She was a great one for a story and she told me about the café – pure entertainment listening to her. She mentioned a particular guy who came in and told her she was pretty, as he paid for his order. I didn’t in any way want to go on about it, but I felt it was unnecessary her mentioning something like that. Two people, a fleeting throwaway comment about her beauty. I knew she was beautiful and that was enough. Suddenly I began to feel cheated, I wasn’t so sure about this day job of hers, out in the public eye all day, in the summer – her vest top, becoming slightly sweaty under her armpits and if you were to go close to her you would find her secret Jenny scent emanating from those lovely armpits of hers and it would be faintly metallic and it would be a warm and comforting thing and I didn’t want to share that with anybody, least of all a complete stranger. Her vest top – in tight to her frame so you could see the outline of her ribs and her nipples sticking out like two pubescent peaks, she didn’t bother with a bra. It was only a part-time job but still and all.

The way I held Jenny’s hand. It wasn’t an over-extenuated grabbing of the hand, rather it was more of a delicate manoeuvre and Jenny seemed to take this in her stride, to like it and the enormity of that, of her allowing that familiarity to grow so concrete and the exhibition of that concreteness to others.

10. The Senior League

March 2017

Mikey and Joey insist on us as a family following the club’s senior team playing the league games. And so that is how I spend my Friday nights now. Watching a hopeful bunch of nineteen-year-olds tear around a pretty poor pitch in the freezing cold. It gets bitter at the matches and the only respite is a cup of tea from a polystyrene cup with an ill-fitting lid, or a portion of curry chips. I often opt for the chips as there seems to me an inherent curried heat that offers a peculiarly comforting reward. I get myself a pint of beer too. Jenny insists on drinking wine which pisses me off as it’s very over-priced at the clubhouse. However, if you consider the night as a whole, what with a few bars of Cadbury’s for the kids, I suppose we might do worse.