The retreat

 I’m in the mood for writing at the moment (as long time readers will know all too well!) but you’re not obligated to read any of it of course, so feel free to move along

It was suggested (by ChatGPT!) that in preparation for the retreat I should journal about the things I wanted to address. One of those is Jill, and it came as a shock to realise that some of you didn’t know I’d been married. So this is how I met her.

I can’t remember the first actual time I saw her, but I can absolutely remember the first time I heard her. We were in our group class (librarianship degree) and someone made a joke, and she laughed. Jill had a very particular laugh, almost like hiccoughs, and it was deep throated and powerful. I hated it, and thought “oh my god, I’ve got to listen to that for the next three years”.

We ended up in the same subject groups quite often, and I liked her. She came from Liverpool, and was amused that I supported Everton. At that time she was seeing another guy, and had an active social life with friends outside the course. I also knew 2 other Jills, so there was Blonde Jill, Tory Jill, and Jill was best friend Jill. I remember she often wore a silken flowing dress, light blue, with roses and flowers on it. She wore brown shoes, always had a sturdy leather bag over her shoulder with at least one book in it, her hair was quite short and bobbed. She liked blues and reds for eye shadow, but never did too much by the way of makeup.

Jill was very social, and worked behind the bar in the student bar. She lived in Nottinghill Gate. She smoked, long slender and dark brown cigarettes called More. She loved drinking whisky, and it would be fair to say she was an ok student. She got irritated with lecturers who hadn’t worked in a library for decades. Ah… “she put in the effort she needed to in order to get a passing grade” sounds better. I was also annoyed by them as well, and as two militants together we gravitated towards each other. We were shortly joined by our friend Alison, and I also interacted with another group of friends ( Christoph Bull ) so we would circle in our friendship groups quite a lot.

Jill was a force to reckon with. Orphaned at 12, she went to live with her much older sister and her family. (Helen Lynda) she loved books and reading, particularly science fiction, another interest we shared. She was very short sighted and had a tendency to peer in a vague manner sometimes. If she was deeply engrossed in a book she would blank out everything going on around her, including me talking directly to her. She came down to London to be with several girlfriends (Gaynor) and got a job working in a library. Got her A levels in nightschool. She was bold, outgoing, happy to chat, easy to laugh, and always the person that lit up a room. The exact opposite of me I think!

I think it would have been the Winter of 79 or 80 she had a grim time. She’d broken up with her older boyfriend, she’d had a bad fall and really smashed up her ankle to the point of needing a cane. And there was a bunch of other stuff. I missed getting up to comfort her, but that brought her much more into my attention - the fact that she was upset upset me. We had, unbeknownst to either of us started to set up a rapport. That grew over time, but she was still “best friend Jill”. At that point in time I knew nothing about girls and just didn’t see or understand any messages at all. I did spend a lot of lovely time with a dear friend, but I was still clueless. I think it was 79, because I saw her once when we both went to see a friend in hospital over the Xmas period. We then had most of the new year to just get to know each other. Because she had an evening job she couldn’t always do her course work, so I’d either lend her my essay to re-write or I’d just do it for her. I’m not sure what I thought about her. I knew she was way not interested in me, so I was content to be her good friend and confidante. And boy did she share some stuff, it was hilarious and no, that’s all you get!

It was the evening of the college disco, the day John Lennon was murdered. It was quite downbeat, and we were all sad, especially Jill of course; a sister scouser. We had all drunk quite a lot, and it was loud, and dark, with flashing disco lights, and it was certainly hazy by that point. Jill came up to me and asked for a Christmas kiss. Status Quo was playing in the background, just started a track. And I looked down at her, looking up slightly at me. This is where my life pivots. It was the most important split second decision of my entire life. I almost kissed her on her forehead (which is what she also expected), but my brain screamed at me to “kiss her you moron!” And so I did. For the entire length of the Quo track, and it was a long track. I really didn’t know much about kissing, but I learned quickly that night.

When the song finished I think we were both a bit stunned at what had happened. The world did literally stop, but all of the baggage of my plans and dreams, my dream of future career, all went crashing onwards, to be replaced with this amazing, beautiful, funny, militant scouser.

From that moment on we were virtually inseparable. We were in the same classes a lot of the time which helped. When we could we would sneak off to the local pub; we were once asked to leave because we were being umm, a bit passionate and we had put the old fellows off their pints. By this time “Best friend Jill” had become “Lady Jill” which amused both of us since we liked fantasy science fiction a lot. We also had zero shame. We would leave college early and then stroll back in 30 minutes late into a lecture the next morning. Alison had by this time become our third wheel (it was Alison who had earlier got exasperated with my lack of understanding and shrieked at me one day “just sleep with the girl!”) and we spent all our time together both in and out of college.

I think looking back that was without a doubt the happiest time of my life. I had my girlfriend and we both had our best friend in Alison. If we were all going down to the canteen we would always find each other, or we would save a seat for the missing one. It was such a tight bond, but it was a bond that attracted other people towards us. Now, a library school isn’t the most exciting place, but we had our bar, central London was close, and we had parties to go to. We knew we were clever enough to get our degrees, so we did what we did to just get by. Every other second we could grab to be with each other we would take.

For my entire life, the only person I wanted to be with, for the rest of my life was Jill. Every second not spent in her company was a wasted second. I went to some amazing countries in my career, and I was offered the chance to stay on and look at so many exciting historical or beautiful places, but I was always “thanks, but next plane out please, I want to go home to my wife”. Why would I waste time on some natural wonder of the world when the most amazing person in the world was waiting at home?

Anyway, enough yapping - congratulations if you got this far!