20

20 years ago today (Febrauary 2nd), on a Wednesday night, I went out to the pub with a group of friends. It was the Hackney hotel and the attraction was that for $5 you could drink as much beer as you liked (or in some cases, more than that, but there were consequences!).

One of the friends that I was going along with was an attractive young lass that I had developed a certain level of desire lust attraction for. In the time leading up to that, I had allowed that level of attraction to lead me to make a couple of (admittedly somewhat drunken) attempts to make known my level of interest, though they had been deftly deflected.

There had been some confusing signals, like the rather excited phone call I received one night informing me that this girl had broken up with her boyfriend of the time, but ultimately whilst the friendship continued unabated, it seemed that this poor boy’s intentions were ultimately to be thwarted.

And so, as this particular Wednesday night wore on, I steeled myself with a couple of handy schooners of courage and wondered just how on earth things might proceed on this evening when she would be dropping me home (along with another of her friends). Not exactly Casanova, or even anything resembling a silver-tongued wooer of women, towards the end of the night I made a bold a dashing move to once again make my intentions known.

I placed my hand upon her knee.

Yep, wasn’t that just the masterstroke! Too my utter delight though, there was no shrinking away of the leg, no slapping of the hand, no discouragement what so ever. In fact on the way home that night, the car was actually stopped and the friend shooed off for a moment and we actually kissed!

Well, from that moment on, I was a happy little boy and to our friends’ mortification, they had to put up with us being joined at the face entirely too often for what they probably considered healthy. 6 and a half years after that, I managed to get around to proposing and now, a full 20 years and 4 kids after that special night out, I have to say, the patience and perseverance was most certainly worth it!