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1981 (16 YEARS OLD)
The Long Road To FunkyTown, Part 2

The Long Road To FunkyTown, Part 2

1981 (16 YEARS OLD)1 week ago

1981 - 16 Years Old

STOP! This is a 2-part post. If you haven’t read the first part, you can find it here.

So, as per the half-arsed instructions on the back of a ruined cigarette pack, I was standing on High Street, outside of the local Wimpy. I was on time, but it was the day that was up in the air.

So for three nights straight, at about 6:30, I ate my dinner at Wimpy’s. They did have hamburgers further down on the menu, so, fortunately, I didn’t have to order the Shanty Brunch.

Whatever the fuck that was.

While not the best burger I’ve ever eaten, at least it wasn’t Sweeney Todd’s.

And on Wednesday, she finally showed up.

And she was the most beautiful girl I had ever met.

Yeah, right.

She looked, and sort of acted, like the “singer” from the FunkyTown video:

The blond one in pink! Not the dancers…

And she was walking with a stunner.

Her sister, she explained, without introducing us.

So we (minus the sister, unfortunately) went inside Wimpy for our Shanty Brunch.

She, too, was wearing a turtleneck and told me she’d got a bollocking from her mum and wouldn’t be able to go out at night until after the New Year.

We chit-chatted about everything and nothing. I can’t even remember about what. She ordered a Knickerbocker Glory, and I just ordered a tea. I was sick of the food by this point.

In the 1970s and 1980s, long before Instagram and the like, social proof came from the number of Christmas cards you would get. This girl had a fairly big stack of them in her purse, and she pulled them out “nonchalantly” in a clumsy attempt to impress me.

Name!

So I pretended to be interested, and looked through them. The problem was she had plumped up her stack by including what I assumed were her sister’s cards.

Several months earlier, at the end of summer, some of the lads and I went on a camping trip to Cornwall to celebrate having finished our ‘O’ levels. We had miscalculated how many nights we were staying when we paid upfront, and, having spent all of our money, sat on a bench all of the last night waiting for Mr. Singh to pick us up the following day.

We talked about many things, including formulating a theory that the name parents give their daughter dictates how she will look when she grows up. Simone and Emma will always blossom into beauty; Gertrude and Bertha not so much.

I can’t remember the exact names, but some of them were addressed to Brunhilda and some to Amelia. I had an idea which one was which, but a little later, I asked what her sister’s name was.

A rookie mistake.

She wasn’t happy, in the inevitable way that a less-attractive sister is when her more attractive sister is brought up.

So I dropped it.

I don’t think I was her dream boy, by any stretch of the imagination. But, like me, she was just working her way through the apprenticeship of romance. And we had nothing in common – not music, not fashion, not books. Not even TV shows.

We had a quick snog in an alley, and went our separate ways. But not before making plans to meet on the upcoming Friday.

Tea at Littlewoods with the girl with no name. Nice.

So on Friday, on my way to the meeting, I had a moment of clarity and decided to do a runner. To do what Kate had done to me about a month before.

I felt guilty, of course. That’s what being a Catholic boy was all about.

On the way home, Kieran was passing in the opposite direction on the other side of the street. He shouted an invitation to go for coffee, but I declined, telling him I was meant to meet a girl but was going home instead.

He snickered and held his nose, as he always did when he was laughing. I’m sure he had done it to a million girls.

At least I knew I wouldn’t bump into her at another party for a month.