(image credit: Libraryman at Flickr)

She was the most beautiful girl I’d seen, oh, that day. At least. That week, certainly.

But then when you’re 14, a certain someone who’s not yet a certain someone, but might become a certain someone, if you were very lucky, the stars were aligned and every ship that ever sailed a sea suddenly docked, was always likely to be the most beautiful girl you’d seen.

Until the next one.

She’d made eye contact first. And smiled. Which was the pools, the league title, the FA Cup, the gold medal, all in two gestures.

Especially considering that I wasn’t making it easy for her, what with me fiddling with my Walkman, hitting rewind again and again and again.

‘Hey! Is your star sign every wrong?’ Yes, always.

Maybe tonight would be the one night it would be right.

Even good things happen on the Metropolitan line. Sometimes.

I had a spare ticket to the gig too.

I didn’t know anyone who’d loved Grand Prix as much as me. So I determined to go anyway.

And now, when presented with the chance of going with someone, someone who could become a certain someone, I baulked.

I wasn’t the type of boy who could ask a girl out there and then.

(I still haven’t become the type of man who can do that either.)

And all the way through the gig, I kept seeing her; imagining holding her hand through ‘What You To Do Me’, shyly smiling back at her – in my mind, at least, it was possible – during ‘About You’.

Naturally, I cried during ‘Everything Flows’.

(As I was to later discover, I always do.)

Did that missed opportunity matter much, in the scheme of things?

I still don’t know. But what I do know is that I trust in the journey now. And not knowing the destination; well, that’s kinda the point, isn’t it?

And I try to remember that. Every day. At least. Every week, certainly.