My ‘courtship’ with my first love began in a laneway behind a shop some 34 years ago.

I had this unknown desire to kiss this boy I’d seen around town, and I must have known him, but we’d not been friends as such. At 16, everything is possible, so my good friend set up the rendezvous for me and on a Saturday afternoon, as I recall, I met said boy and had my first lustful kiss! There was something about his mouth that made me want to touch it, kiss it – I just couldn’t resist it.

Little did I know then that that kiss would be the start of a friendship for many years to come? And I say friendship because although we did have a connection in those early days, I could never say that we were really boyfriend and girlfriend. Sadly, I don’t remember a lot of the details of that time and I know that would piss him off! I can hear him in my head saying ‘Aah come on now Lotus, ffs you do remember, you do!’ But sadly I don’t.

What I do remember is that when I left Ireland towards the end of 1982 and moved to Australia, he used to write me 20 or so foolscap pages almost every week. What was in those letters I can’t recall, but I do know that I would go out to the letterbox at the end of my Aunt’s driveway and retrieve that little bit of Ireland, bare feet blistering from the heat of the concrete, and saviour every word he wrote to me. I was terribly homesick for Ireland and he fed that addiction for me for quite some time.

Our friendship dwindled slowly, but a few years later I returned to Ireland for a short period of time and again caught up with him. One of the few photos I have of him and I is from that time – we are such fresh young faced children, it is indeed a lifetime ago. It remains one of the best Christmas’ of my life.

It was twenty years before I heard from him again. Our lives had taken such diverse paths, but at the time our 21^st school reunion, we both found ourselves single in the same country for the first time in years – my life was in turmoil, but my old friend was always keen to listen to a woman in distress and offer his assistance, so was quickly by my side once more. We spent an illicit weekend together, revelling in each other and the secrecy of our meeting.  We didn’t want anyone to know that we had taken our old school day crush to an adult level and for me it was the first time I’d slept with anyone other than my newly divorced husband for a very long time. He made me feel alive, looked longingly at my body, told me I had the ‘prettiest  vagina he’d ever seen’, which of course made me laugh till I cried. He’d never lost his sense of fun and neither of us could believe we were in the same bed after twenty odd years.

After a couple of weeks I had to return to Australia. We spoke for many hours across the world over a few months and then that following Christmas I took a mad gamble and travelled back to Ireland to spend a couple of weeks with him, travelling around Ireland and really trying to figure out where ‘we’ were headed.

It was a very funny trip, made all the better by the fact that I took my best friend from Melbourne with me, bought the tickets and was with him in Ireland within almost 24 hours – he of course thought I was stone raving mad, which I was, if not a little drunk, but we had so much fun! For me he was a very bright light at the end of a very dark tunnel. He made my laugh and reminded me of all the things I missed about Ireland and my childhood there.

We went to Galway, and up around Kerry, we climbed the cliffs of Mohar and kissed the Blarney stone! A mixed up ‘trio’ traipsing the countryside in the height of winter – and through it all I remember the laughter, the jibes, the “Irishness” of my old friend and my best  ‘Aussie’ mate trying to figure each other out!

Of course I had children and a job to go back to, so returned to Australia and decided that although I loved him in some way, a life with him was not for me. He was too much of a ‘messer’.

We had many a ‘secret’ rendezvous over following years. I stole the odd weekend with him when on business or holiday trips. But life moved on for me.  I really wasn’t the blue-eyed girl he thought, and in time he too moved on.

We’d shared a bit of anger at each other over the years. He never forgave me for losing his Pink Floyd – Wish you were here, limited edition postcard that he had sacrificed by sending to me all those years ago – and could not believe it when I told him I must have thrown it out – he was genuinely shitty with me over that and often mentioned it over the years.

When he died last month (at 49) I cried for a week for my old love, for that all that might have been, but today is his birthday and his laughter still rings in my head.