A Sawed-Off, Pump-Action Babe-Magnet

I haven’t seen anyone naked since last Michaelmas. I don’t remember much, except a tearful rush of gratitude at being there at the time. Since then, apart from a well-thumbed June 2006 copy of Juggs magazine; naked women have been rather thin on the ground.

The gambit of sidling up to said paragon at the bar, suavely tossing a set of scuffed late-model Ford Fiesta keys on the bar counter and say “You could be driving home in this tonight, babycakes” has proved fruitless.

So I’ve got me a sawed-off pump-action babe-magnet; Stankie, my pug puppy. This dog can make girls shriek at 100 paces, and derail the skewed hamster wheel of a woman’s mind at 50 yards. Stankie doesn’t turn heads, she stops trains. Any public appearance brings forth a scrum of women hysterical as a riot at an Enrique Iglesias book signing.

I’ve yet to capitalize Stankie-Mania into any tangible totty. Perhaps I should dispense with the ineffectual chit chat and give chloroform a bash.

Angel, Won't You Call Me?

I walk to my favourite coffee shop most mornings. The coffee’s good and the WIFI is free. There’s a girl that sits on the couch to my left. She stops my breath. Tousled blonde Amelia Earhart haircut, red apple winter-flushed cheeks and ink-stained piano fingers. Her clothes are incoherent Oxfam winter layers that seem fished random from the laundry pile, like a librarian that secretly plays bass cello in her bedsit.

She hardly knows I exist. The only words she's said to me are "is that your dog?". I just stood there, dumbly mumbling-talking like someone playing scrabble in oven gloves. She resumed, staring at her Mac, biting her bottom lip with the expression of someone engrossed in a crossword.

I haven’t started making mix tapes to her in my head yet, but she’s on my mind. If she leant forward, looked in my eyes and said, ‘Let’s leave town, tonight.’ I’d drop everything. I’d follow her to Margate.