Years ago I was in a pub in Oxford, The Bullingdon Arms, on a date with a boy, who was impossibly glamorous and slightly dissolute. It was after a Tammy Wynette concert at the Apollo Theatre and Tammy’s courageous, melancholy strains were buzzing round our heads. I had the feeling this young man quite liked me when I was happy and not at all when I was sad, so I cranked up high levels of cheer in his company to help things to go well. Yet every so often this pose tired me and I found myself worrying lest I went too far and he decided I was airheaded and without any depth so I would sink into unexplaned and sophisticated (I hoped) bouts of gloom. I wasnt the world’s easiest companion back then. Dressed like a school girl in a wine coloured velvet mini skirt and a navy v neck and I fought my way valiantly thorugh the smoky crowds in the pub to order our drinks, humming Stand by your Man. ‘ Could I please have a vodka and tonic’ , I said politely ‘and, if you have it, a pint of snakebite please.’ Few pubs served snakebite then, that teenage starter cocktail of half lager and half cider guaranteed to get you drunker quicker and more cheaply than almost any other drink. Even fewer do now. The man behind the counter shook his head at me as he heard the order. Without even looking up he said, ‘Drop him love. You could do so much better than that.’ I shimmered with pride. I bristled with my own success. If only Mum could see me now!

I thought of that scene this morning when I looked at the black inky PAID stamp on the back of my hand that proved I had been to a gig in a smoky clubthe previous night -that hadn’tt even started until half past ten- given by London’s most talented heroine of the avant garde Blues, Miss Sandy Dillon. In the fashion of an old lady in lavender who’d received a peck from her favourite matinee idol I took care not to wash too well when I dressed. What would be the comments of the mums at school? Oh the fantasies they would nurse about my myserious other life. Sad sad sad sad sad, I scolded myself, but somehow I liked this new development very much. It’s been months since I have been anywhere hot and dark and the slightest bit dangerous, discounting regular investigative sorties to our cranky boiler room, of course. How did things become so one sided? When exactly had I lost my either/or? Didnt I use to be as happy plotting in the library as at the heart of a backstage scrum? What happened to my reputation for pogo-ing wildly in the front row or is it just an idol dream. Didn’t both NiIck Cave and Iris Murdoch both come to a party I once threw?

I put on my new and very womanly1940s influenced black linen dress (from French Connection) lipsticked my lips and waltzed into my daughter’s classroom leading with my left hand fluttering slightly like the Queen or a golddigger recently presented with a ten carat ring.
‘ What’s that on your hand?’ my daughter’s angelic best friend enquired.
‘ Oh, I just went to a sort of concert last night and they didnt really have tickets so instead they stamped our hands to show we could come in. The ink was quite strong, so it’s quite hard to get off.’
‘ Oh,’ she said.
No-one else noticed or cared, but I wore my stamp like a badge of honour all day. It went well with the dress somehow, which might have been a little too romantic without this proud accessory which lent it some valuable hard edged appeal. As afternoon came it faded to a murky smudge and by tea time it
looked like the ends of a dirty bruise. I peered at it as I helped my daughter with her homework at the kitchen table, beef stew in the oven and home improvements on my mind.