Chocolate Tranquillizer

I’m feeling a bit calmer now, largely because I bought a large slice of chocolate fudge cake and a pot of fromage frais to act as a sort of tranquilliser.
I got hold of J today and asked her what she thought she was doing, giving Glenn my address, which I had SPECIFICALLY withheld from him. (Despite him asking every time I’ve seen him.) She said she didn’t give it to him: he must have found it in her Filofax. And she said she was pretty angry herself to come back and find her flat stinky from another of his fish stews and then not even HAVE the fish stew to eat because he’d left it outside my door. (So that was what it was: Glenn’s signature dish. All I can say is that it looked like snot. Hate to think what his non-signature dishes are like.)
She said not to worry, she’ll tick him off and tell him never to bother me again. It’s just (she thinks) that he was so disappointed when the picnic was cancelled.
She says there’s another thing Michael is going to be at soon, did I want to go, as a sort of consolation prize for Glenn calling round? I said yes, of course, though the rate I’m going I soon won’t be able to fit into ANY of my clothes.

Battenburgs and Glenn

I was eating my potato salad and rye bread sandwich at my desk yesterday when J came up and said she wanted to talk. (Oh, by the way, I am so fed up with potato salad now. The Woo said you shouldn’t have stuff you like to eat at home, and I’ve always hated Batteburg cake – too sugary, fake almond taste – so I’m going to substitute Battenburg for potato salad from now on.)
J sat on the edge of my desk and said that she really wanted me to give Glenn another chance. She said he was her cousin and had been going through a really serious depression since he split up from his girlfriend. (It wasn’t a marriage – just a long relationship. She said, surely it was good, that he was capable of a long relationship?) He normally lives in the country, in Cornwall, but he came to stay with J because he was so desperate and her family were worried about him, and he’s been in her flat for two weeks now. She says he’s so depressed he sleeps all day, and she comes back to find he’s boiled up smelly fish stews and ponged the place up. Anyhoo, turns out he was so excited about meeting me that he washed his hair for the first time in about three months and went to lots of trouble, and he’s sort of in decline, now. Oh, and he used up all his money on the pink champagne so it would have to be a cheap date, like a picnic in the park.
I really wasn’t at all sure about this, but she said if I agree to see him over the bank holiday she’ll set up for me to meet Michael on Saturday, when he’s giving a party at his house in Chelsea. And after all, it’s not like I have to REALLY go out with Glenn, just sort of be friendly and let him down gently.