Stupid risks

I got into a cab with a man I didn't know on Saturday night. Just before I did so, I said: "Just so you know, I'm coming with you but I'm not going to shag you."

He looked at me, mumbled something and we stepped into the waiting car.

The evening started quietly enough. The plan was to go to Kenwood House, sit on the grass and listen to the Gypsy Kings but that idea got rained off.

I met Steve and his friend Russ in The Flask in Hampstead around 6. An hour later my anthropology friends joined us. Issy came with her friend Mandy and Annie came alone. Issy works with victims of domestic violence, Mandy with refugees and asylum seekers and Annie on the Age of Stupid. Steve and Russ are actors. All of them professionals, except me.

The plan wasn't to get messy but how quickly things unravel.

At around 11 the girls and I got a tube into Camden, looking for a late night bar. I'd had enough to drink but what the hell, it's not every evening I get to go out.

We went to the Barfly. Shots? Sure! They downed a tequila, Vodka's my poison.

Issy and Mandy left so Annie and I went to The Marathon Bar, a kebab shop come late night drinkery often playing live music.

I got talking to some guys who I was convinced were musicians. Were they? Who knows! Did I ask them? Nah! For some reason I decided that wouldn't be 'cool'. (I have trouble understanding myself sometimes, after all, I didn't consider myself uncool to gawp at Jude Law at Treetops, the indoor kiddies playcentre a few years ago, whilst all the other mums casually pretended there wasn't a superstar in our midst).

I found myself talking to Mr Grey Quiff who invited me to his house. "There are a few people there," he says and I'm thinking "Yey! Party!" Annie had left a few minutes earlier and I'd told her I wouldn't be long in doing the same.

It's as we're standing on the roadside about to get into the minicab, just me and him, that I find myself saying: "Just so you know, I'm coming with you but I'm not going to shag you."

So off we go, we're chatting about this and that and he keeps mentioning that there are people at his house and I keep saying "yeah you said, that's ok!"

It' s when we're on a wide, deserted expanse of Essex road that he suddenly says to the cabbie:
"Stop at the next bus stop and let her out. You can get a bus home," turning to me.
"You can't do that!" I say."Leave me on the side of a deserted road in the middle of the night!"
"Stop at the next bus stop," he repeats to the driver.
"I'll drop you home Sir, and then I'll drive the lady home," says the cabbie and I'm thinking "thank God for that," rather than seeking an explanation.

The cabbie doesn't drop Mr Grey Quiff at his front door. Mr Grey Quiff asks to be let out at the end of a road. The cabbie turns to me and tells me it'll cost me £10 to be driven home.

I consider it an absolute bargain, especially considering the cost of what I might have gone through.

Why am I telling you this? I don't know. Perhaps objectively I find it quite interesting.

Men and women. Discuss.