Plus ça change.. plus celles sont les même amies!!

Some of the incidents in my stories are based  on things which really happened to me.

When I was in Manchester in the seventies there was an amazing club we used to go to, the Continental Club, or the Conti as it was known. It was grim in many ways, at one end was the bar, at the other on a slight platform was a juke-box which provided all the music. On either side of the dance floor was a slightly raised area which had tables and chairs and on one side was the toilets which were always swimming in something disgusting… The Conti used to stay open really late at a time when pubs closed at 10:30, and clubs closed at 2. It was usually heaving with all sorts of odd people, not just students.

I remember going to the Conti with my best friend Wendy. In ‘Loving Judah’, Sandi is not dissimilar from Wendy, although Aislin the main character is very different from me! In the following passage from ‘Loving Judah’ Aislin remember going to a club called Sands with Sandi… it is actually what happened to me and Wendy at the Conti!

“Hmm, a career vicar, if you ask me,” said Sandi, writing something on her pad. “You know what I mean; he’s too good-looking and intelligent to be in the ministry for any other reason than to become a bishop before he’s forty.”

“Do you know him?” asked Aislin, surprised.

“I saw him get off his motor bike. It was the studious way he pretended he wasn’t aware of people watching him, of people nudging each other and saying, see that young chap on the bike, the good-looking one, he’s our vicar!”

“Which people?” Aislin had never seen anyone pass along the narrow lane.

“Well, there weren’t any actual people, not here, I don’t mean,” Sandi passed a blank sheet to Aislin. “List your priorities.”

“Well, he seemed OK, the vicar,” Aislin sat next to Sandi on the settee.

“You mean he gave you a look as if to say, if you weren’t married and I wasn’t a vicar…” Sandi nudged her.

Aislin had to laugh. “I get those sort of looks so infrequently, let me have a little day-dream.”

Sandi patted her hand and agreed with her. “It’s odd isn’t it. When you meet a guy now, or not even meet him, just pass a guy in the street, his eyes drift over you as if you’re invisible. Ten – not even ten, five, two years ago there was always that look, a sort of weighing up, a sort of, yeah, she’s OK.”

“Speak for yourself!” Aislin laughed ruefully.

“You know what I mean. I’m not a woman any more. I’m a middle-aged woman, I’ve become invisible,” Sandi seemed amused but aggrieved.

“Oh Sandi that just is not true – you’ve got that something, and you’ll still have it when you’re ninety. I’ve always been invisible to 99% of men. You see a guy you fancy, you hook him and reel him in like a fish. Do you remember that time when we went to that awful club, what was it called, Sands? And you ended up with that gas fitter – Vic, was he? He was really good-looking, a bit like John Travolta without the lips. I ended up with his spotty mate, except I didn’t because I went home in a huff.”

“How do you remember all these things, I don’t remember a gas fitter called Vic,” Sandy laughed. “Anyway, enough of John Travolta with or without lips. Priorities.”