THE HOTEL WAS full of students in school uniforms, from every corner of the country, mingling in frenzied chaos: sitting on the stairs, huddling around the soft- drinks machine, and ogling each other as they engaged in flirtatious chatter, writes MICHAEL HARDING
Some even sat in a circle on the floor of the foyer, while one of them sang and played a guitar, and those that listened were like dazed sheep, enraptured by the beauty of the song and the gaze of strangers.
For a man of my years, the sight of young people wandering about in a fog of unfocused lust can be an unsettling experience. I began humming Forever Young, by Bob Dylan, as I checked in, and I took off my glasses, because I don't think I look very cool with glasses, and I was trying desperately to look cool, and be cool, amid the throng of frisky youth.
The receptionist was confused because I filled in my name on the wrong line.
“Please,” she said, “put your name here, on this line,” and she fingered the correct spot.
I said, “ I’m sorry, I don’t have my glasses with me.” She looked at me and said, “They’re on your head.” Then I walked to the lift pulling my suitcase behind me with the sophisticated swagger of an airline pilot heading for the VIP lounge after landing an Airbus, and trying to suck in my pot-belly so that I didn’t look too absurd.
The teenagers around me were giddy, and when I squashed myself into the lift with nine of them, I felt like a bull in a china shop and I feared I might be asphyxiated in a cloud of perfume. Later, in the bar, I met a teacher in a green dress, with an identity badge hanging around her neck, as if she was a security person in an airport. She had a ponytail, and she said; “Who are you with?” I said, “I’m on my own.” “Sorry,” she said, “I thought you were with one of the other schools.” I said “I presume they’re all young scientists.” “Correct,” she said, and she laughed.
“Do you know,” she added, “that an earwig looks like a butterfly, except he has no wings? And everyone loves a butterfly. But the earwig must feel sad that nobody loves him.” “Is that something scientific?” I wondered.
“No,” she said, ”it’s just me being silly.” All of a sudden I began wondering where this was going, and a little part of me dared speculate on the possibilities. Could it be that this was the moment I had been waiting for all my life? The moment that all men dream of: the night in which the anonymous ships go bump, secure in the knowledge that both participants are nice people with healthy minds and clean bodies.
I've often heard rumours about moments of passion that can occur among members of staff, on school outings, at union conferences, or during AA weekends. And she wore no wedding ring, and she was maybe in her early 40s, and so I asked her did she like Bob Dylan, and she just said, "Ahhh, Forever Young!" and clinked her glass of wine against my pint.
My heart was palpitating. So I excused myself and headed for the men’s room where I had a little chat with myself, and tried to calm down. “Banish any moral misgivings!” I told my other self in the mirror; time enough for morality in the morning! “Tell me about yourself,” I said, when I returned, which was a fatal mistake.
“I live with my mother,” she declared, and for some reason that’s where it all ended; the flirtation was suspended. She said she was exhausted from working with young people. “They have too much energy,” she said, “it just drains me. And then I go home and look after my mum.” We spent some more time at the bar, discussing topics as wholesome as the digestive biscuits I used to nibble, during charismatic prayer meetings years ago, when I was lonely, and yearned for intimacy and the possibility of weeping with women, without being disturbed by sexual desires.
When she was going she brushed her lips against my beard and said, “You have sad eyes.” “So will you have,” I replied, “when you’re my age.”
I watched her leave the lounge, her lovely green dress swishing as she walked; but as far as the bright young people in the foyer were concerned, she was just as invisible as me.