Insects

He had to have been a gigolo.

The heat of early summer brings those annoying foreign insects that land on you – you flick them away, but they lazily circle, and land again on the same spot. You hope they go away and bother someone else.

He was devastatingly good-looking (and knew it) - and would have been a lovely afternoon distraction if I wasn’t a married woman of the most virtuous calibre (Shut up. Yes I am). He had a mop of dark curly hair, and intense green eyes (actually, bit off a put-off – the colour verged on improbable and I suspect coloured contacts. If men are handsome, they should look accidentally so).

His English was probably very good, but with such a rich and colourful accent, he spoke too fast to be understood easily, and I did eventually lose my patience.

"I bet you have a beautiful smile," he crooned.
"I bet I do, too," I said.
"Oh," he played a sad face. "Will you not smile for me?"
"Not with a mouth full of food, I'm not," I replied, tersely. He persisted.
"And I bet you have beautiful eyes – but I cannot see them behind your sunglasses!"

With no response, and thwarted by my failure to reveal smile or eyes, he moved downwards.

"Your skin – so beautiful with the sun, the colour, so nice."
He touched my hand - wrong move. What a novice.
"Yes, quite. One gets rather tanned toiling on the farm."

He looked confused – he thought he'd hit gold, but gold isn't found in a farm-hand's knickers, no matter how they looked to the contrary.

We were both too young for this game – he too young to know that these lines were not novel territory, but had been well-trammelled for decades by hordes of hungry handsome Lotharios before him, and I was too young to be desperate and appreciative for the attention and silly compliments of a pretty man.

It only works on those whose age frightens them, and husband neglects them, which he too, soon realised, and he left me to find less-resistant smiles, eyes, and credit-cards elsewhere.