1991 – Light My Fire, concluded

The following day, Louise called and asked me out on a date.

The weekend passed in some kind of excited blur of nerves and anticipation, that combination that I’ve experienced so many times since, but had never done so before. That "first date" feeling.

Nowadays, it tends to be more about the fact that I’m going out with someone I don’t really know for the first time, and the nerves are about whether there’ll be a series of silences in place of conversation, whether we’ll get on, whether this is the start of something or the end of nothing, and the anticipation is whether we’ll kiss, or whether we’ll go to bed. But back in the dim dead year of 1991, it was far, far more simple, and yet utterly more complex: I had that "first date" feeling because I’d never been on a date before.

In my head, the weekend is merely a brief and repetitive series of moments: Train journey to Swansea; cricket commentary on the radio by Brian Johnston; the Severn Tunnel; walking from Swansea station to my Nana’s; watching cricket at my Nana’s; Train journey home from Swansea; walking from Loughborough station home; having something to eat; having a shower; listening to "Love Her Madly" by the Doors; leaving the house. That’s pretty much all I can recall from getting on the train on Saturday morning until the early evening of Monday when I began that walk into town, to the cinema, where Louise and I were meeting to watch Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. At least, that’s the physical facts I can remember. I can still easily recall the excitement, those damned nerves and that damned anticipation getting stronger and stronger as that weekend flew by, until by the time I was on my way out on Monday night, I’d almost reached a kind of calmness, an eye-of-the-emotional-storm cool that was wholly at odds with my true feelings that beautiful summer evening, in that long forgotten year, when I finally went on my first date.

Bryan Adams’ Everything I Do, I Do It For You was number one for sixteen weeks during the summer and autumn of 1991, the biggest selling single of the year. It was the theme tune for the film Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, and although now its emotional resonance has completely faded, for years after, hearing that song would transport me back to that night I went to the cinema with Louise, just me and her.

Did we kiss during the film? Yes, I believe we did.

Were we, by the end of the film, a couple? Yes, I believe we were.

And by the time we’d walked back to her house, and her Dad had given me a lift back to mine, we’d definitely kissed, and we definitely were a couple. And it was fucking brilliant. And it was a complete surprise.

The previous few years had seen me falling for a series of girls, and getting absolutely nowhere with them, simply through a combination of shyness, awkwardness, and a complete lack of belief in myself as the kind of boy who could "get the girl". With Louise, I’d fancied her, and naturally assumed nothing would ever happen between us, as in the past. But somehow, things had changed – I’d wanted somebody, and I’d got them. It was great, she was great, we were great, everything was great, and I knew beyond a shadow of it doubt that it was destined to last forever – I was Jim Morrison, she was Pamela Courson (she even had the red hair to match). We went out again a few days later (I think we went to see The Rocketeer, of all things) and it was still great, she was still great, we were still great, everything was still great, and it was still destined to last forever. Jim and Pam, David and Louise, forever and ever, amen.

Blind and innocent teenage optimism – where would young lovers be without it?

A few days later, I was sat in front of the telly, watching another Test Match between England and the West Indies with my brother. Outside, it was a glorious August day of the kind that are so warm that they are better remembered than experienced, because memories are golden warmth, whereas reality is sticky and sweaty. I think that I was sat on the sofa that faced the window, with my brother sitting opposite me, because over the top of his head, I saw somebody walking past our garden, and up our driveway.

My sister was also there, and she was looking out of the window. As whoever it was knocked on the door, I asked her who it was.

"I think it’s the paper boy", she said.

I wondered why the paper boy would be knocking on the door instead of merely posting the local paper, and bemusedly went out and opened the front door.

It wasn’t the paper boy.

It was Louise.

I think I had a touch of precognition for perhaps the first time in my life, or maybe it was just simply the most logical guess that came to me – I knew as soon as I opened the door that something bad was about to happen, perhaps the worst thing possible for me at that moment, that month, that millisecond of my life, and boy, I was damn right.

She said hullo, and then handed me a letter. I was nonplussed, but still there was a little voice in my head that was elated that I had been right in my precognitive moment seconds earlier. That voice was soon silenced by the contents of the letter, by the words in black ink on that blue-ruled sheet of A4 paper.

I’m not going to quote from the letter directly, although I could… it’s still in my possession; in fact its in a black box folder within reaching distance of where I’m sitting now, paper-clipped to a frankly awful piece of adolescent prose/poetry directly concerning the events I’m writing about now. But sometimes, the details of such things are probably best left forgotten, or at least just left on the outer reaches of memory – loss is easier to deal with in general terms. Suffice to say, Louise said that she had thought about a lot of things in the previous couple of days, and come to the conclusion that in her heart, she still wanted to be with Luke, rather than me, and that it was over between us.

"You do understand, don’t you?", she asked.

I felt a peculiar numbness rising from the pit of my stomach, and an uncomfortable lump in my throat, but I managed to mumble something appropriately understanding, although I wasn’t really able to understand anything.

To lend a surreal touch to the whole scene, the paper boy then really did arrive, walked up the drive, and handed me the local rag, not noticing the Shakespearian romantic tragedy that was unfolding on my doorstep. It was probably the Loughborough Echo that was being delivered, and this event is possibly why I have always harboured a lifelong contempt for this dismal excuse for a newspaper. I was now starting to feel faintly ridiculous on top of everything else, holding a letter informing me I was being dumped, with the letter’s author in front of me, and a copy of the local paper to boot. It was time to get some kind of a grip on things, and so I said to Louise that it was fine, I understood, that there was no problem, and that she had to do what was right for her. In other words, I gave her the confirmation that she was desperately seeking from me that she hadn’t behaved badly. I found it difficult to believe I could lie so glibly, but it must have been quite convincing, because she smiled, and looked much relieved.

"I’ll see you back at school", one of us said, and the other nodded.

Louise took her leave then. There was nothing more to say.

What happened next is all lost to time; whether I spent the next few hours in a fugue of tear-stricken misery, or whether I merely returned to watching the Test Match with my brother, I cannot say. I know that at some point I took the letter upstairs and put it with my personal stuff - the fledgling poetry that I had started writing, the poetry that now had a whole world of newly discovered feeling to give it some much-needed real emotional input, and take it away from its quasi-Jim Morrison pretension. It was, I told myself at some point, a good thing that I was feeling hurt, and unhappy, and heartbroken, because I was getting some good writing out of it. But I wasn’t convinced - poems in exchange for a broken heart – was that really such a good deal?

Of course, my heart wasn’t really broken at all. Teenage hearts are strong, I’m pretty damn sure – they bend a bit, and get pulled out of shape, but they’re rarely damaged irrevocably. The real heartbreak always comes a little later, when you think you’re old enough to know better, when you fall in love with an intensity that reminds you of being a teenager again, and when it all goes horribly wrong, you haven’t got the innocent optimism of youth to fall back on, the dreams of a teenage summer to give you some kind of strength to carry on.

But that’s a lesson I learned many years later; in 1991, I was convinced my heart was broken, and even though it wasn’t the real deal, I can still remember feeling that hurt for the first time – you never really forget that first time your emotional life is totally knocked sideways by somebody you thought felt exactly the same way that you did. I think it took a while to get over. I think it wasn’t until we were back at school, amid familiar surroundings and familiar faces, embroiled in new teenage adventures and scholastic tedium that made the events of the summer seem somehow distant and unreal, that I found some kind of closure with my brief time with Louise. Perhaps it was when Louise and Luke got back together, for get back together they did, albeit only for a short while, that I moved on from what had happened. Or perhaps I’m trying to give some neat circularity to a brief period of my life that doesn’t deserve it. Perhaps I only really got over it when I started seeing somebody else, which happened within a month of being back at school. Perhaps I never did get over it at all.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, as the television comedy theme tune says.

"We had some good times, but they’re gone

The winter’s coming on…

Summer’s almost gone"

The Doors, "Summer’s Almost Gone"