First love (or rather lust)

Hey, baby.
You go your way, and I'll go mine.
But in the meantime...

I’d worked with Louise for a couple of years. She was younger than me, and somehow that felt wrong, but I fancied her nonetheless.

I was as clueless at 18 about whether somebody fancied me as I am at 31.

Sometimes only direct action will do, and if the first strike is landed by the other side, then so much the better.

A group of us from the Nursing Home that I worked in over the weekends and holidays had decided to go to the 80s night – The Maggie Thatcher Experience – at Fifth Avenue nightclub on the Southsea seafront, just along from the historic Portsmouth Harbour, home of the Mary Rose and Lord Nelson’s HMS Victory.

The owners of the club probably thought that naming it after a chic road in Manhattan would give it a veneer of class. However, the queue of pre pubescent girls in short skirts, killer heels and Boy George style eye make up, as well as the fact that all drinks were 80p (about $1.60) soon dispelled any delusions of class.

Not that it mattered.

We danced to Madonna, Duran Duran and goodness knows what else, and when at 1.50am the DJ put on the slow tunes, I made my move.

Well, actually I didn’t, she did. Smooching to the sounds of Phyllis Nelson it slowly -  but surely - dawned on me that my ardor might be reciprocated. That night on her parents doorstep it was.

Two and a half years later it all came to a bitter and unpleasant end.

I’m as clueless at 31 as I was at 18 for identifying, and weeding out the psychos…