HELP!

Does this ever happen to anyone else?

There you are chatting away with someone – everything seems to be going along fine and then they ask you if you like Wild Strawberries?

You enthusiastically reply – yes, they grow along the track where I live!

And there is a silence?

Then they say –no, you misunderstood, I’m going to watch it tonight on television and wondered if you were?

And you think – damm, it must be a new American TV series; that’s what people watch these days isn’t it?

So you mutter - er, I live down a track where a lot of wild strawberries grow so I don’t really know what’s going on out there in the real world?

And there is another silence, and they look at you with one of those looks teachers used to use when you were thirteen?

And all you can think is how beautiful their eyes are?

And then they walk away?

And then, just as you are admiring the way their body moves as they walk, they stop and turn and you try and look casual and intelligent?

And just as you realise how pretty their lips are they say – the Bergman film?

And you mumble –Ingrid?

And hope they didn’t hear you because you suddenly don’t think that sounds right, so you repeat it and try to make it sound like – Indeed?

And they give you that look again?

And you think their eyes really are amazing?

And you start to wonder what they would look like dressed in red?

Or white?

Or black?

And they suddenly say – black, Strindberg is so dark.

And you think – did they say black?

And then they say – you know, Strindberg?

And your brain goes – Strindberg? Wasn’t that a German musician, cello? No, it was a politician, Bismark’s time? No, I’ve got it Bismark and Strindberg; German Comedy double act from the twenties?

And they read your mind, which they find to be totally empty, and they say – Swedish!

And you wither a bit inside, and vow to pay more attention at school and then realise that school days are way, way over?

And the last wandering rays of the sleeping sun catches the side of their hair and it suddenly blazes with the purple golds of evening?

And they whisper – Zola?

And all you can think of is the Kinks?



Or is it just me?