It was largely based on a mutual appreciation of horror comics. But while our parents assumed we were up to no good and I received lectures on the perils of teenage motherhood at least twice a week, our romance was much more chaste than that. It was an all-girls school and the only opportunity for mixing with the opposite sex during term time came via doing handstands at the far edge of the playing field to incite the local flasher.Īt the age of fourteen I did manage to get my second kiss from a boy named Malcolm who lived at the top of my street, and that blossomed into my first “relationship.” We spent every moment we could together. Things didn’t pick up when I went to secondary school. You have to admit that shows imagination, but it’s not exactly Tiffany. For my eleventh birthday he gave me three de-winged bluebottles in a matchbox.

When I was nine, Justin Ashford sent me a Valentine’s card with the charming message “Drop dead” written rather neatly inside. The next three years flew by in a haze of similarly rebuffed advances and Chinese burns. Later that day he pinned me against a wall by the school gym and stuck chewing gum in my hair. While he was still on the ground, I pounced on him like a vampire bat on a squirrel and my passionate lips squashed the words “not fair” right back into his gorgeous pouting mouth. When someone shouted “Go,” Justin was in the middle of tying a shoelace (he was eleven before he cracked bows), but I showed no mercy. When it was my turn to do the chasing, I knew exactly which hapless lad I was going for and poor Justin Ashford didn’t stand a chance. I had my first kiss at age eight, during a game of “kiss chase” in my primary-school playground. It started badly and it went downhill from there. My love life was and always had been a disaster.

Just In Case by Chrissie Manby