My Innate, Old School Grasp of Romance

A burst of sodium orange signals the return to England. My iPod celebrates with a version of Cradle’s Second Nature sung in French – its usual irony clearly intact. Within seconds it is hard to distinguish between the blackness of the Chunnel and the darkened Kent countryside.

I did not achieve frites or a decent croissant while in Brussels. However, as the Eurostar rolls across South East England with the speed of a getaway driver hyped to the gills on dexedrine, the amount of chocolate I was importing made my trip feel like a partial success. The fact it was even bought at the shop previously specified reassured me that Surreal Girl would be pleased to see me when I arrived at St. Pancras.

Of course, as I had promised to buy her a glass of fizz at the station’s champagne bar she already had a good reason to be happy to see me safely return from the continent. Surreal Girl might be my best friend, but if the finest Belgian chocolates and a drink at the world’s longest champagne bar does not demonstrate my innate, old school grasp of romance, I am not sure what does. Not that it takes something similar to woo me. I am wowed by a crème brûlée gelatai or a poke of chips to be shared on the beach at Leigh-on-Sea.