111 One Giant Step

July 1969. Man had walked on the moon but on Earth, I was still one giant step away from asking Lindsay out. I’d scraped up the quid I needed to take her to the pictures, now I needed to talk to her, but Lindsay was never alone in school and she always walked home with her friend Ann Howe. Twice I tried to follow them and twice I ended up with a long range view of the wrong girl.

With the end of term nigh and the long summer holiday just days away, time was running out when the bell put an end to the last lesson on what had been a scorching hot day. I hung back once more, long enough for my mates to give up waiting for me, yet not so long that I couldn’t catch up with the girls.

As usual the girls crossed Duncan Road and, as usual, they turned down Gillingham Road. Ten seconds behind them, I turned the same corner, desperate to be on the spot when they parted.

Disaster struck when girls popped into the little confectionery shop with the faded brown exterior, a little way down Gillingham Road. This unexpected twist put my mind in a whirl. Just yards behind, I was all of a dither. Should I walk on and forget it? No, it was now or never.

I picked my spot a little way past the shop. Keep calm and play it cool I told myself as the seconds ticked by, but when the girls came out of the shop, I was a bag of nerves. My planned show of nonchalance went out of the window when a sudden paralysis of the legs meant I could only manage a couple of Douglas Bader-like steps towards them. The big moment, the moment I’d planned for weeks and daydreamed about, had arrived. Lindsay smiled when she saw me, and asked what I was doing there. Radiant in my puppy dog eyes, I couldn’t hold the words in any longer.

‘Will you go out with me?’

Lindsay tossed her head back in surprise. Then the bomb dropped.

‘F*** off!’

Whatever else she said went unheard, as the fragile plinths of teenage confidence and self esteem exploded in my head.

Then she was gone, vanishing up a narrow alleyway to where her house was set back from the main road. I was still reeling as I turned around for the long trail home. Ann, who’d witnessed everything, walked alongside me on the short distance to her house, a little further down Gillingham Road.

‘I was going to take her to the pictures… I’ve saved up a pound’, I muttered, if only to break the dreadful silence.

‘She doesn’t need it. It was her birthday last week and her brother gave her ten pounds,’ said Ann, trying to be helpful.

Rejection hadn’t been in the script. Not so emphatic, anyway. Slow motion replays of Lindsay tossing her head back and delivering those damning words was all I could think of on my way home. I was three quarters of the way there before I gave a thought to Ann’s part in the disaster. She’d shown some compassion and for that I was grateful, but if it crossed my mind that I’d picked the wrong girl, it passed very swiftly. Then came a thought that filled me with dread.

What if Lindsay tells everybody?

That night in my bedroom I brooded. I was still brooding as I stared at the pile of books I’d used to raise a corner of the bed. I only needed to kick the books away with my right foot for the bed to crash down and, hopefully, break my left leg. The plan would get me out of school for an early summer holiday, but did I have the courage?

I was in a subdued mood on the bus the following morning. In saving a leg, I risked losing face, and I wasn’t sure I’d made the right decision.

Will she or won’t she?

The question weighed heavily on my mind as my Twydall friends and I made our way from the Bus Depot to school.

In stark contrast to my friends, carefree and chatty as they walked up the alleys, I carried a heavy heart.

Will she or won’t she?

I soon got my answer. The instant we emerged on Marlborough Road a huge cheer went up from a reception committee on the other side of the road. Though my friends didn’t have a clue what was going on they soon latched on when surrounded by a gleeful mob.

‘Who asked Lindsay Hawkes out last night then?’ asked a gloating Richard Pascall.

With my face on full beam an even louder cheer went up as my grinning friends joined in with the rest of them. Bastards!