For be, or not for be

This is an exercise in style. I envy that of a fellow blogger, and I am adapting her style to mine to make a coruscating hybrid of narcissistic blether.

Me and Tess were on our way to the Borough, and could hear a young child screaming and crying. She'd got her head stuck between the railings outside the office block next door. Before I went over to bend the railings apart with the mighty power of my Cultural Studies, she managed to wriggle free.

Then we bumped into an acquaintance of Tess's, someone who quite openly said that he fancies her boyfriend. He was acidly funny and intelligently pisstaking. He told us he worked for a broadsheet, which I initially took with a pinch of salt, before unsolicited details emerged which confirmed it is true.

I went to collect Trina from the railway station, and on the way back we acquired Richard. Back at the pub, Tess's boyfriend turned up, so there was quite a gang of us. I enjoyed the banter with the journalist, although after a while his desperation to be the centre of attention was irritating. He cut straight across an anecdote I was relating. I let him speak then refused to finish it when he said "Anyway, sorry--carry on." "No, it's OK, I'll tell you later", and turned to speak to Richard for a while, partly to unprise Trina. He was turning to her, doing that serious, supplicating face, taking her hand. I.e., he was pissed, on the spirits, and wanted a woman to be his social worker again. I know he's gone through a bereavement but I wish he wouldn't constantly bring it to social occasions, at this, a four-year distance.

Trina was brilliant with the journalist, gabbling away, as she does, saying the first thing that comes into her head, and getting him to talk in a more open and less competitive style than he was with the rest of us. I was talking to Richard, who was saying that you can tell from the music of certain now-famous bands (famous to him), that they spent many years in Camden, but trying to earwig on Trina and the journo. Tess looked a bit lost, separated by three chairs from the shyest boyfriend in Christendom, whom I find impossible to talk to. The other morning, as he -- to his embarrassment, I could tell -- bumped into me as I was leaving the house, he said "Turned out nice again." I didn't think that any young person ever said that outside of late 70s suburban sitcoms. Yes, hale fellow. 'Tis a day to sport a tank top and attempt to chat up Paula Wilcox!"

Trina and I, almost certainly the two poorest people there, had bought a round each, and there was no sign of movement from anyone else. I tapped Journo on the knee. "Right, do you reckon it's time you bought us a drink?" He told us he had a tab on "at 4B". 4B? He told me to go and get what we wanted. I said, "Have you really, because I live here and I don't want to fuck this up," which is one of those ridiculous utterances that one can never work out how it escaped from one's mouth, even moments after it has done so. I got to the bar and "4B" existed, and eighteen quid's worth's of drink were loaded onto it without question.

Back at home Tom was having a tea of Modernist rigour, refilling his bowels ready for his regular morning Jackson Pollock stunt in the loo. I had made some vegetable soup beforehand, but at this point neither of us were in the mood to wring the dry conversational flannel that is Tom, the exemplar of the University employee whose intellectual gifts expand as his social ones shrink, and we took our tea upstairs. We took some speed, opened some cider, put on some banging tunes at non-banging volume, and chatted away until the small hours. "I wish you hadn't invited Richard. He's like a sink when he gets in that mood."

Trina said that Tess was quite upset when Tom asked her "So are you completely nocturnal then?" FFS, the girl's in her twenties, is enjoying being at University and with a new boyfriend. She doesn't bang and clatter in, doesn't play loud music, and is unfailingly friendly. He's becoming very irritating, too big a presence. The other day he said to me, "There seem to be several tubes of tomato paste in the fridge." Well shove them up your arse then. It'll make your shit prettier.