Beautiful stranger on a strange night

Until Friday I'd never been kissed in my cellar. But maybe where it happened isn't that relevant - until Friday I hadn't been kissed for a long time.

On my part there was a definite early intention to remember little of the evening. Dementia and cancer are slowly claiming more of my mother's memories, and for twelve hours I wanted to beat her to it ... to go somewhere that thoughts of hospital appointments, doctors and sad diagnoses weren't going to penetrate. As for Jane, after splitting up with you know who for the nth time she was happy for any distraction.

We tried the new tapas bar round the corner ... bad wine in large glasses, gulp the first one quickly, by the end it doesn't seem that bad, so order another. Two hours later move on somewhere else for just one more, because neither of us is quite drunk enough to sleep without dreaming just yet.

It only took ten minutes for Jane's distraction to wander over. She's a vision to look at and interesting with it, so it's impossible to dislike her for this. Around the edge of his related friends and aquaintances was the beautiful stranger. Don't ask me any complicated questions ... the colour of his eyes, or the kind of shoes he was wearing ... by now my earlier desire to wipe this night from existence was working, first for but now sadly against me. But he must have been smart and funny because when the time came to go it was too soon.

It was a short walk home followed by a blown fuse that led us to the cellar, and a kiss by the fuse box. And it was for him I'm sure just a kiss, one of many Friday night kisses with girls he's never known and never will, but for me it was for the first time in so very long a moment in real time. For a few minutes nothing else existed, a feeling so incredible and so almost forgotten, that I'm afraid all else was. If I knew his name before, and I hope to whatever you pray to that I'd at least had the good grace to ask that, I didn't afterwards.

Not surprisingly the beautiful stranger wasn't quite so enamoured by the thought of spending his night constantly kissing a strange girl who didn't seem to want to sleep with him, but for some reason also wasn't intent on asking him too many questions. He politely took his leave, and as his kisses faded leaving the other world ready to creep back in, I pulled his last words tight around to bring on sleep. "Hope you have a happy Christmas".