JOY 2014
It's 2014, I am 66. In an attempt to find a woman I started attending the free lunchtime concerts in St Peter's church on Kensington Park Road, London. There was no one terribly suitable, but there was an otherwise desirable woman on a disabled scooter who I took to be a typical rich Kensington dame. But I thought “Hey, I'm looking for someone slightly emotionally disabled, why not try someone physically disabled?”, so I started smiling at her, and she smiled back. So I started opening the door for her scooter, and then walking with her chatting as she returned home, which was a block of retirement flats two or three streets away.
I pointed out the custom inscribed coal hole cover with a poem on it, and this seemed to go down rather well. The next weekend her block of flats was having an Open Day and she was going to be on the door -
After the next concert we met in a cafe round the corner on Portobello Road, she on her scooter, which had to be parked at a table in the little courtyard and talked. She was divorced a long time ago with a grown up daughter and grandchildren, was an artist and had multiple sclerosis. When she asked ”Why me” and I told her, she said she was emotionally damaged too as well as physically. She invited me round to her flat to watch a video hired from a local shop (not that sort of video!).
We sat on her sofa primly two feet apart and watched ‘The Draftsman's Contract', the atmosphere was charged with expectation, but that makes it all the more exciting! After a cup of coffee I left; we had a farewell embrace in her hall and on an impulse I bent down and kissed the base of her neck -
Her project at that time was photographing re-
She died in 2022.