Moholy-Nagy and modern design, or, my girlfriend has got lovely tits

On London Euston's bleak concourse, a moment of checking myself to see how much I would really enjoy seeing her, which was erased by unselfconscious pleasure in doing so, and nascent desire, feeling her pressed against me.

We went to the pub outside the station. "Do you fancy a coffee, or a drink?" she asked. "No. I'm paying for today, seeing as I've dragged you down here." We sat looking out over the bus station and she told me about how easy her son's childbirth had been. My 11am pint of Fuller's, from a small distant breakfast, made everything start to drift, a sensuous feeling I recognise and like.

She apologised about her sweating (she's fifty-seven), but I like it. I like the way it lets me slide my fingers around her neck creases, and its wet warmth when I kiss her forehead or behind her ears. The only displeasure is that its indulgence isn't possible in a pub.

It had been decided that we would centre the day around the Barbican's exhibition about the Bauhaus. Before then, we went to Spitalfields Market, which sells dresses at triple the price you can get them in Primark, but has some good food stalls. In a pub in Bishopsgate, we talked about the respective denominations of our Christian upbringings and how much we like the old Wesleyan hymns. Those lucky enough to be in the above pub early yesterday afternoon heard a middleaged couple in the corner breaking off from snogging to sing together

Guide me, O Thou great Redeemer,
Pilgrim through this barren land
Something something something something
La la la la-ah la la la

Then, more confidently

Bread of Heaven
Bread of Heaven
Feed me now for ever more
(Ever more-or)

Before finising as rousingly as we dared

Feed me now for ever more

We resumed our former attitudes. She had turned up in an aquamarine top with a little cord tie above her tits, and jeans. As delicately as I could in the religious atmosphere, I tugged at her top at its waist to make it tighten around her lovely tits and show them off the better. "Right," I said eventually. "You're going to have to take me to an exhibition about the Bauhaus now because you are getting sexier and sexier."

I was astonished at the price to get in: twelve pounds. It was seven pounds for the disabled. "Can you pretend to be special needs?" she said. It's a great exhibition, although mainly I remember deliberately leaning against her as an excuse to feel my upper arm against her--oh dear me this is getting a bit one-dimensional--tits--while we admired something by one of Moholy-Nagy's pupils.

All of a sudden, there was only one hour to go and we found a little pub (she'd researched the pubs) down a lane off Moorgate somewhere. I won't recite any more of the details as I think any reader has got the gist by now, but I will just record two exchanges. One was "You don't realise how sexy you are do you?" "No," she replied with complete simplicity, "I don't mean to be." Another was, "I really fancy you." And she said "I know. And it's nice to feel the same way back. There's two men at the moment who are mooning over me and there's nothing. I feel a bit sorry for them really."

Coming back on the tube to Euston, we passed through Angel. "There's a pub near here," I said, "where we used to go on Sunday afternoons in my ravey period and just sit and recover." I made a gesture of leaning my face on my hand. "'I'm so pissed I don't remember anything about last night'," she replied, not getting the kind of intoxication to which I was referring. It doesn't matter.

Ringing her from the train I was physically aching, the consequence of several hours of being with someone you want to fuck, but can't. In Lancaster I went to the only pub which doesn't have music. "Practicing Christians?" a man at the bar said. "They've only had two thousand years to get it right." At the next table two male academics from Oxford were out with a Dutch female one. "Why is 'Jesus College' funny?" she asked. "It's not really. Well, you know, Jesus College, Satan College."