9. ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...SEX

Not a chance. I’ve still got a shred of dignity you know

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9. ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...THE PUB (INSTEAD)

The absolute very first time I went on a proper pub visit (ie one where I was unaccompanied and which wasn’t the local rugby club full of thugs who didn’t give a shit how old you were as long as you could down a pint in 3 seconds) was when I was 14.

The Reindeer seemed to interpret the legal age for drinking differently than most other pubs in my home town. I’m not sure I ever saw anyone in there who was actually over 18. And it wasn’t as if we were a profitable consumer group. We would head downstairs to the Space Invader machine and make a single pint last the entire evening mainly because, at that age, we liked missile command far more than we did beer.

On the odd occasion, we would sneak down there at lunchtime during school (particularly on Friday afternoons I gather, Rich?) and head back to class afterwards. It wasn’t entirely clear whether we were breaching school regulations – we almost certainly were – but, just in case, we would duck out of sight whenever a teacher wandered by the pub although, as this was still during school hours, any teachers who spotted us were just as likely to do the same thing. We also made sure we had a ready supply of polo mints on us in the mistaken belief that any alcoholic fumes and cigarette smoke would be instantly neutralised by a hint of minty fresh breath. It also helped our cause if we could offer a pack to any teacher in the same predicament (you know who you are, Mr Earle).

We stopped going to the Reindeer when it changed hands - the landlord presumably aiming to impose his unusual operating model on some other hitherto successful venture - and his successor decided to bring in progressive ideas about sticking to the Over 18s rule and serving food to affluent diners. Commercial suicide or what? He didn't even keep the space invader machine.

My home town used to have 53 pubs when I lived there but it’s now down to about three. It’s been hard to keep track of the closures. Whenever I’ve gone back in recent years, I’ve popped to the pub and invariably found myself marching into someone’s living room and being greeted by some precocious 10 year old called Primrose or Barney whose mummy and daddy had moved up from London the month before.

One such family now live in what used to be the St Marys pub. It was originally called The Vence in honour of our twin town in France but it was swiftly renamed St Marys once the owners realised that their regulars, all of whom would no doubt vote Brexit 30 years later, would prefer a more traditional name for their boozer.

I had first turned up here on their opening night. I don’t think they’d exactly got the publicity machine on overdrive because me, Tim and Jock were their only customers for most of the evening. I took a bit of a shine to Wendy, the landlady. She was classic 80s – big hair and even bigger shoulder pads. I told her she looked like Eve Marie Saint in On The Waterfront, not because I’d seen the film – I hadn’t even heard of it – but because, if Lloyd Cole said it, it was bound to be intellectual enough to impress her whatever it actually meant. In hindsight, I think she was more likely to read Jackie Collins than Simone de Beauvoir and I don’t think either Lloyd Cole or his Commotions were in her vinyl collection….well, I now realise it was still two years before the song came out so that’s perhaps not a big surprise.

It was clear on that first night with Wendy that there was a spark between us despite the 20-25 year age gap. The Lloyd Cole quote (yes, I know this didn't actually happen but go with me) was a masterstroke and her blank, slightly confused reaction didn’t fool me one bit. I could tell she was a lady who liked the athlete in her man and so dropped into the conversation that I played county cricket. I’d piqued her interest. She asked whether it was the U.18s team I played for. My mates were nudging me under the table and whispering something about her being the landlady - bit pointless, duh, she hadn't kept it a secret from me and, if it didn't bother her, it hardly bothered me.

Sadly, it obviously did bother her after all because, as soon as I told her it was actually the U.16s, she kicked me out and told me to come back in 3 years time. It was a strange act of denial but an important life lesson for a 15 yr old boy on the vagaries of courtship. She let me back in the following week but never showed the remotest bit of interest in me again. Women, eh, am I right?

Nights out in my teenage years, tended to be one long pub crawl, interrupted only by a 99 from the ice cream van on the way down to St Marys and a bag of chips near the end of the night on the way back when the only thing left to round off a successful evening was getting beaten up by skinheads outside the chippie as we headed home. Nowadays, the chippie’s gone as well as the 50 pubs but the smell of Doc Martens leather on my nostrils always takes me back to Wendy and a happier time.

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Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME.....GRANGE HILL