Love is in the Air

I was waiting for a friend today to reassure me about life, limited companies, and how not to scream in terror of it all, so I went for a beer in The Westbourne. The barman drew me a pint of Hoegaarden, I said I'd rather have the drink, so he gave me that instead, I'm kidding of course. I sat in the sun next to two friends, a girl and a boy, catching up, filling the other in, going over the details of each other's mundanity to make them feel that little bit more real. Anyway, this girl was describing her new approach to finding lovers, it's pretty novel... She's scratched looks, personality, job, status, pretty much everything; now it all hangs on one vital ingredient: smell. And not the shallow aspects of smell you or I might consider, like freshly showered and not smelling of Old Spice, oh no! She is basing her attraction solely on the pheremones of the immune system. Apparently we are drawn to people who have strongly dissimilar disease fighting make-up than our own, as this will lead to a well-rounded offspring who'll fight all infections and possibly reduce Lemsip to a mere slightly bitter lemony hot drink. However things aren't going well for her. She can't find anyone. Her companion asks what was wrong with the last guy. He smelt of coathangers, she replies. Coathangers? Yeh. But what do coathangers smell of? You know, all coathangery. Musty? No. Metallic? Sort of, but more coathangish. You got rid of him just because of that? Yeh. Did you like him? Oh yeh, he was perfect apart from that. Are you seeing anyone now? Well I met this other guy... And how does he smell? Wow, he smells great. Thank God. He's just such a twat.