The Literary Life

I have never been at ease dining with poets, a feeling which probably stems from an incredibly slow meal after a reading by Douglas Dunn and Henry Shukman in York. I was interviewing Henry for a small magazine, and it was an interview on the run. I recommended shirts and trousers as he changed in his hotel room. I managed to steer most comments he made about poetry onto music, a field with which I was much more comfortable.

During the meal itself I was at the wrong end of the table and unable to contribute, except to field questions about previous comments I had made without apparent basis. Had Simon Armitage really recommended the creative writing department at St Andrews? I wasn't sure.

But this month, my partner was chairing a reading in Bath by two writers from her department. Afterwards, it was suggested, the four of us and a friend would go to Martinis, an Italian restaurant whose pizzas were particularly admired, and which purchased fresh fish every day. I had read the menus and the atmosphere seemed suitably rosso.

As usual, I managed to mildly misrepresent myself in the post-reading discussion:

Matt: Would you say this exhibition was representative of Keith Vaughn's work?
Gerard Woodward: It's a retrospective.

'I have kids, I want to go home.' We left the gallery owner to his lookout and bundled into the evening street. But instead of taking a left towards Martinis, we took a right towards rugby pub The Rummer. I asked my partner what was going on.

'We're going to meet Colm Toibin,' she told me. I frantically asked her for a potted bio. I followed her shakily into the pub.

In the corner, we were met with a parabola of backs. Every space into which a chair could have been navigated had had a chair already navigated into it. Introductions were being made and I was aware of my bit-part status in this situation: someone's partner, unpublished and unremarkable. And in the corner, ruddy, wizened, slightly baffled but handy as an old sailor, was Colm Toibin. At least, he could have been. I had no idea what Colm Toibin looked like. To his left, younger, with jet-black hair and a confidently raised pint, was another candidate. An Oxford manner. I turned on my heels and left.

I texted my apologies and, sacrificing my spaghetti-and-red-wine meal, caught the bus home.

Things weren't so bad, I thought, as I forked cold smoked tofu into my mouth and replied to e-mails while listening to The Fall. I drank several cups of roibosh tea and got an early night, realising that I had missed out on any excitement.

At around 3am my partner stumbled in moaning that she wanted to die. Drinks, a meal, a kebab and a vomit in the street to the good, she got into bed naked (perilous in our unheated 17th century bakehouse) and then dashed a glass of water I had brought her so hard onto the floor that the jolt snapped its stem. I cleared the glass and mopped the water, then dressed her in pyjamas and socks.

And her meeting with Colm Toibin? They had arrived at the pub too late to meet him.