Nearly a Romantic Tale.

Once upon a time I knew a girl called Dorothy Parker. Notwithstanding her oddly anachronistic name (I never knew another girl of her generation called Dorothy) she was, by common consent, the best looking girl at my school. She was certainly the best looking girl in the post-school gang of which I was a member. Unfortunately, Dorothy never fancied me. Her twin sister Catherine did, and Catherine was attractive enough in her own right, but Dorothy had the better teeth. Life always nearly worked out for me, but never quite completely.

When we were around seventeen or eighteen, several members of our gang went to a fancy dress event, but only two of us wore fancy dress – Dorothy and me. I went as Sinbad the Sailor in a costume made by my mother who hadn’t a clue what a mediaeval Arabic sailor’s costume should look like. (Fortunately, nobody else did either so I got away with it.) By a strange coincidence, Dorothy went as Scheherazade in a much better costume and looked every inch the mediaeval Arab princess. We had our picture taken by a press photographer, standing close, which appeared in a subsequent issue of the local paper. That was the closest I ever got to Dorothy.

Anyway, as the evening drew to a close and I drew ever closer to being unable to stand, I dropped my beer glass (which was empty, I’m proud to say.) I picked up most of the pieces, and then discovered that my finger was bleeding quite profusely. Just as I was looking at it thinking ‘I wonder what I should do now,’ I saw a hand stretch out and take hold of mine. And then I saw a second hand produce a handkerchief. And then the two hands worked in unison to bind up my injured digit. I turned to look at the source of such sweet succour and it wasn’t Dorothy, but another girl of similar age who was even more beautiful. She was smiling and saying nice things to me. (I don’t remember what they were – really I don’t – but I remember they were nice.)

Well, it was one of those moments when life hands you a single pearl among the million pieces of nutty slack. Life worked out. Our eyes met across a bloody handkerchief and I was smitten. We started dating three days later.

That was the infamous Pauline McNicol, of whom mention has been made on this blog before. Such a pretty name for such a pretty colleen (her dad being an Irish bricklayer, you understand.) She was the one who finished with me a month later because, she said, I wasn’t domineering enough. If only I’d known she wanted to be dominated…

So, life nearly worked out, but not quite completely.