I have been at \things’ just like this with rooms full of strangers. I used to borrow a female colleagues “Shut’em Up” line when asked what she did for a living.
“I’m a soft core pornographer,” she would say.
We are driving to a thing. We are lost. It is a lunch thing, so the children are in tow. They are babies really, happily unaware of the nervous glances my wife and I are exchanging in the front of the car.
No one we know will be there. Except the host. And we don’t even know her very well.
‘Whatever you do, please don’t say I’m a poet,’ I say. ‘I hate it.’
‘Of course not. I would never do that. Whatever made you think-‘
‘Just don’t. Please. They won’t understand.’
‘Ugly?’
‘Ugly. Yes.’
Outside it is bright London sunshine, the streets suddenly wide in an area we have not been to before. Even though it is daylight, no one seems to be about. We pass a sofa straddling a street corner.
‘It can’t be far,’ my wife says. ‘She said it was past the library on the left…
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