I’m writing down some memories.
You can start at Chapter One if you like or just keep reading here.
– 1978 –
I was 12 when I fell in love with J*** on the first day of class at Chis & Sid. But I was shy back then and didn’t get around to talking to her for several years.
Class 2P was the most social group of kids you could dream up. We did everything together. We went to each other’s birthday party with a Party Six of Heineken or a bottle of Cinzano Bianco. We went to the disco every week. I even got to dance with J*** a few times (‘Come on and jump to the beat! Jump!’) but nothing ever came of it because I was still too shy to talk to her and anyway, she had a boyfriend.
Class 2P became Class 3P but we were split up for the last two years of school. We still hung out together. We went to Margate on the train and went to London every weekend to go ice skating. I got to hold J***’s hand as we skated around the rink.
— 1982 —
I left school at 16 to join the Royal Navy but everyone else stayed on to do A-levels and I lost touch. But just before Christmas, I received a fancy invitation to Prize Day at Chis & Sid. I had won prizes for coming first in maths and for nine O-levels.
I left school at 16 to join the Royal Navy but everyone else stayed on to do A-levels and I lost touch. But just before Christmas, I received a fancy invitation to Prize Day at Chis & Sid. I had won prizes for coming first in maths and for nine O-levels.
I was due home for Christmas Leave on Prize Day so I accepted the invitation. It was a six-hour journey home from Cornwall with a tube ride and ferry ride on the way but I thought I could make it.
My mum picked me up at Sidcup Station and drove me to the school but I was an hour late already and we had to run the last bit. The headmaster was already making his ‘Well done everyone! Have a good Christmas…’ speech as I burst through the doors at the back of the hall. Mr Hahn spotted me in my Navy uniform and grabbed the microphone from the headmaster: “…and the prize for maths goes to… The Ragged Clown.”
After the prize-giving, I was invited to a party — still in my uniform — and everyone wanted to hear my Navy stories. Later that evening, David said, “Hey! There’s a party in the Sixth Form Centre on Wednesday. Why don’t you come? We’re allowed to bring beer, wine and cider. But no hard alcohol!”
On Wednesday afternoon, I got the bus down to the school and all my old friends were there. We drank and we danced until Dexy’s Midnight Runners played Come on Eileen! and we all held hands in a big circle. J*** held my hand!!!
We held hands all night and we danced to the slow ones together.
The next evening I decided to ask J*** out. I was terrified. I had never asked anyone out before.
I called from the phone box at the top of Sidcup Hill and my hands were shaking as I tried to get my 10p into the slot. I dropped it twice. But J*** said ‘Yes’ and we went to see E.T. the next day.
We went out together every night of my Christmas leave: to The George and The Railway Tavern — pubs in Bexley Village — until, filled with sadness, I got that lonely train back to Cornwall.
— 1983 —
Our romance blossomed for the next couple of years and we wrote love letters every week. Later that year, I was drafted closer to home and could travel up from Portsmouth to see J*** almost every weekend.
It was cool to be a teenager with a full-time salary and we could do things that most teenagers can’t afford. We went to concert after concert. Kool & the Gang. Wham! Queen. Elton John. Spandau Ballet… I still have all the brochures. And nightclubs! J***’s favourite was The Empire, Leicester Square and it took me years to get over my allergy to disco music.
J***’s family took me on a horse-riding holiday to Wales every Easter and a week in Annecy, France every summer. We had the perfect romance until I joined my first ship and the Navy sent me to The Falklands for six months.
— 1985 —
When I got home from The Falklands, J*** and her mum came to meet me on HMS Southampton as we came alongside in Portsmouth Dockyard. The band played Rod Stewart’s I am Sailing and we kissed like Romeo & Juliet.
Our romance carried on where we left off — but it wasn’t quite the same.
J*** had a job now in a bank in Bond Street and had new friends from work. I still went to meet her every weekend and we still went out on the town every Saturday night but things soon began to get awkward.
We had already booked a holiday together but I think we both knew our love affair was coming to an end. We had one last wild fling on Las Playa de Las Américas but when we got home we agreed to go our separate ways.
A few months later, I got a phone call out of the blue. It was J***.
We have to get back together because I have two tickets for Live Aid.
You have to come with me!
Live Aid was special.
You probably know that Bob Geldoff rounded up the greatest acts in the world to perform at Wembley Stadium with a simultaneous concert in Philadelphia. They’d announced on the radio that the tickets were all sold out but J*** went up to Wembley anyway and they had a few left. With 72,000 other lucky ticket holders, we went to see the best concert in the history of music.
We had the best seats in the stadium — just to the left of the stage — and the concert was truly amazing. At most concerts, the artists play their new stuff that no one ever heard before but at Live Aid they were at their best because there were two billion people watching on the telly.
All my favourites were there: Sade, Elvis Costello, Paul Young, Spandau Ballet. We all cheered when Freddie Mercury stole the show and we all cried when they played the Drive video by The Cars while children starved in Africa. Everyone there remembers the teddy bear who did laps of the stadium while the bands in Philadelphia took their turn and we all cheered with each toss into the air.
When the finale came around and we all sang Do They Know It’s Christmas?, we sang and we sang and we sang. We sang those last two lines over and over; all the way down Wembley Way to the tube station and halfway back to London on the Tube. What a day!
Feed the Wo-o-orld!
Let them know it’s Christmas time!
After Live Aid, J*** and I rekindled our romance for a few more months and we went on one more trip to Annecy with her family but we had a massive falling out the night before we left. We practically broke up the first day we got there and didn’t speak to each other for the whole week. What a horrible week that must have been for J***’s family!
– 2010 –
Time moved on and we didn’t see each other again until many years later when I was visiting from America and met up with a few old school friends at Hall Place in Bexley. We’ve met for lunch a few times since. It’s fun to reminisce about the old times.
I sometimes wonder if we might’ve made it if it hadn’t been for that trip to the Falklands. We thought we would last forever at the time but, looking back, I don’t think our romance would have survived. First love is always special but we had our separate lives to live. I am glad mine turned out the way it did and I hope J*** can say the same.
First love is special though and I love looking back at those early memories.
☕️ Buy me a coffee? ☕️
It won’t make me rich but it’ll make me happy.
(I promise I won’t spend it on beer!)
She won the tickets in a raffle?!! OMG! Great story Ragged. Who knows whether it was the Navy or not. I think the odds are stacked against young love but you gave it a good go!
My editor made me remove the dig about the critics of Live Aid but here it is for posterity.
> To all those people who said it was disrespectful or colonialist or patronising to send money to Africa or who cleverly noted that, ackshually, there is snow in Africa at Christmas time… you can fuck off.