‘I’m indulging in self-pity,’ I mused, reflecting on my latest attempt at seduction,
which hadn’t even got past the starting post.

Just like a newly-crowned king on his throne, I’d had admirers but no partakers in the court of romance.
One particular, dressed so alluring in a nurse’s uniform, used to glance towards me at the bus stop.

However, I was dismayed when I saw her with a good looking fellow in my favourite pub, The Soho Strumpet.
He spent most of the evening gazing at the television watching cricket,
after she got him up for a bop (and I can swing and step like a good ’un)
and it was obvious that he couldn’t even dance.

I’d discovered that many men had cast similar glances at my object of desire,
even a Hong Kong contortionist called the Snap Dragon,
but their affair ended when he called her and said, ‘I’m all tied up, I can’t make it.’

She told me this story to cheer me up as I lay in my hospital bed,
when, following her along the High Street, I was knocked down by an ice cream van,
and woke up to see the object of my desire with a thermometer and a bed pan.

She asked ‘Have you been?’

I answered, bemused, ‘Yes, but not a number two.'
'Oh, I’ll give you some dates.’
I asked, ‘How’s your boyfriend with the muscles?’

She looked surprised, then replied, ‘Oh him, he’s my personal trainer,
but he’s as camp as a field of tents.
‘He’s going out with a body builder, and keeps telling me he’s in love.'

The next day I saw her at the bus stop, and we had lots of the above.