encounter in a kitchen shop

All right, all right, he was­n’t bran­dish­ing a sword at the time. Boy are peo­ple picky. Just look at that face.

But yes, it tru­ly hap­pened! And like most things in life, when I least expect­ed it. OK, deep breath, I’ll tell you the whole sto­ry. I had decid­ed to run into the Mar­co Polo Cafe in the Maryle­bone High Street for a spot of hum­mous for lunch, not hav­ing much in the way of an appetite late­ly, and had just fin­ished and was mean­der­ing toward school pick­up when I passed the offices of BBC Lon­don. Lots of weedy look­ing chaps and chicks, smok­ing, clutch­ing their own ribcages in the wind, drink­ing cof­fee. Doubt­less our nation’s youth­ful cul­tur­al elite. I perused them to see if any­one looked like any­one. No one did. Just on the oth­er side of the BBC is the love­ly if hor­ren­dous­ly over­priced kitchen sup­ply shop Diver­ti­men­ti, which I used to fre­quent in its old loca­tion in the Ful­ham Road, and I gazed into the shop win­dows, think­ing, “See, Matthew Mac­fadyen was pho­tographed in some undis­closed ‘Maryle­bone’ loca­tion just the oth­er week, hav­ing lunch. Why does­n’t that ever hap­pen to me, see­ing him wan­der­ing about? What’s the point in hav­ing a crush if you nev­er ever see him?” And there he was.

Tru­ly! In the shop! It was but the work of a moment to realise, hey, I’m a cook, I might need some­thing in the way of car­rot peel­ers or Dutch ovens, so I dart­ed in and… then what? I thought of Dorothy L. Say­ers’ refer­ring to tail­ing a sus­pect, and final­ly cor­ner­ing him. “The glass is firm­ly clapped over the moth. Now the only ques­tion that remains is how to extract the moth with­out injury.” Indeed. What to do? He was deep in perusal of some extrav­a­gant Mag­im­ix machines, so I perused them too. Then he moved on to cof­fee mak­ers, and that was­n’t too hard, there were so many. By the time he moved to the vin­tage cook­ery books behind glass, how­ev­er, I had to get out of the way. I found myself with a real­ly top­notch grater in my hand and my wal­let in the oth­er, so I queued up at the till, and he walked right behind me. Actu­al­ly brushed again the sleeve of my Bar­bour jack­et (I’d say I’ll nev­er wash it again, but then I nev­er have washed it). He is, as I always sus­pect­ed, just the build of John, big and tall and com­fort­ing. Rim­less glass­es, messy hair, jeans and a sweat­shirt, with what could have been a script, rolled up in his hand. The hand bear­ing the wed­ding ring, mind you, so I sighed and bought my grater. Then he walked by and turned for just an instant, and looked right at me! Not with any great inter­est, you know. But still.

So I called John, so far away in Iowa, and he can be for­giv­en for being less than entranced. But he tried, for my sake. I float­ed on up to school and got Fifi (and a beau­ti­ful bou­quet of flow­ers from my dear friend Becky who I real­ly missed so much last week), and we made our way in a taxi back down the High Street toward the sta­ble. “Would you believe I saw him?” I raved, “And he could still be around here, any­where!” And there he was, on the cor­ner, car­ry­ing now a Daunt Book­shop bag in his hand, the kind you get if you spend more than 25 pounds. “It’s Matthew!” Avery shrieked. But taxis wait for no obsessed fans, so we were on our way. What fun.

How excit­ing. I can­not imag­ine that today will bring any such adven­tures, the sched­ule call­ing for noth­ing more than a vis­it to the Roy­al Acad­e­my and the New White Cube Gallery with my friend Susan. But my eyes will be peeled, for sure.