My thoughts on a page.

It’s been a hectic week. Yer man had a minor op, and in his haste to prove he was not sick and in need of no care whatsoever he decided to…

Fix our phone…which wasn’t broken, but is now

Mess with the modem…which left us four days without internet.

However all is now good with both yer man and the internet, (I explained to our kids it would be wrong to murder him in his weakened condition) and I can now offer you another one of my Feelgood articles from the Irish Examiner… a lovely romantic one…kindof.

Is there anything more timeless than love? I wonder in prehistoric days were there battles over partners? Love was certainly alive and well eight hundred years ago when the Persian poet Rumi wrote,

“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”

However, quite some time before we ever find love we usually have our first kiss.  Some are memorable? Others, like mine, less than perfect?

I was an innocent eleven-year-old attending a friend’s birthday party one wet afternoon. We’d taken over the entire house for a game of hide and seek. No room was off limits. I’d searched in vain for the perfect spot, only to end up in full view under the kitchen table. As I sat in silence, the door creaked open and the geekiest boy at the party lurched towards my hiding place.

Despite my spreading myself out to ensure there was no room, he pushed his way in, ignoring my body language and hissing sounds. I was acutely aware of his body pushed up against mine as the noise of others being caught about the house broke the silence.

Turning to snarl in his direction I was just in time to see his face, as if in slow motion, approaching mine, eyes closed, mouth wide open. I’d no time to react as he leaned in for the kill. I can assure you, from that moment on I can imagine exactly what it feels like to be kissed by the enormous slobbering tongue of a St Bernard. As I sat wiping spit off my face I realised, I’d been kissed for the first time.

All competitiveness left me, as I shot out of my hiding spot like the cork out of a bottle, without a backward glance at my passionate admirer.

“Yeuk,” I thought. “Boys are disgusting.”

Thankfully, despite that less than perfect memory, I recovered enough to change my mind about boys, but had little interest in finding any one in particular. That is until I and a gang of fellow student nurses traveled to Cyprus.

It was there I first set eyes on yer man…and his brother. Initially I did my best to ignore him, but I couldn’t deny there was a rather unfamiliar flutter in my chest whenever I saw him smile in my direction. The girl who’d ‘Never chase a man’ seemed to lose her mind, as she waited in hope for him to arrive at the pool each day.

Mid week through the holiday I decided I needed to give my liver a break so waved my party mad friends off, relishing the thought of a quiet night in. Moments later I answered a knock on the door to find yer man from the pool standing there.

“Do you want to come out?”

Did I what? There were skid marks behind me as I jumped on the back of his moped. Just the two of us…and his brother.

We’d a lovely night but as it got late, his brother took off. Sitting together, looking out to sea, the flutter in my chest returned. We leaned closer, electricity sparking between us.

And then it happened. Our first kiss? Chemistry exploded?

Sadly no, the only exploding was within my stomach as at that very minute my dinner decided it wished to see daylight once more. I raced around the corner leaving poor Casanova alone.

A short while later I returned, the flutter within me dead and buried, “I’m a bit tired,” I said. We drove home in silence and I raced inside, barely a “Goodnight” said between us.

Did we eventually share a first kiss? Let’s just say I’d learned an important lesson about chemistry and dodgy dinners and yes, yer man is still calling to the door thirty years later.

photo credit: Haley Redshaw willow’s cute look via photopin (license)
photo credit: Kurayba Summer Cruising via photopin (license)

Photo credit: London Irish Graduate Network