Double plus Kapow

Well, I hardly know where to begin…

Date One, the South African – whom we should really call Sam from this point on – visited me today…

Eagle-eyed as always, gentle reader, you will recall we were due to meet on 27 February. What gives?

Well, Sam and I have been chatting online; texting, calling and emailing too. We’ve been calling each other several times a day and it had become our custom to call each other to say goodnight. Today he texted to ask if he could see me, if only for a little while… And, do you know, I thought to myself “why not”?

A little after 5pm (the efforts of TfL to transcend its usual caprice ridden whimsy and finally prevent anyone getting anywhere, ever, notwithstanding) we met: I’ll admit, as an aside, my first face-to-face sight of him left me (mentally) clicking my heels together and going ‘yippee’…

Anyway, we opened the wine he brought, and sat on the sofa. And we talked. And, my God I was nervous. Really nervous; more so than I’ve been on a ‘first date’ for quite some time. Me being me, of course, I burbled incontinently about inconsequential matters until, seemingly impulsively (though I suspect to shut me up) he leaned over and kissed me.

Well, if it was to shut me up it worked. Anyone who knows me would – if given the chance of course – happily confirm that very little leaves me speechless. But this did.

One kiss led, as these things will, to another and another – each of us breathlessly exclaiming throughout that Rule One was not! No! Never! To be broken.

Yet after the wine, when I went to put on some coffee, and he followed me into the kitchen, wrapped his arms around me and begun to nuzzle my neck it was that exact moment I decided I simply don’t care about rules any more.

Fortunately Sam is in better control of his baser nature than I and despite us both reaching a state known as dishabille, we – by a hair’s breadth to be sure - managed to keep to the letter of Rule One.

It wasn’t just the you-know-what though. We each talked about various things; he’s been so open with me, it really makes me want him more: The death of his father, his life growing up in South Africa as a non-white person (half Indian, half Indonesian, all yum) his [to be revealed another time]. Also, I think it rather civilised that we managed to end what I suppose we’d call date zero with a coffee and game of chess…

Well, I’m sold. Actually there’s nothing here I don’t like (at the risk of sounding crass, we pushed the boundaries of Rule One sufficiently for me to be quite sure of that) and apparently he feels the same… so until 27 February, then, let us raise a toast to South African food technologists named Sam.