LIZ JONES: I’m so bruised by way of what took place, I advised him. It’s true: My thighs had been coated in red pawprints

So, what was once his verdict after our date of lunch and an exhibition at Tate Modern?

‘Thank you so much for the books, and such a wonderful inscription*. You still look good, Liz, classy and elegant. You didn’t disappoint. You had been what I assumed you could be. I do sympathise with the listening to difficulties: that should be intensely irritating. My frustration is with my legs, and that preys on my thoughts at all times. Growing previous is the sort of whinge. “It’s not for sissies,” as Bette Davis famously stated. ‘Thanks again for a memorable day. Most fun visit to the Tate of all. Am looking forward to your diary on Sunday. Love xx’

Still! Still! Still!!

Talk a few backhanded praise! No, ‘How are you still available? Beautiful face, beautiful baaaaddddaaaayyy!’

Our assembly in actual existence were extra awkward than I anticipated, given our lengthy emails from side to side over the last few weeks. This was once due largely to my deafness, but in addition strolling round a gallery, taking a look at blue squares, isn’t conducive to chatting. I have a tendency to whiz previous, heading for the present store, whilst he needed to stay sitting down. And why put on a Zara jumper to our date? Why no longer placed on a jacket? Why order duck? Though I had concept not anything of the German b*****d ordering oysters and steak frites at my expense. When I noticed the oysters’ unhappy, gray little our bodies I did bring to mind Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking-Glass, which traumatised me as a kid: the Walrus and the Carpenter trick a bunch of docile oysters into presenting themselves for dinner.

I believe girls get well with age, however males appear to move hastily downhill. Even the b*****d advised me he’d had most cancers elderly 50 and has a dodgy ankle. ‘That’s it,’ he stated. ‘Now you know everything.’

Ha!

I want to let my pen buddy down within the gentlest approach conceivable. He should know there isn’t an opportunity in hell, or is his ego as large as his mind? I WhatsApp Andrea, who replies, ‘The Leigh Bowery exhibition sounds amazing, but the date sounds awful. Good on paper but not in real life. I think most men think they can date supermodels.’

I sparsely compose an e-mail. ‘Hi. Thanks again for lunch and the curated tour. I’m certain you don’t have any romantic intentions however, simply in case, I’m so bruised** by way of what took place with the German, I’m guidance transparent of any entanglements for the foreseeable long term. Happy to be buddies, in fact.’

But ahead of I will press ship, he writes to mention he has began studying my memoir and heat floods me. ‘If I did think I was about to read something quirky and comical, that idea was quickly scuppered by the introduction. It doesn’t get any bleaker or extra devastating than this. Watching your individual mom slowly rotting away.

Alive however no longer alive. That should had been excruciating, but one way or the other you wove your memoir round it. And interspersed with this narrative is the dying of the one you love brother Nick, who as soon as safe you after a housebreaking at your own home in Brixton. Your mum would possibly or would possibly not know her son is lifeless. This is indubitably the darkest advent to any e book I’ve ever learn.’

He tells me his mum died all through Covid, so he was once no longer allowed to wait her funeral: ‘It was as though she vanished into thin air.’ I inform him I feared my mum demise my complete existence; it could be what caused my ever-present anxiousness. She was once out and in of sanatorium when I used to be a kid, affected by consistent ache. She had weekly appointments to have her neck stretched (because of arthritis), which was once painful however did no excellent. When dying after all got here, it was once a aid, no longer a tragedy.

I don’t suppose he has romantic intentions. There isn’t any point out of a 2nd date. I’m relieved, but in addition reasonably miffed…

*I’d given him a few books, together with my memoir.

**After a date with the German, my thighs had been coated in red pawprints.

JONES MOANS… What Liz loathes this week

• I used to be lambasted on Substack for recommending a Zara get dressed (‘No sleeves! Slave labour!’), then in the similar breath cancelled for announcing I like Gris Dior Esprit de Parfum. You can’t win. 
•  Still!!!!