My social-ambient director, when Big Daddy is away, is a Persian lad called Farhad, who says getting me out at night is beginning to feel like moving a cruise ship. I know what he means. If you want to spend the evening with me, I have to know where, what time and who I’m sitting next to (that’s on both sides) at least 72 hours in advance, but preferably before. As a 45-year-old mother of two, I told Farhad, who is single and 30, that’s my prerogative.
But isn’t this precisely the mind-set that makes people prematurely senile? With this in mind, I called Big Daddy at the office last Friday and told him we were going to reinvent ourselves as clubbers. You know, like those really nang people who watch telly, have their tea and then go out at night. Poor Big Daddy. Not the sort of thing he wanted to hear at all, with his streaming cold and bad back. But he has spent every weekend this year shooting, so he knew he sort of owed me one.
Boujis is a club that is supposed to appeal to the older generation too, one of those places that occasionally plays the Gypsy Kings, has valet parking and so forth. But on this particular night, the crowd looked distinctly as if it was out on exeat, and ooh, did we feel like two old sore thumbs when we walked in. Anyway, having been offered a hand down the stairs by a handsome, Cherry Airwaves-chewing blond called Jake, we squeezed our way across a dancefloor seething with young sloaney flesh, and found an empty banquette in the corner of a little anteroom. Suddenly, out of nowhere, we found ourselves straddled from behind by two young girlies in white jeans and tank tops, wanting to give us Thai massages. Well, you can’t say no, can you? So there we sat, tapping our feet in time to the music, drinking our old people’s drinks (red wine) and pretending we didn’t have two girls grinding themselves into us from behind.
Meanwhile, that American actor with the potato nose, the one from Wedding Crashers, moseyed in and sat down in the opposite corner. Immediately, he was surrounded by girls (one of whom, I shoutingly pointed out to Big Daddy, looked very much like the daughter of an acquaintance of ours). And here’s the funny thing. Despite all this nubile English totty pawing at his crotch, I think he was checking me out. Yes. Me. I’m sure of it. Well? Is that so weird? According to Big Daddy, yes, very: the only other type of person he’s heard of who’s convinced that on the one hand she’s grossly inferior to her surroundings, and on the other the focal point of desire, is a schizophrenic.