Therapy

were lucky to be awarded that third goal, which was why getting the fourth one was so deliriously satisfying. When the ball went in the net you could hear the cheering coming out of the neighbours’ open windows; and when it was all over people went into their back gardens, or out into the street, grinning all over their faces, to babble about it to other people they’d never said more than “Good morning” to in their lives before.
    It was a time of hope, a time when it was possible to feel patriotic without being typecast as a Tory blimp. The shame of Suez was behind us, and now we were beating the world in the things that really mattered to ordinary people, sport and pop music and fashion and television. Britain was the Beatles and mini-skirts and That Was The Week That Was and the victorious England team. I wonder if the Queen was watching the telly tonight, and what she felt seeing herself presenting the World Cup to Bobby Moore. A pang or two of nostalgia, I should think. “Those were the days, Philip, eh?” Those were the days when she could wake up in the morning confident of not having to read detailed accounts of the sexual misbehaviour of her family in the newspapers: Dianagate, Camillagate, Squidgey tapes, Charles’s tampon fantasies, Fergie’s toe-sucking. Internal Derangement of the Monarchy. I was never a great one for the Royal Family, but you can’t help feeling sorry for the poor old Queen.
     
    Which reminds me of an oddly disturbing experience I had this morning on my way to London. As I waited for the train at Rummidge Expo, I spotted Nizar further up the platform. I was just going up to greet him, my face already arranged into a suitable smile, when I saw that he was with a young woman. She wasn’t young enough to be his daughter, and I knew she wasn’t his wife, because I’d seen a silver-framed photo of the wife on his desk, a plump, rather severe-looking matron in a floral dress, flanked by three children, and she bore no resemblance to this tall slim young woman with glistening black hair falling to the shoulders of a smartly cut black woollen coat. Nizar was standing very close to her, talking animatedly and touching her, his surgeon’s fingers fluttering over the collar of her coat and adjusting her hair and plucking at her sleeves, in a manner which was at once possessive and deferential, like a star’s dresser. She was smiling complacently at whatever Nizar was murmuring into her ear, with her head bent because he was several inches shorter than herself, but she happened to look up just as I clocked what was going on. Fortunately she didn’t know me from Adam. I wheeled round and retreated rapidly to the waiting room, where I sat down and hid my face behind the Guardian until the train arrived.
    There seems to be an adultery epidemic going on: Jake, Jean Wellington, the Royal Family, and now Nizar. What I want to know is, why should I feel embarrassed, even guilty, at having surprised Nizar with his bimbo? Why did I run away? Why did I hide? I don’t know.
     
    Sally and I haven’t made love since last Thursday. I’ve been going to bed at different times from her, or complaining of indigestion or of feeling a cold coming on, etc., to discourage the idea. I’m scared of finding that I can’t come again. I suppose I could try masturbating, just to check there’s nothing mechanically wrong.
     
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    Thursday morning, 25th Feb. After I wrote that last bit, I undressed and lay on the bed with a towel handy and tried to jerk myself off. It’s a long time since I did this, getting on for thirty-five years in fact, and I was out of practice. I couldn’t find any Vaseline in the bathroom cabinet, and it so happened that I’d just run out of olive oil in the kitchen, so I lubricated my cock with Paul Newman’s Own Salad Dressing, which was a mistake. First of all it was freezing cold from the fridge and had a shrivelling rather than a stimulating effect at first, secondly the vinegar and lemon juice in it stung like hell, and thirdly I began to smell like Gabrielli’s pollo alla cacciatora as the herbs warmed up with the friction. But the main problem was that I couldn’t summon up the appropriate thoughts. Instead of erotic imagery I kept thinking of Bobby Moore triumphantly holding aloft the Jules Rimet trophy, or Tim Roth lying in a pool of his own blood in Reservoir Dogs, with the red stain spreading up his shirt front till he