Without wax /   Andy Ritchie blog

Summers as a child would consist of long games of football trying desperately to cripple one another. Rolling bales of hay from the nearest farm to a bridge, smashing it up, then throwing ourselves and each-other of a thirty foot drop (9 or 10 meters) on to it almost ending in death for a friend I pushed not realising our hay-jump was along a bit. Then a week or so at Granny’s old cottage farm where I’d run off with Granddads bonnet, steal a cheeky hello to Mr Bull who we weren’t allowed near and send Granny into a blind panic by failing to listen to warnings of “Don’t go into the sinking mud. It’s VERY dangerous”! Like every-other kid it would seem that the words “don’t do that” are comparable to that of a red flag to Mr Bull.

After following a similar pattern year after year, childhood would finally make way to childishness of a new kind with the departure of Primary school and the beginning of a whole new set of problems.

  . . .

I would like to shake the hand of whoever had the idea for Valentine’s Day, then head-butt them repeatedly. Those two words send a chill down my spine every year as the memory’s flood back making me bite down on my fist with embarrassment at the ridiculous stunts I used to pull in order to win the hand of some fair maiden I’d convinced myself was the one.

First year at High School and still chasing my first love, not that I’m one to get ahead of myself, but I already have names for our children and I’ve been chasing her since early Primary. She was blond, cute and we’d always been the smallest in our class from the age of four. Time to make a move.

Our school had a special Valentine’s Day message board that would be read during the morning to each class and I was sure only her class would hear what I had planned. Little did I know.

I assume I maybe fell and landed on my head or had my orange juice spiked because I have no idea what made me think this would be a good plan of action. Inside a Def Leppard album cover I found what I thought was the perfect love poem. It read:

“Dark and dirty like you’ve never seen,

A mind so twisted with thought’s so unclean,

My heart is racing all tattered and torn,

I stand here naked like the day I was born.”

For two full sheets of A4 paper this continued getting worse with each line. At the end I added lyrics from a song. “I’m burning, burning, I got the fever. I know for sure there ain’t no cure. So feel it don’t fight it just go with the flow. Give me one more for the road.”

Someone just fucking shoot me please! I cringe even now when I look back. What was I thinking?

I arrived late that day not knowing the whole school (1,500 people) had read this letter. Two people teased me for about a minute for this, but I think every person at that school took the piss out of that poor girl for months.

Needless to say our friendship diminished soon after. I did win star message of the year though. Every dark cloud.. I wonder if she ever forgave me for that. Wouldn’t be my last massive blunder, that’s for sure!