La P’tite Folie

Jane Bonnyman is a teacher and tutor who lives in Edinburgh. Her poems have appeared in The Dark Horse, The Interpreter’s House and Magma. Her new pamphlet Dinner with Superman (Red Squirrel, £6) describes, amongst other things, several dates that don’t go well. “La P’tite Folie” chronicles just such a date-gone-wrong in a French restaurant, Piaf ’s Je Ne Regrette Rien playing ironically in the background.

When, on our blind date in the French restaurant, while you’re telling me about your six-day hike through the wilderness of the Southern Alps, I lean towards you and set fire to my hair, accidently dipping it into the candle flame,

you watch as if it were happening on a screen: me clutching a damp napkin to my head, sweeping the singed strands from the tablecloth, apologising for the mess. Somewhere Piaf sings Non, je ne regrette rien, and you ask for the bill.

And I think I always knew, the way some things seem to be meant, that it would end like this: one half-eaten soufflé, me working out the tip, and the chill from the open door as you, already in your coat, run for the hills.

You can find a copy of Dinner with Superman by Jane Bonnyman at the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh. For poetry enquiries, e-mail reception@spl.org.uk or visit www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk