“You’ve lost weight!” I said to Dave the builder as I was hosing my plants on the terrace this morning.

Shirtless, Dave was adding the finishing touches to the new railings he had built on Catherine and Martin’s balcony at Number Seven, two doors down from us.

“Well,” Dave smiled, turned off his radio and stopped working briefly to explain, “I couldn’t get into the suit I bought new two years ago so I wasn’t going to buy a new one… and I’ve been on a high protein diet recently. No carbs. I’ve lost between one and a half and two stone!”

“You look good,” I said encouragingly, “like James Bond coming out of the water!” (I know, I may have exaggerated a wee bit – Dave is in his fifties and completely bald.)

“Which one?” he asked.

“Daniel Craig,” I laughed, “but wouldn’t Sean Connery be alright, too?”

“Are you sure you’re not thinking of the one with the cat?” modest Dave stroked an imaginary cat in his arms.

“Oh, Blofeld!” I chuckled as an image of bald Telly Savalas entered my head.

We both laughed – patently, without his beard Dave could have been the Kojak actor’s double. Dave turned the radio back on and picked up a nautical-looking rope, which was to make the balcony rail appear like a handrail on a ship. Still musing on the mental image I went back to my hosing. 

I didn’t tell Dave I used like the bald actor when I was a girl in the seventies and he brought out that romantic LP. Telly had such a lovely deep voice that he had only to speak-sing to bring out the goose pimples. Funny how men hate Telly Savalas’s singing!