Emergency....

....so, there was I, clutched in a beefy embrace and my heart pumping in my ears. He ushered me inside what was a little cottage, bracketed in all directions by fields and stables. A few hundred yards beyond his drive stood a rather proud looking, red-brick farmhouse.

'Oh, my parents live there!' he boomed, 'it's called Toad Hall!'

The idyll was shattered by that confession. And furthermore, by...

'My place is called BagEnd!'

OK, so let's rack up those clues....

- dodgy 'do you work out?' opening line
- bad coat
- patter of generic chat-up lines
- his hand on my bottom at the soonest possible opportunity that we were beyond the scope of the PCC
- his 'cousin' in a filmy negligee on his phone
- ribbons
- his sharing a plot of land with his parents
- a dog called Kaiser
- a house called BagEnd


Oh, and just to top it off, as I was dragged across a windy field to see his horses, he announced their names

'Black Bess and Starlight!'

Now, Black Bess isn't too bad. Sure, it lacks imagination and even the horse itself, chewing morosely on a carrot seemed to say,

'Don't say it! Just because I'm sodding black! My last owner lacked similar imagination!'

But my real concern was with Starlight....after all, this was a man who'd ridden the military tide through Borneo, Germany, Afghanistan. He was as hard as nails, 6'6, a military officer and a big-cheese in the local police force. Surely he couldn't be held responsible for giving his horse such a gay name?

I found myself in a stable, watching him throw forkfuls of straw in the air.

'My two passions!' he boomed (his default vocal setting), 'are riding and horses!'

I daren't ask for clarification....

We went back across the field, and he showed me his house. A sunken bath, scruffy leather sofas, an AGA and a battered piano in an alcove. I was slowly warming to his interior decor, he was making me a cup of tea when he revealed what really ratified, to me at least, that beneath the suited and booted exterior there may well have lain a butt just wiggling to be taken.

'Through there,' he jabbed a finger behind me, 'I've got a sauna and a hot-tub.'

I think at this point, had I applied to the police and been asked to take a simple aptitude test, I may well have been thrown out for such a poor score...

However, he was keen, it seemed, to prove that he wasn't actually gay at all. He'd pinned a pic of a leggy nurse to his fridge door and his tour of the house led me to his bedroom where Jilly Cooper novels and condoms lay on the bedside table. We lay down on the bed together and fumbled with each other for a few moments. Suddenly, he pulled back, looked at me and smiled broadly.

'We should work out together,' he suggested, 'and you could wear tight lycra so I could see your vulva!'

I don't think I said anything. I don't think I thought anything either, but I did feel the primeval visceral rumble of terror in my tummy...