A few years ago, I was out with a friend in the East End foraging for a late pint on a rainy Bank Holiday weekend. The place looked busy enough with people pouring into the rain but with plenty of noise and song emanating from behind the thickly paned windows. We chanced our arm and sloped over towards it.
As we were about to push the door a couple fell through it from the other side. She was having a lovely time if her face was anything to go by while the male half of the sketch looked both furious and amorous at the same time if such a thing is possible. Seriously, he was all over her like a cheap suit. She seemed happy enough with just a drink and a song.
My friend, several sheets to the wind at this point, politely advised him to take the poor girl inside out of the rain and buy her a drink, but the man was not open to advice. He kept looking back into the bar and around us as if avoiding our eyes. Their reactions were much different. She seemed rather keen on the idea and it was no hardship on my part, but the man took her by the arm and led her out into the night.
Odd, but no harm done. Well, okay. The woman was Liz Stride and the man was β¦ well, God knows. But imagine if it had happened to me in the here and now. And a book tour. That was it. No fifteen minutes of fame. There are several caveats which must be covered here. He could have been a date, he could have been a customer, he could have been someone she just ran into and for all we knew he might have thundered away to drown his sorrows in any number of Commercial Road pubs and left poor Liz to her fate.
He was well dressed in a black morning suit with a morning coat. He had rather weak eyes. I mean he had sore eyes without any eyelashes. I should know the man again amongst a hundred.
