My friend Fenner is getting married, and he’s having a stag weekend abroad that I can’t go to. So he and I met up with mutual friend Nick yesterday to kind of see him off. We went to Nick’s club, which was closed. And then to a restaurant that Nick chose, but then rejected because there were no hamburgers. Eventually we found a Mexican place with cocktails. So I drank quite a few, and we talked of lasers in the Antarctic, mermaids with irritated nipples and the benefits of the “Breakfast Margarita”, a glorious concept that puts pink grapefruit juice into the standard recipe making it eminently suitable for calming the nerves before that early-morning meeting. Not that I’d ever do that, obviously.
When we finally parted company four hours later, I was a little drunk and excitable. I met another Nick in Soho and we wandered up to the Yard, where this photo was taken. Then it was off to the cinema to see L.I.E. where I managed to embarrass Nick by pointing at people (before the film) and saying in a stage whisper, “Do you think he’s a paederast? No? How about him? He looks like a paederast…” Some people have no sense of humour… Oh and I saw a guy in a bar who made me double-take. So if you were out in Rupert Street yesterday evening and you were wearing a grey t-shirt with a kind of laced-up front and you have a little beard tuft in the middle of your chin, then Hello, my name is Tom – can I buy you a drink? is what I meant to say…