I had done what my dad would refer to as ‘Blotted my copy book’. I’d been there before but this time I’d excelled myself in the ‘What has she done now?’ misdemeanours and no amount of wide-eyed fictional protesting could talk me out of this situation or lessen the impact.
Returning home after two weeks away in Europe with school friends, I was exhausted after a lengthy over-land journey but still on a high and buzzing with enthusiasm to share thoughts on where I’d been. I thought they, my family, would be pleased to see me. I was naïve. Worse, I’d been stupid. Caught up in a moment fueled by Slivovitz and the sultry, open air discotheque and, yes, of course it was my own fault.
“I hope you weren’t getting up to what I was doing when I got love bites!”There was a hint of s snigger from the barmaid. I’d just dragged my suitcase through the pub door and she could see me from the bar. She was only a year older than me, married to my dad’s cellar man and had a baby daughter. She was lovely. She’ll never know how much.
My story was more innocent than her story implied. Mine was no more than a dare in Opatija. Who can get the biggest, reddest love bite out of the four of us up for it. We had become friendly – and it was just friendly – with some lads from a posh boarding school. Everything above board and respectable, apart from the awful love bites.
Following the passing of my mother and re-marriage of my father, our family dynamics had changed considerably and everything familiar and comfortable to me had gone. It is hard enough to be a teenage girl without complications of where you fit in, where you belong.
It wasn’t many minutes into my arrival before the proverbial hit the fan. My dad was speechless. Even he couldn’t stand my corner on this one. His wife, with a ‘How dare you do this to us’ headless chicken routine, throwing in to my dad, ‘I knew she’d do something, I told you.’
I don’t suppose it helped when I reassured them that the love bites will have gone long before I go back to school and meanwhile, I’ll dab them with Witch Hazel and hide them with makeup, better than I have done.
I didn’t fit in and I didn’t belong, but for the time being I had a good friend in the barmaid who was always there for me and wanted me to do well for myself, not be tied down like she thought she was. Life goes on and we’ve both done ok.
By the way, love bites are disgusting and I promise I haven't had any since!
I’ve chosen poems that are not love-bite related, but take me back to that summer and remind me of my fascination with the poets concerned.
Love’s Philosophy
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine? –
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822
She Walks In Beauty
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron 1788 - 1824
Thanks for reading, Pam x
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