I have decided to embark on a bit of a self indulgent journey, well, OK, a very large self indulgent one as I am not generally known to do "bits". The theme is to be recollections of the first time of doing or experiencing something that is now commonplace and indeed not today worthy of mention because it is the norm in the lives of most of us. Part One was my first glimpse of a Japanese made car, followed by my first experience of Chinese food and yesterday the arrival of the continental quilt. Today........
I was brought up as one of five children and had two sisters, one older and one younger than me.
I like to think that I was at ease with and sensitive to the opposite sex having grown up and experienced life with them at close quarters.
There was always a house full of our friends at any one time because we had a good play-friendly back garden, a super metal climbing frame and lashings of snacks and orange squash on hand from our doting parents. I thought nothing of playing mixed role playing games which in our minds were innocent and natural such as Doctors and Nurses, Soldiers and Nurses, Spacemen and Space Nurses, Cowboys and Cowgirls with medical training and so on following a certain theme and pattern.
My early years education was at a small town co-educational junior school and I would number a few girls amongst my best friends. When my family moved away to another area in the early 1970's one of my friends who happened to be a girl, so technically a girlfriend, took it upon herself to give me a collection of leaving presents. These included a few Robinsons Jam Gollywog figurines, merchandise from the book character Milly Molly Mandy merchandise and some miscellaneous ornaments of a pony/horse type.
In retrospect I suspect that she was just having a spring clean of her belongings but I acknowledged the sentiment with grateful thanks. I soon swopped the whole lot at my new school for some Tonka Toys.
I think she would have been pleased at my resourcefulness.
As a new arrival a new town it took some time for me to find my bearings but as soon as the school term commenced I was easily integrated into a whole new set of friends.
The age group of 9 to 11, of which I was now part, represented a time of a growing awareness of girls amongst us lads.
Rumours and whispers were rife about who fancied who and the phrase about "going on" was mentioned but having arrived from a different part of the country the customs and language may as well have been from another planet. The school had regular disco's in the assembly hall starting at 4pm and finishing when parents turned up to collect us. This was a legitimate time to talk to girls although the school staff prowled about to make sure there was no physical contact. Slade, The Sweet, Alvin Stardust, Suzi Quattro and the like were the soundtrack for that particular phase in my life.
I seem to recall that I was always getting invited to girls' birthday parties and would often be the only boy there so I took this to be a reasonable indication of popularity. Perhaps the curious parents of the celebrating child just wanted to see for themselves this polite new boy who wore a sports jacket and slacks. Fortunately my style was some years before William Hague emerged on the scene and irrevocably my smart attire became associated with that idiot.
One girl always seemed to be smiling at me at the same parties. We seemed to assume the roles of girlfriend and boyfriend although never held hands or, to my knowledge, even spoke to each other. This apparently was the assumption for the next five years, a sort of arranged betrothal by proxy or default. It became a bit of an in joke amongst my school mates. For those imagining this to be the beginning of a schoolyard romance that led, eventually to marriage are completely mistaken. Out of the five year, so called relationship, we were in fact at different schools for three of them. So there. Lesley Whitehand, if you ever get to read this I liked you a bit but we were never compatible. I hope you have had a good life over the last 40 years since we "broke up".
My subsequent passing of the 11 plus exam and entry to an all boys Grammar School represented a retrograde step in my slowly emerging confidence with the ladies.
It was some four years of feeling hot and bothered in the company of girls out of school before I summoned up enough courage to invite one to a disco in the village hall. Amazingly she agreed but copped off with an older boy at an early stage in the evening.
If you think that nothing could be worse than being dumped well, consider that I had to wait around after the disco for my dad to pick me up and drive the girl back to her house as well. Totally cringeworthy.
We moved house again, not because of my track record with girls, but through my Father's job. The next town was as far from the previous sleepy and backward places as you could imagine.
It was a bustling market town and being only six or so miles away from a major regional city all the attractions for a 17 year old were close by including cinemas, record shops, performance venues and the like. I quickly assimilated into the school and social scene and gradually regained some of my shattered confidence with girls. After a couple of terms I got a date.
The first time for everything, in this instance ,was going out for a date and a meal.
This event is commonplace now ,what with the great range and variety of fast food restaurants, foodie pubs, cafes, bistro's and other outlets serving every conceivable ethnic and home made meal.
The phrase 'lets go out for meal' was for my seventeen years quite an undertaking, a commitment and a big gamble.
The choice in the local town was in those days limited to just a restaurant above a pub but the displayed menu that I had studied a few days before the date was within my budget and as I was not yet driving we could walk down from her mum and dad's house.
I scrubbed up well and felt that with a liberal splashing of Brut aftershave on my downy cheeks I was the embodiment of sophistication for my age group. The girl looked nice as well.
Nerves had knotted up my stomach and befuddled my brain as I ordered a gammon steak with a fried egg, chips and peas. A classic mainstay of a restaurant above a pub in 1980.
For some reason I was fooling myself that all previous incidences of my feeling and being sick immediately after eating this menu item had been a freakish occurrence rather than , in truth, a persistent and allergic reaction to one or more of the ingredients.
Sitting down and with some awkwardly forced small talk about school and favourite teachers, who had been on Top of The Pops that week, or my repertoire of Monty Python impressions I felt the liaison was going well.
I had not counted on my meal evoking a stirring and gagging so quickly but, persisting under a sweat beaded brow and shiny nose, I cleared my plate rapidly.
The rest of the evening, or rather the final ten minutes of a total elapsed time of under an hour for the whole date , was spent alone in the gents loo as I inevitably and predictably chucked up everything including the tea I had eaten upon getting home from school.
Credit to the girl, I'm sorry I cannot recall her name, she waited patiently for me to emerge and kindly walked me home.
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