There I was. In my old bedroom, a bedroom I hadn�t seen in over six years, but it still looked the same. In fact it was the same. And all those memories came flooding back and I thought about her. Well, what would you do?

It was winter. It was cold. And the heating wasn�t on. It only came on twice a day. A cost saving measure. And I wasn�t paying the rent so there was nothing I could do about that, not that I wanted to. It wasn�t my house, it wasn�t my central heating, and ultimately it wasn�t my bill.

So I thought about my first love and remembered the letters, those love letters. And I pulled them out, from an old dusty bundle, in a dark recess in my wardrobe. And the letters were still there, faded and dated by time. Written over a decade before and now it was the millennium, and I was a decade older, and nobody even writes letters anymore.

I couldn�t read the letters, it was too much, but I shook the sun-faded envelopes until it dropped into my open palm. The photo! The only one I ever had. And there she was. My first love, long blonde hair flying in the wind, sixteen years of age, flawless skin, full lips, beautiful. How pretty she looked.

And she was in my bedroom, sun-tanned, confident. Looking so sexy, so wonderful, so superior. She flipped through my tiny record collection, six LP�s and seven singles. They didn�t interest her, �Do you have any Beach Boys? Some boys we met on holiday played them on the beach!�

A surge of jealousy, some boys she met on holiday; the beach!

I ran downstairs and flicked through my old man�s record collection, and there it was, �Pet Sounds.� I checked out the cover. There was no sign of the beach, or surfboards, or surfer girls, just a bunch of nerdy looking dudes feeding goats. But it was definitely the Beach Boys.

I raced upstairs and flipped the album onto the turntable. And �Wouldn�t it be Nice,� the intro sounding like a bad ice-cream van jingle came floating out the speakers. My first love pulled a face. �Is that the Beach Boys?� But it was the Beach Boys, and as the jingle faded away and the first drum crashed, the music spoke to me, telling me what I wanted to hear, and it wasn�t pop music, but a teenage symphony.

And we lay together on my single bed, listening to the Beach Boys in the pale cool evening, and didn�t talk. Then, like a miracle, she put her head on my shoulder. And I could hear so much in her sigh.

Joe grew up in the East End of London and left school with few qualifications. He then embarked on a succession of menial jobs. After being stabbed in a bar brawl and getting robbed at knifepoint he decided it was time to leave the country and promptly travelled the world; Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. He stayed in Australia for three years living mostly in the Kings Cross area of Sydney until he became an illegal immigrant. To avoid being deported Joe then went to Thailand and brought a share in the world's smallest bar, the famous and now defunct Barcelona Bar. After fleeing Thailand with a tail between his legs he returned to London in 2001 where he lives and writes to this day. To read Joe�s story �Candice� on the showcase section of this site, click here

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.