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Laugh, I could have died when I overheard this woman on the bus. She said some woman had rung her husband only it was his elder brother she wanted.

'Fancy,' she said,'ringing up a bloke she hadn't seen in over sixty years. A woman of her age. She's over eighty you know.'

That set me thinking. Only the other week I'd seen his name in the obituary column. My first love, the one they say you never forget. Gave me quite a turn I can tell you, but it wasn't him. I could tell because it mentioned a sister and he didn't have one. That's the trouble with names they are so common.

Well why not I thought. Where's the harm? Just a phone call to see if he's still alive. Daft really, he could have left Nottingham years ago for all I know.

I got out the telephone directory. The one thing about being old you can do things you wouldn't dream of when you're young. Of course I used to go round the streets where I might bump into him, accidental like. But I'd never have rung him up.

There were six Josephs, all with the right initial so I rang the first one in the list. Bingo first time!

He didn't remember me. Not even when I said my maiden name. Can you credit it. Eight years he flipped in and out of my life and he didn't remember me. It's the best of times, and the worst of times, being old I mean.The worst of times because your bones won't let you do the things your your spirit cries out to do.

Sometimes I want to flap my arms and run down a grassy bank the way I did when I was a child but my legs won't go. Or take eating, when I was a child I secretly decided I would eat a dozen eclairs at one go once I was old and being fat would nolonger matter. The trouble is it does matter, being fat I mean, especially when your arteries are clogged up. Not only that but even one eclair gives me chronic indigestion.

'It's down hill now all the way', my brother told me when I reached sixty. Can't say I agree with him. Up hill more like. Mind you I've never liked climbing hills always made me puff. Being overweight as I always have been. Still as my milkman says, plums are juicier than prunes. Laugh I could have died.

That's one of the advantages, of being old I mean. You can have a joke with a fellow without worrying that he wants to get you in bed. Only trouble is inside you wouldn't mind if he did. I can still remember the last time I responded to a wolf whistle only to find it was aimed at a bit of a thing barely out of gymslips. Spoilt my day I can tell you.

You see I'd always had more than my fair share of wolf whistles. My weight was unevenly distributed. I reckon if I had my top front removed I'd have been a stone lighter. But the lads seemed to go for it. Or should it be them?

Any road, I was marked down as a bit of hot stuff. Funny really because their fumbling did nothing for me. I just gloried in the power it gave to me. Of course I didn't have any girl friends. No they were jealous, called me a slag I shouldn't wonder, still I never bothered.

Eh well we're all daft when we're young.

It was my reputation that lost me my first love. And what a lucky escape that turned out to be! I didn't think so at the time mind. No,I shed some tears over him I can tell you.

I was fourteen and still at school. He was a year older. I can see him now clear as any brick wall. Is he still as lean now I wonder. And that glorious red hair, that'll be gone for sure. Not that he was ever what you'd call handsome. I don't think I could have ever looked at him properly.

I was really surprised when I happened to see an old medical card and discovered he was blind in one eye. I was a clerk in School Medical at the time. They sent me down to the cellar to file these old record cards. Naturally I read the ones whose names I recognised.

I knew he had a weak arm because I always had to sit on his left side in the pictures. Good thing he was left handed.

'One eye and one arm gone west and our Jo ran in and grabbed the rest." my brother teased. No wonder I was never sure whether he was looking at me or my mate.

He told me once he only went out with me to teach me a lesson. He always intended to break my heart in revenge for what I'd done to others.

Laugh, I could have died. No well I'd always tried to let them down gently and I'd never told any of the lads that I'd marry them. I just wanted a good time. Until I took up with him and that were it.

He were a clever lad though. Years ahead of his time. Fifty years ago

he said that marriage was an outdated institution and that monagomy wasn't natural to man. "After the war," he said, "folk would nolonger form permanent relationships."

Well, like Scarlet O'Hara I couldn't see what a woman would get out of that except a "Passel of brats."

"Women," he thought, "would form unions to protect themselves."

"A chastity belt more like." I said.

It's a funny thing, a girl like me oozing sex and yet I was as cold as last night's rice pudding. Oh I loved him all right. I'd walk miles by his side; chew the rag for hours and if he'd ever have got round to asking me to live with him I'd have jumped at the chance.

I just wanted to be with him. Always thought he would come round to it one day. But he never did. Mind you he never asked for anything else. Only once when he was half cut. I didn't fancy it. For one thing it was cold in our entry and he wouldn't say he loved me. Said I was trying to trap him.

There was a time when I thought I had him but then I made a fatal mistake. It was my twentyfirst birthday, a Thursday it was. He told me he always took his mother out on a Thursday. Well I can see now I should have said, "Take us both." But I didn't.No! I just said coyly,

"Well you take your mother out. I'll find somebody else to take me."

If only he had suggested taking us both things might have been different. His mother,was wiser than me. Well she was older wasn't she?

"Don't worry about me," she told him, "'you must take your girl out."

So he did but then he chucked me. He did come back more than once but he said he'd never leave his mother. I thought it was just an excuse.

We had an on off affair for years until at last I made a decision.

"The next time you throw me over I'll get married", I said. And I did.

I sometimes wondered if I should have waited. But I took a decision and what's more I played it straight.

But do you know I hardly dared speak to a man for fear he'd think I was easy. I'd only got to offer a tradesman a cup o' tea for him to assume he'd get a hot roll to go with it. I don't know whether I looked like a femme fatal or just desperate for it.

Lads were funny about sex in those days. One told me he was offering the flower of his manhood. I refused. "That's not a flower," I said, 'it's a flipping dandelion." Laugh, I could have died. He wasn't amused.

I met him once, after I was married. My first love, I mean. It was at the Palais. I'd gone with a mate and he was there. When he asked me to dance I thought my knees would give way. Funny that, all those years I'd known him and we'd never danced together before.

I should have been transported to heaven only it weren't like the films. No, we couldn't get it together. I don't know to this day whether it was my feet or his that got in the way but after five minutes he suggested we went for a drink. He still looked the same and it could have all started again but I had a couple of babies to think about and you have to put them first, don't you?

My friend said she thought I looked bored when I danced with him. Bored! I laughed. I wasn't sick 'till later.

I've never seen him since, nor thought about him for years. And when I did it was the best of times.

I could tell from his voice on the phone he'd gotten really old. It was all quavery like and from what I could make out he didn't do anything except garden and play bowles. He told me his mother died four years ago, she was ninety-eight. No he never married.

I didn't say much except I was glad he was still alive. Even if he wasn't really living. Well not what I call living.

He said he never went dancing now. He felt out of it with all this new fangled sequence dancing. I wanted to laugh. Well sequence is supposed to be on the way out now and it's hardly what you'd call new.

Made me think though. If I'd have waited! What I would have missed and still be missing. All that loving and living.

I shan't ring again but I'll send him a birthday card. You never know -might jog his memory. Perhaps he will remember!

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