‘—“Born to be Wild”?’ asked Lars.

‘How d’ya guess? And “Sweet Home Alabama”, and some old Carpenters hits, and his Elton John was just … beyond compare …’

‘Jesus Christ, maybe he has gone gay,’ said Poppy. Then, realizing where she was, added, ‘Oh, shit, no offence.’

‘It’s OK, beautiful, your husband hasn’t “gone gay”. It’s not something that just happens overnight, you know.’

‘Oh, fuck, God, yes, I’m so sorry,’ Poppy repeated, mortified.

‘He looked sad, but the singing helped, I think.’ The tranny smiled at her, ignoring the last apology. ‘Hey, why don’t you guys stick around? It should be crazy in here tonight.’

‘Why?’ asked Bella, intrigued by the nice man, even if he did look decidedly weird (and strangely familiar) in his specs and wig.

‘Sarah Palin lookalike night!’

As he said it, around forty men, of vastly differing shapes, sizes and colours, but mostly wearing auburn wigs and glasses pretty similar to the ones the tranny was wearing, started to troop into the cavernous room. Not a single one of them looked like Sarah Palin, but the overall effect was extremely funny.

‘Hey, Hockey Mom!’ One of them high-fived another, who was wearing a T-shirt over a pair of fake tits, emblazoned with the words OUR ALLIES IN NORTH KOREA.

‘It’s easy for me to keep an eye on Russia, from Alaska,’ somebody else was saying.

‘I have many gay friends, but I do think that homosexuality is an abomination,’ a very camp voice was drawling from another corner of the room.

Poppy, Bella and Lars looked at one another, smiling. This did look as if it could be a fun evening, after all.

‘Can we order some drinks? Do you have a menu?’ Lars asked the fat black tranny, who was still standing by their table.

‘Sure thing, Swedish man. Boy, are you cute.’ Lars smiled bravely back. ‘But we are only serving one drink tonight, and it is frozen—’

‘Do you call it “Alaskan Bitch”?’ Poppy giggled.

‘Jeez, that is a great name!’ He roared with laughter, and shouted over to the bar, ‘Hey, double pitchers of Alaskan Bitch on the house for my new friends over here.’

After a couple of pitchers of weird, sweet, icy, and very potent stuff, Bella, Poppy and Lars had started to make some more new friends.

‘Heeyyyy,’ said one of them, looking at Bella closely. ‘Try these on.’ He handed her his Sarah Palin specs, and as soon as Bella had donned them, the entire table erupted into laughter.

‘Omigod, omigod, omigod, she wins, without even trying,’ said one of their new friends. ‘Give her your wig, Grant.’

Grant ran behind Bella, twisted her hair up, took off his auburn chignon wig, and plonked it on top of her head.

‘Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, I can’t believe it,’ spluttered Poppy. ‘You are the spitting bloody image! All you need is some heavy lip-liner and your own mothers couldn’t tell you apart!’

‘I am nothing like Sarah Palin,’ said Bella, with as much dignity as she could muster after the quantity of Alaskan Bitch she’d just consumed.