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.

When Rohan was organsing this evening, he sent round a note asking us to “pencil in” this date.

Now I’m not one who is naturally disposed to doing what I am told…

…so I joined the small band of pencil-resisters and informed Rohan and others:

I have written “Rohan Thing?” in big letters in my diary, in ink. If my inflexibility in the pencil verses ink aspect deems me ineligible for the event, I quite understand.

Rohan responded:

Ian, it’s mainly your hat that I’m inviting. But, apparently, it can’t make it without you wandering about underneath. As for ‘Rohan Thing’ – that makes it sound like you’d met me at a party the night before, but can’t remember my surname. Despite all this, I still want you to come along.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking that I am buying time here, in a rather pitiful way, by quoting Rohan’s witty remarks while avoiding actually telling a story of my own.

Well, y…

…NO! Not at all. But that bant does form part of my story.

Let’s start with Rohan’s initial reference to my hat. Now it seems to me, that Rohan was, rather obviously, dropping a heavy hint that he wanted me to tell the story about the day I bought this hat.

And in many ways it is perfectly understandable that Rohan should try to coax me, kindly, gently, directorially towards telling that story. Because it is a darned good story. Within three minutes of buying this hat, from Lock & Co. in St James’s, in early June 2016, I was afforded the opportunity to accost Boris Johnson while he was on his bicycle and had to stop for me at a pelican crossing on The Mall. I waved my real tennis racket at Boris – an implement which, I have subsequently been told, has the unfortunate look of a sawn-off shotgun when in its archaic canvas bag. It wasn’t my intention to seem quite so threatening. Oh well.

Anyway, I let Boris know what a knob he was being by supporting Brexit, endangering our economy and potentially causing geopolitical mayhem. My noble gesture was temporarily cathartic for me but ultimately, it seems, futile for the nation and the world.

[Click here for the full story of that Boris Johnson day]

I could milk that anecdote into a full blown dramatic…or perhaps I should say tragi-comic recitation…

…if I wanted to…

…but as you know, I’m not one who is naturally disposed to doing what I am told…

…or even what I am kindly, gently, directorially coaxed towards doing…

…so I’m not going to talk about the June 2016 hat.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the trousers I bought four weeks earlier. These red trousers.

I made an emergency trip to the Retro Clothing Exchange shop
at 28 Pembridge Road in Notting Hill Gate, to try and find an appropriate pair of trousers for a 1960’s party. Actually it wasn’t for any old 1960’s party. It was for my wife, Janie’s party.

The likely source of the party trousers was the basement of that retro shop. Despite its change of purpose within the “Exchange Empire”, I recognised the space immediately as the old bargain basement of Record and Tape Exchange.

[On with Sisters Of Mercy]

I inhabited that basement a great deal in my youth. Initially and several times subsequently, those visits were with my Alleyn’s School friend, Paul Deacon.

It was probably the pull of Record and Tape Exchange and my resulting familiarity with Notting Hill Gate that drew me to move into that part of London ten years later, almost exactly 30 years ago, when I was ready to find my own place. A most fortuitous draw, as I have been profoundly happy living there.

Now as some of you might know, I indulge a retro-blogging habit, writing up my diaries and memorabilia in the form of a life blog going back as far as I can go. Ogblog, I call it.

So, when I got home with my bright red retro trousers, I did a diary trawl of my 1970s second hand record shop expeditions, in order to Ogblog those memories.

Paul Deacon and I first succeeded in visiting that shop in late April 1978. I bought several records which had a profound effect on me. Most memorably from that first batch, a CBS sampler album, The Rock Machine Turns You On, which had, amongst other treasures, Sisters of Mercy by Leonard Cohen. I remember the hairs on the back of my neck standing up when I first heard that track. I played it over and over again, to the irritation of my parents who wondered why I was hell bent on playing “such dirgy stuff”.

[Click here for the story of that first visit]

But the dusty and musty smell of the 28 Pembridge Road basement actually reminded me most about a visit some three months later, during the school holidays, not with Paul, but with a young female known as Fuzz.

[Off with Sisters Of Mercy – On with Me & Mrs Jones]

You might recall that Rohan thought the term “Rohan Thing” appropriate for someone you met at a party whose second name had evaded you. Of course, back in 1978, when we were 15/16 years old, it was not uncommon to get rather friendly with someone at a party without ever finding out their second name.

But I must confess that Fuzz, with whom I’d had a gentle squeeze at Anil & Anita Biltoo’s party a couple of weeks before she and I made that July 1978 Pembridge Road visit, has a unique place in my junior romantic canon. Because I don’t think I even found out Fuzz’s real first name, let alone her second name. 

How we arranged that “date” at Pembridge Road is a bit of a mystery now…but nowhere near as much of a mystery as her name. “Everyone calls me Fuzz”, is, I think, as far as I got, name-wise.

But in other ways, Fuzz and I got a little bit further. I was on the lowest foothills of learning about romantic entwinement that summer, but I had discovered tonsil hockey a few months earlier and was quite keen to practice that sport when the chance presented itself.

During one of the quarter breaks in our tonsil hockey match at Anil and Anita’s party, I inadvertently overheard Fuzz excitedly telling her pals, that…

…I blush to report this…

…words to the effect…

…I was the best tonsil hockey player she had ever encountered.

[Off with Me And Mrs Jones]

Now please bear in mind, folks, I went to the sort of school where the only feedback you got from games masters, even if you were one of the best sporting boys the school had seen in years, was a phrase such as, “you’re uncoachable”, delivered with a clip around the ear…

…and I was far from being one of the best sporting boys the school had seen in years…

…I was one of those boys who would try hard at sport, but whose abundant enthusiasm could not compensate for my dismal shortages of athleticism and talent.

Not that my school sporting career was completely devoid of success. Oh no. Three years earlier I had, famously, defeated the mighty John Eltham – who was certainly one of the more sporty boys – in the fives quarter finals of 1975. I even have a “winning quarter-finalist” trophy emblazoning my drinks cabinet, a trophy mysteriously uncovered by a certain Rohan Candappa, as evidence of that victory.

(Click here for the story of that famous victory)

But my point is, I was not used to hearing encouraging sporting words at all and I had, until that juncture, the low confidence of a novice in the matter of tonsil hockey. My previous experience at that sport (otherwise known as French kissing) could, in July 1978, have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Possibly even the finger of one finger. But I was hearing it on good authority that I was already up there with the very best exponents of the sport globally. Wow.

Of course, it occurs to me now that Fuzz’s prior experience of tonsil hockey might have been as limited as mine, or even less so, making “best ever” a somewhat meaningless comparative term. Oh well.

What Fuzz might have thought of my sartorial talent back then is lost in the mists of time, but it is very unlikely to have been good news. Baggy flared jeans and a yellow PVC waterproof garment, which my youth club friends teasingly described as “Ian’s Banana Jacket”. Little did those folks know that I was, in fact, a proto leader of the yet-to-be-formed gilets jaunes movement. The non-violent, social justice, French chapter. Not the Neo-Nazi English chapter that likes to describe centrist Tories as Nazis. But I digress.

Anyway, back to my date, on a hot day in late July, with Fuzz, in the bargain basement of the Record & Tape Exchange shop where, years later, I bought these red trousers. I suppose I became engrossed in my gramophone record searches and it seems that Fuzz became overwhelmed by the mustiness and dustiness of that Notting Hill basement. Fuzz fainted, banged her head while collapsing and needed to be revived by worried staff in the shop.

But apart from that, young Mr Harris, how was your hot date?

Reflecting on this ill-fated first (and perhaps unsurprisingly, last) date with Fuzz, I realise that it could have been a truly disastrous incident. Had Fuzz lost consciousness and needed attention from the emergency services, I might have had some explaining to do to the other type of fuzz when trying to assist them in identifying the young woman and notifying her next of kin. I don’t think the answers “Fuzz” or “Thing Thing” would have gone down terribly well with the fuzz.

Roll the clock forward again to May 2016, the day I bought these retro red trousers and a month before I accosted Boris Johnson while wearing this hat…

…I wrote up those 1978 Record and Tape Exchange memories on Ogblog and corresponded with Paul Deacon over the next couple of days, tidying up and expanding some of the text.

Paul emigrated to Canada some years ago now, where he now pursues his career as a voice-over actor, music archivist and part-time DJ.

As an aside to our e-reminiscing, Paul asked me if Janie and I had listened to his weekly broadcast on The Grand At 101 lately, which is available on-line. I had to admit we hadn’t. The show is on Saturday afternoons in Ontario, therefore Saturday evening in the UK. Janie and I are almost always out on a Saturday evening.

But, as luck would have it, our Saturday evening plans that weekend had, for practical reasons, been switched to Sunday lunch. So I told Paul we’d tune in. A few other old school friends also tuned in that evening and we had some fun with Paul, messaging in obscure requests for shout-outs and spins.

Paul then messaged us to say that John Eltham (yes, he of the historic fives quarter final in 1975) would be joining Paul at the studio “any minute”. I was aware that John Eltham was due to visit Paul, but I hadn’t twigged that the visit was so imminent, let alone that day. Then another message from Paul:

John’s here now! He’s just told me about the Rohan Thing…

Now, at this juncture I probably should explain that “The Rohan Thing” back in 2016 was not the same “Rohan Thing” as The Rohan Thing we are all attending tonight. “The Rohan Thing” that John Eltham and Paul Deacon were talking about was the monologue, “How I Said ‘F*** You’ To The Company When They Tried to Make Me Redundant”, which Rohan had piloted at my company’s office earlier that year and which he was preparing to take to Edinburgh as his first Edinburgh Fringe show.

Thus we learn that there is more than one Rohan Thing. Indeed, there are many Rohan Things.

And as for my red trousers, you must be wondering whether they worked with my 1960s party get up?

Well…

[Remove hat and jumper to reveal bandanna, party shirt, CND medallion and don the CND whacky specs]

…the red trousers were a groovy happening thing amongst many groovy happening things at that party, man. Peace and love.

Footnote: At the end of the evening, Rohan ceremonially handed out a lengthy  thread to all who had performed, to symbolise the thread of story-telling that leads from Chaucer through Shakespeare and Dickens to our evening and evenings beyond.

Ben Clayson captured that moment and has kindly consented to me publishing a Photoshopped version of his photo here – (not that Ben knows it at this actual moment, but if the photo is still here when you look, then he probably has actually consented):