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sister’s guardian. I was twenty-four.
    P at and I walked to the railway station together every day on our journey to work. One wintry morning I made my way through the ice and snow to her street door. I asked her, ‘Can I hang on to you? If I don’t I reckon I’m going to fall over.’ Pat replied, ‘I think I’d better hang on to you as well.’ We linked our arms together and picked our way down her pathway. Pat closed the gate behind her. She took one step forward and completely lost her footing, landing on her backside whilst still hanging onto my arm.
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    Pat was continually late for work and her boss had given her several warnings. He noticed her slink to her desk fifteen minutes after the correcttime once more and called her into his office. He asked her, ‘Why are you late again today?’ Pat replied, ‘It wasn’t my fault. The train didn’t stop at Liverpool Street.’ She returned to her desk and suddenly realised that Liverpool Street was a main line station and the final stop for all trains travelling there.
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    Pat decided to change her job and registered with an employment agency. She was given a timed typing test. The interviewer said ‘Go’ and pressed the stop watch. Pat typed as fast as she could and wondered why nothing had been printed on her sheet of paper. She looked down to see she had jammed all the keys of the manual typewriter.
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    I went dancing with Pat and her friend Angie. Pat said to me, ‘Angie gets all the fellers and I don’t get any.’ I examined her appearance and said, ‘I think it’s your hair. Why don’t you have it cut?’ She took my advice and made an appointment with a hairdresser one lunchtime. Pat chose a very short style to replace her long black page-boy. On her return to the office a male colleague stopped her and asked, ‘What have you done to all that beautiful hair? It really suited you.’
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    Pat told me she walked past a family welfare clinic just as a young mother took her baby outof the pram. The woman turned around with the baby in her arms and banged the child’s head against a telegraph pole. She looked at Pat and said, ‘If I do that one again there won’t be much point going in will there?’

1969
B OB
    Bob was thirty. I was twenty-four. We met at a dance at the Empire ballroom in Leicester Square. We had one date.
    B ob invited me to dinner at his flat one Thursday evening and we made arrangements that he would meet me by car at his local underground station.
    He cooked an excellent medium rare steak and french fries, served with a dressed salad and a glass of claret.
    After our meal we settled in his lounge with the remainder of the wine. I found him to be far too amorous. I turned down his advances and would do no more than kiss him.
    At the end of the evening he drove me back to the tube and suggested I meet him there the following Thursday, but this time with a pound of sausages as he would have no time for shopping.
    The next Thursday I arrived at the underground station at the appointed hour but therewas no Bob. After waiting forty minutes and not knowing exactly where he lived and still there was no Bob, I went home, taking my sausages with me.

1970
H ERACLES
    Heracles and I met at a dance at the Café de Paris just off Leicester Square. He was a Greek aged twenty-seven. I was twenty-five. He had a university degree in Economics and had moved to London for three years to perfect his English. He worked in a Greek shipping office in the City during the day and studied at college two evenings each week to learn the language. He shared a flat in Tottenham with another Greek and he made a lot of friends in the Greek community in London. We fell in love but we both hurt each other. He forgave me but I was unable to forgive him and he returned to Greece at the end of three years.
    H eracles introduced himself to me as ‘Hercules’ as