Playing the Game of Romance.

The rant I engaged in earlier is now a distant memory, at least until tomorrow. I said I’d lighten up later, didn’t I? So maybe now I should permit reflection to replace the ranting and go back in time as I sometimes do anyway.

Somebody once suggested I write my memoirs, but the concept is far too grand for one such as me. Nevertheless, maybe a confession is in order, and maybe it can be taken as a memoir of sorts. I don’t expect anybody to be particularly interested, but it’s been running through my head since yesterday morning and I felt inclined to write it down for my own amusement.

*  *  *

The song playing in one of the charity shops yesterday took me back to the start of it all. The song had been a big hit when I was fourteen and taking my last holiday with my parents. We’d gone to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk and I was in the habit of going to the fairground every night on my own. Much of the reason for my regular visits to the bright lights and music was the group of teenage girls which I kept seeing there, and the one in particular who attracted my fancy to quite a considerable degree.

I’d already had a couple of regular girlfriends by then – one of whom had been three years older than me – but they’d both been girls I knew from the local youth club and we’d just drifted together. What I’d never done was approach a complete stranger and asked her to walk out with me (what a nice old fashioned phrase that is.) The problem I had at the tender age of fourteen, however, was that I hadn’t a clue how to go about it.

Now, it just happened that I’d got know an Irish lad of seventeen who was also on holiday with his parents and we’d become pals. It seemed to me that he would have a greater level of experience in the matter of pick up lines in consequence of his more advanced age, and so I asked him how he thought I should go about it.

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he said. You just go up to her and say “are you coming, then?” and she’ll walk away with you no problem.’

Do bear in mind that he was Irish, and whatever else the Irish are or are not, they’re certainly the world’s best blarney merchants. It occurred to me later that he probably had no more idea of how to pick up strange girls than I had. At the time I simply wasn’t convinced that it would work, and I was also aware that such an approach would put my vanity at risk of being mangled. But I had nothing better to offer. I prevaricated until the last night before we were due to go home, and then desperation encouraged me to take the leap into unknown territory. I approached the group, singled out the gorgeous one, and said ‘Are you coming, then?’ Her eyes showed no evident response as they looked into mine for several pregnant seconds. ‘No,’ she said, and then walked away with her friends while I shuffled off in the opposite direction with a waddle and a quack and a very unhappy frown.

But that was the beginning of the great game of romance which became the abiding passion of my life (about equal with fishing but of greater longevity, and slightly ahead of playing rugby and partying.) For such it always was – a game of discovery and observation which I played compulsively for the next thirty years. And the benefit of experience made me far more adept at knowing the right moves in the right circumstances.

Sounds like a lot of innocent fun, doesn’t it? It wasn’t, actually. It was more of a bumpy rollercoaster ride than a soft sailing on sleepy tides. I’m a complex sort of bloke, you see, and the complexities played a game of their own with my sense of wellbeing on many occasions. The thrills were always followed by the ducking stool, and the feather beds were ever laden with sharp needles. It’s why I can say that thirty years of playing the game of romance caused me far more injuries than I received in twenty years of playing rugby.

And now it’s all over. The loner gene has finally achieved a position of unassailable ascendancy and I don’t need the mirror or my birth certificate to tell me that my body is no longer a vehicle fit for either of my favourite games. I’m washed up, worn out, and undecided whether to groan at the bitter taste of cold turkey or simply feel relieved at having acquired a safe spot on the sidelines. That’s where old men belong, isn’t it, however much the old instinct insists on whispering ‘I’m still here’?

So that’s about it – an inconsequential little anecdote which led to a life less sordid than you might imagine. Make of it what you will. Or don’t bother to make anything of it at all.