When the fun never starts

"Never again," says Marion the hairdresser, waving her scissors dangerously close to my ear to emphasise the point. "Never, never again."

After a life-skills refresher course, she had endorphins to spare, leading to an evangelical desire to give her colleague Janet, the excitement-averse, mid-mouse colourist whose idea of adventure is a different sandwich filling at lunchtime, a taster of life on the edge.

So she organised a girl's night out at a local restaurant. It was to die for, she says, but only in the sense that you'd rather die than ever have to do it again.

I ask what made it so awful.

"Well......" begins Marion, and my heart sinks. She's clearly emotional - I can tell, because now the scissors are shaking - and has an awful lot of hair still to cut.

"Things didn't get off to a good start, because I was a bit late. Janet was already upset because I refused to make the restaurant booking for 4.30 pm and she'd had a couple of hours to kill."

"How did she spent the time?" I ask.

"Oh, reorganising her sugar packet collection. She spends hours agonising about whether it's better to maintain the pack integrity by keeping the sugar - though it does discolour the paper - or removing it grain by grain through a tiny hole. And then there's the sub-sets - you know, airline packets, hotel packets, and whether you cross-reference them by language or design components -"

"- I think I've got the gist. Several gists worth, really. Thanks."

"So when I arrive at the mad impetuous hour of 7.00 she's already really twitchy. 'I was hoping you'd come soon, because of ordering drinks,' she says.

"'Just ask the waiter,' I say.

"'Oh, you ask him, I'm too shy.' So I do, and when he comes over, I ask him to turn this outside heater off - it's much too hot for it. And he does. And Janet says, 'Oh, thank you. I was boiling.

"Then we look at the menu. And Janet says, 'I wanted garlic mushrooms for the starter. I didn't want anything else. I know they do them, but they're not on this menu. They must be on the lunchtime menu.' And she's beginning to sound a bit tearful, so I say, 'Why don't you ask the waiter?' she says, 'Oh, I can't. You do it' We get the waiter back and explain that this is a special treat for my friend and is there any way they could give her a starter from the lunch menu and they get the chef out and finally agree.

'Then we order the main courses and Janet whispers that she's a bit short of money and perhaps she'll just have something from the children's menu. I offer to pay for her but she says no, she couldn't possibly, she doesn't want to be in my debt. The waiter comes over to take her order and explains that she can't order from the children's menu because she's not a child. And she looks tearful again, so he gets the manager. The manager gets the owner, the owner, who's obviously just wishing we'd leave says 'Fine, give her a child's portion,' and they go away again.

'She's ordered steak. She looks at the menu again and says, 'It says minute steak. What does that mean?' I say it means it's not cooked for very long. She says, "Oh no, I hope that doesn't mean it's going to be all bloody and red or anything. Could you ask if they can make sure it's well-cooked?' 'You do it,' I say. 'Oh, no, I couldn't,' she says. We get the waiter over again.

'Then she sees the sauce it comes with. It's got blue cheese in it. 'I don't like this sauce,' she says. 'Well, don't have it.' I say. 'Yes, but now the steak's going to be well cooked, it might be much too dry,' I'm so cross I start to say, 'Just breathe on it, you're being so wet it'll moisten up a treat,' but I bite the words back and say, 'Why don't you ask for some melted butter.' "

Marion's scissors are now jigging around so much I'm surprised there aren't fragments of my ear clinging to them. "I think I know where this one's going, Marion," I say, and we both chorus:

"'Oh, I couldn't Marion, could you do it instead?"

"By the time I've organised the pudding - something that's not on the menu, the tea - Janet's brought her own bag - and the bill - Janet kicks up a huge fuss and makes me query every single item - I can truthfully say I never want to see her again. And you can almost hear the cheers go up as we leave. I have to walk Janet home - she's frightened of the dark.

"We get to her door, I say goodnight and she says, 'That was such fun, wasn't it? I really, really enjoyed it. Let's do it again.'

"And the saddest thing," finishes Marion, "Was that I think she really meant it."