Orange and Greene

Graham Greene belived that every writer must have a chip of ice in his or her heart. As much as I try to deny this, more and more I'm beginning to accept it's true. So yes, I have dithered about writing about my high school reunion, but to be honest, that chip of ice, manifesting itself as bitchy mischievousness will simply not allow me to abandon material that's just pure gold.

Mrs Nunn and I arrived at Heathrow just before 1 p.m. It was an overnight flight with a baby next to us. Let's just say by the time I drove 120 miles up the M1, I was tired and a bit fractious. I slept for an hour or so before forcing myself into the shower, popping on a dress and driving to my old school. Everything felt a bit dreamlike. Possibly because mostly I was still asleep.

God, in His or Her knowingness of my reunion had blessed me with two giant spots. This is why I don't believe in Him or Her. It's a two-way spite thing.

I arrived. A gaggle of girls were already gathered. I was greeted by a boy from our brother school. "Hello Laura," he said. Then conspiratorially, "Don't worry... I haven't sat you next to Annabelle." This confused me. I barely knew this guy at school... yet he reads the Plog? Seemed unlikely. And the rather more likely explanation of some sort of rumour doing the rounds began to formulate itself.

I went to join the gaggle of girls - none of whom I'd stayed in touch with, but all of whom I got on fine with at school. The school was a girls' school - so whilst the boys' school was next door, I knew the girls far better than the boys. We made very polite small talk about how odd the experience was, and I said something, talking about the boys, like, "It's weird - a sea of faces that you vaguely recognise, but can't quite put a name to."

At this point a small, yapping started up from someone who seemed a bit unnaturally short and orange. "You remember me though, don't you Laura? I'm Annabelle." This came from - let's call her Belinda McOrange. Now I'm no stranger to the bad fake tan (as TheBloke (TM) said to me just last week, "Ooh, aren't you tanned... in places."), but this really was something extra-special.

"Sorry?" I said.

"I'm Annabelle, aren't I? From your blog?"

"Oh - no, Belinda," I said.

"So who is Annabelle then?" yapped Belinda, orangely.

I launched into my standard (and boringly true) explanation of my Plog, "You know how I do stand-up? Well, very much like stand-up, everything in my blog is exaggerated for comic effect*. Annabelle is a composite of lots of people."

"So who is Annabelle then?" Belinda oranged at me**.

"Well, as I just said..."

She cut me off. "I think it's me. I have a sports car. I call my Maths teacher Dad. I'm flattered that you're so jealous of me."

"That's nice, Belinda." Her friends, sensing Belinda McOrange was making an utter tit of herself, tried to shut her up, but like an hysterical springer spaniel, she wouldn't be silenced.

"I'm flattered you write about me and that you're jealous of me. You're looking really nervous. Do I make you nervous? Are you in a relationship? I'm in a relationship. I met my boyfriend in Fiji. Have you been to Fiji? I have. I've been to Fiji. I met my boyfriend there. Do you have a garden? I have a garden. I have a sports car. And a garden. And a boyfriend I met in Fiji."

"OK, Belinda, in order, no, you don't make me nervous, yes, I'm in a relationship, yes I've been to Fiji. No, I don't have a garden..."

She cut me off again. "I have a garden. Do you still live in East London? I hate East London. I live in Richmond. It's much nicer there. Do you read the Daily Mail? I love the Daily Mail."

I wouldn't have guessed.

Luckily at this point, a few more people arrived and I was able to have some less-mad conversations.

I haven't been that irritated by something that small and that orange since I sat on a cheesy Wotsit last Christmas.

OK, bitchiness over with, the rest of the evening was lovely. It was a bit odd to be surrounded by faces once so familiar and now quite distant. And whilst it's true that generally I've done pretty well at keeping in touch with my closest school friends - and have happily let people I didn't get on with so well drift away, there is also a raft of people I got on well with but perhaps because we were in different friendship groups, didn't really keep in touch with after school. So it was genuinely lovely to catch up with some old faces last night.

Even if I did feel a bit guilty that about 30% of the room kept coming up to me and saying, "I read your Plog about Annabelle - and emailed it to all my friends."

I was sitting near (she picked her own pseudonym out) Isabella last night. Isabella doesn't need a pseudonym because she's lovely anyway, but she wanted one so she got one. We went to a drama course in France together many moons ago (which was strange enough to perhaps merit its own Plog one day), and she now reads my Plog too. To say Isabella reads my Plog isn't perhaps doing her justice. In fact Isabella knows every detail of my Plog and can recite it back to me. She claimed it wasn't that she was stalking me, it was that she just had a good memory.

Which I almost believed until she told me she'd stolen my hubcaps.

Anyway, I'm still jetlagged and probably ought to toddle off to bed. Where I can think about what I've done and what sort of person I am.

* Apologies to anyone who thought it was the utter truth. I hate to be the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.

** If Shakespeare can turn "incarnadine" into a verb, I'm having "to orange". Shut up.