When I was 16, I worked at a restaurant / nightclub. I had worked there for a number of years and it wasn’t until I was around 15 that a position in the kitchens came up on Friday and Saturday nights and I was allowed (by my parents) to go for the job. It meant late nights and hard work, but that never killed anyone… right? A little later on, I was given the responsibility of the coffee bar – no booze of course, I wasn’t old enough to sell alcohol.

This is me a few months later - July/August 1981

Mid-week the club held different events (Tuesday was CB Radio ‘eyeball’ meets, Country Music Evenings was held on another, that sort of thing) and because they were held on school nights and the volume of dishes was negligible (chicken-in-a-basket was the trend at that time) I could have those nights off. I used to catch a lift down to the club with my mother and father (she doesn’t drive, he took us both) and I helped out with prep for the evening.

Yep, we had protests about it...

I would meet friends at the CB Radio meets because we all had one of the rogue (not quite illegal) CB rigs. CB Radio was the ‘in thing’ back then, the chatroom of our generation.

One of my friends (Kathy) was going steady with a guy and he helped to set up my CB rig when I first bought it. Because of that connection, I always said hi to him whenever I saw him – and he would say hi back to me.

I used to play the space invaders machine in the club and because I spent a lot of time hanging about before and after my shift started, I was good on it – actually, I knew the sequences of the little spaceship that flew across the top and I knew how many shots you had to fire before hitting it for max points. The capacity to write your name on the top score hadn’t been invented yet, but I didn’t mind. At 99990 points I came off the game, no matter whether I had three lives left or none because after that score, it rolled over to zero again and didn’t record that you’d gone over. I’d wait until my game was over before I’d leave the machine because I didn’t want anyone else taking my place and going over that score. (I think that’s how it works, but of course it could be my memory playing tricks.)

The guy that helped set up my CB radio used to watch me play. He’d ask questions and watch carefully. If he was playing, I’d watch him and his friend on the machine and often they’d ask questions then too. To all intents and purposes, we were friends.

Then, Kathy and the guy split up. I carried on saying hi to him when I saw him but one day, he ignored me. ‘Oh well,’ I said to myself with a shrug.

Then, on Tuesday 7th April, 1981, I went to the restaurant for the CB ‘do’ to meet Sara my best friend at school. She had her eye on a guy and wanted me to be there with her in case his friend was there too – teenage strategies are still complicated.

The friend of her target was the guy that had set up my CB radio. We all sat around the table and I realised that she’d not exactly told me the whole truth. Sara and Mick (her target) had cooked-up a strategy to get his friend and me together.

It didn’t quite work out to their carefully laid plans because she either forgot or ignored the fact that I was seeing someone else.

“Will you go out with him?” Mick asked.

“No, I’m seeing someone,” I said.

“He doesn’t mind,” Mick said.

“No, maybe not, but I do,” I said. End of conversation.

As I was leaving, Trev (yes, the guy was @s0u1) finally plucked up courage to ask me out. “When you finish with him, will you go out with me?” he asked.

“I’ll see,” says I.

Friday 10th April (I wasn’t at work) and Trev calls me on the CB Radio. I wasn’t at the rig, but my younger brother and sister were. Just half an hour before, I had finished with the guy I was seeing. He’d gone home and I’d made sure he was gone before I went out to feed the rabbits. We didn’t have an outside light and part of the garden was pitch black, plus there were issues with the guy I’d just finished with and I’m nothing of not paranoid sometimes. I didn’t want to encounter him outside in the dark – I probably took a weapon of some sort out with me… better safe than sorry.

One of the new-born rabbits had caught its head in the wire mesh of the cage somehow and had died. I was heart-broken and it made me cry.

When Trev called on the CB, my brother and sister shouted to me to answer the call and I ran upstairs to where we kept the rig.

Trev and I went to another channel to chat. He said, “You’ve finished with him, haven’t you?”

Utterly shocked at how he could know – my brother and sister didn’t know yet – I said that yes I had, but how did he know?

“You sound upset, like you’ve been crying,” he said.

“I’m not upset because of him. One of my baby rabbits has died!” I said and broke down in tears all over again.

“I’ll speak to you tomorrow,” he said and went offline. I guessed I’d scared him off with my silly girlishness, but the next day, he did indeed phone back. My answer was still no, but he promised to ring again the next day. I had work later that evening and I’ve recounted the tale of that evening before, so I’ll not repeat it.

On the next day, Mick phoned a couple of hours after I’d got home from work. I was tired, but Mick wanted to know a few things.

“Are you coming out?” he asked.

“No.”

“Go on, come out. Trev wants to see you.”

“No.”

“Go on! Sara’s coming out too if you come out. Trev really wants to see you.”

“No.”

“Well, will you go out with him then?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Oh, go on…” he said. I heard a commotion on the other side of the conversation and Mick finally realised that the expected ‘no’ had actually been a ‘yes’. Trev had heard it and he was pleased. He snatched the phone from Mick’s hand and finally spoke to me himself.

“I’m coming to fetch you,” he said. “I’ll be about half an hour.”

Today is the anniversary of Trev (@s0u1) and I getting together on an 'official' and permanent basis.