Poetry – My Mountains – A love song.

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Poetry – My Mountains – A love song.

My Mountains
We cannot live without a heart, without recognition of something worth more than ourselves.
Love gives purpose to existence. It makes us strong, bolsters us when weak and generates power.
In an infinite universe it is not good to be alone.
To share a tea, a sunset or a quiet moment is transcendental. It is enough.
There is nothing more important than love. It is the antidote to the hatred and cruelty that destroys the world.

My Mountains
You are my mountains, hazed with blue mist
My sky
My sun
You are my forests, seas and wind
My stars
My rain
You are my volcanoes and hills
My soil
My trees
You are the ground underneath my feet
My air
My wind
You are my moon serene in the heavens
My clouds
My flowers
You are the touch that wakens me
My morning
My day
You are all the time I hold in my heart
My streams
My shore
You are in me beating with life
My blood
My guts
Without you there is only silence, darkness and perpetual night
For you are my light, my beauty and my truth.
Nothing can exist without you.

Opher 10.9.2015

A hand to hold – A poem of love and friendship.

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This is a poem about love and friendship.

A Hand to Hold

I wish you always have a hand to hold

When the road is rough

And shadows jump;

An arm around your shoulder

When the wind bites

And dreams of loss sting the eyes:

Tender words to raise your spirits

When doubt erodes your hopes

To maroon you on the rocks;

And a friendly heart to share the joy,

Provide the warmth,

And generate the love,

That makes it all worthwhile.

 

10.2.2017

 

A Hand to Hold

It was the John Martyn song May You Always Have that inspired me to write this love song.

As we go through life we always need a partner, companion or friend to share the wonder and the rough times. Sharing makes everything better.

Opher’s World – Tributes to Rock Genius – Love – Forever Changes

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Love were one of the best bands ever but subject to the same ego and frailties that laid most bands low. Fame brings it’s excesses and turns out to be nothing like imagined. It destroys most people. It destroyed Love.

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Love

Contrary to the connotations of the name Love were not always soft and full of flower-power naivety. They came steaming out of the heat of Los Angeles with its urban gangs, racial tribalism and harsh culture. Los Angeles was a city like no other. It sprawled out from the freeways and boulevards and was constructed for the motorcar. It was not a place you could walk the streets; you cruised in your Cadillac and frequented the Sunset Strip to sample the London Fog or Whiskey-a-go-go where the action was.

Love’s first couple of albums were earthy with a Punk feel to them. The songs were melodic and memorable but they had an edge to them that was raw and full of energy.

Arthur Lee and Bryan Maclean shared the writing and vocals creating a great blend of harmonies that fitted well with the guitar-based rhythms.

Those albums were groundbreaking but Love really came together on the third; the immaculate Forever Changes. This reflected their song-writing, musicianship, vocals and production all at their peak. It was one of the stand-out albums of that Acid Rock period. This was a masterpiece of West Coast Hippie culture that has been voted the best album of all time a couple of times. The album has sophistication and is complex with a divine sound without losing the immediacy and distinctiveness of the band. I love it.

Love captured the counter-culture feel of Los Angeles in the heady days of the sixties.

They also epitomise its collapse.

All the idealism and hopes of those times crumpled. The creative force dried up and it descended into violence, hard drugs, free-loading and sell-out. Greed and abuse destroyed it.

Hard drugs were the main reason for Love’s decline. It was all so predictable. After having broken big they were consumed with adulation, sycophancy and overwhelmed with expectation. They were plied with heroin. After the adrenaline high of performance it is difficult to come down and return to any normality. They were hugely successful, swamped with groupies and expected to live the life.

They were young men and succumbed. After one last OK album they split up.

Bryan went on to produce one solo album before going off into Christian Rock and dying in 1998.

Arthur stumbled along reforming versions of Love but failing to recapture the magic. He got himself into trouble discharging a fire-arm and ended up with a prison sentence.

It wasn’t until the 2000s that he finally got it back together. He found himself a group of young musicians called Baby Lemonade (After a Syd Barrett psychedelic number). He groomed them and formed a new vibrant incarnation of Love.

Suddenly the energy and magic was back. They were every bit as good as the original band in their heyday.

I caught a number of their concerts and they rocked. They even got Johnny Echolls back for a concert. I asked him where he’d been and he said ‘Around’.

Arthur wore his fables leather jacket and a headscarf and looked and sounded brilliant. The band was pulling enthusiastic crowds. Was it all about to happen again?

I had a chat with an enthusiastic Arthur. He was full of optimism and talked of recording an album of original material.

Just as it appeared that it was going to come to fruition and culminate in a renaissance Arthur was diagnosed with leukaemia.

He died. It died.

My Weird Surreal Sixties Book – Reality Dreams – Chapter 37 – the ultimate love story.

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Well this must be the ultimate love story. They don’t get any grander than this. The biggest love story on the planet. The lengths people go to.

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37.

Messny could not bear to leave her. Even when he knew that she was gone. He could not bear to be left behind.

He had to follow her.

In those terrible days he had drifted around in a haze of unreality, numb and insane. The world had ceased to exist. He did not know where he was. None of it was real. He had rejected it all. If she did not exist, had no place in the world, then none of it had substance. What use was a world without her?

Somehow his body operated on instinct and took him home. He wandered from room to room staring at the empty house, insubstantial, gloomy and drab. It was full of them, nothing had changed, and he kept imagining that she was still there. There was nothing for him here.

He knew that he had no choice but to follow. He imagined her reaching out a hand backwards and he slipping his into hers as they went on. He could not bear the thought that she had ceased to exist. Emptiness was preferable to this. It was merely a question of choice of methods. There could be no other consideration. It was the only decision left to him.

It was dark now and he was too tired and confused. He could not focus. All that was in his head was the method he should select. Somehow it seemed important. He had to get it right. He was compelled to think deeply and make the correct decision. In his mind he could see her in the darkness reaching her hand back to him. He had to catch up and reach out to slip his hand into hers.

He sat in the armchair in a state of stupor and fell into a fitful sleep.

She came to him and they embraced, laughing and gay. But then she was gone. It was over. He jumped off high cliffs, crashed his car into walls, pulled triggers, swallowed pills, exploded, was gassed and lastly drifted out to sea, to follow in her wake, to slowly slip beneath the waves and find peace. Always she was there waiting to comfort him and ease the pain and shock.

When he woke he ran through the possibilities seeking to make a choice. He knew it had to be right. He agonised over it. But he could not decide. Then came the stray thought that led to a dream and he latched on to it. The dream seemed so crazy that it pulled him back from the brink and gave him something to work towards. It might be completely stupid but it was what he needed.

To everyone outside he seemed to have recovered, to have pulled himself together. Inside he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He also knew that it must be impossible. Yet in his dreams he had seen it work. That was all the proof he needed.

Messny was cynical. He had a new gritty, one-track obsession. He needed time and he needed money. He became ruthless. He exploited and robbed from every possible source with an unbending dedication. He slaved all hours of the day and turned his mind to amassing a fortune. Nothing else mattered. As far as he was concerned there was no such thing as love, beauty or friendship – just money.

In this course of this he turned his attention to science. He purchased a huge building and converted it into a series of the most hi-tech laboratories on the planet and recruited a team of extraordinary researchers. They were equipped with everything they desired. No expense was spared.

Messny determined the areas of research and personally oversaw every single aspect, working round the clock and driving them all to greater efforts as if time was running out. In the course of this Messny became master of numerous fields. He stretched his mind to the limits. But he was still not satisfied.

The years rolled by and still his ceaseless energies remained unchanged. He immersed himself in his quest. There were no distinctions between days – no holidays or weekends. He was tireless. His teams were at once in awe of him but also frightened of his drive. He could be merciless. If things were no going right or people slacking he discarded them. The frontiers of understanding were pushed right back. Barriers fell as Messny sank his teeth into the impossible. That word did not appear in his lexicon. Nothing was impossible.

He drove his teams harder and harder. It was results that he wanted rather than money or prestige. He did not give a damn for status. He refused all interviews or any activity that took time away from his endeavours. His business empire funded the science and the science was the only thing that counted.

Messny was totally one-pointed. He wanted nothing more than to repeat his mission.

What spilled out of his laboratories altered lives and changed philosophy. The theory of the nature of the universe, the concept of time and the limitations of speed were all blown to pieces but still he was not satisfied. He drove his teams harder.

After a lifetime of dedicated work one of his teams made the breakthrough that pulled it all together. It enabled Messny to pull all the pieces together. It came in the nick of time. He was an old man now and nearing the end of his days.

On the day the mathematics revealed the answer and he had the solution he desired he was like a young man again. The years dropped off him, his hunched shoulders straightened, his skin tightened and he ran and jumped like a twenty year old, high fiving and whooping like a demented idiot.

They had done all the hard work; they had the theory worked out. Now they had to put it into practice. They had to construct a prototype of the machine and iron out all the inevitable faults.

Money was no problem. As soon as they had the project officially vetted the money came rolling in. Everyone wanted to be associated with it.

The euphoria soon wore off as Messny realised the long slog ahead of him and wondered if he had the time to complete his task. But he pressed on with renewed determination.

At long last the prototype was ready. From inside it was a plain metal box the size of a small room. There was no streamlining, no noticeable means of propulsion, no contouring, protuberances or embellishments. This was purely practical. There were no frills. All the frills could come later – as many as the PR guys wanted. They could jazz it up and make it as space-age as they wanted. All that Messny required was something that worked. It had an airtight door and airlock with which to get in and out. That was good enough for Messny.

Messny had a seat fitted with an array of dials and switches. There wasn’t much to control. The advanced bio-computer took care of everything. All that was required was to feed in your request. Not that any of this extreme technology was visible. The wizardry was kept well out of sight.

Messny was sweating profusely, trembling and felt sick to the pit of his stomach as he climbed inside the machine. He sat himself down in front of the rudimentary controls and paused a while in thought. He knew exactly what he was going to put in. This was the culmination of his whole life’s work. This was what he had driven himself for. This was the dream that had saved his life and given him something to live for. They had all said it was impossible but he had not believed them. Now he was going to prove them wrong. He was going to become the first human being to try it out. He was going to embark on the destiny he had seen in that dream long, long ago.

As he sat there and allowed his mind to relax he felt old and tired. He knew this was totally insane and was bound to be an anti-climax. It was a stupid thing to have done; to have wasted his life in this way. Even if it worked he knew in his heart of hearts that it was pointless.

He had already fed in the complex coordinates. He had it worked out to the nearest second. He knew the exact point in space and time that he wanted. It should take him there but he was prepared to have to hunt around. After all these years and the permutations of the universe, nothing could be certain. Even the minor inconsistencies could result in major deviations. It might not work at all.

He sat and took a very deep breath as he prepared to press the button that initiated the process. It was as if his whole life passed before his eyes. Finally he broke the spell.

He pressed.

There was no sensation of movement and Messny wondered if anything had happened. There was no impression of speed. Yet Messny knew that this strange craft was travelling through the fabric of space/time and would arrive at a destination trillions of miles away in a matter of a few minutes.

That had been one of the crowning glories of his research team. They had cracked the barrier of speed. Any destination in the universe was always just over three minutes away. They had opened the whole universe up! Not that Messny gave a hoot for that.

There was no indication but Messny instinctively knew that they had arrived. The capsule he was in was travelling at the speed of light at exactly the right place.

Messny was trembling worse than ever and hesitated to touch the other button that triggered the next phase. He finally jabbed it.

A three dimensional image formed in the room in front of him. It was silent and would forever remain so – it being impossible to record sound in a vacuum.

The image was totally abstract. Nothing could be made out at all. He knew that was just the bio-computer gathering its vast amount of data and processing it. Even for a computer of its prodigious capacity the task was daunting.

Messny knew that part of him desperately wanted it to fail. He felt that he could not bear to watch and wanted to shut his eyes to blot out the image. But he could not. This was the reason he had devoted his whole life to this project – this was the fruition of everything he had yearned for. He could not help but look.

Gradually the image began to materialise as the computer was receiving and enhancing the weakened, divergent light from a time in the distant past. Light that had taken nearly sixty years to reach this place. Now he was seeing it again – not as a passing flash but as an image that was progressing in real time.

It crystallised into a perfect 3D image and Messny knew that the second ‘impossible’ task had been fully achieved.

The sensors had gathered sufficient light from such diverse spread for the computer to enhance and reconstitute. It was as near to a miracle as anyone had ever achieved.

A young girl was lovingly gazing into a young man’s face. Her eyes twinkled with wicked light and her rich, full lips smiled. The young man smiled back.

Huge tears rolled down his cheeks as he watched them making love as the sun set and the waves crashed on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.

My Weird Surreal Sixties Book – Reality Dreams – Love

Posted on by Opher

Aaaah! The idyll of all consuming young love. What could be better or more intense?

36.

They ran hand in hand along the beach. The wind tugged at their hair. They threw their heads back and laughed and shrieked into the open sky.

He crept off and clamoured up on the rocks to jump out and surprise her. They fell down giggling in craziness to make love in the sand.

They talked and he quietened her with a kiss and when he became too carried away she quietened him with a kiss.

They walked through the long grass and felt the waving seed heads brush against their legs as they strolled. She broke away and danced, skipping among the tall stems to the beat of a cosmic song within her head, singing it back up into the blue heavens with its hot goddess. He chased her and they tumbled together making love in the green grass with the bees and butterflies flitting around their heads like satelites.

He lay back under the trees and watched her, marvelling at the beauty of her lithe body. She danced for him – a slow lascivious dance of sex and her body flowed and curved through easy lines as he drank her in. She was his pure mercury in freefall motion, slowly rising and falling in liquid motion as she bounded back out naked in the flower meadow, cleaving a narrow trail that connected her to him in that undulating sea of green with its Renoiresque splashes of colour.

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She wore a thin cotton dress as they walked the hills. It flowed and clung to show off her lithe body as her pretty face bobbed and his eyes flashed like sparkling gems, wicked sparkly gems, as her teeth gleamed and she entranced him with the power of her spell. She would burst away, full of pent-up energy, to spin with her long wavy hair sending out tendrils in the sky as if reaching for the sun.

She called to him with those eyes so full of mischief and promise that he understood her every unspoken desire and quickly joined the chase as she darted off and fled but was easy caught. She screamed and yelped with delight as he pulled her to him and they made love overlooking the beach with the crashing waves. Always she’d pretend to struggle from his grip but as they grappled he could see those eyes metamorphosis into something softer and she reached for him and pulled him to her.

She melted into his body as the setting sun bathed them in its warm tingling embrace, lending them its cloak of gentle orange glow to makes the moment mellow.

They kissed slowly and were bonded in closeness that was beyond the physical. There was no need to talk. Their eyes and bodies talked. Their skin was transformed to electricity.

As the excitement grew they were transcended to become one spirit soaring together. They entered each other as they left their bodies to dissolve away on the crest of tingling sensation. They merged in breath and desire and gave freely.

Their coming was no end but rather a continuation that drew them closer as they clung to each other in desperation to make it last, savour every last intimacy, overwhelmed by the force of their feelings.

Now was the time to whisper words of love and feel the inner warmth and contentment forged from trust and security; to snuggle the other inside in a spiritual embrace which has no barriers.

They both wished that new life could come from something such as this. It was so fine a gift to give creation and no life could have had a better start than to have been forged in the heat of such a crescendo.

They walked slowly back, cuddling tightly together and savouring the perfection, renewed in each other.

 

 

Rituals, Odes and Mystic Anxieties – My seventh Poetry Book – now available on Kindle.

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Rituals, Odes & Mystic anxieties

I continue to produce poetry about all the issues that touch my heart and ignite my passions. This is not really a book of poetry so much as writings about the subjects that pluck at my emotions. There’s all manner of writing over topics such as the environment, society, war, love and friendship. It also has my secular rituals.

Featured Book – Danny’s Story – An Extract

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Sex Drugs Rock ‘n’ Roll – Love, Friendship and Idealism. It was the death of the sixties. Acid, Dope, Smack and violence and a magic old man in a magic garden.

Chapter 7 – The magic garden and Pete

For Danny venturing into the garden was like a trip without the acid. In future times he would become used to encountering numerous strange characters, in pairs or singly, who obviously felt the same, though it seemed they chose to augment their visit with the aid of additional chemistry.

Mr Rose might have been in his eighties but he had created a psychedelic jungle of the first order. Somehow he had combined the most peculiar set of incongruous objects and with the use of hanging vines and garish paint to create a mind-expanding fairyland. There were fairground swing boats, plastic ornaments, seats, fountains, concrete sculptures, plastic flowers and overhanging shelters, all lit by enough light bulbs to keep Blackpool going for a season or two. At night the effect was simply amazing.

The effect when anyone first saw it was mesmerising. People stood open-mouthed and stared.

Danny sat and looked at the multi-coloured universe of a garden with eyes as big as jelly-bean jars. It knocked him out of the ground and through a wormhole onto another planet.

‘Not bad is it?’ A voice said from within the dazzling lights.

‘It’s fucking incredible,’ Danny replied quietly in a voice steeped in awe, without taking his eyes off the fairyland he was surrounded with.

‘I’m Pete,’ the silhouetted figure said, stepping out of the brightness and taking a seat next to him. Danny noted that the figure was a young man with long, shaggy black hair with long fringe hanging over his eyes, a big droopy moustache, a week’s dark stubble and an incongruous ankle-length grey RAF greatcoat. Pete grinned and pulled a ready-rolled spliff out of his shirt pocket and lit it. ‘I live in the bottom flat.’

‘I’m Danny,’ he said. ‘I’ve moved into the top flat.’ He flicked his eyes up towards the top of the house.

Pete nodded and lit up the jay.

Together they sat in the brightness of the magic garden in silence, passed the jay between them like some holy sacrament, and stared at colours around them.

It was a momentous first meeting.

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For the princely sum of just  – Paperback
£6.86 1 New from £6.86                                  You could own the new Opher Goodwin classic.

Here’s the links:

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Love, Sex, Romance, Friendship, Hormones, Brain Chemistry, Biology and Evolution.

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It was Cheryl who sparked these thoughts off.

As a Biologist I am always aware of what puppets we are to our genes, chemistry and psychology. We think we have free will but I believe it is largely a myth. We are ruled by our evolution.

As a species we are so new that our body chemistry and psychology hasn’t even begun to keep pace with our technology. We are chimps living in cities but acting like we are still in the jungle.

Friendship – such a crucial element for hunting. When you are out in the jungle with dangerous animals you have to put your trust in the friend next to you. Together, as a small hunting group, you can drive off a fearsome predator or make a kill that will feed the whole tribe. As a young hunter you had respect. Your friendship group of fellow hunters were trusted friends – you put your life in their hands; you faced danger and fear together; you bonded through terror. Your bravery and loyalty was crucial.

Now-a-days we see groups of youths in gangs on the streets in their hunting groups. Except there are no predators to ward off or beasts to kill. Yet they still crave the excitement and danger, still bond and seek the respect. They’ve lost their purpose and status.

Love – a biological phenomenon to pair bond sufficiently to have, and raise, children. An hormonal rush, endorphin saturation of the brain, and a passing phase. The female selects the highest status male she can. The aim is to find compatible genes to meld with her own in order to produce offspring who are endowed with the best in order to survive. The pair bonding is a euphoric rush of brain chemicals – no more. It induces feelings of protection and promotes crazy bouts of sex. The idea being that while the male is infatuated and the female hampered by pregnancy and an infant, he will protect and provide. But the love that will last forever soon loses its glow as after the duration necessary for the child to grow, the brain chemicals subside. A new infatuation develops with other potential partners – it is better no to put all your eggs in one basket (so to speak). A different set of genes provides more survival possibilities for a female’s offspring. Genetic variation. DNA testing in modern families show that a high proportion of children from supposedly loyal monogamous marriages have different fathers. Biologically we are programmed to be serial monogamists and some males more promiscuous (the cuckoo effect). Women are seduced by status.

Yet we also see that once the hormones and brain chemistry subsides there is the possibility of a different relationship – based on respect, affection, trust and ‘love’. It is deeper and less frenetic and brings pleasure and contentment. It is a different partnership.

Anecdote – Love Letters – sadness and loss

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Love Letters

I wonder if anyone writes love letters any more? It would be such a shame if they don’t. You cannot beat a passionate love letter. I valued mine. But now it is all computers, phones and text. There is nothing to hold on to; nothing tangible.

My first love letters were to and from Glenys, the first love of my life when I was ten. We poured our hearts out to each other. She only lived at the top of the road and we saw each other every day but still it seemed important to write some things down. The written word has a different impact. You can reread it, ponder on it, absorb it and re-enjoy the words. You could hold it in your hand.

There were some things that we did not want anyone else to read. We did not want snooping parents or siblings reading our inner-most passion. We tried invisible ink but that was unsuccessful so we turned to code. That made it even more fun. I was keen on codes and secret agents. I devised a code using the periodic table and letters of the elements. We could spell out our love onto paper in numbers. It would be impossible to crack because you could use different elements with the same letters. It worked.

Looking back I suppose it wasn’t really very romantic. To receive a page of numbers did not exactly get the pulse racing, but it was fun deciphering he code and working out the words of love.

It all came to an abrupt end when Glenys moved and left me heart-broken. But at least I had the letters.

But then tragedy struck. I kept the letters in my bedside cabinet hidden in a box. It was ostensibly a game. I put the letters under the pieces. However, it obviously wasn’t hidden well enough. My sister who was four years younger than me went through my things and found them. She took them to my mum.

These were my precious love letters. The only thing left of Glenys. For some inexplicable reason my mum threw them away. I still do not know why she did that. I can only think that she thought I was just a kid. They can’t have meant much to me. But they did. I was bereft.

I would love to have those letters now and to read them aqnd peer through that little window into the mind of that ten year old that I was. I poured my soul into them and so did Glenys. They were worth more than anything to me.

But my passion for writing love letters did not stop there.When I was courting my wife as an eighteen year old cavalier, I regularly wrote letters. We were both at college different sides of London so there were times when we did not see each other too often. I was always looking for a way of impressing her. I was forever the young romantic. She’d receive an unexpected telegram delivered to her college classroom.

The biggest ploy of all was when I had this idea of swamping her with love letters. I wrote fifteen in one day, all sent adorned with orange half-penny stamps so that they’d stand out. The next day I sent another thirty and the following day another batch. Her pigeon-hole at college was crammed with them. They made quite a splash.

I am not sure what I wrote in them. It wasn’t easy writing so many. Each one was two pages long. I simply wrote everything that came into my mind.

We still have those letters. They are stored in a box upstairs and haven’t been read for forty years.

I’m going to rummage them out and re-read the romantic thoughts of the young fool I was. I’m sure it will be fun visiting with that naive idealist again.

Long live the love letter!

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Anecdote – First love

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First love

I fall in love easy. I am emotional and passionate. When I fall in love it is overwhelming. I’m as obsessive about love as I am about writing, rock music and reading. It takes over my life.

You can’t beat love.

My first love was Glenys. I was ten and a half and extremely green. She was the older woman a whole three months older than me. She was also extremely precocious and quite brazen. She enjoyed telling me how she’d got the boys in her class to show her their willies.

We spent ages in her garage, my garage and my den in the woods playing ‘Dare, Truth and Promise’. I’d played that with the other kids and it would usually involve doing something unpleasant, vulgar or disgusting. With Glenys it was invariably sex. Not that we actually knew anything about sex apart from the rudimentaries (aptly named). It would always wind up with showing each other our bits or touching each other. It was the first time I’d ever experienced those feelings.

We were very serious about each other. I had even forsaken playing cricket with the kids in the road in order to talk to Glenys. And I loved playing cricket. I would hang around outside her window and whistle ‘I’d Like to get you on a Slow Boat to China’, which was current at the time. She’d open her bedroom window and we’d giggle and talk for ages.

Glenys and I would sit on the kerb and discuss the future. She would enquire how many babies I wanted. It was taken for granted that as soon as we were old enough we would set up home and have babies.

The other thing Glenys taught me was ‘Real Lover’s kisses’ like they did in the movies.

I’d kissed girls before. I’d played ‘Kiss Chase’ and managed to be caught many a time. The girls would smother me in kisses. I’d even kissed a girl on the lips. But none of that was anything like the real lovers kisses that we shared. We learnt how to keep our noses out of the way and would kiss for minutes at a time. Those kisses went on for ever and had a profound effect on me. They sent my heart racing and stomach churning. They also were the start of other more visceral stirrings, feelings and urges that were so powerful they swamped me. I didn’t really understand it, but I loved it.

We had twenty seven of those passionate, heady embraces. I know because I was counting.

Then disaster struck. Glenys’s family upped sticks and moved. It was the end of our dreams.

In fact it was only twelve miles away but at ten years old that might as well have been the end of the earth. I still remember that address – 16 Nicholas Gardens. It’s etched in my memory. Glenys would come every Saturday and we’d spend the day together. I’d meet her from the station and she’d tell me about her new place. The boys in her class and the boy and girl she’d found doing things in the toilets. She was excited by it. I was despondent.

The last time I saw her back then was a disaster. We were late and running for the train. We hastily arranged a meeting the next Saturday and I suddenly remembered I was away at scout camp. We did not have time to rearrange another get together. As she got on the train we had one last kiss. I told her I’d write and tell her all about camp she could write back and arrange when to meet.

I wrote a great long letter about our tramp back from the Cheddar gorger with all the bulls in the fields and everything we’d done. She never wrote back.

I was too full of pride to write again. Perhaps my letter had become lost in the post. Most probably Glenys had moved on and become involved with the excitement of her new life in more urbane surroundings.

I shed a lot of tears. I was heartbroken.

That coincided with me failing the eleven plus and going to a new big school. I became quite introvert and unsure of myself.

After three years of being the mouse I can remember giving myself a real talking to. I had to take risks if I ever wanted to do anything. So I tried it. I asked girls out and they usually accepted.

I opened out again.

First love can be so sweet and painful.