-7

i remember: the date

i met annemarie when i was at poly. we occasionally spoke to each other, but we were not friends or mates. i remember she wore a large duffel coat and always appeared to be shy. she never completed the course; unusually for me i did indeed finish the course.
i met her again when she was working as a sales assistant at a comic shop i frequented. it was there that we developed a friendship: she was pretty, she liked comics, she was into sociology and she gave me a great discount: what wasn’t there to like. as i went to the shop each week we got quite friendly, we went out a couple of times for drinks.
one christmas she invited me over to her place. i said no (hey i never said i was good at reading the signs).

it was several months later when we next met. i am not sure how i ended up in highbury but there i was and as i walked over to holloway road i met annmarie. we talked; we went back to her flat. had tea, and i told her how i had fallen for a girl at the london school of economics. naomi was an american student who was exceptionally cute, and ferociously clever (and is probably running the world right now). there may have been chemistry between us, but as ever i missed the signals and fluffed my chance and naomi remained no more than a dream. my tale of self-pity was accompanied with sympathetic cups of tea from annemarie.
after a few hours i left and she went to pick up her kid.

in the way of such things i didn’t think much more about it.
a few months later i am in my bedroom, i had just come back from a run and i was still in my sweaty sweats lying on my bed when the door opens and in walks annemarie. to say i was shocked was a bit of an understatement.
i was also impressed she found where my mum’s place was.
we chatted for a couple of hours and then i took her home (which meant catching a tube from south harrow to holloway road – or pretty much all the way across london, but i am a gentleman).
i realised then i was smitten.

when she called and asked if i wanted to meet up after christmas i said yes (i am slow but not that slow). date and time arranged. countdown began, christmas dragged, and then off i went over to holloway road for the date that would change my life.

strangely i arrived early, a rare feat for me, as most will testify to. now i will be the first to confess that i am not the most socially functional person in the world, that plus the fact i realised that i was very keen on annemarie, made me incredibly nervous. i wasn’t quite shitting my pants nervous, but i wouldn’t have chanced a fart at that very moment for fear of kissing cotton.
she lived on the fourth floor of a set of flats. i climbed the stairs in eager anticipation and mounting dread. i know what film we were going to see, even knew where the cinema was, all was set. i arrived at her door. knocked. waited. knocked again. waited. mmm the tendrils of mounting panic were climbing up my spine. knocked. waited. joy, i had been stood up. oh one last knock. an answer. annemarie’s flatmate let me and told me she had gone out to do some shopping.
relief.
we watched a little tv in embarrassed silence.
double relief when annemarie returned.

we went to see “back to the future” at the screen on the green. we both enjoyed the movie. it was now officially our movie (and to this day i haven’t watched it since she dumped me – hey i am not spoiling the happy ending you knew this already). we walked back to her place. we told each other we had a good time and we should do it again. i caught the tube home, the journey seemed to be over in a flash but then i was as happy as a pig in shit.
i went back over the new year and shared the new year coming in with annemarie and some canadian girls she knew. i slept on a rickety camp bed that night, somewhat in fear that it would collapse.
we spent the next day talking and talking. we talked through the next night.
i went back to my parents.
then went back to annemarie’s, and we admitted to each other we wanted to be an item.
in that instance i was as happy as i think i have ever been, to misquote calvin and hobbes: it was my pony moment.
in hindsight i wish i had known how quickly things go wrong, as i would have savoured it much more than i did.

but in that wonderful fleeting moment i was living a technicolor musical and i sang and danced like fred and gene combined.