- There was Sue, my very first girl friend, a trainee solicitor who had a mental breakdown after completing her exams and stopped dating.
- There was Gill, a religious Tory supporter, who was great fun but we finally fell out over politics.
- There was Caroline, a go-getter and reckless driver who got bored with my laid-back-ness.
- There was Pamela, who I dropped because she was oddly submissive and deferential to men (I always preferred assertive women).
- There was Maggie, scatty and accident-prone, who I ruthlessly abandoned after falling for Trish at a party.
- There was Grethe, a single mum with a truculent son, who I stopped seeing because her highly-stressed chain-smoking was only fuelling my own anxieties.
- There was Rosie, who took a fancy to me when she was fighting with her existing boy friend, but then made it up with him.
- And of course there was Trish, a freewheeling sixties flower child. We lived together for about six months before I decided we were incompatible and abruptly pulled the plug. That's something that bugs me to this day. I have no idea what I meant by incompatible. As far as I remember we got on very well. Maybe it was just the masculine fear of commitment.
There were lots of women I lusted after along the way, but they showed not a flicker of interest in return. Hardly surprising since I was never a dazzling Mr Beefcake, more a pigeon-chested Mr Average. I've posted before about my obsession with Gina, who I was besotted with but who always politely rebuffed me.
Then in 1981 I met Jenny. And the rest, as they say, is history.
