mature - like cheese

It's just possible that I may be growing up.

There was an office 'do' on Friday night, just an informal affair to see off one our colleagues who's leaving to go home to Oz.

I was busy ferrying drinks between the bar and our group, concentrating very hard on the job in hand as I have an almost phobic reaction to trays (I had an expensive accident in a beer garden with one once) - so I didn't see the hand that tapped me on the shoulder coming, and it took a moment or two to register who it belonged to. I very nearly had another expensive accident. It was very pretty lady that I know quite well, or at least did know quite well, In fact I'd had an enormous crush on her in a past life, but she'd chosen not to notice at the time. She said hello, and I rattled my tray and made goldfish faces for a moment, before explaining that I had to get the drinks to my friends before I spilt them all. "Fine" she said "come back and have a chat".

So I did. She was there with her friends on a girl's night out - her "one moment of fun in a boring existence" as she described it. I knew already that she'd married, but she seemed happy to talk and I was happy to let her. Except that she seemed to want to talk mostly about what a rotten marriage she had, how it had been a mistake really and how terribly bored she was...and did I remember how we'd had fun and done this and that and wasn't that exciting, and how she missed.....a good time that frankly I couldn't remember having. And eventually it permeated my thick skull that just maybe she was suggesting that we really ought to be having fun, that if I offered just a little encouragement I could help it to happen.

She is very attractive. Even if there's no suggestion of any kind of physical liaison, there's a temptation there (please don't leave me out there on my own with this, tell me I'm not the only person who this might occur to, or I will feel like a complete cad), which is to play along, to act just a little sexy to see if you could, you know, if you wanted to. Because for her I think, the grass will always be greener on the other side, and she'll need to know she's wanted, daily, hourly perhaps.

I'm happy to the point of being smug to report that the little man with the halo on my left shoulder told the man in the tight red pants on my right shoulder to poke it. It would be fun, I agreed, to go out for a drink, when could her and her husband make it?

(And don't think that it hasn't occurred to me that she might have been teasing the man with the big L on his forehead, getting me all worked up so that she could ignore me all over again).

Still.