Life As a Dream (with pumpkins)

Well, I’m having a truly incredible weekend. It’s like a dream. On Friday, after work. I went off to the hairdresser to get my highlights done. I had thought of NOT doing this, being short of cash, but am so, so glad I went ahead with it, as my hair was looking terrible.
Anyhoo, afterwards I had nothing special to do and it seemed a waste ofd my great hair to do nothing with it, so I thought I’d pop into the Cadogan Arms for a cocktail. (I had just enough money in my bag, so did not have to go to the cashpoint, which has been randomly refusing my requests for money this week. It let me have cash Tuesday, but not Wednesday. V embarrassing.) I was just about to order when someone put their hand on my shoulder and said ’The delicious Scones!’ (Well, actually, they used my real name, which, for pointless security reasons, cannot be used on this blog.) I turned round, and guess who it was! Michael. He looked very rumpled and tired, and smelled of drink, and he has a friend with him, and he introduced me, keeping his arm round my waist at all times. So we sat down together, and the friend asked what I did etc and then the two men had a rambling talk, which seemed to be in code, about some company they owned. I didn’t listen, as Michael kept buying me different champagne cocktails and lining them up in front of me on the table and asking me what they tasted like. It was so so odd. He was so affectionate. It was like we were suddenly such close friends. Anyhoo, in the end his friend drifted off, and Michael put his face in his hands and said: ‘Scones, scones scones!’ He shook his head. And then he said, taking my hand, ‘I don’t suppose you would… No, no you wouldn’t.’
It took ages to get it out of him what he wanted, but he said he longed to take me away to a hotel for the weekend, would I agree?’
Well, OF COURSE I said yes! (Who wouldn’t?) He wanted to go STRAIGHT AWAY, so I said I had to go home and get some clothes, and see about Mirabelle etc. And in no time I found myself in a taxi, going to my flat. Michael waited downstairs while I flung stuff into a suitcase. The Japanese girls were not in, so we drove Mirabelle round to Rache’s, where I KNOW she will have a lovely romantic weekend with Oskar the totally-transformed cat. Rache came out to the taxi to have a good look at Michael, giggling, which would have been embarrassing if I hadn’t been so numb from the champagne, and then we were off.
We just sat in the back of the taxi, Michael gripping on to my hand tightly, and drove through the rain. He said, fuzzily, ‘You don’t know what this means to me, my darling Scones,’ and then fell asleep. I had no idea where we were going. It was to a huge stately home type place in Watford.
Michel piled out of the taxi and paid with a huge roll of cash, and then we were in to reception, surrounded by warm air, and polished glass, and incredibly polite staff. And pumpkins. The place was curiously decorated with sort of mad modern art stuff. There were trees with tiny orange paper lanterns on, like fruit, in reception, and the oddest paintings. And piles of pumpkins everywhere. I suppose because it is Halloween. Or was
So we went straight into a very dark restaurant with a vast oil-painting (of pumpkins, of course). And we had a ‘tasting menu’, which is when they keep presenting you with, say, a thimbleful of very salty soup, or a piece of meat the size of a bar of soap, with a squiggle of coloured sauce on it, and then they whisk it away and bring more plates, and more silver knives and forks, and another thimble. And we drank more and more champagne, and Michel kept squeezing my hand and telling me how wonderful I was, and laughing indulgently at everything I said.
It must have been about I a.m by the time we went to the suite, which had a huge four-poster bed. I ran a bath and tried out all the free soaps etc and when I got back to the bed Michael was fast asleep in all his clothes, snoring unbelievably loudly.