I awoke in a hospital bed, a young nurse stood on a chair beside my pillow, reaching up to open the curtains which had been shut tight for the previous three days. I have no memory of those three days, and my recovery from meningitis was not anticipated. Still an innocent sixth form grammar school boy, the antibiotics pumped into my system had gathered all the potential pimples from my entire body into one huge pimple at the end of my nose. The nurse took care of it as I blushed with teenage embarrassment.
I am told that at the onset of this illness I had been carried screaming from the house, my language so offensive that an exorcist might have been more appropriate than the ambulance which arrived late. I am also told that, whilst I was in hospital, two school friends of mine arrived carrying grapes. Unable to find me, they apparently sat down on the hospital steps and ate the grapes, before returning to school to tell everyone I had died. This would explain the look of alarm on the headmaster's face some weeks later when I went back to continue my studies.
After my being discharged, a third school friend came to visit me at home. Unlike myself, he had decided against staying on into the sixth form and had started work in the coal mines, an option most grammar school boys in that town took anyway, regardless of the opportunity of further education. We had first met at the back of the maths class. We were both heavily into James Bond novels and secret agents, which explains why, regardless of their being a teacher present, I tried to sneak up behind him and grab him in a headlock. Unfortunately for me, he was already fairly well acquainted with the basics of Kung-Fu, and his defensive karate chop practically took my head off, splitting my lower lip in two. Covered in blood I made a swift exit to the toilets. He followed on behind, worried, but no doubt secretly proud of the blow he'd delivered. The maths teacher simply continued with his lesson as if nothing was happening. From that moment on we were close, hence his visit to see me.
As a young working man, he had now started to earn a wage, and pursue the social life which went with it. In other words, Girls. Therefore his ideas on how to accelerate my full recovery involved something much more potent than grapes. He had fixed me up with a blind date. I should mention here that this would also be my first real date, such being the consequence of attending an all boy's school.
Come the day of the date she and I strolled around the grounds of Newstead Abbey, escorted at a discreet distance by a small entourage of her friends, checking me out as I imagined a Sicilian Family might. Of course, they were not Sicilian, but the mining communities were tight like that.
She was five foot six of a sixteen year old working girl, a striking juxtaposition of jet black hair and bright blue eyes. A factory seamstress by day, a mod by night even as her Midlands working class rocker roots showed through. I was a slight of build sixth former, eager to grow my hair longer than school rules would permit, bored with A-level Chaucer by day, alone at night, sketching, strumming. She was just what the hospital doctor of some weeks previous should have ordered. She jump-started my hitherto dormant teenage years, her nicotine fingers impatient to explore the content of my jeans, taking a firm grip and guiding me through all the gears. I was quite shocked, and I needed to be. She was indeed much better than grapes.
All text, pros, & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.
