My First Girlfriend

Still no blog entry for our Rockies holiday, but instead…

Wow, today I celebrate 17 years of dating my first girlfriend! I don’t just mean that it was seventeen years ago that I first had a date, although that is true, but that I have now been dating my first girlfriend for seventeen years!!
I seem to remember it came about as my friend Chris and I kidnapped Heather’s toy penguin, Alexander (usually known now as ‘Little A’) and sent a ransom note to her demanding ‘two custard creams, or the penguin gets it!’ I don’t remember what the penguin was going to get, but he was sure going to get it if those custard creams didn’t materialise. Now for my Canadian friends, I’m not sure you’ll know what custard creams are. A custard cream is two small rectangular cookies (biscuits to the British) sandwiched together with a yellow hardish cream that I suppose is meant to be custard flavour – I can’t say I’d ever really thought about it until now, but I don’t think they taste like custard at all! For more information, I found a web page describing them at http://www.kempwrights.co.uk/custardcream.htm.
Anyway, I can’t really remember how the next part of the day developed, only that our friends Chris and Beckie were probably getting fed up of us not really getting our act together. I had asked Heather if she would ‘go out’ with me about five weeks before and she had refused. I can only thank Chris and Beckie for interfering or I may still be a bachelor today. I was nineteen at the time and had never worked up the bravery to ask anyone to go out with me before and then when I finally did manage to ask that question I was turned down. Heather did have good reason – she’d never realised that she liked me in that kind of way despite being best friends for months! Anyway we moped around for the next five weeks not knowing what we were feeling for each other until Saturday 20th May 1989 when Chris and Beckie told us to go into Heather’s room and not come out until we had decided what we were going to do. Sometimes friends have to be cruel to be kind.
We decided we’d give it a try and our closest friends were delighted. Our less close friends were confused as they thought we’d already been going out for months anyway! It so happened that Don Francisco was holding a concert in Nottingham that night (oh, I forgot to say we were all students at Nottingham University at this time) and although I had a ticket for this, Heather didn’t. However, friends will be friends and one of our friends was unable to go and either gave or sold his ticket to Heather, but now we had tickets that were in separate parts of the concert hall. Another friend who had a ticket in the same area as me gallantly swapped tickets with Heather and so we were able to sit together and enjoy the concert sitting next to one another. The concert was great and the company was wonderful – my first date!
Heather and I did get a ticking off from Chris later that evening after walking back from the bus stop with our arms around each other – we had progressed from holding hands rather too quickly in his opinion. As I said, we’d already been best friends for months and had most people in the Christian Union thinking we were already dating, so I don’t think anyone else thought anything of it. As for me, I thought it was rather fabulous walking with my arm around Heather. The first kiss was some days later, but that’s another story – not a very long one – it was a quick peck on the cheek as Heather went away for the weekend to a friend’s wedding but I’m sure you’ve had enough of my reminiscing already!

So how are we going to celebrate seventeen years? Well, friends from Newfoundland who are living in Lloyd have invited us over for supper, so we’re going to have REAL chips! Not French fries, not potato crisps which is what other Canadians think of when we say chips, but REAL chips – good fat deep fried chips - the Newfies call the chips as well as us British - hooray. I’ve no idea what else we’ll be eating but I’m sure it will be good.

God bless you,

Steve