A nice Muriel

I inadvertently chose to go to Glasgow on the day when twenty thousand Scotland supporters were travelling home after watching their country add another chapter to its long history of footballing crapness. Scores of be-kilted, pissed up East Kilbriders were in my carriage; another party had come all the way from Arbroath, a town which I suspect actually doesn't exist now that James Alexander Gordon has died. It was all aimiable, if noisy.

Walking to the pub for my date with Muriel I saw a big poster for Shelly Nadashi's show at the CCA. I only found out recently that the show Shelley, Giles Bailey and I did together in Brussels was reviewed, somewhat non-committally, in the Belgian art magazine Le Salon.

I greeted Muriel with the one-cheek kiss which I'm glad to observe is becoming standard for meeting new women. She has a deep voice and a rather slow air about her, and as I went to the bar at the Blackfriars to get us a drink, I was wondering if she had concealed the fact that she had mental problems. Back at our table, I asked her to pronounce the name of the small Gordonesque town she's from. It bears only a slight correspondence to its spelling and I found it amusing.

The chat flowed easily and freely, both of us knowing quite early on that it's not going to be repeated. We commented on the excellent standard of beards sported by the arty set who seemed to be in the pub at 5pm. She looked to me to suggest somwhere to eat. I was inwardly alarmed, as that would have broken my budget, so I took her to the Brunswick Hotel and she had a tortilla and I had a glass of cava. She paid, to my relief. As we left, she gave me a kiss which was most peck-like, and jolted my head back a little with its perfunctory force.

On the train back I got moved up to first class by a former colleague on the railways. I drank, dozed, and tried unsuccessfully to read a bit more of Moby Dick, and generally thought it had been a waste of time and money. I thought longingly of Daniella's refusal to let me get home last week without a snog, and I started mentally composing a Valentines card for her which would consist of a series of notecards in envelopes of ever-diminishing sizes, with the messages getting filthier as she opens each one.

I lost my phone so I was unable to text her to thank Muriel for the evening. This morning, I went onto the website on which we met to find she'd deleted her account.