I must’ve been very young indeed, but it was a shop assistant in a jeweller’s shop who talked to me when my mum took a watch or something into to get fixed. I went all peculiar and felt something I didn’t really understand and sort of huddled in a corner, and she said, ‘Ah, he’s shy’. But I wasn’t really - I was just a grubby wee bastard with incipient impure thoughts. I couldn’t follow up on things, as I wasn’t allowed to go to the town centre myself, but who knows how things could have developed - I had a fine head of hair in those days, and she had access to an extensive choice of engagement rings. Could have been married at 6, honeymoon in the swing park, bitter and divorced at 8.
I also remember feeling a bit ‘peculiar’ when I was playing in the back garden and the young woman next door was playing ‘I Want To Dance With Somebody’ by Whitney Houston (on the stereo, she wasn’t playing one of these twee ukulele cover versions they’ve got nowadays) and sort of dancing round the back garden while hanging the washing out.