Boy Meets Girl
Picture the scene: late 80s/early 90s Northumbria. Eighteen years ago tonight, a Cure tribute band played in a Durham college. The air was thick with Marlboro smoke and dry ice, the strobe lights were flashing, the floors were sticky with beer, Snakebite and …never mind, let’s not go there - you get the picture. Yours truly had danced all night with the girls like a woman possessed, periodically being pursued round the heaving dancefloor by a James Spader lookalike with strangely fluorescent highlights who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally, when the guy got a little too drunk and insistent, in stepped my knight in shining armour - a strapping 6’2” Geologist I’d met once or twice at the college bar. He pretended we were together. Eighteen years and two children later we still are.
Did you know the moment you met your other half? Remembering the Durham days it feels like a mix of Narnia and St Elmo’s Fire – the incredible Norman cathedral, narrow snow cloaked lanes lit by lanterns near Prebend’s Bridge and the cosy bars heaving with floppy haired students where you could always find a friend. I think its become quite chichi now, but part of the attraction of the town was its authenticity - no Starbucks in those days, just lovely old pubs like the Shakespeare where you queued on the freezing payment to have a pint at the tiny bar (no chairs), Bimbi’s fish and chips and local gangs of girls straight out of Viz who trawled the weekend streets bare legged in white stilettos and miniskirts even on the coldest nights.
Ah, the 80s … the music, the damage we did to our hair, endless black lycra, the cronky convertibles and blind optimism. We’ve grown up together - moments like this it makes you nostalgic for what feels like simpler times. So, recession looms, the oil's run out, snow's on its way - but the fire's warm and once I scrape the children off the ceiling and get them safely tucked up I'm planning back to back Breathless and Wild At Heart to celebrate. Tonight this anniversary post goes out to the pilot – wherever you are (eating curry on the beach according to his last text) – thinking of you.
TODAY’S PROMPT: What's your great love story? Happy ending or epic loss? How did you meet your significant other, the mother/father of your children, or the ‘one that got away’? Why not write it down for posterity, or share it here – my anniversary weekend’s not going to be so loved up (pilot in India), but there’s no stopping you …
