A major disadvantage of moving back to your home town...
I'm standing innocently at the crossing in the centre of town, daughter in pushchair, waiting for the little red man to turn green.
Absentmindedly, my eyes flick over the passersby on the other side of the road. My town (let's call it V.) specialises in old people, wearing fleeces that make them look like forlorn, misshapen teddies. Other than that, where would we be without white van man and the gaggle of teenage mums around the statue in the market place. Some of them could well be the daughters of my class mates, who left school at 16 with a baby and not many GCSEs. It's a sobering thought. Not from a 'Daily Mail' reader's point of view, just that I'm getting old.
I do a double-take.
It can't be.
Approaching the crossing is a man, tall, heavily built. He walks with a familiar, plodding gait, leaning forward slightly. At some point in the 15 years since I last saw him, he's cut off his lanky tresses, and put on a fair amount of weight. He now looks about 40, although I know he's younger. He was in the school year above me.
This man, although he doesn't know it, is responsible for my worst ever 'please tell me I dreamt it' morning-after recollection. He also deserves to take first place on the podium of Francesca's biggest ever mistakes (and that's taking into account many pints of snakebite and black).
The outline of his arse, silhouetted against the stars (thank god the night was dark) will forever be imprinted upon my memory.
It was a short-lived... (the next word should be 'romance', which would be wildly and laughably inaccurate) It was a short-lived... whatever it was. It began in the Royal Oak pub, the day after I finished my A-levels and enjoyed my first night out, and drink, since the previous autumn (that was always my excuse, see). A combination of glandular fever and intensive swotting meant that I had been absent from the social scene of the town of V for many months, and tonight was my re-coming out. Hurrah!
He chatted me up over my fourth pint, and we met up several times over that summer to get drunk and indulge in alfresco heavy petting sessions (euurgh). I knew that he was ugly, flaky, and into drugs, but I didn't care. There was noone else around, and he was in with the in-crowd, which I had never been part of. I fancied finding out what all the fuss was about, before I was rumbled as an imposter.
It ended when I invited him to a friend's party and he decided he liked the look of another girl there, and they started romping in a bedroom. My friend very loyally threw them out, but before they sloped off into the night I told him what I thought of him. My theory is that he then spiked my drink, which would explain the hallucinations and panic attacks that followed, and the fact that I STILL don't feel safe walking down stairs without holding on to a bannister, because I started getting dizzy spells. Still, those were the days, eh?
Back in 2006, my feet turn to lead and I silently will him to walk past the crossing and not look my way.
Amazingly, he does.
Absentmindedly, my eyes flick over the passersby on the other side of the road. My town (let's call it V.) specialises in old people, wearing fleeces that make them look like forlorn, misshapen teddies. Other than that, where would we be without white van man and the gaggle of teenage mums around the statue in the market place. Some of them could well be the daughters of my class mates, who left school at 16 with a baby and not many GCSEs. It's a sobering thought. Not from a 'Daily Mail' reader's point of view, just that I'm getting old.
I do a double-take.
It can't be.
Approaching the crossing is a man, tall, heavily built. He walks with a familiar, plodding gait, leaning forward slightly. At some point in the 15 years since I last saw him, he's cut off his lanky tresses, and put on a fair amount of weight. He now looks about 40, although I know he's younger. He was in the school year above me.
This man, although he doesn't know it, is responsible for my worst ever 'please tell me I dreamt it' morning-after recollection. He also deserves to take first place on the podium of Francesca's biggest ever mistakes (and that's taking into account many pints of snakebite and black).
The outline of his arse, silhouetted against the stars (thank god the night was dark) will forever be imprinted upon my memory.
It was a short-lived... (the next word should be 'romance', which would be wildly and laughably inaccurate) It was a short-lived... whatever it was. It began in the Royal Oak pub, the day after I finished my A-levels and enjoyed my first night out, and drink, since the previous autumn (that was always my excuse, see). A combination of glandular fever and intensive swotting meant that I had been absent from the social scene of the town of V for many months, and tonight was my re-coming out. Hurrah!
He chatted me up over my fourth pint, and we met up several times over that summer to get drunk and indulge in alfresco heavy petting sessions (euurgh). I knew that he was ugly, flaky, and into drugs, but I didn't care. There was noone else around, and he was in with the in-crowd, which I had never been part of. I fancied finding out what all the fuss was about, before I was rumbled as an imposter.
It ended when I invited him to a friend's party and he decided he liked the look of another girl there, and they started romping in a bedroom. My friend very loyally threw them out, but before they sloped off into the night I told him what I thought of him. My theory is that he then spiked my drink, which would explain the hallucinations and panic attacks that followed, and the fact that I STILL don't feel safe walking down stairs without holding on to a bannister, because I started getting dizzy spells. Still, those were the days, eh?
Back in 2006, my feet turn to lead and I silently will him to walk past the crossing and not look my way.
Amazingly, he does.
posted by francesca tereshkova | 3:37 PM
2 Comments:
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