Out for a pint with Bob. Or two. Or three. Pints, not Bobs.

Talking about his latest trip back to the UK, then of his favourite "bad bars" in Copenhagen. Forget the name. Started with an "M", a dockside bar. All bad bars are dockside, I think. Or at least Bob's are, since he was a tall ship sailor for twenty-five-ish years.

A friend of mine passed our table. A friend, her husband, their seven-year-old daughter.

"Hello! How are you? What have you been up to lately?" she coos. Friend is scanning Bob up and down. If her glance had weight, he'd be naked and hairless by now.

Friend's husband, however, has a black eye (sports injury, as it happens) and it is that which commands our conversational attention for the three or four minutes of their visit until their small daughter demands their immediate departure. I have not yet had a chance to introduce Bob.

"This is Bob, my friend," I would say.

But would they have believed me, anyway? I was alone, in a pub, with a Man, and with Alcoholic Beverages on the table in front of us. Surely naughtiness was in the air??

'Course, once upon a time it would have been. Once, Bob and I were lovers. I am on good terms with all my exes bar two. (One of them being my ex-husband, and the other being a fellow who lied to me when he told me he was single. When I discovered he wasn't and stopped seeing him, this somehow became something nasty I'd done to him. Go figure. Ego is such a pointless thing.) But Bob and I are no longer lovers. We are friends, friends with a history that sometimes makes us share a naughty grin. But nothing more.

My friend and her husband left the pub. A glance was cast back through the window of the snug.

Bob grinned. "I have contributed to your notoriety." He's so cute when he's proud.

"So you have. Are they still looking? Shall I kiss you?"

He glances over my shoulder. "No. No, they've moved on." And sighs. "Damn!"

We share a naughty grin.