Shopping for Others, Wedding Nights and Internet Stalkers

In the evening, I decide I want to be a teenager again. They have so much more fun, despite the superficial angst. It's not just the constant sex and the taut bodies, but the things they think of to do - and have the nerve to actually carry out.

Josh and his mates tag along with Max and I when we go food shopping. I do wonder at this sudden and uncharacteristic interest in participating in such a mundane task, but soon all becomes clear. It turns out that the boys are intent upon "Shopping for Others."

Max and I watch in disbelief as they spend an hour or so happily putting things into the shopping trolleys of complete strangers when the latter aren't looking. We don't know what to do with ourselves when an elderly spinster heads for the checkouts with twenty packets of condoms and some Durex Play gel in hers, and a butch body-builder type looks puzzled at finding lipstick, eye shadow and tampons amidst his other purchases.

The most stressful moment comes when I notice a large leg of pork being covertly added to the contents of a trolley belonging to a hijab-clad middle-aged woman, at which point Max decides enough is enough and calls a halt. I think he secretly enjoys the whole experience as much as me, though...

Much later, I get another email from Johnny International Director of a Global Oil Company Hunter. He's been away, globetrotting across Eastern Europe again.

Johnny says he hates hotel rooms, and wonders whether I do too. I've only ever stayed in a posh hotel once and that was on my wedding night - when my Dad accompanied Max and I upstairs to our room after the reception, and waltzed inside when we carelessly opened the door a little too wide.

Then he proceeded to order blithely from room service while asking our advice on how to "manage Dinah and her tantrums". Max and I finally got rid of him at 3:00am, so we weren't even earning gold stars on our wedding night. I probably should have seen that as a portent.

The next morning was no better. At 9:00am, Max's brother Richard turned up, uninvited, to announce that we needed to hurry up and go down to the bar, as the whole Bennett family were on their way to the hotel to have a drink with us. Then Richard ate my pre-ordered breakfast-in-bed while I struggled to get dressed in the relative privacy of the bathroom.

It's not as if I even get to stay in decent hotels because of work. At *conference, we're lucky to get booked into a broom cupboard so I have no experience of the high-life at all, which does rather lessen any sympathy I might feel for Johnny.

To make matters worse, he also wants to know what I look like now, and whether I still have "that amazing hair and those incredible legs." I doubt it, but am more worried by the fact that I still can't even remember who he is, while he seems to recall me in microscopic detail.

I hope he's not some crazed internet stalker or - worse - a constituent playing mind games. That'd be just my luck. Where the hell have I put my old diaries?

*conference - the Labour Party Conference/Bunfight/Scene of Some of The Boss's worst social faux-pas.