs in the Kingdom though it is to his heart?'

'Cut the carp, Nigel: as I've got a perfectly rational, dispassionate answer to both questions, there's no need for me to beg either one of them. As to the first one, consider, first, that, as I'd never been out with Tamsin in public I hadn't the slightest idearrof what an accomplished piss artist she was. Of course, if I had had any such idea, I would have googled out beforehand the nearest alcohol-serving establishment to her home address and somehow contrived to make it seem the most logical place, from a common-ground teetotaller's point of view, for us to hang out in. But acting, as I couldn't help doing, on the assumption that we'd both be automotively-capable come the end of the evening, I naturally aimed to settle on a spot that would be as convenient to her route home as to mine, meaning, in other words, some spot sited along the Barnet High Road. And once I reached that point, well, my range of choice was rather limited, wasn't it? Naturally, I thought at first of Ahir Lorenzo's, but as neither of us were particularly in the market for pulling or being pulled (again, as far as I knew), it hardly seemed a suitable venue. And as for the alternatives--meaning the places hereabouts that you and I frequent together--well, the lot of 'em consisted of a string of posh and semi-posh restaurants as against the down'n'dirty pub that we'd established as the only proper genre of establishment for our counter-chinwag. And so it happened that your glowing eulogy of the Sedulous Ape as "a relaxed, unpretentious watering hole-cum-larderia where blokes and blokesses of all shapes and stripes can unwind and hold forth at their respective leisures" came to the rescue. Mind you, if I'd known your self-prescribed absence therefrom was such a sensitive issue, I would have resorted to some still-more-desperate venue--even, say, the forecourt of Stora Market.'

Here, at last, I suddenly realised that in the heat of my self-righteous upper-handedness vis-à-vis a certain SOA (i.e., Emseralda’s introduction of the besotted Tamsin into our here-2-4 cosy household) I’d allowed my sense of injury to bleed over into my remarks apropos of a certain contingently adjacent SOA (i.e., my recent absence from the Ape), to the detriment of the veracity of the aforesaid remarks. In other words, I’d held forth to Esmeralda as though I were officially banned from the Ape (and as though she already knew as much); whereas, in fact, I’d merely, in Esmeralda’s all-too-apt phraseology, ‘prescribed [to myself an] absence therefrom'; privately and essentially for the sake of avoiding any awkward rencounters with Ronnie Livingstone, publicly and contingently (thatistersay, in answer to Esmeralda's occasional suggestions of nipping down to 'our' local for a quick bite-'n'-pint), for the sake of sparing my innards the ingestion of a two-thousand-and-some-oddth serving of fish 'n' poppers (which serving, at duodenom, I had naturally been craving all along). At all events, and whether by intent or by accident, that last-delivered sentence of Esmeralda's served as a perfectly effectual high-horse-dislodging lance-blow to YFCT; and rather than go to all the trouble of remounting the aforesaid HH via a painstaking apologia for my Ronnie-Livingstonian snubfest (in essaying which apologia I would, in any case, have risked touching off yet another volley of Esmeraldan recriminations against my Arsenalophobia, Tamsinian considerations notwithstanding), I thought it best to call it a night--or at least summon forth a night within hailing distance--by replying as follows:

'Yeah. I guess you did what you had to do.'

'I'll say I did do. But look what good it's done me.'

'That sounds a bit premature to these orioles,' I says, giving her a consoling smack on the face-cheek whilst self-assuredly tamping down me pillowcase in ostensible (and, for all I know, actual) preparation for finally settling down to sleep. 'Look, with any luck, come morning she'll have forgotten the whole fracas from her first sip of cognac onwards.'

'With any luck, sure. But assuming that what we've learnt about Tamsin tonight is true, that'll still leave my openly Arsenal hating-hating self at the beck and call of an Arsenal-hating would-be Clytaemnestra. You know what they say: in vino veritas.'

'Yeah, and if you'll pardon my dog-Latin, I also know what they ought to say: in vino cuntitas. Trust me: for every bloke or blokess for whom a coupla pints amount to a jemmy-spanner into the safe deposit box of the heart, there's at least ten for whom they amount to a great big walloping shit-stirring spoon-cum-get-out-of-jail-free card.'

'I see. And do you testify as much from firsthand personal experience, as one of these other ten?'

''Course I don't!' I demur, whilst indignantly re-assuming my Roman-patrician posture. 'Naturally, I speak solely from personal secondhand experience, as one of the proud, the few, the elite, the maximum-nine-percenters, the veritas blokes, outflanked at each and every turn by the cuntitas-ian mob--'

'--Of course you do, darling; of course you do,' she says, whilst deftly switching off the light, knocking me off my elbow-prop and snuggling up alongside me all mama bear-like, all at one go. 'As if I'd have it any other way.'

'There's just one other thing, Nigel.'

'What's that?'

'You didn't just leave her down there...I mean, stuck in whatever ungainly posture she happened to have passed out in?'

'Oh, no. I tucked her in right and proper, and put her within arm's reach of every needful hangover-curative accoutrement--a bloody sight more, in fact, than I've ever done in me own behalf, in parallel circumstances...'

*

Unsurprisingly enough, something less than the best part of a single Occuvisual work-day sufficed utterly to unravel the filligree'd J-Cloth of wishful thinking with which I'd so artfully sopped up Esmeralda's residual Tamsinian apprehensions the night before. For the fact was that, although I had invoked the 10-to-1 cuntitas-to-veritas ratio qua general SOA in a spirit of dispassionate candour worthy of the worldly-wise social tippler-cum amateur statistician that I had been, was and am, I had by no means concluded that Tamsin constituted an instance of conformity to the general rule: to the contrary, I had concluded that she, like myself, was one of the maximum-nine-percenters, a true-blue veritas woman. TBS, the first half of her performance (the Nigel qua chef-baiting and Esmeralda qua hostess-bullying half) had been crammed chock-full of a sufficiently diversified number of cuntworthy sallies to belie this veritasian essence even to my urbanely hard-bitten okies; but the second half (the Nigel-qua-tear-bucket overflowing one), had been altogether too monotonously abject in character to pass for anything less or other than a manifestation of the royal veritasian Doyle even in the tenderly-unbitten okies of an autistic teetotaller. Luckily for my slumber's sake, Esmeralda had been present for the first half alone; otherwise the aforementioned J Cloth would have been of about as much use on the apprehension-sopping front as a square-foot of waterproofed sealskin. Anyway, as I was beginning to say in more impersonal and less situated phraseology at the commencement of this here post-asteriskial episode, I was hardly surprised, when, at roughly 9:45 GDT the following day, my well-nigh-Kantianly imperturbable mid-morning browsing of the Randy Nannies site was interrupted by the silent flashing of my desk-phone's ring-LED, along with an LCD-displayed string of diggits that I instantly recognised as hailing from Esmeralda's mobile.

'Thank you for calling Proctologitex,' I nonchalantly drone into the uncradled blower, before mandatorily launching into a full-fledged Perry Como-esque croon to the chune of 'Happy Holidays,' AFF: 'Proctologitex. / Proctologitex. / May your haemorrhoids / Cease stinging / With Proctologitex / In you.' (Yeah, I know this is a personal call; but the croonage is official company telephonic protocol, not to be waived under any circumstances whatsoever [for, as Tim Bottoms peremptorily reminded us at last month's brown-bag luncheon: 'Each and every incoming caller, be she your mum ringing in to inform you that your gran's just pitched over dead of a stroke, is a potential customer.'] and the cubicle partitions do have ears. In any case, Esmeralda's all too well inured to the drill to make the slightest fuss about it by way of preamble to the meat of her gist, viz:)

'She's got it in for me, Nigel. I'm convinced of it.'

'By she, I presume you mean Ta--'

'--That's right. Look: I'm just calling you to say--and, mind you, I haven't much time--that just in case you were thinking of spending a quiet evening alone at your place tonight; well, stop thinking about it. I need your help.'

'So you want me to meet me at your place, say at around 6:30--?'

'--Make it 6 if you can. And if I'm not there by 7, dial 999. In all seriousness, Nigel, I'm wondering if I'm even going to make it out of here al--'

At this point the connexion went dead. And so, after discharging me obligatory butcher's-trio of I'm-sorry:-you're-breaking-ups, I cradled the blower and resumed my pornoscopic browsings in an attitude of scarcely discomposed complacency. Surely, after all, I mused to meself during the course thereof, that bit about 'wondering whether she was going to out of there al[ive]' was nothing but sheer feminine hysterics. Surely, no blokess has ever lost, or shall ever lose, so much as an eyelash in contestation of such a puny patch of turf as is comprised, according to the inverted telescope of femininity, by the full sesquicentennially- ancient history of league football?

Needles to say, the eventual appointed rendezvous with Esmeralda, chez elle, set me straight on just how much more than an eyelash was at stake between Tamsin and her vis-a-vis the sesquiannually-recent history of league football, and, even more parochially, vis-a-vis the recent history of that accursed club that shall not be named. The RiQ was inaugurated at precisely 19:02 GDT, i.e. a full two minutes posterior to the likewise-appointed 999-ringing time, (i.e., just barely posterior enough thereto that I could have fallen back, had I needed to, on the unsynchronised watch-excuse by way of vindication of my neglecting to punch in the aforesaid triple-nines), when Esmeralda burst in through the front door, slammed it shut behind her and leaned against it, with hands clasped behind her arse, like a wanted woman, she panting all the while like a proverbial bitch in heat [blame the ungallantness of the image on the proverb, not on me!]

'So you did manage to get out of there alive after all?' I asked, in as suitably grave a tone as I could manage to affect.

'Only--only just,' she pants out. 'Look, I haven't much time.'

'Oh, no, not again. What's happened? Has Tamsin been stalking you all the way home on foot? And is she at any minute about to start hacking away on the other side of that door with a machete or axe? If so, I'd advise you to stand well clear of the threshold--'

'--No, Nigel, it's much worse than that. She's assigned me a 200-page report, due complete and spiral-bound on her desk by eight o'clock sharp tomorrow morning!'

'Oh, darling,' I exclaim, suddenly overcome by a wave of empathetic remorse such as only one who has been there, done that and worn the sodding hairshirt can be overcome by, 'I'm so sorry! How could I have been so callous!' Then, rushing towards her, extricating her hands from behind her arse and taking them in mine, I continue, amidst a liberal smattering of chivalric finger-pecks: 'What do you need me to do? Calculate the aggregate depreciation of lens-grinding equipment across three fiscal quarters?--or, say, the aggregate appreciation of your R&D team across a parallel calendrical stretch? Just say the word and I'll hop to it!'

'I need nothing of the kind from you, darling. Please don't take this as a slight against your professional competence, but I flatter myself that with my Occuvisual insider's know-how I would do better to take care of the accountancy-proper side of things unassisted.'

'Ah, well, then,' I says, with a John-Wayne-esque jerk of the head directed over her shoulder towards the door qua door, 'as my services will not be required after all, I suppose I'd better just mosey on.'

'Not so fast, Nigel. You see, it wasn't your professional expertise I was alluding to over the phone today when I said I needed your help.'

[Well, of course, I'd known as much; but this was, after all, a professional point of honour.] 'Oh, it wasn't?'

'Yes, it wasn't. It was, rather, in point of your amateur expertise on a certain subject that I then stood most desperately most in need of your assistance. And I suspect if I'd actually had ten minutes' leisure to avail myself of that expertise--in other words, if Tamsin hadn't been lurking round the corner all the while I was on the phone with you--this report assignment would have remained right on through to now what it was at that moment--a mischievous twinkle in her eye, rather than externalising and transmogrifying itself into the slackened noose around my neck that it now is.'

'But now that the noose is slackly slung round your neck, and you don't seem to want my professional help in shaking yourself free of it--well, what's the use of my amateur expertise on this certain subject?'

'The use consists in arresting the otherwise-inevitable, irreversible tightening of the noose from tomorrow onwards. Look, this report, as near as I can tell, is mere window-dressing in Tamsin's eyes: I mean, I gather she assigned it to me sheerly by way of lending a veneer of professionalism to her...Arsenalo...'

'...Arsenalophobic?'

'...That seem to be the mot juste, thanks...[here, I couldn't forbear smiling, vis-a-vis the sheer apparent novelty of the adjective to her greenhorn'd orioles]...to her Arsenalophobic spite.'

'Are you sure you aren't--and weren't--being just a wee bit paranoid? I mean, not only as to the particular genesis of the report, but also as to its broader psychic background? Did you really conceive yourself on just grounds to be a full-fledged member of that ancient, celebrated Mark-Knopfler-fronted rock ensemble when you called me today, and the more so entirely on account of your lack of enthusiasm for Tamsin's Aresnalophobia?'

'I'm sure as Shaw on both counts. Look, as I was saying,' she says, stroppily extricating her hands from mine, as if by way of preparation for a headlong dash into the front room proper, 'I haven't much time, so if you'll just give me a bit of something to work with Arsenal-wise tomorrow, toot sweet, I'd be ever so grateful.'

'Look,' I says, soothingly, grabbing hold of one of the fugitive hands and tugging her forwards towards her presumptive intended destination, 'I'm all too willing--indeed, eager--to help you, but surely there's no point, say, in my mechanically catechizing you on the full current Gunners squad roster in the next 20 seconds or so. All that'll've eventuated in, at best, come tomorrow, is your regurgitating some random name in Tamsin's presence--and who knows whether you'll even have got the name right, let alone whether it'll've been anyone she'll have ever heard of.'

[E, thoroughly nonplussed:] 'Catechizing me on the current Gunners squad roster?'

'Case in point: as of now, you're unacquainted with so much as the barest rudiments of the club-specific argot. If I'm to be of any use to you atoll on the Arsenalophobic front, I'll need to ply you selectively--tactically, as it were--with a mere handful of names and terms guaranteed to press Tamsin's Arsenalophobic buttons. But pursuant to the production of such a tactically-purposive handful, I'll need to sketch out an Arsenalophobic profile of Tamsin--which will perforce necessitate your relating to me as patient an account as you can manage of what passed between the two of you today, which will in turn, of course, require some more-than-negligible expenditure of time. Now, tell me truthfully, darling: how much of that precious commodity would you estimate you've got ready to hand?'

'I dunno. Perhaps 20 minutes--half an hour at the most. The depreciation calculations alone'll take four hours, the appreciation ones another three or so; and then, of course, I have to factor in another two hours for checking the figures, along with a quarter-hour for printout; the lot converging on my 6 a.m. departure time, so's I arrive at the office early enough to be sure of commandeering the ring-binding machine...Christ, she really rubbed it in! Surely an electronic copy would have sufficed!'

'Surely. But as we've only, as you say, a half an hour at most to ourselves, perhaps you'd better commence your account...' [By now, we're both standing in front of the couch, to which I give a paralytic, leftside bow-cum-free-arm sweep, in classic Ruggerian-cum-ZZ-Toppian fashion; and once we're both seated arse-cheek-to-arse-cheek thereupon, with both pairs of legs crossed and propped up on the coffee table, she delivers the aforementioned account, AFF:]

'Well, the day started off auspiciously enough: Tamsin slept through the entire drive into work; and, in fact, once we'd arrived it was all I could do to get her out of the car, back on her feet and into the front door of the building.'

'If you'll pardon the briefest of interruptions, none of this so far sounds particularly auspicious.'

'Well, you have to put yourself in my shoes then (or keep yourself in our shoes now, whichever's easiest). You see, it seemed to me at this point that Tamsin was so utterly knackered by the night before that she'd never be capable of putting in so much as a single solid hour's work, let alone a full day's one; that by 10 o'clock at the latest she'd inevitably either have punched out or sequestered herself in her office under pretence of some uninterruptible seven-hour conference call. In either case, I'd have been off the hook Arsenal-phobic-[sic (but let's at least give her credit for trying to pick up the lingo)]-wise for at least another day. But then, once we were in the lift, everything took an irrevocable turn for the worse: her mobile started ringing, and whilst she was barely managing to keep herself propped up against the handrail, she somehow summoned up enough manual dexterity to extract the phone from her handbag and cup it to her ear in time to answer the call.'

'Let me guess: the bell in question came from Cuthbert.'

'"Ding-ding!" as they say. Well, anyway, Cuthbert presumably having asked her where she was, she said, "I'm at the office, you shithead! Where in fuck's name else would I be this time of the day?" And then, Cuthbert presumably having asked her where she'd been for the past 11 hours or so, she said, "I stayed over at Merle's." There was a bit more silence, accompanied by much nauseated eye-rolling and tongue-lolling in my direction, and then she says, "OK, have it your way: at Merle's and Nigel's. I did, after all, forewarn you that I might not be coming home." From this point onwards I was at something of a loss to reconstruct the Cuthbertian end of the conversation in any detail, but I gathered distinctly enough that it centred in the main on a disgruntled appraisal of your end of your earlier conversation with him. But as for Tamsin's end, I recall her saying, first, "Oh, poor baby! Does your pussy hurt?" and then, "Well, I don't care if it is an ungentlemanly comparison. It's about fucking time someone had the balls to make it in public" and finally, "That's enough for today, dear. Sieg Heil!, and Fick dich! to boot."'

'Let me just interject, by way of gratifying your presumptive reconstructive curiosity, that the comparison in question was one of the current Arsenal fan base to the Hitler Youth movement of the 1930s. Hence the smattering of German vocables in Tamsin's sign-off.'

'Ah, yes! Soft-pedalled subtlety has always been your forte. Anyway, the point is that upon the conclusion of that phone-convo, which coincided all-too-tidily with our exit from the lift, Tamsin was suddenly galvanised into caffeinated sobriety; and that, from that point onwards, except on the evidence of the slightly static-frazzled discomposure of her hairdo, and of the barely-noticeable misalignment of her skirt-flies with her blouse-buttons, none of our co-workers could have guessed that she'd been pissed as a backed-up urinal a mere eight hours previous. And naturally, the galvinisation was attended by a string of imprecations against the galvinisor. "He's hopeless," she said, throwing her hands up from behind her desk. "We're hopeless--he and I. Goddamn him and his fucking Terry Ornery and Arsenio Finger and Czech Fabri-Gas!" But, of course, having nothing to go on vis-a-vis this catalogue of Cuthbert-affiliated people or things she was inveighing against, apart from some vague sense that all of them had something to do with Arsenal, it was as much as I could do to reply with a a mousey smile of feigned sympathy whose insincerity she saw through to straightway. "As if you'd understand," she said. "Why don't you go and fetch me a cup of tea. I could use one, and, in any case, it seems to be the only practical task you're cut out for." Naturally, I took advantage of the precious four-minute interval of solitude presumptively required for the preparation of this selfsame cuppa to ring you up from the kitchen. I even erred so far on the side of caution as to synchronise the starting of the timer of the microwave with the dialling of your work number. But unluckily for me, Tamsin--no kettle-warming, loose-leaf-straining tea snob she, apparently--poked her head in at 1 minute 20 and counting to demand "what's taking so fucking long" and so I had to ring off. Then, no sooner had I delivered the tea to her desk than she assigned me this report, along with its impossible deadline, which, suffice it to say--apart from the occasional pee break, the drive home and the present conversation--I've been furiously, uninterruptedly swotting away towards ever since.'

'OK: granted, you've established to my infinite satisfaction that Tamsin heartily resents your all-too-palpable absence of sympathy with her Arsenalophobia. That said, I'm still not fully satisfied that there's a tight--thatistersay necessary and not even partially contingent--connexion between her resentment and the impossibly-deadlined commission of this here report. In other words, I want to know on what evidence you maintain that Tamsin would never have commissioned such an assignment in the absence of such resentment.'

'Well, firstoff, on the evidence that last year's version of the same report wasn't due till mid-November at the earliest; and secondoff, on the evidence of her parting words.'

'Namely?'

'Namely: "If this report isn't on my desk at start of business tomorrow, Houghington, your crypto-Goonerly ass will be grass.'"

'Ah, I see. Well, that about cinches it. Mind you, you're off to a promising enough start. Firstoff, you recognised the adjective Goonerly for the Arsenalic subcultural slang-lexeme that it in fact is; and secondly, you managed to carry home at least an approximate phonetic record of Tamsin's personal unholy triumvirate of Gunners: such that all that's really required against your setting up shop as a full-fledged, greenhorn Arsenlophobe is a bit of phonetic fine-chuning and biographical back-in-filling. Are you ready?'

'As Freddie.'

'Are you sure as Shaw? (I mean, in other words, shouldn't you be writing at least some of this down...)?'

'Oh, yes, of course!' she says, springing up from the couch, fetching a scribbling block-'n'-pen from the dining room table and finally re-seating herself, pen ready to block, alongside me haunches.

'OK,' I says. 'The first individual in this rogues' gallery is Arsène (not Arsenio) Wenger (not Finger). His first name is spelt A-R-S-E (with an accent grave, not that you really need to know that for now) N-E. For mnemonic purposes, just think of it as the name of the club minus the terminating 'al.'"

'Oh, come off it, Nigel! It can't be that simple: his name is Arsène and he's managing a team called Arsenal? Surely you're setting me up for your own...crypto-Goonerphobic ends.'

'I wish I could say I was. But, alas!: sometimes, as in this case, truth is stranger and more cu--more front-bottomish than fiction. His first name is Arsène and there's an end on it. Now, as for his second name, it's spelt W-E-N-G-E-R. Again for mnemonic purposes, just think of the celebrated Kraut composer and proto-Nazi Dick Wanger--'

'--I'm sorry, but isn't that Wagner...?'

'...Erm, well, I suppose it is. So just transpose the G and the N and substitute an E for the N and you're all set. Anyway, Monsieur Wenger (b. Strasbourg, France, 1949; MA in Economics, Robert Schumann University 1974) a.k.a. the Professor, a.a.k.a. Dr Moreau or Mengele in intimate Aresnalophobic circles, onetime striker for RC Strasbourg and erstwhile manager of AS Monaco, is due to celebrate his tenth anniversary as club manager come this September. Clever, ruthless, reservedly genteel in upbringing and yet mercurially boorish on the pitch, he can be counted on to descend to the utmost depths of pottymouthism in contesting the most blatantly cut-and-dry (or is it cut-and-dried?) red card flung in the phiz of a member of his side.'

'OK,' says Esmeralda, furiously scrawling with the tip of her tongue sticking out ever-so-winsomely betwixt her lips, 'I think I've got all that down. I've one question though, not apropos of Monsieur...Wenger, but of football generally: what's a red card?'

'Oh, come off it, Esmeralda!' I couldn't help ejaculating, more out of horror (on her sham-Arsenlophobic behalf) than resentment (on my generic pedipilular own). 'You might as well ask me "What's a stadium?" or, indeed, "What's a football?". Surely you've retained at least a smattering of the basic terminology of the game from your nipperly days of Wimbledonian fandom?'

'Apparently not.'

'Very well, then: a red card is the visual symbol of an infraction against the official rules severe enough to result in the sending off of the player in question--thatistersay in his being excluded from further play for the duration of the match. And just to forewarn you, if the fact that you've had occasion to ask this question is anything to go on, you can expect, at minimum, a yellow card or two from Tamsin tomorrow--'

'--As if I knew what a yellow card was--'

'--yesyesyes: or, for that matter, a free kick or a hat-trick. From now on, let's just stick to the biographical register and hope against hope that on its own it amounts to a serviceable enough bucketful of chum to her Arsenalophobic gullet. Now, the next rogue in the line-up is Thierry Henry: first -named Thomas-Howard-Ivan-Edward-Roger-Roger-Yolanda, surnamed awn-REE, which, despite its poncey French pronunciation is orthographically identical to our English Henry, as in John Haitch or The Six Wives of Haitch the Eighth. Anyway, Monsieur Henry (b. Paris 1977, Brevet Collège Jerry Lewis 1992) a.k.a. Cap'n Shithead, striker and squad captain, has been with the club since 1999...'

END of '(T)E(o)EH: PART THE FIRST'.