This tale takes us back to the early 1970s.
The Troubles
One day, my mother took me the five or so miles walk up from our home on the coast inland to her friend's from work. That woman was either a divorcee or a widower, with two children of her own but no man about the house.
My mother and I were both quite fit in those days - us from walking everywhere, her from daily labour. Her rheumatoid arthritis came later as reward for picking potatoes, cauliflower, sprouts, lettuce, whatever was ready for harvest at pittance wages, bent over in east-coast Scottish weather.
I was still too young to realize we might have taken the local bus instead. Terry Wiles's blue and yellow single-deckers covered routes that Scottish Motor Transport's green coaches didn't run on, where Lothian Regional Transport's maroon livery was not yet evident anywhere east of the Scottish capital Edinburgh.
But we had fallen too poor for even the bus. And for the exact same reason we no longer owned a car. Marital separation.
My personal treat for our cross-country traipse turned out to be Lydia. She was my mother's friend's daughter aged 12 and, therefore, a few years older than me.
Now never in my short years had I ever beheld such a pinnacle of creation as was Lydia! (And, I realize as I write this, her fledgling pheromones.)
Princess Lydia, fit to be a queen!
Oh, how the rest of my world slipped out of focus when Lydia appeared! Her kind smile! Her Germanic complexion and blonde pigtails! That voice. Those lips, darkened by smooth pale skin.
Now, I was too young for lust. Of course I was. So this must have been my very first experience of love and therefore attraction. My heart was for her and her only.
Oh Lydia!
Of course, her big brother Watty, skinny and 16, smoking a single-bought Embassy Regal on the fly, spotting my guileless infatuation, teased me. A soft-hearted lad himself, he would only dish it so far, laughing benignly and away from the ears of others.
Me, I just felt embarrassed. My aching butterflies, fluttering over his glorious wee sister, being so obvious. Such the boy was I.
Elsewhere, my mother and her friend would be gossiping away the hours. Beyond the initial ritual welcome of a cup of tea, further refreshments probably ran to Bacardi and Coke (a symbol of sophistication for Scottish women of the 20th century's working classes).
I'd occasionally be handed a cheese piece with tomato sauce on, a home-made cupcake smothered in hundreds & thousands, a glass of diluting orange.
My considerate tormentor Watty would have escaped by now to meet his pals. Light-of-my-life Lydia would eventually tire of babysitting this love-struck eejit.
Then, before early evening, my mother and I would say goodbyes and ready to retrace our steps. Once back down on the coast and home we would have our meagre dinner alone.
This whole episode repeated only once or twice, with what seemed long gaps in between. But by then Lydia the girl was becoming more a young woman, and therefore more distant to me and out more with her own age group.
Several months later, perhaps, my mother told me Watty had joined the army but would be home on leave to get married. This meant another trip inland, this time by transport.
I have vague recollections of being at the reception. I felt socially inadequate, never having before been out at so formal an occasion. Lydia stayed out of my way and in the company of cousins who had come especially.
But the day did not finish well or as planned.
Guests discovered the bride drunk, in a lift, still in full bridal gown, knelt in front of the conveniently kilted Best Man with her mouth open and fully occupied.
A week later Watty was posted to Northern Ireland, where the troubles were escalating.
I never saw Lydia again.
Genesis 6:5 - KJV