The question “where do I begin?” in the matter of a love story is, I suggest, a rather uninteresting question. Almost all love stories start when the lovers meet. OK, the story might have a short preamble to set the scene, such as the almighty punch-up at the start of Romeo and Juliet, but basically love stories start when the lovers meet. Simples.
So before I begin the short love story I have prepared for you, I want to explore two variants of the “where do I begin?” question:
Firstly – where did “where do I begin?” begin, in the context of the film Love Story.
Secondly, I want to explore the question, where…or rather when…does love begin?”, which I think is a rather more intriguing question. My attempted answer also informs the rather regular style of love story with which I shall briefly conclude.
So, where did “where do I begin?” begin?
Francis Lai had written a score for the movie Love Story, including the tune Theme From Love Story.
The Paramount Movie people felt that the Theme needed a lyric and commissioned Carl Sigman, a top lyricist at the time, to turn that theme tune into a song.
Sigman initially wrote a schmaltzy lyric summarizing the love story depicted in the film, with lines such as:
- “So when Jenny came” and
- “Suddenly was gone”…
…you get the picture. But Robert Evans, the larger than life producer of Love Story, hated Sigman’s original attempt at the lyric; in particular fretting that the “Jenny came” line was suggestive.
According to Sigman’s son, the great lyricist was furious at being asked to rewrite the lyric, throwing a bit of a hissy and threatening to withdraw from the project. But the next day, when Sigman had calmed down, he told his wife that he would try again. But, “where do I begin?”, Sigman asked. “That’ll do”, or words to that effect, replied Mrs Sigman. Thus, at least apocryphally, the famous line and song title was born.
But the question I really want to explore before I tell you my little love story is where…or rather when…does love begin?”
I believe that people tend to rewrite their personal romantic histories somewhat, often attributing a “love at first sight” narrative to, for example, the story of meeting one’s life partner. But that attribution is made with the benefit of hindsight.
Let me illustrate my point with a slightly less emotive example. Falling in love with a house.
I quite often tell the tale of my viewing our house in West Acton, at the behest of my then girlfriend, now wife, Janie, who had already seen it. I reckon I had been inside for no more than 30 to 40 seconds before I concluded that I could imagine Janie living out the rest of her life in that house, possibly with me in it too. In the vernacular, I fell in love with our house at first sight. We bought the house. Janie and I love that house. Noddyland, we call it.
But supposing the Noddyland house story had not panned out as it did. My offer might have been rejected or the survey might have found an insurmountable problem with that house. Or we might have been guzumped by David Wellbrook or some such person who knows a fine house at a sensible price when he sees one.
Janie and I would have resumed our search for a house and we’d no doubt have found another; we might have liked or even loved that other house…
…but I would not have looked back on my initial visit to Noddyland as a “love at first sight” story. We might have mused about whether we’d have been happier “at that one we liked the look of but didn’t get”. We would not have used the term “love” about that house at all.
My point is that the love comes later. We tend to back-fill the story in hindsight and imagine the love to have come much sooner than it really did.
Returning to the question of romantic love, I wonder where or when that love genuinely begins. My view on this matter has changed as I have got older. Back in the days of my very early fumblings in the late 1970s, for example The Story Of Fuzz in my inaugural TheadMash piece…
…I don’t think I thought of those escapades as love stories of any kind.
But soon after that, once I had started having “proper, long-term relationships”…I’m talking weeks here or even occasionally months…I considered those adventures to be “my love life.” Rollercoaster emotions would ensue; elation at the onset or when a romantic setback was overcome; heartache when things went awry, especially when the upshot was that I had been dumped. I know it’s hard to believe, folks, but one or two foolish young women made that mistake and paid the ultimate price of losing their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with me.
But when I look back on those short-lived, early efforts now, I find it hard to recognize many if any of the characteristics of a love story in those tales. At the time, of course, I thought I was falling in and out of love. But with the benefit of a more seasoned perspective, those stories are merely a good source for comedic interludes or nostalgia-drenched asides…
…especially those stories for which I have unintentionally amusing diary entries with easily-interpreted hieroglyphics…
…oh yes.
Those early entanglements are too fleeting and (I regret having to confess) sometimes too entangled with each other to make true romantic copy.
Contrast that sort of juvenile jumble with…
…David Wellbrook’s superb recitation at ThreadMash 2, about his good lady’s near death experience and David’s intimate account of his own reaction to it. Now that piece was not written as a love story, it was written as a piece on the theme of “lost and found”. Yet it was, I would argue, a profound and heartfelt personal love story. I wouldn’t attempt to emulate or better it as a love story.
But it did get me thinking about a couple of near-death experiences Janie and I went through, particularly the first of them.
The incident was many years ago, in the mid 1990s, when Janie and I had been together for fewer than three years.
Janie and I went over to my business partner Michael and his then girlfriend (now wife) Elisabeth’s place for a Saturday evening meal that May Bank Holiday. Both Janie and I experienced quite severe indigestion that night; a state we attributed to Elisabeth’s solidly-Germanic, Sauerbraten style of cooking, combined with perhaps a tad too much alcohol to wash down the heavy food. But whereas my biliousness passed as the Sunday progressed, Janie became increasingly poorly and doubled up with pain in her innards.
To cut a long and painful story short, by the night of Bank Holiday Monday, I was convinced that the locum doctor’s relatively casual attitude to a woman doubled up with increasing pain was insufficient and took Janie to A&E, where they immediately diagnosed (correctly) acute pancreatitis caused by a rogue gallstone.
As I left Janie in the care of the kind doctor, the youngster (yes, even when I was still a mere 33 years old, the night-duty house doctor in A&E looked like a youngster) took me aside. He warned me that, although they thought they had everything under control and that the odds were in Janie’s favour, he was duty bound to warn me how serious pancreatitis can be and that Janie might not survive the ordeal.
I drove home, alone, with that “might not survive” thought and the strains of Miserlou by Dick Dale & His Del-Tones on the radio…
…well it was 1995 when Pulp Fiction was all the rage. I can no longer hear that tune without thinking of that lonely drive home.
But the incident brought the romantic truth home to me; Janie wasn’t just the girl that I had been going out with for longer now than any of my previous girlfriends – nearly three whole years. It made me realize that I really did love Janie.
In fact it made me realize that I had recognized that fact a year earlier, when I discussed the idea of me setting up business with Michael. I had said to Janie that the venture was a big risk…
…the dangers of Michael and Elisabeth’s notorious cooking for a start…that’s an unfair joke that should not be repeated or put in print (apart from the Ogblog version of this piece 😉 )…
…the venture was a big risk because we’d be taking on indebtedness and if the business went wrong I’d have to give up my flat and have little or no money for quite a while. Janie had simply said that it wasn’t really a big risk because she still had a job and a flat and that we’d get by. It was then that I knew that she loved me and that I also loved her and that she and I were committed to help each other through life’s journey for the foreseeable future.
To me, THAT is truly the stuff of “where love begins”.
As for the more simple, “where do I begin?” love story; I suppose I should now tell you the story of how Janie and I met.
We met in August 1992 at one of Kim and Micky’s parties; Kim being Janie’s best friend.
In some ways it is odd that Janie’s and my path hadn’t crossed before, through Kim & Micky. I had known Kim, through holiday jobs and stuff, since I was a youngster. In the late 1980s, when I got to know Kim & Micky socially, I would see them a few times a year at dinner or lunch parties. But I guess they saw Janie and me as part of different circles. In any case, we were both otherwise attached most of the time during those years.
Anyway, Janie and I chatted quite a lot during the party and ended up as part of a smaller group that was still around into the early evening, at which point Kim suggested that we all go across the square and play tennis.
I had just started playing tennis again, rather tentatively, following a particularly nasty back injury. Goodness only knows how useless I was after quite a few drinks at the party. But most of us had been drinking quite heavily, so I don’t suppose the quality of the tennis was very high. I do recall thinking that Janie was pretty good at tennis. It probably helped that she was the only sober person among us.
Janie had mentioned several times that she had driven to the party in her car and therefore wasn’t drinking. After the tennis, I asked her if she could drop me at a tube station. She said that she would, but that she wasn’t prepared to go out of her way and that the only tube station she’d be passing was Hanger Lane. That was ideal for me, as Hanger Lane and Notting Hill Gate are on the same line.
Janie and I chatted some more on the fifteen minute car journey.
Janie said that she liked poetry.
When she stopped the car to drop me off, I asked Janie for her telephone number.
Janie said no.
In order to get out of the car with my dignity intact, I took from my wallet one of those sticky labels with my name, address and telephone number on it. I stuck the label on her steering wheel, saying, “in that case, you can have my address and telephone number”.
Janie thanked me and said that she would write me a poem.
I’m still waiting for the poem.
While preparing this TheadMash piece, I asked Janie if she wanted to apologise for her terse refusal that first evening and for the continued absence of my poem, some 27 years later.
“No”, said Janie, “love means never having to say you’re sorry”. Who could argue with that sentiment in the matter of love story.
In any case, Janie assures me that the poem is coming; she never set a specific date for its production. It might end up being my epitaph.
I look forward to that.
Meanwhile, if this short account has left you wondering how on earth Janie and I got it together after her initial rejection…
…well, that’s another story or two – not for ThreadMash.
But those yarns will be linked to the Ogblog version of this piece. They involve ossobuco…
…and The Street of Crocodiles…
…obviously.
Postscript 1: For Those Readers Who Like Their Stories Circular/Complete
I realised after completing my first pass on this piece that Robert Evans, the producer who sent Carl Sigman back to the drawing board to write the “Where Do I Begin?” lyric, was the subject of a play Janie and I saw a couple of years ago; The Kid Stays In The Picture…
…which was put on by Simon McBurney/Theatre de Complicite, the same people who did The Street Of Crocodiles – Janie’s and my first proper date.
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