It's happened at last, that moment that only seems to happen with characters in endlessly deprecating screwball comedies - I've bumped into the Old School Friend who has dropkicked me into touch with the real world. She regaled me with perfectly lovely tales of mutual aquaintences and ex's I'd fallen out of favour with, getting married, buying houses (Who can afford a house? I can barely afford having lunch.), having babies all whilst living the high life in other countries now, trying to forget where they're from.
While we stood fiddling with our milk-lids in the dairy aisle of Tescos, she asked me what I was doing back here again (I swanned off like a big prick to England a few years ago and then came back a little bit smaller but still a sizable prick) and I mentioned that I was drawing now mostly, which was precisely the moment where she realised I was a complete prick. I may have thought I was shopping for butternut squash and cous cous (still got the skills chaps) but to her I was just playing at House, complete with these obviously make believe airy fairy foods in my basket.
Catching this shift in mood my ego swelled to gargantuan levels and I blurted out 'I got offered a job in London so it's going quite well'. She just looked at me like I did a poo in the creme fraiche. I looked a bit of a Mickey Try Too Hard, a tad like a Tommy Trumpet, you know the boastful, deluded type of life's failures you sometimes meet. And I was pretty much lying too, jobs usually offer to pay you don't they?
So next time she bumps into a mutual pal of ours I'm sure the conversation will inevitably go;
"Do you remember speccy Stephen from school?"
"Oh yeah! You saw him did you? What's he up to now?"
"Still wears specs, but he's a complete prick now!"
"He always was!"
