There'll be Another One Along in a Minute

I was in Princes Street, Edinburgh when I met him.

‘Hello,’ he said, ‘Are you waiting on a bus?’

And there was me thinking I was playing Sudoku with the numbers on the overhead sign.

‘Oh, shoot, oh no, what am I saying? Of course you are, I’m sorry.’

Well, wasn’t he the perfect little mannerly gent in his private school blazer and tie? And was that a ‘Vote Conservative’ badge on his lapel? Oh my god, another Colin…

Little Colin ------- windsor-knotted uptight, leather briefcase in hand and forever quoting Maggie Thatcher. In fact, in those last few months of school when I’d had the dubious honour of sharing (with the swots and toffs and obvious teacher’s pet candidates for Head Girl and Boy) what was laughingly referred to as the fifth year common room (which was really just the far-end of the corridor between the two first-floor science labs) I’d soon reached the conclusion that while all the other sleaze-spouting, gesture-making specimens of half-baked manhood who sat leering across the desks at me (and in one case groping from in behind it) were stashing their illicitly acquired copies of Penthouse and Mayfair under their beds and fantasizing about the likes of Bo Derek, Tatum o’ Neal (and Selina Scott, I’d heard it said) all Colin’s wet dreams – if he had them at all – must have come about as a result of staring too long and hard at our late-middle-aged Prime Minister’s face on the front of her party manifesto.

‘Hi, I’m Justin.’

Okay… Just in time…? Just in on the last train north from Chelsea…?

‘You look nice. I like your jacket.’

Of course he did, it was Thatcher blue - good match for my bob of blonde hair. And I’d had my rollers in. Maybe the next time I bought a dye, I’d opt for red… Kinnock, Scargill, Barbara Castle… Not that I was especially political, for if I had been age to vote I’d have had trouble choosing between left and right, but sometimes it was good to pretend, to argue the opposition’s case just to get a reaction.

I’d quite enjoyed those sham debates with the comically impassioned Colin, for as Suggs of Madness would have it, when it came to idling away my time between the bare minimum of compulsory classes and the two optional ones I hadn’t yet dropped out of, whilst praying for the day to come when I could legally up and leave, thinking up ‘different ways to make a difference to the days' in between had proven a must.

‘Are you going somewhere special?’

Tempted as I was to tell him, yeah, I’m off to Labour headquarters to pick up my electioneering pack, I held my tongue. First off, I hadn’t a clue where these headquarters were, and secondly, Justin could probably tell I wasn’t old enough to be out campaigning, otherwise why would this presumptuous preppy be attempting to chat me up? I might have got away with being served in every licensed premises within a twenty-five-mile radius of where I lived (with the sole exception of the one down the road from me to which my mother had spilled the beans) but the lights were generally low or distractingly flickery in such places and daylight was infinitely more revealing.

‘Well, I’m meant to be meeting this guy.’

‘But you’re not sure you want to?’

A flicker of hope in Justin’s eyes. Sweet really. I scanned the numbers of the buses again. That blank square in the middle, could that be the one that I wanted – the magic one?

‘It’s not that big a deal.’

And it wasn’t. Not to me, at least. James was just a pen-pal really. Before we’d left school, my sometimes-friend, Aubrey and I had swapped. She’d taken Douglas, my boyfriend of all of five minutes (a hundred and eighty to be more accurate) and I’d got James – the cause of Aubrey's parents having been temporarily forced to put a lock on their phone.

I’d only met James in person the once, the week before, in the fortuitously named St James’ Centre, but forget the pub lunch I'd planned, we hadn’t even gone to a café, just wandered around, him with a bottle of Sprite in one hand – a large one – a Crawford’s sausage roll in the other, and because eating from paper bags in the street just wasn’t my thing, me with my stomach grumbling until it was time for him to go home and ‘walk the dog’…

A coffee? James had looked about as terrified of this as he had my mention of the bar in Rose Street, but he’d see me again, he said, and I could go to his and meet Schnozzle. Oh well, that was just wonderful (not). The older I got the less I’d decided I liked dogs – all that panting, pawing and slavering reminded me a little too much of Douglas, but I’d tried to sound enthusiastic.

James had told me what bus to catch and that he’d wait at the stop where I had to get off, but which of those numbers was it, and maybe he’d said to get on at the other side of the street? I thought about asking Justin, but then again…

‘You’re not from here, are you?’

Was it really that obvious?

‘No, I’m from the Borders.’

‘Ah, the Liberal stronghold. Guess you support David Steel?’

‘Do I look like a sheep?’

‘Get a lot of them down there, don’t you?’ He smiled.

Just then a bus pulled up, no idea what number it was, or where it was going, but I hopped right on.

‘Hey… What’s your name? Where are you…? No, no, no, wait...’

Next thing I knew he was right behind me, leaning over, elbows on the back of my seat.

I had to laugh when I told him I was meeting James at the zoo and he informed me that I was on the wrong bus, but so was he, he lived in the opposite direction entirely - walking distance from the stop, in fact, and hadn’t needed to get a bus at all. We made it to the end of Princess Street, and I walked him back past where we started. I’d call James later, I thought, wondering what the medical term for a phobia of dogs might be as I stopped to buy a newspaper from the vendor on the way. The Socialist Worker – I’d no intention of reading it.

We exchanged addresses. I liked to write, I told him, which was just as well since I wasn’t on the phone, and that I loved going out to discos. There was one at his school, he informed me, an end of term thing the following Friday – would I like to go?

I said yes, of course. Okay, so it was hardly a Rose Street nightspot, but if the senior discos at my school were anything to go by (I’d heard all about the sneaked alcohol and other shenanigans including the no-longer prospective Head Girl being caught attempting to initiate a gang bang and Colin snogging another lad) I reckoned this could be fun. Besides, if I got to know Justin’s friends, I’d be able to go out in the city more often. Taxis back to the Borders at 4am were expensive even when shared, and the last time the owner of my usual firm had come out to fetch me, having to take the scenic route to drop my friend at her village, Mum had made a great fuss about his ‘looking like death’ and 'what if he’d fallen asleep at the wheel?'

When the following Friday came around, I decided I wouldn’t go overboard dressing up. My white satin shirt worn over skin-tight black jeans would suffice, a broad black belt, white high heels and some cheap and cheerful beads and clip-on earrings to match. Like Thatcher, I thought - that would please Justin - she didn’t have her ears pierced either.

I lightened my hair again, chopped it a bit and backcombed it when curled on top. Someone had said I looked like Kim Wilde when I did it this way, so no going ginger for now. I’d also recently invested in a glow-in-the dark white-blonde spray so I made good use of that. Too good, perhaps, when I heard Mum, who was neither a smoker nor asthmatic, coughing her lungs up on her way up the stairs before entering my bedroom, one hand over her nose, the other clutching that dreaded black cardi that she was forever insisting I wear. It’s warm out, Mum… But it’ll be cold later on… Still, at least she’d got used to me frequenting the pubs. Didn’t tell her I was headed to Edinburgh though…

I’d arranged to meet Justin at the school at seven. He’d shown me where it was that first day. At least, we’d walked up a street or two and he’d pointed it out. Didn’t take me any further even though he was headed that way, so I guessed this was more to do with the newspaper under my arm than anything else… Well, hello Mr Tory, Sir, this is my new-found Socialist Worker friend who I think must be a bit of an anarchist, all for the abolishment of private schools… I wondered, when I reached the gates, what the chances were that I’d have my bag searched?

Still, seven on the dot, he was there, smartly, although unsurprisingly conservatively dressed, and in we went to be introduced to…

Wait… why were all those kids here? Hordes of them streaming in, no older than twelve by the looks of things, the boys like mini Justins, the girls in party frocks… and why was Mrs ------ (I didn’t catch her name) thanking me for coming to help? The table set up by the entrance with the jugs of water, the bottles of orange squash and the disposable plastic cups told me the rest.

I didn’t mind serving the kids their refreshments. In fact, I quite enjoyed it. But really? When the disco came to an end at nine o’clock and I’d finished mopping up the minor spillages, I can’t even recall seeing Justin or saying goodbye. And I didn’t even think about heading off into the centre or anywhere else. With my luck I’d just end up being hit on by some other no-hoper, and because the general election had taken place the day before, politics was bound to come into it somewhere. Maggie’s famous landslide victory - I imagined Colin would be raising a glass of champagne about that, and in the city most likely; the people in small Border towns might have voted Liberal but were far from liberal-minded.

Some weeks later, Justin wrote me a letter. Nice enough, but I didn’t reply. He also sent a photograph of the back of his head with his face in a pie. I don’t remember people talking about being ‘pied’ back then. Funny when you come to think of it.