Monthly comp – March 2022

Lols, oh dear. I’m happy. I am. Happy happy happy. Tinking the happiest of thoughts. And not failing whatsoever. *goes off to see what big, fat li-, I mean what I can do* 😬😬 haha

I lied.

Summer of sixty-one – when Percy Faith’s ‘Theme for a Summer Place’ persistently played along the telegraph wires, exhaling hauntingly into the ether – was one of much excitement and promise for the girls of the small Hertfordshire village where I lived, thanks to a recent influx into the village of no fewer than eight new males, mostly of an age to be of interest.

Sean, Christy Mick and Joe, (Liam a bit young), Irish and each of them fascinatingly different in appearance and personality, moved into the estate opposite my parents’ bungalow. South through the village, cousins John and Steve (John’s mother owned and managed the Wool Shop) To the north, newly-occupying another  bungalow, another Steve and, a younger brother, Jack.

In the following months those who had the freedom, the confidence, the knowledge, made progress,  aided and  empowered by such songs as Helen Shapiro’s ‘Don’t treat me like a child’;  Billy Fury’s ‘Halfway to Paradise’ and Elvis’s ‘Surrender.’

Me, I got German measles. And my parents were very strict.

So it was April 1963, a youth club trip to The Fifty Nine Club in Hackney Wick, run by the “Ton up Vicar  before the Steve living to the north and I “got together” (i.e. snogged on the coach throughout the journey home.)

A date for the following night was made: the  cinema  in Bishop Stortford.

“Telling” my parents opened a floodgate of questions:

“How old?”

“Eighteen”

“How get there?”

“Bus” (Taken as read, catching the last one back meant leaving thirty minutes before the film ended)

“Has he a job?”

“Yes.” (And gives his mother £3 10s of his wages every  week.)

“What qualifications?”

“A levels.” Getting fed up. “He was accepted for Medical School, but changed his mind!” Then, sensing victory, “We’re only going to the cinema – it’s not as if I’m intending  marrying him!”

That April date was fifty-nine years ago. I knew before the end that night, waiting to catch the bus home, I’d found the man I could be me with. And three and a half years later, we did marry. And have lived happy ever after.

And  I thank my lucky stars that his parents, thinking of the cost of medical school, sold their house in Ponders End and moved out of London, so as to free up cash to fund it, unaware he’d change his mind.

[394 words]

Happiness Is An Old Slut

Y’know, there were a time – before the Great Dark – when I would chase Happiness. Relentless in my pursuit, I would pin her with a heated stare onto the walls of my life, undress her slow and vulgar, dry fingerin’ the places where she kept her best secrets. But even when I caught her, had my way with her, I knew Happiness – the old slut – weren’t never mine to keep.

Then the Great Dark came, increasin’ the deadness I felt inside whenever she left, a hundredfold. So much death inside somethin’ so small and fragile as the human heart, well –it left me colder than grief and twice as wounded. It were three years into those dark days, that I found the love of my life, Meaning. She were a fine woman, pristine in a way that made an old dog like me wanna be somebody’s next of kin.

But her, her I could not touch even though I’d sought her far and wide. No matter how close we grew, I couldn’t so much as bring my hand to glance the soft underside of her cheek the way I longed to. Still, I found her when I proved my worth, when I bested myself, when I moved forward alone and contained. I found her in the absence of touch and other, and when I spoke the truth, ‘specially the ones that left me exposed to the world.

She was there when I took care of myself, when I watched the company I kept. And even though I could not hold her, show her how much a man like me could love the woman she was, Meaning set me free. And free I remained. Roamin’ dark lands, I was filled with sweet wonder and understandin’, my quest a quiet, triumphant mountain pass spiralin’ me home. It were to this quest – even more so than Meaning, who now always rode alongside me – that I belonged.

Who knows, perhaps it were better this way, the chance to meet my kindred folk long lost on life’s path, leavin’ me lonely and collectin’ strays for associates. Desire for companionship, and the beauty of that feeling, faded to naught but dirt in my mouth. Yet even if it’s too late for anything but peace, knowing it were a good life despite my worst choices – and perhaps even because of them – would make it all worthwhile in the end, when these dark days turn to light.

[408 words]

Thank you Ath, for comp and comments, and very well done Knicks. Seagreen (who gave me lovely images), and Kate., whose teddy could well be a friend of mine,