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Do You Want To Hold Me?
Do You Want To Hold Me?
I first met Kate at a disco the Banbury Rugby Club was having on Bonfire Night (November 5th), 1981.
After the fireworks.
And the sausages and baked potato that were cooked on the fire.
I went with Smell, who was on leave from the Scots Guards (he had joined as a bagpiper in the early summer).
It was an odd demographic. It consisted of a lot of Rugby Club regulars, people who were too lazy to go to their normal hangouts after the bonfire, oddballs who had never been to a disco before, people’s mums, dads, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, and only a handful of teens.
All of the old crowd loved the music and were dancing their hearts out in their varicose-vein socks.
The DJ, with his typical box-of-shit record collection, was beaming.
Nobody stood out from the few girls around our age who were there, so we sidled up to the bar to place drink orders.
The barman, without seeming to even look at us, said, “You’re not 18. Bugger off.”
Smell told him he was in the Scots Guards.
I told him that I used to play second row for BGN’s First Fifteen (that was our school’s rather impressive rugby team).
The barman had been in the paras (Britain’s Parachute Regiment), so he and Smell had an immediate connection.
He served Smell a scotch, and asked him if I had really been on the rugby team.
I would have been outraged, but, to be fair, I was wearing my Ultravox/Brideshead Revisited outfit (that phase, thankfully, was coming to an end). To make matters worse, I was wearing a blue silk bowtie with white polka dots, and I think I had a bit of eyeliner on. So I could see where he was coming from. Ordering a gin and tonic also probably hadn’t helped.
So Smell vouched to his new best friend that I was on the up and up.
And so, unknowingly, we had successfully employed Aristotle’s concept of ethos.
We sat at a table, drinking our drinks, scanning the crowd. Somebody’s mum (at least she looked that way) came to our table and asked Smell to dance.
So I sat there scanning the crowd with the optimistic-yet-futile diligence similar to searching through the Quality Street tin, two days after Christmas, hoping to find a purple one.
Then through a door (either the entrance or the toilets, I can’t remember which), a beautiful girl with a mohawk appeared.
Smell came back to the table, having bought his dance partner a Babycham, and I asked him if he was going to buy selection boxes for her grandkids.
He spit out whisky, through his mouth and nose, and did the 3-minute rat-a-tat-tat laugh that he was famous for.
I nodded towards the girl, and asked him “doesn’t she look like someone?”
“Yeah. Someone who was on Top of the Pops, but I can’t remember who.”
She was the spitting image of Annabella Lwin from Bow Wow Wow. But we weren’t hip enough to realise it at the time.
So I went over to Mohawk girl and pestered her until she gradually appreciated my charm. Her name was Kate.
She didn’t drink, so I bought her an orange juice. I asked the barkeep to put it in a wine glass with a cube of ice (probably 10% of the bar’s supply), a slice of orange, and a fancy straw.
He did it, with a begrudging scowl.
Through a combination of humour and dogged persistence, I did alright with the girls. I think once I got over my first clumsy attempts of the learning curve, I was batting a 500.
That’s a baseball expression that I’m not sure if I’m using properly. It’s just a shameless attempt to get American visitors to this blog.
I wasn’t bad.
But I wasn’t the Fonz.
I danced with Kate for two slow dances, probably Three Times A Lady and I’m Not In Love. Who knows? But a high statistical probability.
Before she left (she had school the next day, and I, in the sixth form, didn’t on a Friday), I asked her on a date.
“Why not?” she responded, with typical British enthusiasm.
And I got a peck on the cheek.
After she had left, Smell gave me the most sought-after observation, “I think you’re in there.”
So the date was set for Saturday. We’d meet in front of the Town Hall.
On the way home, I did a mental inventory:
Made her laugh a lot. Check.
Didn’t step on her toes while we danced. Check.
No bits of sausage in my teeth. Check.
Didn’t fart in a way that was audible or couldn’t reasonably be blamed on someone else. Check.
I was good to go.
So Saturday noon, I stood for an hour in the pouring rain, partially sheltered by the Town Hall’s awning (I can’t remember what the weather was, but it was England, so I’m fairly certain that was the case).
She never showed up.
The unmitigated gall.
In there, my bollocks.
Of course, a couple of months later, we bumped into each other at a party, and I eagerly started an on-again-off-again romance with her.
Such is the flexibility of pride in a 16-year-old boy…
POST SCRIPT
There’s not many videos of Bow Wow Wow, but here’s a concert they performed in September of 1982 at Sefton Park. We weren’t together at that time, so I don’t know for sure, but I bet Kate was there:
