A Time of Innocence

A-M u s i n g s – Musings are thoughts, the thoughtful kind. For the purpose of these articles, a-musings are thoughts that might amuse, entertain and even enlighten.

I suppose it’s one of those legendary signs of old age coming on, the onset of senility, but it appears to me that the once turbulent times of my younger days have levelled out like the surface of the sea after a storm; even waxing poetical it seems. So let me explain.

Recently, in my ever diminishing circle of acquaintances—yes, that’s another side-effect of old age—two children, one definitely a child the other a tad older but no less unwise, managed to get their girlfriends pregnant and the pregnancies resulted in babies being born. I should really have found a better word than ‘managed’ because ‘managed’ implies some effort, whereas ‘putting the bun in the oven’ or ‘knocking a girl up’ as we used to say was, and still is, the easiest, most effortless thing in the world. Sadly, like the world wide web (w.w.w) everything is so accessible these days, and over-and-done-with in seconds—whip it in, whip it out, and wipe it (w.w.w.) without any engagement or deeper connection.

In my day, when I was their age, and we’re going back sixty years now, life was very different. My classmates and I went to the Boys’ Grammar School just outside town, whereas Joyce, the goddess of my dreams, and her surrounding angels all attended the Girls’ High School which, by chance, just happened to be about five minute’s walk away from my home on the other side of Clifton Park. Joyce lived miles away. She walked from the High School through the park, to town, a walk of about 40 minutes, to catch a bus to Greasbrough, a village a few miles on the other side of the valley. On a clear night I would walk to the top of our road and stare across the dividing distance. We had agreed that Joyce would flick the light in her bedroom on and off before she went to bed, and I would fancy I saw the flickering light as a sign that she loved me. I would go to bed happy.

At the end of every school day, my friends and I would race frantically from the Grammar School on our bikes to the High School so that we could stand idly, nonchalantly, our hearts racing and our lungs bursting, panting from exhaustion not lust, at the park gates as the girls appeared. They knew we would be there, but they pretended to ignore us. Then we would walk our bikes with them through the park and into town. Cycling was prohibited in the park, but who would want to ride a bike in the presence of such heavenly creatures? We were full of lust, quite naturally—who wouldn’t be?—but the thought of ‘doing it’ was so distant that it remained a dream.

Once Joyce was safely on her bus, I cycled home and rushed to get my homework done, after which, weather permitting, I would run across the whole valley, through the steel mills, just to spend an hour with her before running all the way back again. We spent Saturdays and Sundays together, she at our house—my mother loved her and I suspect it was the greatest disappointment of her life when it all ended once I left home and went to university—or I at Joyce’s.

It was a wondrous time in my life. There was plenty of lust and intended sex, but it never culminated in anything. Joyce was too nice a girl for that sort of thing, and I was just happy that we were boyfriend and girlfriend. Talk about Paradise Lost!