LAURA 1973

It's 1973, I am 25. How did we meet? All is gone. She lived with 3 other girls in a flat in an Earl's Court Square. My first memory is of sitting on her living room floor beside her sitting on the sofa with crossed legs. We were chatting away inconsequentially when I reached out and stroked her elevated ankle. “NO DON'T DO THAT!” she cried and I jumped back as though I had been shot. A long silence. Then “Why shouldn't you?”

So I did . . .

My most intelligent girlfriend and getting close to a soul-mate. We were very compatible, but I nearly made a bad mistake at the beginning. For our first outing I took her to 'The Rocky Horror Show', a cult horror/science fiction parody transvestite musical. I didn't know it but this was COMPLETELY not her taste, which was most conventional. She stuck it out and amazingly didn't dump me. At a party, perhaps she was sitting on my knee, and another male party-goer came up and said incredulously “Are you going out with her?” “Why not?” I said and stroked her hair.

She was a part time Youth Hostel warden and after I bought my orange Bond Bug my first big outing was to surprise her with a visit one week end, and bring her back to London.

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