Hippies, F*** Buddies and Footballers' Wives

Last night was one of those joyous occasions, my monthly-ish diner a deux with Best Straight Lady Friend. Over the last couple of years BSLF and I have noshed at a panoply of London's swankiest venues, and last night was no exception as we revisited one of our past faves, No. 5 Cavendish Square Normally the restaurant in this members club-cum-hotel-cum-nightclub would be way out of our league price-wise (starters average out at about £12, mains at £25) but given that these prices clearly put off any sort of mid-week customer volume, they lure in the hoi polloi with a £20-for-three-courses menu du jour which suited us just fine. Better still, I'd accrued enough toptable points through my prodigious eating out that I was able to cash them in for my share of the food - no such thing as a free meal my big gay ginger arse.

Kicking off with a couple of cocktails in the bar (a Bramble for me, a Flirtini aptly enough for BSLF) we kicked back and caught up on the mundanities of work so as to be able to devote our over-dinner conversation to the salacious details of our sex lives and recent dates. Cocktails duly necked and each having brought the other up to date on our respective successes at work (thrusting young executives both are we, it seems) we sashayed through to the restaurant only to find ourselves the only diners there. All to the good though in our book; neither of us is averse to a private dining room especially when it's as opulent as this one with all its claret damask, oil paintings and gilt-work, lovingly preserved from the building's days as the Spanish Embassy. Solitude also meant that we could speak freely and at volume about the men in our lives and just what we've been getting up to with them.

Fortifying ourselves with some of the delicious bread and fresh salsa (nice touch) I launched into a moan about the Kit situation, namely that despite our speaking on the phone pretty much daily about anything and everything, I had only seen him once since he unilaterally called a halt to our dating and was beginning to get the distinct impression that he was avoiding me. He says that he’s coming to my party on Saturday but I have a sneaky feeling he will - yet again - blow me out. BSLF – looking stunning, for the record, in a very flattering black roll neck and kinky boots - cheered me up no end by launching into her own tale of dating woe: her less-than-successful second date with a Tree Hugger. She explained that, at a recent after-party (in fact for The Other Ex’s birthday party, of which BSLF’s memory is about as patchy as mine) she had got chatting to a bit of a dude - she did tell me his name but it eludes me; let’s call him The Hippy - who impressed her with his planet-saving credentials. He was recently returned from a life-changing walk across the Kalahari (or somesuch madcap venture) and was now living on a budget of a tenner a day. They’d swapped numbers (his rejection of capitalism clearly not extending to the telephone) and arranged to go to the cinema. That date had gone promisingly, and BSLF took it as a good sign that he liked her enough to accept a lift home from her, given that his principles normally required him to boycott gas-guzzling motors (although BSLF’s nippy turquoise Celica could hardly be said to ‘guzzle’.)

(Speaking of guzzling, by this stage of the conversation we had received and shovelled down our starters, a superb black tagliatelle with prawns for me and a goodly plate of Parma ham and figs for her. We had also ceased to be alone, having been joined a few tables away by a glamour couple comprising a suave and clearly loaded footballer or maybe football exec and his perma-tanned size zero moll; we continued the conversation unabated but a few decibels quieter.)

Date two however had been less of a success. It started well; The Hippy offered to come round to hers and cook dinner, and duly arrived (on a yak, presumably) and proceeded to make what BSLF described as an ‘amazingly good’ Bolognese with chopped steak. Sadly it would transpire that that would the only serving of prime meat she would be getting that night. Several bottles of wine and a spliff ‘or two’ later, things turned amorous and all looked good until The Hippy announced that he wanted to be dominated. Resisting the urge to suggest he try North Korea, BSLF – partial to a bit of subjugation herself but on the receiving end – gamely tried to play the dominatrix role but the heady combination of good food, booze and gear (and no doubt patchouli) took over and The Hippy just didn't have it in him; consequently, BSLF didn’t get 'it' in her. There may or may not be a date three…

Airing our respective disappointments led us neatly on to bemoaning our mutual lack of a good, dependable, no-strings, on-call Fuck Buddy. BSLF had no idea that I had been reacquainted with The American just a couple of weeks before our fleeting encounter at The Wolseley so I tantalised her with every salacious detail of our last dirty adulterous romp, whilst also reflecting that whilst I may be on call for him, his availability to me depends wholly on when The American’s Husband is out of the country. There’d also been The VWE Waiter, but he ruined our buddy arrangement by introducing - eek! – feelings into the equation. BSLF reciprocated by expounding on how much she regretted having ever let go of Big Black Frank, who had filled many a crack in the bedroom when a Rabbit just wasn’t enough to get her off.

(Speaking of filling, somewhere around this point we hoovered up our mains, stuffed chicken breast for her, red mullet, mussels and cavolo nero for me, lubed with a bottle of Chablis, all very good apart from the cavolo which had the texture and taste of balsa wood. The Footballers' Wife seemed to keep looking over (hard as is to discern facial movement with that much Botox) so we resolved sotto voce to rectify our lack of a decent FB just as soon as we could; watch, yet again, this space.)

The world put squarely to rights, we sweetened our bitter tongues with a cracking - literally and figuratively - berry mille feuille and a bit of small talk about status handbags (we both want) and wealthy lovers (we both so want) before settling the very reasonable bill (they’d forgotten to include the cocktails, or possibly comped them as thanks from the barman for having ogled BSLF's 34F’s for a full quarter hour) and swishing down the marble staircase and out into Cavendish Square. After a couple of hours with Best Straight Lady Friend, as it always does I felt like all was right with the world and do you know what? I think for the time being it genuinely is.