We sat in a pub, my scholarly friend and I. We sloshed our way through a bowl of pea and mint soup each. We agreed it was delicious. Then, with the man at the next table pretending he wasn’t listening, we embarked on a wistful and completely imaginary construction of our ideal lover.
We both have a penchant for the rock star look so we gave our composite lover Roger Daltrey’s face on the grounds that it was handsome yet pretty.
My scholarly friend suggested we give him Roger Daltrey’s hair to match his face but I pointed out he now has short hair (to look the part strolling round his trout farm in his muddy wellies) so we narrowed it down to Slash or Robert Plant.
I read somewhere … OK, I’ll come clean, it was on Groupiedirt.com … that Robert Plant really loves having his hair stroked. Now I would happily cleave my way through a prairie full of snakes to stroke long hair so she relented and agreed that our composite lover should be graced with Robert Plant’s golden tresses.
The man at the next table was stroking his bald patch disconsolately..
Scholarly Friend said that as she Does It with women, our composite lover should have a nice pair of boobs. This was very selfish of her and I reminded her of my weakness for butch, hairy chests, I just can’t help it. A mild squabble broke out but we compromised with one female breast on a hairy biker chest.
‘You can choose whose breast, I’m not bothered,’ I said.
‘Tina Turner’s, then.’
‘Left or right?’
‘Now you’re just being silly.’
The man at the next table was trying to look as if he wasn’t peering down the front of his shirt.
Hands next. Again we disagreed.
Scholarly Friend likes hands with long slender white fingers but … wuhhhuhuhooww…shudder. I like ’em square and tanned with well clipped fingernails. Geddy Lee, for example, whose hands were blown to gloriously epic proportions, on a massive screen when Rush played in Manchester last year, are truly the work of a celestial sculptor. Scholarly Friend did not agree so we gave our imaginary man/lover/person type thingy one Geddy Lee hand and one white slithery fingered one. Oh, and his feet could match the hands.
Legs next. I like chunky, hairy caveman legs and she likes long slender ones to match the fingers so I conceded on this one and we gave him 70s rock star legs to strut around on but encased in compulsory leather trousers.
We decided our composite lover should be a singer. Here, I plumped for Paul Rogers on the grounds that if a melted brandy truffle could sing, it would sound like him. But she wanted to Roger Daltrey’s voice. I asked if it was the screaming she liked, because both Geddy Lee and Robert Plant could scream like demons. At this point, she said, in a slightly irritable tone, ‘Why don’t you just have Robert Plant and be done with it?’
Whose bum? Scholarly Friend said she liked a soft, girly bum and suggested David Cameron’s. Clearly the conversation was degenerating. I don’t care how crass, how vulgar, how licentious things get (quite welcome it in fact) but no, ‘David Cameron is a hard limit,’ I said.
The man at the next table gave a little nod.
We pondered the bum of Lemmy out of Motorhead. I’d just watched a documentary about him and although he reckons he’s slept with over 2000 women, so his gluteus maximus is probably well toned, he is a sexist git and therefore banned from donating any of his body parts to our composite man.
‘Oh go on then, we’ll have Robert Plant’s bum,’ she said magnanimously.
By now, we were drooling salaciously.
‘Whose willy?’ we two middle-aged women tittered. We’d have to take pot luck here, or else consult Cynthia Plaster-Caster, although as Scholarly Friend pointed out, ‘Size isn’t everything.’
The man at the next table looked faintly relieved.
‘We could build one out of clay or papier mache and glue it to him,’ I said. ‘ We’d have to wait for it to dry but we’d have exactly the one we wanted. I know everyone says size isn’t everything but it does help.’
The man at the next table folded up his newspaper and in a crestfallen manner, shuffled towards the door.
