OH managed to sell some stuff the other day and got enough for two nights out at our favourite Mediterranean restaurant, which also functions as our takeaway and bar. Jellabiya Man (see previous blogpost from June) was back and I invited him to sit down with us. By this point, we'd polished off our respective Friendship Plates and a bottle of rose and were on the shared baklava plus coffee and cognac. Jellabiya Man (who was actually in trousers and poloshirt that night) said he was feeling a bit down and was thinking of jacking in his job driving people around.
I don't know how these things happen but I do seem to attract them. OH had once called me a "nutter magnet" for my ability to talk to anyone, usually googly-eyed needy middle-aged men with substance-abuse problems and a trail of unplanned kids with hated ex-wives. I tried to catch OH's gaze but his eyes had just glazed over -- he was watching the nightlife unfold in the street outside.
Now, I've calmed down so much since my firebrand teens and twenties. I used to bite the heads off misogynists and staple their hands to their buttocks and regurgitate digestive acid on their twitching torsos. Jellabiya Man was just such a candidate, declaring in his third sentence that he thought equality was all wrong, pregnant women were a drag on business etc. I really don't know what it was about me that provided him with that particular cue. I tried to reason with him but there was just no getting through so I threw in some good-humoured banter instead and sipped my cognac. The benefit of middle age: you now know that life's too short to start a flame war with a depressed taxi driver. Far better to keep on his good side -- you never know when you might have to rely on his generosity and knowledge. By the end of the evening, he had contradicted himself about a dozen times but we were the best of friends by then, he was offering to get me "anything you want -- from my contact in China", and I also know now that if I ever need an airport ride to Luton, Norwich or Stansted, he'll do it, and it will be the shortest (and possibly also the most infuriating) 70 or so miles of my life.
As for the chef, our good friend, I managed to put my foot in it again! This time, I noticed his girlfriend behind the counter mixing some dried herbs with onion rings and looking like she'd had enough already. "How are you doing?" I asked, leaning against the counter. And she told me. Not good at all. And it was basically all our friend's fault. "Oi," I called across to him, "why are you working your woman so hard? Give her a rest." Owner-chef didn't like this at all and complained to me that he'd heard it all before and really didn't need to hear it again. He was really busy preparing meals as the joint was filling up. Some of the drunk Eastern Europeans hanging around waiting for their kebab were not getting on and one of them was spoiling for a fight so Owner-chef was getting a bit tense. Jellabiya Man temporarily ditched his social darwinism from earlier ("If I see a fight between two people, I won't intervene!") and went to separate the yappy little Lithuanian from the others. "But I want to fight!" the small Lithuanian guy said, almost pleadingly. He'd looked forward to it so much.
The night at the restaurant was only getting started but for us, it was midnight and time to go home. I left Owner-chef's girlfriend -- she was standing around dejectedly, arms crossed as if she was warding off all this go-getting testosterone, and the night's alcohol, so not wanting to engage. A bit like me and housework actually. "I'm 38", she'd complained to me earlier, "I'm too old for this. I need my sleep."
Well, I hope they get it sorted and come to some sort of sustainable agreement because if not, our friend, the talented chef, will have to go it alone again. Perhaps he knows this already. When we saw him, he'd grown a tidy little satanic-looking chin beard, which will work wonders in the clubs down our way.
As for us, OH confessed on the way back home that while I was fighting the good suffragettes' fight with a North African taxi driver, he had been casually complimented by a drunk Irishwoman who was waiting for her kebab and who apparently told him she really liked the way he crossed his legs. Yes, sister, I know. We all do. Now shoo. There is a distinct limit to my sisterly solidarity.
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