KISS

The love was there, no doubt about it. As long as they had known each other they had always shared a private, unequal love; his for her greater than hers for him, he the lover, she the loved.

To her, he was her comforter, companion and counsellor. Old enough to be her father, he never judged, always listened, and never had to try to see the best in her, because that was all he ever saw. He was the one who saw right through her and loved her still, and when she was sad, she looked at herself through his eyes and was dazzled.

To him, she was everything he wanted. When they first met, he saw her beauty, and she was, in truth, stunning; but in time he came to see that beauty was the least of her. Just as women learn to be attracted to the men they love, men learn to love the women they are attracted to, but he would have loved her if he'd have been blind. She was funny and clever, kind and sensitive, innocent and vulnerable ,all of which made him want to fold her in his arms and keep her safe every bit as much as he wanted to make love to her.

They both knew that they would never be together. For a long time they shared the pretence that it was because of the difference in their ages, which was sweet of her; the truth was that even on his best day in his best year, she would never have looked at him twice. She could have had any man she wanted. He was, at best...nice.

And so, over the years they grew together and became like a pair of comfortable shoes. They came to realize that the each filled a need in the other. He gave her his insight and his wisdom, and she gave him one last mad romantic dream to follow. He gave her experience, she, without ever laying a finger on him, gave him sex.

With time, their feelings changed, of course. Over the years, by nothing more sinister than osmosis, he came to be close to the centre of her world. When something made her laugh, he was the person she shared it with. When something made her cry, he was the one she called. When she saw something amazing, he was the one she wished had been there to see it with her, and one day she realized, with an uncomfortable bump, that this fairly funny, fairly clever and basically unremarkable middle-aged man was the best friend she had ever had.

When he first saw her, he thought the same as any man thought when he saw a woman like her; but as she grew more dear to him, whilst he still dreamed of laying with her, rather than them making love, he imagined her sleeping with her head on his chest as he felt the strange electricity of skin against skin, or kissing her neck and shoulders whilst his fingertips brushed the curve of the base of her back; no longer thinking about their being lovers, but the two of them being as close in body as they were in their hearts. He knew it would never be, and somehow he clung on to just enough sense to realize that although he could not have everything he wanted, there was no reason to throw away the something that they had.

And so the two of them grew together like honeysuckle and ivy, and the folks of the small town they lived in grew accustomed to the sight of the strange couple; the beauty and man who could have been her father; but they never understood, and never asked; and the pair never told.

One night, they sat on his sofa watching a film together, his hand in her lap and her head on his shoulder, when he caught the smell of her hair and realized what it was he wanted most; and as he thought the thought, the thought became a wish wordlessly breathed into life.

One day, he thought, she'll kiss me. Not the fond kisses on the cheek we give each other all the time. Not the warm, affectionate kisses she plants on the top of my head as I sit, or the loving but sexless kisses I lay on her hand. No; one day she'll be happy or emotional or drunk or tired or just impulsive and she'll kiss me – soft and wet and deep – and that will be all. No frantic groping or tearing at clothes, no falling into bed, no ill-judged passion; just a kiss. And we'll both be a bit sheepish afterwards, we probably won't speak for a day or two and then we'll pretend to forget all about it.

There's one thing she'll never know, though. Nobody will. I'll take that memory, and put it in a special box in my heart, along with all my greatest treasures, and for the rest of my life I will always be able to take it out and look at it. When I die, if there is anyone by my bedside, they'll see a faint smile cross my face and wonder what I'm thinking; but nobody, even those who know me best won't know.

I'll be thinking about the time she kissed me.

The demon in the glass

Demon In The Glass

Last night, not for the first time, I sat drinking pisco with the man I had killed more than thirty years ago; his glass untouched as he nursed a Quilmes. He looked much as he had the first and last time I saw him alive; his olive drab uniform tunic soaked with blood from the wound in his chest and his trousers with piss and shit where he had emptied himself as died. All that had changed was the look of dumb ox surprise and confusion on his face as I’d shot him.

Eduardo had come to see me for years. The first time I saw him was from my bedroom window at night, standing in the ghastly yellow streetlight, calmly looking straight at me. For a long time that was how it was. From time to time I’d see him at a distance, standing across the street as I filled my car, sitting alone at a pub table, or in a football crowd, watching me as I watched the game, always in the same bloodstained uniform. Over time he came closer, watching from the front row when I was on stage or two or three places behind me in a queue; until one night I was driving home, looked in my rear-view mirror and saw him sitting in the back seat. I must have pulled some sort of comedy holyfuckingshit! face, because he laughed; and then, for the first time, I heard him speak.

“You got old, English. Fat. At least I'm still young. Always will be.”

“Yeah, but I'm not the one spending eternity in piss-stained trousers.”

We laughed like idiots, and from that point on, I had a drinking partner. It was, obviously, always an odd relationship; not least because one of us was dead; but aside from that, Eduardo insisted that whenever we were together we drank until we passed out; which, to be honest, suited me just fine. There was never any animosity between us, nor had I ever been afraid of him. It seemed that we belonged together. We would talk late into the night about anything and everything; whether in Spanish or English I have no idea. We just talked. He told me about the Afterlife - ‘boring as shit’, apparently; quizzed me about my sex life; ‘more boring than the Afterlife’, it seems (although given that he died aged 19, it’s hard to see how colourful his could have been) but mostly, to be honest, we just drank.

One thing, though, we never spoke about. It was always there, never discussed; the guerilla in the room. There had always been one question in my mind, ever since that day. In the quiet of many sleep-stripped nights I had run those few seconds over in my mind; thousands upon thousands of times, but had never got there.

That day, in the steel-grey half light of an Antarctic dawn, as I rounded a wall of sandbags, I had seen an enemy in front of me and shot him dead. It was war, I was a soldier, so was he. He was not the only man I had ever killed. Christ, he wasn't even the only man I killed that day, but something about this one had gnawed on my mind like a rat. The part that I played again and again, Zapruder-style, was the moment before I fired; his right arm swinging his weapon away from his body, his left coming toward me. Was he bringing up his rifle to fire, or throwing it away, and reaching out in surrender? A half a second's hesitation, I would have known. A second's, and it might have been me who died; but however many times I had told myself that I had done the only thing I could have, it kept coming back. Had I killed a man – a boy - who had surrendered? A soldier has no need of a conscience; from day one you learn that the idea is not to die for your country, but to make sure the other poor bastard dies for his; but a soldier is also a man, and a man does. Wondering ate at me like cancer. Soldier or murderer? What's more, I knew he knew, but the bastard never said a word.
I had come back from that war damaged; many of us did. These days, they try and give the lads the softest landing they can, with counselling and pastoral care; even so, if you want to find a veteran, look the prisons and cardboard cities and homeless hostels first. In my day it was simply a matter of bottling it up and hitting the bottle; only to finish up with civilian doctors who thought that the filth of war could be washed away with medicine.Those of us who battle had broken showed our scars in different ways. Some discovered religion or Good Works and found some peace that way. Good luck with that, lads; but in your hearts you know there is no heaven for men like us. Some became wife-beating thugs, lashing out at anyone and everyone, for want of a way of screaming their anger and hurt. Others became mercenaries, stalking the meaningless battlefields of Africa's dust bowl wars, waiting for the angels of death they served to take them home. Others still found refuge in madness. For me, as with many others, it was drugs and sex and drink and guilt.

Until last night, I hadn't seen Eduardo in weeks. The medicines the doctors gave me had been slowing me down and clogging my thoughts, so I'd stopped taking them, and my mind had begun to clear. I'd made a little money, and bought some blow and some grass to congratulate myself when, sure enough, there he was. Trust him to turn up for a party. We hit it hard, he and I, and after we had gone through all the drugs, and most of the booze, I finally plucked up the courage to speak.

“Edo – I need you to tell me something”
“I know. It's what you've wanted to know since before I came here. It's why I came in the first place”
“Well?”
"You want to know if, the day I died, I was going to fight you or not.”
“If you know that, you know how much it matters to me. I've gone mad wondering, and all the time you knew.”
“Yes – I know. It kills you a little more every day”
“So why haven't you said anything?”
“I wanted to – loads of times – but he won't let me.”
“Who won't let you?”

There was a pause

“My demon” He said.
“What? What the fuck? What do you mean, 'demon'?”“You know exactly what a demon is” he replied “Just like you know what a ghost is.”

Silence.

“Look, English; there are things about this you won't understand, but he has said I must not tell you, ever. I'm sorry. I think that is your punishment.”
“But we're friends, you and I. Just tell me...”
“It's not that I don't want to. I just can't. The demon says I mustn't; and trust me – there are worse things than just being dead.”
“I need to know, Edo."
“I know; but I'm sorry. As long as the demon is alive, you never will.”

There was a long silence before the obvious question.

“So. How do I kill him?”
“You're joking!”
“I said – how do I kill him?”
“I don't know – he's a tricky bastard – he will mess with your mind. He'll use every trick he has to confuse you. This is dangerous, English, very, very dangerous.”
“Where is he, and how do I kill him?”
“Get your gun, and I'll show you – but be careful; he will play games with you. Don't let him get into your head.”

From a drawer in the sideboard I took out my gun; the Browning 9 I'd kept all those years. It still nestled into my hand like the hand of a steel lover. With his head, Eduardo pointed me toward the closed curtain. I eased off the safety and racked a round into the chamber.
Realizing how hard I was panting, I slowed my breathing down, and then paused. Was killing this demon the only way? Could Eduardo be persuaded somehow to tell me the truth? I didn't think so. Could I live without knowing? Absolutely not. I waited a heartbeat and ripped back the curtain.

There he was. A real, live demon. No horns, no tail, no brimstone; he looked just like a man. My height and build, with grey hair just like mine, he stood, unsteady, his left hand holding a gun.

Eduardo, horrified, shouted out

“Be strong, English! He's trying to confuse you! It is him!”

And then I saw. He looked just like me. He had changed his appearance to look like, he thought, someone I would never hurt. What the stupid bastard didn't know was that if there was one more soul I would happily send to hell, he looked exactly like the demon in the window. I smiled. He smiled back at me, more wolf than man, and I knew I could kill him. I shoved the barrel of my gun into his mouth, and at the same time tasted rancid, oily metal where he had thrust his gun into mine. I had to be quick – no time to think – I pulled

And so tonight, for the first time, you sit, with your wine, your coffee or whatever, being told a story by a man who I killed last night.

Five Lies

Five Lies

#5: Pringles are not any more intrinsically 'fun' than any other snack food. In fact, they are the saddest of snacks, being made from a paste formed from the dust of loneliness and the tears of heartbreak, fried in a mixture of rejection and regret.

#4: The paints which every paint manufacturer make that claim to cover completely in one coat, needless to say, don't. What are you going to do though? Take your bedroom wall to the shop? They've got you cold

#3: The cheque, as the person you are telling this to knows full well, is never, ever in the post

#2: 'Serves two' provided, of course, that the two in question are an anorexic and a very small child who has just eaten a large meal.

#1: The epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest story in human history. Thought to date from c2150 BC, it is almost inconceivably ancient.

Although I haven't read it myself, it's a reasonable assumption that at some point someone male says to someone female (in ancient Sumerian, of course) 'It's OK, we can just cuddle'

And you know what? He didn't respect her in the morning, either.

The first time she kissed me, she picked my pocket. She stole my St Christopher and my moral compass. I knew she did, because from that first moment on I was lost forever

Remembering Holding Hands

On a hazy summer day, the World War II re-enactment people had come to a seaside town in Southern England.

Union Jack bunting fluttered and young women in vintage clothes and charity shop earrings, their coiffed hair and scarlet lipstick giving them the look of 1940s pin up girls, danced with men in ill-fitting period uniforms, their hair brylcreemed and moustaches waxed. A couple of restored military vehicles were parked incongruously on the esplanade, and by the floral clock a band played the music of Glenn Miller and Vera Lynn.

In front of the band, among the bright young things in the seamed stockings and wartime dresses, a number of elderly couples danced somewhat sheepishly. The oldest of them hardly moved, holding each other as much for support as anything else, but most showed a slow-motion recollection of the Saturday night dances of years gone by. After a few numbers, a singer came on stage, a smoky voiced chanteuse with a look that was all high-tar cigarettes and low-life dives; and when she sang, I noticed something beautiful.

“That certain night, the night we met,
There was magic abroad in the air
There were angels dining at the Ritz
And a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square”

Two of the elderly dancers paused for a heartbeat, and their smiles widened, just a little. As I watched a change came over them, but couldn't, for a moment pin down. Still a husband and wife in their eighties, their clothes were still shabby but clean, their shoes still old but polished; the bodies still fit together as familiarly as hands, but in their eyes they were two new young lovers.

“How strange it was how sweet and strange,
There was never a dream to compare
With that hazy, crazy night we met
When a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. “

The two of them had closed out the world, and were dancing on memories without a word to be said, and as they glided off into a time in their past, after a while I drifted away into mine.

----oOo---

I was, what - nineteen or twenty? Something like that, and I was with a student nurse called Lisa. She was sunny and happy, tender and kind, and was unlike any girl I'd been with before. I was as shallow and superficial as any nineteen year old, and it was new to me to find someone I wanted to spend time with just for the love of spending time with them.

Someone who felt good not because she was a trophy to show off or a body to explore, but who made me feel safe and happy, simply by being. Someone, I realized with a jolt, that I had fallen in love with. And that was something I knew nothing about.

I'd been looking for love and was in love with love, but had never truly believed it would ever happen. When I realized that it had, my one thought was “What if she doesn't feel the same?”; because the one thing I did know was that no-one was about to love me.

I said nothing, believing that if I did, she would just smile her sweet smile, let me down gently as you would a child, and I would be lost.

We went down for a couple of days to a seaside town much like the one I was now. A friend of hers was having a party, so we took the opportunity to have some time away. For reasons I don't recall, we travelled down by bus. We met at Victoria Coach Station on a sweltering afternoon,and I still remember seeing her through the crowd. Dressed head to toe in white, her blonde hair held off her face with a twisted scarf, she was carrying a battered leather suitcase straight out of an old film. I called her name, and as she turned to me and smiled, she was the most romantic sight I'd ever seen.

The journey was long and dull, and we fell into the numb half-sleep of travel, but after a while, I felt Lisa's hand squeeze mine.

“Look..” She whispered

A couple of seats down from us sat a very elderly couple. I'd noticed them earlier,as they had needed to be helped onto the bus back in London. They had been sitting holding hands for the entire journey, and now the old lady was sleeping peacefully, her head resting on her husband's shoulder, their fingers still intertwined.

“That'll be us one day”

I had never been so happy in my life. I wanted to shout, laugh and punch the air. I wanted to run up and down the bus telling everyone about this incredible feeling I was the first person in the world to have. I felt  better than James Brown. No words can explain it, but if you've ever been in love with someone who loved you back, you'll understand. It's an experience that millions of us have had, but that is never less than the greatest thing in history. It is as alive as you will ever feel. Even all these years later, after all the other loves in my life, when I remember that moment, I can still feel that rush of happiness as intensely as when it happened.

And we were happy for a while; but time passes, people drift apart, and suffice to say that Lisa and I are never going to dance on a seaside promenade in our old age, whilst a band plays our special tune. If I had my time over again, that wouldn't change; it was what it was, and 'for a while' was all it was ever meant to be. When I look back now,as I did watching that old couple dancing by the sea, I don't remember much about our time together, really; but that magical moment always stays with me – so do me a favour, will you?

If you know a woman named Lisa who used to be a nurse, ask her if she's the one I've been telling you about.

And tell her that Mick says thank you.

This is not for you

I started writing something today which I hope you'll like, but unfortunately it isn't finished, so until I have something new, here, somewhat revised, is a poem I wrote a while back. If you read 'Love in the time of chip shops', this was written in the aftermath of that relationship. I hope you like it.

This is not for you

Don't believe that you were the love of my life
From the first time I kissed you until the day I died

Don't believe that I would have waited all night in the rain for a glimpse of you,
And turned my back on all who love me for one last kiss

Don't believe that after all this time, I still wake in the night
And smell your hair and taste you on my tongue

Don't believe that when I kissed your sleeping lips and woke you
I knew that I was home

Don't believe that I would forgive you anything, give you everything,
Never leave you, betray you or ever make you cry

Don't believe that I would have picked you up again
No matter how often you fell

Don't believe that your eyes made my heart sing
And that now I have no music left

Don't believe that you gave me my greatest joy and my worst despair
And that I lived my life in those few short months with you

Don't believe, though all of it is true
Cross my broken heart.

Love in the time of chip shops (slight return)

Lazy bastard that I am, I haven't written a word today, so, with apologies to anyone who's already read this, instead of something new, here's something from a couple of years ago. I have, however, written a postscript...

. A couple of quick thoughts on adultery before I start, though. It has become fashionable to refer to extra-marital shenanigans as ‘cheating’. Traditionally it was called ‘being unfaithful’. Well, it isn't cheating if you haven’t broken any of the rules of your marriage, and it isn't being unfaithful if there is no covenant of faith to stop you doing it. Any of you who want to express your views on my marriage are entitled to do so once you've lived through it. There’s stuff you don’t know, the relevant parts of which I will tell you about in due course. Two things I have learned from life though – one is that men’s faithfulness to their wives is generally in inverse ratio to their opportunities not to be, and, as someone who has slept with far, far too many married women, I can assure you that the only man a happily married woman has sex with is her husband. Anyway – to begin at the beginning – return with me, my friends, to 1989.... At that time, in a hot summer over twenty years ago, I was working as a driving instructor in Brixton. This meant covering the same few streets many times over in the course of the day, and naturally I came to know many of the locals by sight. Brixton being Brixton, some were eccentric or colourful, some outrageous, but nearly all interesting in some way. There was always one, though, who especially caught my eye. She was a stunning young woman who lived in the street where I parked my car. I always used to see with two small girls, who might have been her younger sisters or might have been her children, and sometimes with a surly-looking sour-faced chav too. She was very, very beautiful – far out of my league – slinky and sexy with an amazing full, sensual mouth and the most sensational body; slim and almost boyish, but at the same time incredibly feminine. What always struck me though, was that she always looked terribly sad. I often used to wonder why, and if she’d look even lovelier if she were happy, but this was academic. I’m not the worst looking bloke in the world, nor do I have the world’s worst personality, but I know my limits, and not only did this woman not know I existed, but she was always going to be way beyond my reach. A one day, a day much like any other, I was driving past the woman’s house when I had to stop and wait while she parked the great barge of a Cortina she drove back then. She actually parked it pretty well, getting a big car into a small space, and as she looked up I smiled and made a ‘not bad’ sort of gesture. Then she did something which changed my life forever. She smiled back... My friends, I have seen the sun rise through the clouds in the High Andes and seen it set over the lagoon at Venice. I have seen a flock of a million pink flamingos taking flight from Lake Victoria and I have flown above the Grand Canyon, seen the pleasure gardens of the Alhambra and the palaces of the Forbidden City, but I had never, ever in my life seen anything as stunningly beautiful as that smile, and twenty years on I still haven’t. From that moment, I was lost, utterly infatuated and helpless. Looking back, even I can’t quite explain the state I found myself in. All my life I had been confident around and assured with women. I don’t take much pride in this, but since adolescence I had been an inveterate serial shagger. The third time I ever had sex I was cheating on the girl who only a few days before had unburdened me of my virginity; I had wandered through the female population of South London like a kid locked overnight in a sweetshop, and one of my best friends, a former flatmate, had once said that he knew that I had finally grown up because I now only slept with women I was actually attracted to. One thing I certainly didn’t do was get schoolgirl crushes. This isn’t confessional and it isn’t bragging; I tell you this to establish some context for you to understand how out of character what happened next was. The first thing was that from that point on, every time I saw my mysterious beauty, she would smile and wave; cheerfully if she was with the kids, sexily if she was driving alone and, best of all, if she was with the surly-looking chav, ever so, ever so discreetly. So far, so good; in the waving and smiling departments all my needs were being met, no complaints there, we were w’ing and s’ing like champions, but how was I going to meet her? I tried everything I could think of. I spent ages tinkering meaninglessly at my car in the hope she’d pass by. Never did. I religiously drove past the school where the oldest child went in the hope of catching her alone and not with the other mums. No chance. The strange thing was that Brixton Hill was like a little village where everybody knew everybody else, but although everyone I asked about her knew who I meant, none of them had the foggiest idea who she was. It was though I was trying to catch a beautiful ghost. What was I going to do? I couldn’t just knock on her door in case the S-L C answered, but if I shadowed her movements any more closely I risked getting arrested for stalking. I thought about little else day and night (I must have given some rubbish driving lessons around that time) and so I was probably obsessing about it the day I walked over to my car and found a note stuck beneath the wiper... “Hello” it said “Hope you’re having a good day. Jane X” underneath there was a picture of a smile. It couldn’t be her, could it? It was, though, wasn’t it? And what do you do with a note with no phone number on it? Leave a note on her car for the surly-looking chav to find? I think not. So I did the only thing I could think of; namely I carried it with me as though it was a fragment of the Shroud of Turin and read it forty times a day to divine its hidden meaning. After much analysis - linguistic, semiotic and forensic - I concluded that it came from someone called Jane, who hoped I was having a nice day and signed off with a kiss (although I didn’t discount the possibility that her surname was ‘X’ and she had actually signed it rather formally ‘Jane X’. Perhaps the S-L-C was an S.A.S officer. They always seem to be called ‘Captain T’ or ‘Major P’) so, now what? Over the next days, we worked ourselves into a near-frenzy of smiling & waving until one afternoon I saw her and the children doing what can only be described as loitering by my car. The time had come for the great seducer to do what he did best. I straightened my tie, checked my reflection in a shop window, turned up the louche to 11 and sashayed over to where the mysterious lovely stood waiting. Mysterious Lovely: “Hello” Me: “Errrrrrrrrrr” ML: “How are you today?” Me: “Ummmmmm” She laughed a rich velvety laugh, and I composed myself enough to get out some actual words. Me: “I’m Mick. And you are?” ML (gamely managing not to start with ‘du-urrrrr!’ ): “I’m Jane” Me: “Umm. Right. Great. Well, stay in touch” BOLLOCKSBOLLOCKSBOLLOCKSBOLLLOCKSBOLLOCKS!!!!SHITSHITSHITSHIT!!!!!ARRRRGGGHH!! I mean, I was good in situations like that. I knew exactly how to render women defenceless with my wit and charm (not to mention the boyish good looks* and manly shoulders) and here I am behaving like a particularly sheltered eleven year old with a crush on his mate’s older sister. I had to face facts; it was over before it had begun. I’d had my chance and I’d blown it. Or so I thought... (*Only available on pre-1990 model Mickeyboys) Faint heart, as they say, ne’er won fair lady. Actually, for most of my childhood I had honestly believed that the saying was, as my father had told me “Faint heart never f*cked a pig”, but apparently it isn’t. As many of you know, I’ve done some scary things in my time, things that required courage, determination, focus and a cool head, and this would be no different. I would stalk my prey like a jungle tiger, albeit rather like a sweaty tiger with a nervous stammer and an embarrassing erection. She would not escape my clutches a second time. I vowed unceasing, unsleeping vigilance. I would not rest, no matter how long I had to wait, until I found a chance to speak to her again. I was a man with a dream. Days, weeks, months, even years would be no obstacle to my passion. However long it took, I would not be deterred. I would have another chance. Which, as it happened, came the following afternoon. You know those sudden summer rainstorms? The ones which come from nowhere and suddenly saturate everything and make the drains bubble up like fountains? Well, it was one of those days. I had come off lessons and put myself on reception, the better to keep a lookout for the lovely Jane, and was quietly grateful that I wasn’t out teaching in a storm like that when I saw her car pulling up outside the chip shop next door. Zooming out of the shop in a cloud of testosterone and desperation, I raced round to the chippie to see the object of my desire standing at the back of possibly the longest queue ever recorded in a takeaway establishment anywhere in the European Union. It took bloody hours. Seriously. I stood there in the bucketing rain for what seemed an age, getting soaked through to my socks and pants, gaining three stone in moisture whilst losing two inches in height due to shrinkage, my hair plastered onto my head like paint. It was not a good look. Eventually, though, she emerged, and the S-L C and the kids got cold chips that night as we finally met properly and arranged to meet for lunch later that week. Game on! We arranged to meet at a quiet restaurant, and the mysterious Jane became a little less enigmatic. She was ten years younger than me at 20, the two children were hers, and she was married to the surly-looking-chav. She was also funny, smart, charming and absolutely lovely. We got on brilliantly and were talking and laughing like old friends whilst the restaurant staff began pointedly yawning and stacking chairs onto tables around us. When we finally got the hint and left, we went to her car and snogged the faces off each other like hyperhormonal adolescents. This was definitely heading in the right direction. Gentle readers, I must now draw the veil of decency over what transpired over the succeeding weeks and months, except to discreetly hint that it consisted of a great deal of sweet, sweet loving, of the very highest calibre. It wasn't just that, though. I had never; have never met anyone with who I was happier with – anyone who made me happier to be who I am – and anyone who I've tried harder to be worthy of. We saw each other every chance we got, and, as is the way of such things, couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It wasn’t long though, before things started to go wrong; but not in the way you might think. There are rules about these kinds of relationships. No ties, no jealousy, no empty promises and everything is about both having fun. We both knew the rules, but didn’t even realize that we were breaking every one of them. It was about this time that I made the second biggest mistake of my life. Before we knew what was happening, Jane and I were head over heels in love with each other. This was not going to end well. Time went by, and we fell deeper and deeper in love. We knew it was wrong, but we couldn’t imagine not being together. We lived for the hours we could snatch together; but slowly reality dawned. We were worlds apart in age and life experience came from totally different backgrounds and, oh...what was it? – oh yes - we were married to other people. She had a husband and two children and I had a pregnant wife at home. It was never going to work out for us, and after a great deal of soul-searching, much agonising and some frankly sensational break-up sex we tearfully decided to say goodbye. We tearfully held each other one last time and went back to our other lives forever. Yeah, right After a while, the dust settled, and life returned to something like normal. I became a dad, the only job I’ve ever had that I was any good at, and I had a business to run (into the ground, as it turned out)my wife’s career went from strength to strength and we moved out of London to find a new life in the country. We grew ever closer as a family, and I never made the mistake of getting so emotionally involved with another woman again. Months turned into years and my affair with the mysterious lovely from Brixton should have become a distant memory. It should have, but it didn’t. As time went on I came to realize that if having fallen in love with her was the second greatest mistake of my life, then letting her go was the greatest. But what can you do? You can’t live in the past forever and eventually life must go on. We watched our daughter grow into a beautiful young woman, traveled the world together, had a seemingly endless procession of cats and made plans for our future; and, whatever gnawing disquiet may have been in the back of my mind, we were, for the most part, genuinely happy. Then, things got tricky. My wife, over the last years has had  battles with depression. Mine. I won’t detail them here, but suffice to say that for long periods of the last years she has effectively been my carer, and that the nature of our relationship has fundamentally changed. We are dear, dear friends, bound together by ties of trust, history and love that will never be broken; but dear friends are what we are, and although we have an amazing relationship, we stopped having a marriage years ago. That is why we decided some months ago, perfectly amicably, after twenty three years of marriage, to call it a day and I moved out. Now..... I don’t drink. Well, that may not be strictly true. I do drink, maybe once a year, maybe less, but when I do, I tear the arse right out of it. It was on one of those evenings, when I had been re-establishing my acquaintance with my good friends José Cuervo & Jim Beam, that, through an alcoholic haze I did one of the weirdest/smartest things I’ve ever done. We all know what a dangerous cocktail the internet makes when mixed with alcohol, and Facebook in particular is a minefield for the inebriated; which was, of course, exactly where I found myself. She wasn’t there. Her daughters were, though. This was before Facebook changed its privacy settings and you could still access the pages of people who hadn’t opted out. I looked at the photo galleries of her oldest daughter (who looks, incidentally, exactly like her mother did at that age – lucky girl) and there, on one of her graduation pictures were the dancing brown eyes and the dazzling smile that I had never, ever, forgotten. After nearly twenty years, I had found her. Finding her was one thing, but there didn’t seem to be much point in contacting her. She was hardly going to be single, and, if the truth be known, I was half afraid that she wouldn’t remember me. I’m not saying that I’d thought about her every day over all those years, but to be honest, I’d thought about her on most of them. She isn’t the only woman I’ve ever loved – I’ve been lucky enough to have had some incredible relationships with some amazing women – but she is the one I’ve loved the most. The thing was, I couldn’t believe that I could have meant as much to her as she did to me, so, for a couple of weeks I did what any red-blooded, passionate man would have done. Totally bottled it... The thing was, having not forgotten her in two decades apart; I was highly unlikely to forget her now. I tried, really I did, but every time I sat at a computer, which was, let’s face it, most of the time, I found myself looking at that photo on Facebook. In it, she’s looking straight down the camera, and her eyes seemed to follow me everywhere, like an infinitely sexier version of Lord Kitchener. Eventually, last September, I gave in to the inevitable. I spent about two days trying to make up a message which didn’t make me sound like a stalker and bunged it off into the ether. That was the easy part – the tough bit was going to be waiting for the reply, which, inevitably, didn’t come. Not for a month, anyway. After a few weeks of playing it cool, she sent me a text message saying of course she remembered me, she was single too now, and yes, she would love to see me again, if only to find out how fat and bald I’d become (the answer, btw ladies, is not very and not at all, in that order) Jumping out of aircraft thousands of feet in the air? Child’s play. Storming machinegun emplacements under mortar fire? A mere bagatelle. Phoning the woman I’d been thinking about for half my adult life? Scariest thing I’ve ever done. The moment she answered and I heard her voice again I knew I’d done the right thing, as the years fell away and we were as comfortable together as we always had been. When I saw her face to face, the old magic was there straight away. It turns out that she had missed me just as much as I her, and, like me, had never forgotten our time together. She’s still beautiful – the looks may have faded a little, but we’re neither of us kids anymore, and she’s still, unmistakably the woman I fancied so much from afar. She’s still got a great figure – but a great figure for a 41-year-old mother of three rather than a girl just out of her teens. The sweet, sweet loving may be a little less energetic these days, but it’s as sweet as ever it was, and my Great Folly has, after all these years, become my Great Love. At our ages, ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ sound rather silly, so we have opted for ‘fiancé’ and ‘fiancée’. Everything is out in the open with everybody concerned, we are together at last and we’re both happier than we have ever been. Wish me luck... Postscript: If I'd been hit by a bus the moment I finished writing this, I'd have died a happy man. I wasn't though, and I have to tell you that as most people who read this will have guessed, this didn't end well. It finished badly, and I was hurt more badly than I ever dreamed was possible. One day soon I'Il write that story too, but for now, I hope you enjoyed the happy part. Mick July 2014