Do you fancy trying them?

So this evening I decided to meet up with a friend for a natter and a quick drink. Or two. The location was carefully set as Tottenham Court Road as owing to me, a pair of wellies and a few thousand poppies I'm currently hobbling around W1 at 0.9 times the speed of a particularly clueless tourist.

Not a sight one wants to see.

Anyway, we agreed to meet by Tottenham Court Road as it sort of made sense and did rather avoid the tenth circle of Hell that Dante sensibly excluded from Divina Commedia: Oxford Circus.

Except I'd forgotten that arranging to meet anyone at TCR is akin to looking for a needle in a haystack that's strapped to a racing car in a tornado. Just with more tourists about. At least the hoardings were down outside the Dominion Theatre.

Two large gins in the Plough on Museum Street later we were walking back to TCR and vaguely ignored a young lady that was handing out something or other outside the Starbucks on New Oxford Street. My companion had to pop in to deal with a call of nature so we bid each other farewell and I continued on my way.

At this point the young lady again tried to offer me whatever the free sample was. I peered closely but owing to being frightfully middle aged I couldn't actually read what it said, so she told me: Condoms.

I thought I misheard her.

After all, I'm 47; I tend not to get offered condoms on the street any more. Well, if the truth be known I never was offered any and definitely not by very attractive young ladies. But I digress. After I burst out laughing a bizarre exchange occurred which lead to her deciding it might be best if I have more than one and I went on my way, still giggling as, if the truth be known, she was too.

Within 5 yards a man started talking to me, he was, unsurprisingly perhaps, interested in the conversation and cackling that had just occurred. Being amused and gin merry I proceeded to explain that I'd just been given condoms with the hope that I'd get lucky and need them over the weekend.

Unlikely, I must to clean my oven and sort the pan cupboard.

I laughed along with me at the insanity of the suggestion before kindly making a suggestion that went something like this:

Him: so, err, do you fancy trying them out now
Me: I'm not sure I follow
Him: you know, we could go somewhere quiet.
Me: *     *
Him: yeah, it'd be fun, so do you fancy it...

Now let me think...

I'm pretty sure that no about covers it. And then some.

For added entertainment the conversation continued along those lines for what felt like an eternity before I wished him a good evening and disappeared down the stairs of Tottenham Court Road station with the plan that if he followed I was going to attach myself to the nearest PCSO, BTP or TFL staff member that happened to be there.

So what is that? At what point does your innate politeness kick in and make sure that instead of you telling somebody to leave in no uncertain terms you keep on banging the polite drum knowing that you'll only use any serious sanctions if things get out of hand.

On the plus side at least it wasn't like when I was coming back from the WI group thing and was semi-accosted in Oxford Circus whilst being less merry and more actually quite drunk. On the plus side I did get away with pushing the blokes involved away before making a run for it.

Anyway, it's left me once more feeling slightly perturbed but I'm sure I'll get over it. In the meantime I've some prophylactics that won't get used if anyone needs some which, according to the girl that gave me them, are the closest thing to wearing nothing.

She was wearing an awful lot so I'm not sure she really meant it...