Jeremy Clarke’s date with a plank fancier

We’d being trying to meet for lunch for weeks, but always something had got in the way and either she or I had had to cancel. But at long last we’d managed it, and after two pleasant hours we emerged from the fish restaurant and made our way along the sea front towards the car park, still marvelling at the achievement.

We hadn’t gone far when she noticed two planks leaning against a wall. They were six by twos, each about 2ft long. The sight of these planks seemed to cause her to lose the ballerina’s poise that she’d maintained throughout lunch. She became agitated and started hopping from foot to foot.

An absent person was putting in a new window frame. The job was half-finished. It was unclear whether the planks were gash, or materials essential to completion, or a loose, rather abstract embodiment of the concept of a safety barrier.

‘Should I just take them, do you think?’ she said, almost beside herself. ‘They are exactly what I need.’ I imagined she was thinking of doing a spot of do-it-yourself. Shelves, perhaps. I’m not above inexpensive improvisation of that kind myself. And a little light thieving on our first date would certainly have cemented whatever tentative connection we had already made across the luncheon table.

There were lots of people about and the planks were not without value. The sudden alteration in my behaviour from well-fed boulevardier to cautious spiv gave her a start and the moment was lost. A delightfully spontaneous post-prandial adventure was strangled at birth. ‘I’d better ask first, hadn’t I?’ she said. She said it as if she were trotting out moral positions until she lighted on one I approved of. I was still doing my impression of Private Walker checking to see if the coast was clear.