My new friend Robert, a physics genius who had recently burnt off all his eyebrows when sticking a hairclip into an electric socket was leaving with his family for their annual pilgrimage to their chalet (garden shed on stilts) in Great Yarmouth.
‘Will, last week at Richard Flange’s party I got off with Gillian Feelgood. I mean really got off!’
‘Bollocks. She’s going out with Fiddler ’
‘Chucked him. I’m telling you, my old fella’s flashing like a belisha beacon’
‘Everyone’s feels like that the first time’
Of course, I had no idea what it felt like the first time as I’d never done it the first time.
‘I’m going down to the chalet tomorrow’
‘Shed’
‘Funny, and I want to give Gillian this rose. Will you take it round to her’?
‘Are you serious?’
‘This rose, like you, forever true, my love unbound, it cost me a pound’
‘You’ve got to be kidding’
‘It took me ages to think up’
‘It cost me a pound – is that all she’s worth?’
‘Well it did cost me a pound’
‘It may well have, but you’re not going to get very far if you tell her that. How about my love like saliva, it cost me a fiver?’
‘Very bloody funny. She’ll think I’m a dribbling idiot’
‘As opposed to just an idiot’
‘Look do this for me and I won’t tell anyone about your Christmas number one collection’
‘Tomorrow you said?’
My newly acquired sixth form confidence had brought out in me a dramatic side I never knew existed. Years of playing peacemaker to Mother and Father had fine tuned my spontaneous improvisation techniques to such a degree that I had now been chosen to play the lead in the school play. Les Cenci by Antonin Artaud, a Sado-masochistic tyrant who rapes his daughter and holds her captive. Mr Sycamore, our drama teacher, said he’d seen something in my audition that disturbed him to such an extent that casting me as the lead was a prerequisite to the show’s success. He also wrote to Mother asking if everything was alright at home.
‘My love unbound, it cost me a pound. He’s bloody nuts’. I gently tapped on Gillian’s front door praying she wasn’t in so I could return to the normality of the drama studio and the tying up of my daughter to a thirty foot wooden wheel of torture. No such luck, my heart began to quicken as her silhouette drew closer. As the door opened the light around Gillian turned to soft focus, her hallway wasn’t a hallway anymore, but a field of brilliant red poppies. Fluffy, cotton tailed bunnies hopped out of the doorway, two doves of peace whiter than white hovered above my head and Gillian tossed her head to one side, her long flowing hair following a split second later, as hair always does when you toss it in slow motion. A young couple were lying on a tartan picnic rug sharing a glass of Asti Spumante whilst sucking the juice from an overripe strawberry. The stylistics popped up from behind a golden syrup coloured haystack and began singing, ‘I can’t give you anything, but my love’.
I knew what I had to say.
‘This is the first my friend. I can hardly contain my joy. Betray them both and let us begin’
And with that I stepped over the threshold and the world changed from ten pence bags of sweets on a Saturday morning to lavish five course lunches at the Ritz. It was then I knew that although I may not make it through to dinner, I was damn sure I’d have a bloody good lunch.
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