Idealism

I walked down to the pub on the canal towpath to meet Trina, who lives on a houseboat a few miles away. We've only been emailing since Saturday but there's a bit of a running joke developing about Hegel, since the German Idealist girl-magnet makes an appearance on my dating profile. I said she could identify me by my copy of Charles Taylor's 'Hegel and Modern Society'.

She was sitting on a bench outside but didn't require any bookish assistance to spot me. Straight black shoulder length hair, and, as she said herself, "great tits." I sat down next to her and asked her what she was reading. It was The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller. "Oh look at us," I said. "What a literary couple." "I wonder how Miller and Hegel would have got on," she said. I told her I'd read his Tropic of Cancer and we started talking about how feminists wouldn't like it.

"Some feminists are very intolerant," she said. "Yes, I know, but although there's lots of individual counterexamples, I still think feminism is something worth clinging on to. So get me a drink, bitch." I stood up and asked her what she'd like.

Three short hours passed, my only anxiety being to protect myself from any disappointment, since her voluble, unserious chat, and the way she looked, meant I was becoming attracted to her. She suggested a walk along the canal and we went a little way out of town then turned back on ourselves, past the pub.

"What shall we do now?" she said. "Well, I suppose you could come and have a cup of tea at my house. It's only ten minutes away." Just as I was to join her on the sofa, Neil phoned, inopportunely, about the Dickens event.

"Where are you?" he said. "At my house." "What are you doing this afternoon?" "I'm entertaining this bird I've just met on the internet." "Come back to bed," she shouted.

I put my arm round her and we began kissing. There wasn't much time before her bus, so we walked slowly to the bus stop, hand in hand, me hoping I wouldn't have to explain her to anyone I might bump into. We stood waiting together and and we kissed again and again as I raked my hands through her lovely black hair and around her ears and down her neck, keeping my hands reluctantly off her tits. "Eeeh... I haven't snogged in a bus shelter for a few years," she said. "Well, youngsters mustn't be allowed to monopolise the best pleasures," I said.

I waved her off and I walked into town to sit by myself with a quiet pint, to drink the afternoon in.

She emailed when she got in, and again before going to bed. A couple of lovely texts this morning. We've arranged to see each other again on Monday.

In the evening our wine club went round Alsace. I wanted to tell Clare and John about her, but managed to exercise a dignified restraint through the entire valley.