The Press Junket

The photograph was taken at ten to one in the morning outside a noodle place on Kingsland Road, and in it I am laughing with my mouth open and one hand on his forearm, which I have no memory of doing and which the photograph is very clear about.

We had gone there after the week-four service because it was the only thing open and because neither of us wanted to be the one who said goodnight first, and I had eaten a bowl of hand-pulled noodles at five to one in the morning in a plastic chair and had a better time than I have had at most dinners in my life. There was nothing in it. There was, obviously, a great deal in it, but there was nothing in it that a photograph was entitled to.

The headline was RECIPE FOR ROMANCE? and the piece was four hundred…