Rewind..

Top Row... Chris Heyes, Judith Hillier, Jacqui Coughlan, Susan Barlow, Chris Lawrenson, Susan Benbow, Oonagh Waterhouse, Front Row: Wendy Boardman, Joyce Whitley, Janet Bradshaw, Diane Goddard, Kim Hewitt, Carol Wilson and Beverley Dyson.

Back to 1972......

Here's a question for the translucent masses, Did I try to go out with a girl called Christine Lawrenson at one point?, I personally have no idea any more, 32 years of washing my brain with beer has taken it's toll.

My experiences with girls were not excellent at school. I was seeing Yvonne Blakemore but, in retrospect, I don't think she was "seeing" me. I can recall quite vividly around March 12th 1971 at 4.15 pm she kissed me when I was seated on a low wall down the road from the school, I clowned and fell off the wall for effect, I don't think I've hit the ground yet........

In the later school years, my very good friend Joe Haines and his girlfriend Katrina Burns tried to fix me up with Christine Lees and I remember snogging with her in Katrina's garden shed (under a sheet because we were both excessively shy) - I foolishly gave her a love bite on her neck like a complete rookie and arranged to see her on the Friday night, Joe came with me for support and I, shy again, asked him to go and knock on their front door, he did and her dad grabbed him by the scruff of the neck (while I waited oblivious in the stairwell) well, talk about nipping a relationship in the bud, I don't think she talked to me for a month.

I do remember letching after the aforementioned Chris Lawrenson though, can't remember any associated stories, so I think she gave me the brush off. Now, there's an interesting snippet to publish on the web, Catherine Cookson eat your heart out!

The other thing I remember is that I was in the final year, 1974, and there was a lovely 15 year old girl I really fancied in the fourth year, I'd bumped into her (on purpose) a few times in the corridor and we'd expressed interest in each other. The school disco was the meeting place, the plan was set, the night of the disco, I remember walking across the hall floor and saying to her that we were definitely going to have a dance, then, at some point in the night (before THE dance) some boy kicked the divider in at the boys toilets. This was discovered and the dance was stopped. All the girls were sent out into the yard and the boys were grilled, and grilled, nobody admitted guilt and all the girls went home, and that was that.

And if you take all the pathetic stories and stack them on top of one another, you'll have created my life.........