(i)
It was nine o'clock on the patio outside Carluccio's. At this time of night, Kate observed from a table far from the body of the restaurant, every table was happily flanked by matching His & Her sets of people and food. Countless couples laughing and murmurring to each other in the cool evening air. Their privacy was ensured by fat, flickering candles, hollowed and misshapen by the succession of romantic tete-a-tetes, which stood loyally guard at the centre of the tables. Waiters slunk around them in the yellowed semi-darkness like surly ghosts, and ubiquitous soft jazz trickled thinly out of unseen speakers. The night sky was obscured behind thick square parasols. A brief gust of wind twirled a static tendril of smoke from existence, and Kate blinked, flicked the bullet of ash from the end of her cigarette, and watched her date hurry towards the table.
"Are you too cold? We usually sit inside... I thought outside might be a nice change." said Steven, sitting down and rearing his seat onto its hind legs.
"No, I like it. You can't smoke inside."
"That's right. That's true," he replied, and lurched forward. The front legs cracked loudly against the concrete. "You know, it's a really lovely night tonight."
Kate sighed and tucked a strand of dark purple hair behind her ear. "No it is, it really is. I'm glad we came." She had ordered her usual: an exotic and delicious seafood salad.
"It feels like a night to remember," prompted Steven.
Kate smiled and raised her glass of white wine into the air. "To, a night to remember!" she said gamely, and drank the remainder in one mealy mouthful. Steven smiled too, creasing the brackets of his eyes behind his new designer glasses and below the sharp new cut of his ginger hair. He finally undid the top button of his blue checked shirt (something inside Kate's mind unclenched), flicked at the two flaps distractedly, then rebuttoned it. But Kate was looking elsewhere.
"Holy fuck!" she hissed.
"What? What is it? Hey, what's wrong?" Steven shifted in his chair to see what Kate was avoiding staring at over his shoulder. "Who's that?"
"Just-! Okay." She surreptitiously scraped her chair to the left, using Steven to block her view.
"That man is Leo."
And suddenly hearing that name aloud again after almost six months, and from her own alien mouth, the force of sour recollections wiped the present from her vision like ice being scraped off a windscreen. Leo; agreeably tall, wide eyes, easing into the bed with one of her magazines, eating cereal, watching her make toast as the darkening evenings outside made her flat glow even brighter. There was a snowman offering a gold ring on a brittle branch, and Leo laughing on one knee. Later; the shame-faced retraction and the rapid unravelling that had left Kate raw, left her inside-out, and left her absolutely alone in a windowless apartment six floors up from a sunny London suburb with an inert intercom and rotting green camoflage climbing the inside of an houglass-shaped fishbowl.
"Who's Leo? And why the hell is he here?!" Now Steven was hissing.
"Don't over-react. I'm not over-reacting."
Still keeping Leo fully hidden behind her date, she leaned forward until the pale light from the candle darkened the hollows of her eyes. In a low, quick voice she described in skeleton form the events of the previous winter without digression or repetition. When she had finished, Steven was pressing on the prongs of his fork to make the handle wave crazily in the air. The fingers on his other hand drumrolled on the underside of the table.
"I can't believe you didn't tell me this before!" he ejaculated.
"Why would I? He's not a part of my life any more. Don't worry. You're a much bigger part of my life than he is right now. We can't leave anyway, we've already ordered. That cava was expensive. I don't think he can see me."
"So why didn't you tell me?"
"This is only our seventh date! It's not like you should know all about me yet. Come on, let's not let this ruin the meal."
Steven rocked in his chair for a moment, then straightened his napkin and placed it in front of him. He faced her squarely.
"I'm sorry, I have to go to the bathroom. It's an emergency."
He rose too fast and jarred the table with his hip, springing the cutlery from their strict allignment. In less than a minute he was lost in the dim innards of the restaurant.
Leo wasn't noticing her, noticed Kate. This meant, Kate reasoned, that he must have noticed her at some point earlier and decided that they were both colluding in mutual avoidance. Had he told his date about her too? Kate felt the familiar ill-will build, like a shark fin rippling the surface of a millpond, and suppressed it with a conscious effort. She was here with Steven. And Leo was here with... well, whoever that was who laughed with her mouth open too wide. It didn't matter. Although this was not how she'd ideally imagined her reunion with Leo, she had projected so many different scenarios with so many unlikely outcomes onto the walls of her skull that anticlimactic silence came almost as a relief. At least it gave her the opportunity to scrutinise him freely, which she naturally took.
Leo sat thinly hunched over a plate of wet red meat, tearing it apart methodically and gulping down whole chunks so large that their outlines were still visible through his throat. His legs were crossed, which wasn't like him, and his neck now jutted from his shoulders at a forty-five degree angle. It's strange, Kate thought, how the differences shine out before she even had a chance to acknowledge the familiarities. The length of his hair was the same as she remembered it, but its careless shagginess was suddenly new. His attention, once her sole preserve, was wholly focused on the bloody white plate before him. His date was similarly absorbed in a silent telepathic exchange with her phone screen. Their table had replaced the close murmur of coupledom with the clicks and clanks of fake nails on plastic and absent-mindedly knocked crockery. At least she and Steven were talking. She watched Leo skewer and swallow another scarlet mouthful, then was brought back into her flustered self by a drinks-bearing waiter appearing abruptly at her shoulder.
"Here you are, madam," said the waiter, lowering two tall-stemmed glasses of cava onto the tabletop. "Your meal will just be a moment, madam." The empty tray was whisked up, over and away, and the waiter with it.
Kate resolved to ignore her ex's table and raised the glass to her lips. By glancing down her nose and through the thin curved glass, she suddenly noticed Steven stumbling hurriedly back through the archipelago of tables.
"Wait! - (sorry, i'm sorry) - Kate! Wait!"
He arrived at the table and hovered nervously for a moment. He looked at their glasses, then swiftly scanned the tabletop. Finally, still without speaking, he held his wine glass closer to the candle-light and glared into the liquid as if he could read the future in it.
Kate looked more amused than confused. "What's wrong with it?"
"Have you... ? Did you-? So?" Steven replaced the glass.
Kate and Steven searched each other's faces, but were met with symmetrically baffled smiles. The murmur of indistinguishable voices around them seemed to grow quieter.
"So... everything's okay then?" asked Steven cautiously.
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"Ha..." Steven had a heady sip. "This stuff is really nice. I'm glad we splashed out." He looked wildly over his shoulder and scanned the inside of the restaurant through the front window for a few seconds. Then he spun back around, grinned sheepishly and sipped the cava again. He didn't slurp once, Kate noticed with surprise.
"Your guy's still there," he said.
"The meal's coming in a sec."
Steven breathed out sharply through his nose. He sounded tired. He removed his glasses and rubbed the raw red marks it had left behind, then rested his forearms on the table, hands faced down.
"You know..." He cleared his throat. "You know, when we met for the first time in the office, it must have been... two years ago now?, I asked you out for a drink and you said no."
"I know. I remember."
"Were you engaged then?"
A difficult pause. "Yes."
"To him?"
"Yes." No pause that time. Now I'm committed, giggled hidden drunken Kate.
Steven nodded his head absently while staring over Kate's shoulder into the street. "Fair enough." he said kindly, and finished his cava in a single quaff. Two identically empty glasses faced each other on the table, for him and for her.
"You know," he started suddenly, "I think maybe it's time we stopped going out, you know, together. I..." he blew through slackened lips and widened his eyes to demonstrate his own confusion. "A while ago, I thought..." he hesitated again. "It's like you reminded me of something that I don't need to remember anymore. No, I'm sorry... that came out wrong." The tablecloth stared back at him indifferently, so he concluded in a self-effacing tone:
"You may not believe this, but this is coming as almost as big a surprise for me as it is for you."
"Are we breaking up? Just so we're on the same page." Kate asked.
"I... yeah. I think so." Now I'm committed, noted sober inner-Steven.
Kate reached towards the centre of the table and rested her hand indulgently on his. She waited until he looked up again. "I do like you, Steven, I really do. You're such a really great guy..."
She let the rising happy jabber from a nearby table cut her sweetly short. She didn't have anything else to say anyway. If Steven was at all perturbed by her acceptance of his sudden announcement, thought Kate, it wasn't showing anywhere. Withdrawing his hand from underneath hers with a small apologetic smile, he unbuttoned his collar again, then plucked another two tall glasses of cava from the tray of a waiter who had been standing for an unknown length of time behind Kate's back.
"A toast!" he declared tipsily after gallantly handing her the fuller glass. The waiter wandered away. "To us, obviously, and to all those missed and taken opportunities in our lives, past or future."
They drank in unison. By the time their waiter arrived with their food five minutes later, all that was left was a crushed out cigarette in the ashtary, and on the table a pair of twenties left to the mercy of the wind.
(ii)
It was nine o'clock on the patio outside Carluccio's. Leo took a sweet solitary second to study the delicious rare steak set before him on the table, while opposite him his date Kelli was coquettishly pestering the young-ish maitre d'. The steak: Tough grey hide with a red raw centre, tastefully separated from a green leafy afterthought. A cursory glance confirmed that Leo was the patio's only shameless carnivore, but Kelli's bowlful of overt vegetarianism acted as a perfect counterbalance. Not that it mattered; on closer inspection, no two people sitting outside were eating the same meal. Only the matching drinks seemed to affirm the congruency of the other couples, but the hubbub of conversation, like the hum of some heavy generator, brought the restauranteers together seamlessly in a single unifying din.
Once the waiter had escaped, Leo raised his attention back to Kelli. She laughed and shook her arm in a flutter or bracelets, and swept her thick yellow hair back over her shoulder.
"You know Pete?" she started.
"Who?"
"Pete, you know. From Angela's party."
"Oh yeah..." Was he the one with the glasses?
"He literally will not stop texting me. Look at this." She flashed him the screen of her phone.
"Ha ha. Christ."
"I know, right?" She locked her phone and set it down on the table. "What about you?"
"Er... nothing much." Leo admitted. "How's the salad?"
She laughed again. "It's good. How's your dead animal?"
"It definitely didn't die in vain," he replied, grinning.
Kelli sighed in mock exasperation and tossed her head. A peacock spray of dyed blonde. "So what have you got for later?" she asked.
"I got Game of Thrones. I thought we could keep watching until we get either horny or confused."
"I always get horny when I'm confused," Kelli laughed. "By the way, you've got a little..." She gestured at her mouth with her fork.
"Oh... thanks." Leo turned away to discreetly dig a sinewy scrap of steak out of his teeth, but his finger slowed and stopped before it could reach his mouth. Oh Jesus. Oh no.
The instant recognition of her face was followed faster than thought by a powerful sucker punch to the gut. Guilt, heavy and immediate, buckled his spine and sunk him deep into his seat. Had she seen him? Oh Christ, he hadn't seen her for almost six months. She must be giving him the silent treatment, which was a whole lot more than he deserved. It took him a moment to realise his nose was only inches from his food, but he couldn't look up just yet. (Kelli was still texting Glasses Pete, thank God.) His memory whirled like a catherine wheel as he stared at the dead red meat, flinging out flashbacks and fragments of feelings he didn't want to remember. Her voice. The snowman's twig hand that the ring (the ring!) kept sliding off. Her terrible toaster. OK! magazine. And then he'd just got out of there, like a balloon fleeing upwards to an area of less pressure. Her awful gaze. Him, the wide-eyed leaver. Him! Why'd I...?
"Mm, this is good salad and no mistake."
Leo blinked. "What's the mistake?"
The ginger guy Kate was with scrambled past their table and into the body of the restaurant. Leo stayed frozen in position until his mind forcefully shouldered its way back to the table. With renewed vigour he began tearing at the meat, cramming the dripping pieces into his suddenly dry mouth. Christ, did he need a drink. For reassurance (whose, he wasn't sure) he stroked Kelli's calf under the table with his foot.
He could no longer see the ginger guy through the window of the restaurant. There were even more diners inside, silently gossiping or breaking into laughter that was lost to him. Even the waiters seemed on better terms with the glamorous insiders, exchanging pleasantries with unfaked smiles and neater hair. Why had he opted for the outdoors when warmth and happy bonhomie were just a few metres away? But he was always above the crowd, wasn't he, he thought reproachfully. Why couldn't he take that step into normality? He absently grabbed a fresh glass of cava and sipped at it thoughtfully, until...
"Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!" Kelli shrieked, fanning her breathless gasps with brightly coloured nails. She was pulling a dripping ring onto her shaking ring finger and staring at it with cartoon wonder. "Oh my fucking... It fits! Oh my God, it fits! What the... I can't..." Her mouth flapped wordlessly for a full five seconds, during which time Leo was able to piece together from the spilled cava glass lying on its side that somehow, and he had not even the vaguest idea how, he had accidentally just got engaged.
"Yes!" cried Kelli, her voice returning croakily. "Yes, of course. Of course I will." She pulled Leo towards her and they kissed fully until the heat from the candle flame tickled their throats.
"Really?" managed Leo when they parted.
"I've never..." There were genuine tears in her eyes. "I'm so happy. It's literally the most beautiful ring I've ever seen. Where did you get it?"
"I don't know," answered Leo. There was a pressure at the back of his throat and his vision was swimming. Kelli held her hand closer to the candle and watched the light bounce off the ring's every angle.
"Let's go," Kelli proposed suddenly, eyes locked on Leo's. "Let's get out of this place. Let's go dancing, I'm serious."
"I love you," said Leo with a jolt.
"I love you too," replied Kelli. "So much right now."
"I think you're amazing," he continued, "and I do love you, Kelli." The words stumbled out of his mouth and blinked in the dim light. The more he said it, he realised, the more he meant it.
They stood up and kissed, hands struggling to cover as much ground as possible. Kelli waved her splayed hand in the faces of the other diners while Leo threw some cash down on the table, then they ran, both in states of gleeful disbelief, out into the strange street that had brought them there.
(iii)
It was nine o'clock on the patio outside Carluccio's. It was a busy night for the restaurant, but not so busy that Will couldn't shirk his duties for a moment and pace with faked purpose between the tables outside, all in order to gaze with frustrating purposelessness at the furthest table, where Kate, with her dark dyed hair and arch stare, had decided to sit this week. He knew her name - he had known it since he'd first taken her order seven weeks ago - but she didn't know his, despite it being printed on a nametag pinned over his heart. He was another anonymous white-suited waiter, and she his personal customer, and no amount of complimentary olives could seem to raise her gaze higher than his scrappy white notepad and pencil. Will's one spark of hope was that (if anything) she paid just as much attention to him as to the anxious chatter of her regular dining partner, some IT guy or insurance peddler, whose clear designs on her she seemed to cordially ignore. Right now she was sitting alone, so Will skulked around the potted plants by the doorway and enjoyed watching her smoke unattended.
"Excuse me! Hey. Listen; could you do me a favour?"
Will jumped guiltily. It was the odious escort himself; Steven, shifting itchily from foot to foot. Before he could answer, Steven continued:
"Listen; you see that woman over there at the far table? Who I was just with?"
"Yeah," said Will without looking. No 'sir' for you, mate.
"Well, and I dunno if you do this kind of thing, but I was wondering if you could maybe bring this ring over to us in like five or ten minutes." Here he produced a fat gold ring from a zipped pocket and blew the lint off it. "I'm gonna propose to her, you see? I was thinking you could put it in her drink - we've already ordered some fancy cava. Pretty romantic, don't you think? Would that be possible?"
Will considered saying no, saying it was against the restaurant's policy. But he couldn't. Instead he took the ring in his fist and squeezed it behind his back until his knuckles turned white. "Okay," he said, "that's fine. To the... smoker over there?"
"Yes, that's her." Steven beamed. "That's great, thanks so much. I'll tip, obviously." He scampered back over to Kate, leaving Will standing incredulously by the door. He didn't move for a few seconds, staring at Steven's back, and then (for what could be the last time) mentally photographed Kate's pale condemned face. So that was it - his hopes had now withered on the vine. He sullenly stalked back inside the restaurant, dejected.
After groping past the grazing, gossiping herd of guests and gobbling toddlers who devoured every doughy plateful he gave them, and into the restaurant's humid metal netherworld, Will ducked into an alcove and unclenched his fist to give the ring a proper look. It was solid, unadorned gold, and looked much like the cheap, knock-off, painted-gold ring he wore on his left hand, only noticeably heavier. Nothing his waiter's salary could afford at any rate. He gripped it again and stared self-reprimandingly at his reflection in the metal steam vents. He'd left it too late, as per usual, and now it was over and he was forced to facillitate its demise. All those solo bathroom mirror pep talks lined up and hissed at him for his cowardice. But then, in a high-pitched burst of steam, a low urge for revenge stirred him and he glanced again at the budget gold band on his left hand. After all, she didn't know how much the ring weighed...
Heart pounding with the sly thrill, he slipped his ring off his finger and replaced it with the one he'd been given. He held his hand up to the light and watched the light roll across its surface, then poured two full glasses of cava and dropped his dismal substitute into one of them. As he held them and prepared to walk back outside, his nerve started to waver and he realised that seeing Steven propose, even with his artful adjustment, would still be an ordeal he couldn't quite face.
"Andy!" he called out to the newest member of the waiting staff, who ambled over. "Another couple's getting engaged out there, and I think you're ready to do the honours." He held out the glasses.
"Cool. Which table?"
"Out on the patio. This one" - the glass with the ring - "goes to the woman with the dyed hair who ordered a salad."
As Andy left the kitchen, Will started to harbour second thoughts. Was this really a good idea...? But that boring, self-entitled, rich prick was capturing his comely Kate, and him getting some old ring out of it seemed a more than fair trade. Second prize, he thought morosely, as ever.
He was suddenly shaken out of his thoughts by the sight of Steven crashing through the door of the restaurant seconds after Andy had left. Panic shot through Will's veins. He couldn't have noticed already...? Too late to hide - Steven had spotted him and was frantically floundering towards him, knocking coats off chairbacks and trampling over them in his manic haste.
"I need the ring," he gasped, pinning Will against the wall.
"What?" Will warbled, an octave higher than usual.
"I've made a mistake! I can't marry her! I need the ring back. Please! Look, I'll pay you double. I'm sorry! Where's the ring?"
"I... It's too late. It's already gone, I'm sorry, sir."
"What?!" He gaped at Will for a second as if expecting a punchline then dashed back out the way he'd came, leaving a return trail of Doc Martin boot prints across the fallen jackets. Will stayed frozen against the wall, thankfully ignored by the oblivious customers. Stupid Steven was calling off the proposal? It was a mistake? Mesmeric, magnetic Kate had somehow fended off the attraction of the metal finger-manacle, and before Will could consider the miraculous implications of this, let alone the fact that Steven was now more likely to notice the switch, he was gestured at impatiently by a nearby elderly couple.
Five long minutes were eaten away explaining and re-explaining how to work the chip-and-pin machine for their humourless deliberation. When Will was next able to glance out of the window, Kate's table was empty. They hadn't even been served their food yet. It must have been a bitter break-up, thought Will ungenerously. At that very moment, Steven burst dramatically through the restaurant door and stormily surveyed the room. Even at first glance he was a changed person from the skittish sap of five minutes ago. He seemed somehow taller, filling the doorway, and his shoulders were rolled well back. His checked shirt was recklessly untucked and, when he spotted Will retreating towards the kitchen, he advanced with bold purpose.
"Where's my ring?" he demanded at the threshold to the kitchen. Standing just inside the doorway, Will became very aware that only general convention was stopping Steven from advancing any further.
"Didn't you get it, sir? In the glass?"
Steven sighed. "Don't fuck with me. I didn't get my ring, and I'm not leaving until I get it back. Do I need to talk to the manager?"
"Are you sure you didn't? Because..."
"Listen; that was my grandmother's ring. If it isn't returned to me soon you are gonna owe me a hell of a lot of money."
Will tried one last panicky gambit. "Maybe... I've heard that the metal can sometimes react to the liquid in the glass, which could perhaps cause the ring to..."
Steven shouldered his way into the inner sanctum, pushing Will backwards bodily. Will started to retreat, hands raised, and Steven took the opportunity to pursue him, forcing him to stumble backwards around the central work station. Around them, geysers of pressurised steam rendered their slow, uncertain procession inaudible and invisible to the surrounding chefs, who were immersed in their cooking.
"Okay, okay, look. Here it is." Will furtively removed the ring from his finger and held it up. "It was in my fucking pocket all along. Jesus!"
Steven snatched it and waved it heatedly in Will's face. "You were trying to steal this! My grandmother's fucking ring! I was gonna ask that woman out there to marry me with this, you bastard!"
"So why the hell didn't you?!" Will was running out of ground to back over, so he stopped and wildly took the offensive.
"What!?" Steven halted. He put the ring on his finger for safekeeping.
"Because she's too fucking good for you, mate, and you know that she'll say 'no' anyway, and even if she does say 'yes' you'll always be the guy that she just settled for in the end and you'll be like 'I'm the guy who locked down fit Kate from work!' but it'll all be bullshit because she's like ten times-"
Steven had never hit before anyone in his life, but at that moment on that night it just felt natural, predestined. The heft of his wiry fist crashed into Will's face and hurled him backwards into the double doors of the fire exit which obligingly opened, and ejected him gracelessly onto the tarmac of a grim, bin-lined backstreet. Then the doors swung shut again with a fateful clunk. Steven winced, as if expecting a blow in return, then breathed out heavily. He felt oddly elated. The billowing sprays of steam around him looked like strange fireworks. Undoing his second-to-top button, he strode manfully back out of the kitchen.
Outside on the street, Will lay on his back squinting at the stars. A trickle of blood issued from his cheekbone where the ring had connected. Woozily he could make out the sound of approaching feet, then a dark, purpley head-shape obscured the night sky.
"Holy fuck!" said a familiar voice. "You're lucky I found you."
The End
WOW! Loved it! You are an excellent writer! I especially like how descriptive you were, I think sometimes in a short story that is hard to do. I really enjoyed the personality of your characters also, it made for a great read.
Daaaaaaaaw that was adorable. You, my friend, are a fantastic writer.
Good:
I liked the whole little farcey thing you had going on. It was super funny and cute.
Will was my favorite character. By a longshot. I totally didn't see that coming, I thought there would be another couple somehow involved, but then - surprise! - it's the waiter. When I read that part my brain went "wat. Yay."
Good choice to make her hair an abnormal color. It worked perfectly at the ending part.
Great descriptions. I could see everything in my mind's eye clearly. The words you used in describing things was excellent. Side note: I kept seeing DiCaprio in my head and it was making me laugh.
Great job making each character so vastly different and yet still multi-dimensional.
Other things:
Perhaps you should give it a higher rating for language.
Great story and fantastic ending! It made me squeal a bit.
I loved that story, you're very talented! Your language is fantastic, especially in the first paragraph. I've never been in a carluccios that sounded so entrancing, so that was very good. The dialogue was natural and intuitive- you manage to portray emotions and deeper thoughts in subtle ways. The way you used body language to this effect was great as well.
The multiple perspectives worked well, as you very quickly manage to build a very complicated narrative out of very little. The plot was good, but there were two things I was unsure of. If Kate had only been seeing her man for seven dates, why was he asking her to marry him? I guess they'd known each other a while, but it seemed a bit odd. Secondly, if Will had Steven's ring, then where did Leo's ring come from? But other than those little points, I really liked this and think you've done a great job.
A quickfire review from Stupid there, hope I was helpful. Keep writing
Thanks for such a prompt review! What i intended was that leo's ring was Will's bad-quality ring, mistakenly brought to their table by Andy. Also, Steven was just a really desperate kind of a guy, hence the ridiculously early proposal. However I can see now you've pointed this out I should make this a bit clearer; it is a bit sprinted over. Thanks so much for your much appreciated input!
Hi ingolmatt! My name is Kora, and I'd like to go over a few things I noticed about your writing.
To begin with, I think Fortuna Salad is an awesomely descriptive short story, and I could see the scenes clearly in my mind – for instance, when Kate observes Leo bent over his plate, ripping open his meat, and swallowing whole blocks that trace his throat on the way down – things like that really spark my imagination as a reader. I think you did a great job of painting a realistic portrait of the characters and settings.
The balance between dialogue and narration was good. The conversations felt real, as well as the thoughts behind them, and at certain points I couldn't help but think back on some of my own life experiences. It was easy to fall for the characters and truly care about what happened to them, which can be a difficult thing to accomplish in short fiction. I found myself smiling at the subtle humor, frowning at the somber moments, and mentally rolling my eyes at Kelli.
I didn't see many mistakes, maybe only one spelling issue at the end, which didn't bother me.
I love a good story with interconnected characters, showing each point of view. You did a wonderful job, and your talent for writing shows. Your story is the first I've read or reviewed on this site, and I have to say, I’m glad I stumbled upon it. Great ending! The Game of Thrones reference was also a nice touch. It’s one of the only shows I watch, because of its quality in setting and characters. You have a similar quality, and I definitely look forward to more of your writing.
Thanks very much for your input! I think I see the spelling mistake you mean - will clear that up asap. This is my first submission on this site, so it's extra gratifying to read your too kind review.
Will return the favour!