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We had stopped drinking, after a couple of whiskies.

It was because I wasn't looking at him that I realised who his voice reminded me of: Benjamin Zephaniah. He has a gentle voice, quite thoughtful, with a slight lisp. He looks quite dissimilar to Mr Z, a fuller face (stocky in build, he is often mistaken for Nigerian), and of course much shorter hair.

I don't need a photographic memory as for the inanimate I've a camera and I'm happy with my visual recollection as far as the organic are concerned, but I wish I could capture exact speech. He said something like this, though more colloquial yet more eloquent:


"What's really lovely is being with her when she's getting ready to go out. You know, when they build it up right from the beginning. From the shower on. It's a bit like a striptease backwards but not really. And you're there in the bedroom and she is half paying attention to you but more on getting ready and there's the smells of perfume and hair things and all the clothes here and there and how she does her make up even before she's half dressed and no, I don't think it destroys the magic at all."

He wasn't talking of a particular she, but rather a generic one, though his character suggests that his interactions with women, or anyone, are anything but generic. He was talking of that experience within a relationship, and the wistfulness with which he said this suggested the scenario had not been played out before him for quite some time now. Or perhaps it had just been yesterday. Or that evening if they had then gone separate ways.