Giant Bananas and a Seductive Physique

Last night started very well. As I was leaving the hairdressers’ I spotted one of those tiny madam shops filled with swish designer clothes, and had a quick look round, and found a beautiful yellow dress with a frilled front that made my décolletage look like two irresistible peaches in a tight bowl. It was v expensive, but I told myself I was going to take the gladiator sandals back, so that was £49 off the price straightaway.
Of course, all the other women at the party were dressed in black, which made me feel like a giant banana, but I’d been half-expecting that. Michael actually recognized me, though he got my name wrong. And I had to sit between two businessmen types who kept talking across my front. Whoever wrote that article last week in the Telegraph about men being boring was absolutely spot-on. They talked about cars so much they even seemed to bore EACH OTHER. (One of them kept yawning, and boasted that he’d got up at 5 to work-out in the gym.)
The food was just wonderful. There was a ‘trio’ of something to start with, and then langoustines, and then something I suspect was veal. (The menu was on the table but out of reach and the boring men wouldn’t stop talking long enough to hear me asking for it.)
And after an almondy dessert we went into an incredible room upstairs with a huge window looking out across London, and a slightly pissed, skeletal woman staggered up and apologised for her husband’s rude behaviour (he’d been on my left) and said that he hadn’t used to be like that, success had gone to his head. And then she described how last week, when service had been slow in The Fat Duck, he’d started banging his knife and fork on the table and shouting: ‘I want my dinner!’ like a two-year-old.
So all in all, it would have been a pretty nice evening even if Michael hadn’t come over a kissed me goodbye. (A mwah kiss, and he had to stand on tiptoe in his elevator shoes, and I got his sweat on my dress.) But then he also gave me his card and said we should do lunch sometime, and I gave him MY card, just in case.
And all the way home in the taxi I kept comparing it to Carla Bruni’s first dinner with Sarkosy and wondering if in the future, I’d be able to say, believably, of Michael, that I was ‘seduced by his physique and intelligence’.

Does Money Make All the Difference?

Wow! Went off to Michael’s house last night with J. He was hosting a Eurovision party in his London house. It’s one of those Chelsea houses that looks like a beautifully iced wedding-cake. J had been invited because she met Michael through some thing the firm organised.
Anyhoo, we got there, and the place was incredible. Waiters handing round Cristal champagne and delicious nibbles, three vast flatscreens showing the contest, place stuffed with rich men and the sort of thin women that make you want to run to the toilet and slit your throat. And I hadn’t been able to wear my favouritest dress because I couldn’t get the zip up. So it was a black Prada standby. But I did have some terrific shoes.
Really peculiar watching Eurovision as there’s something strangely SEXY about the entries, isn’t there? Even though they are nearly all so silly and naff. It’s like going on holiday and getting this thing for one of the waiters…
I really wanted to see Michael, because I was so so impressed by his house, and his friends. I kept saying to J, where IS he? (Eurovision party a very good idea if you don’t know anyone as you can just smile knowingly at the screen while drinking bubbles and you don’t look like a no-friend loser.) And then, around 9, she dug me in the ribs.
She’s right about the peculiar-shaped head. And he’s bald. And at least three inches shorter than me (but I was wearing Laboutins). And he’s one of those fat, sweatyish men that makes you think of cheese. Damp Caerphilly. He hadn’t got a jacket on, and you could see wet patches. And when I took his hand it was damp, too. But he had a nice smile.
You know, he’s the sort of man I’d never even look at. But his being so rich makes a scary difference…