I got the receptionist at the hotel to book me a taxi back to the Gare du Nord so I could get the Eurostar home. In my heart I was hoping that by a crazy and romantic coincidence, worthy of a Richard Curtis film, the cab that arrived would be driven by the beautiful lady from Monday. Or failing that by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. No-one can say that I have unrealistic expectations of love.
I went as far as deciding that if I got the same driver as before, this would be some sort of sign from a god that I don't believe in and that I should maybe ask her to dump her cab at the station, get on the train with me and come and live in my house in England. To begin with, in my spare room. But after maybe the first fifteen minutes of this arrangement she could come and sleep in my room. Obviously I'd be a gentleman and sleep on the floor, for the first forty seconds of this arrangement, but then I would sneak into the bed with her and stare at her a bit too intensely whilst she slept, so that when she woke up whe'd see me staring and smiling oddly at her and begin to wonder if she hadn't been a little bit impulsive.
Yes, that's how I imagined it. That's how I wanted it all to go. Now it was just up to Cupid or St Valentine or Jesus or CNPS God 69 or whoever it is who is in charge of romantic coincidences to make all my dreams come true.
You can imagine my utter disbelief then, when the cab turned up and turned out to be driven by a grey haired, short man of about fifty years of age. How could this have happened? How could my happiness be ruined by the lack of an improbable coincidence. The Gods of love are clearly all dead or they would have made my dreams come true and more: she would have driven me off and at the end of the road the car would have been so filled with our love that it would have taken off and flown us both to a castle in the sky where we would have lived happily ever after.
That's how you know you have found the right person and I intend to remain single until the castle in the sky arrangement transpires.
The quiet, grey-haired man drove me efficiently to the Eurostar; we didn't share a joke and he didn't try to engage me in conversation. There was no electricity in the air. I reflected on another missed opportunity.
I looked at my driver in his rear view mirror; although he didn't have deep and seductive eyes, although his clothes were unfashionable and practical, although he didn't laugh or have any apparent conversational abilities, although he was a man (nobody's perfect); at least he didn't smell of urine or sweat, at least he had no food crumbs down his jumper, at least he wasn't fat or flatulent and he had a kind face. He was nothing on my original driver, but when you think of the taxi drivers I could end up with he was quite a catch. I already knew how easy it was to let a cabbie slip through your fingers and never see them again and though this fella might not take me to a castle in the sky he at least seemed reliable (he got me to the station very quickly, if uneventfully). Maybe there comes a time in our lives when we have to accept that there are no castles in the sky and that we just have to settle for someone. There would be no fireworks with this man, but he would look after me and be kind. As I gave him his money I looked him in the eye and asked him if he'd like to come and live in England with me.
He looked a bit shocked, but I could see in his eyes that he was thinking about it. Sure he'd had some much better passengers than me: passengers that had been sexier, more entertaining, passengers who hadn't spent a significant part of their journey with him plucking out their own nasal hair; but he'd had much worse and he wasn't getting any younger. Perhaps we could learn to love one another.
So he said "Ah fuck it, what the Hell?!" (however you say that in French and we left the cab on the forecourt and hand in hand ran up the steps to the Eurostar entrance.
We found we didn't have much to say to each other on the journey home.
He's asleep downstairs in my bedroom now. I think I'm just going to go down and stare at him til he wakes up.
Then I might get him to drive me down to the Supermarket.
