IT was late November in 1966 and I was in my first year at grammar school. I was shooting the breeze at lunchtime with some male classmates in the quadrangle when a girl from our form marched up to me and demanded: ‘Will you take Lynne Snowden to t’ swarry?’ Caught on the hop, not even knowing what she meant and keen not to lose face with the lads, I replied: ‘Will I buggery!’ ‘OK, I’ll tell her,’ came the reply.
Subsequent research revealed that the ‘swarry’ was in fact Lancastrian for soirée, a Christmas dance given in the main hall for each year-group on consecutive evenings. Three weeks before the event, first-form boys’ and girls’ separate games lessons were combined and given over to instruction in such exercises as the Barn Dance, the Veleta and the Gay Gordons.
Until her friend’s approach Lynne Snowden had not been on my radar but the realisation that a GIRL was interested in me suddenly made her seem the most beautiful and fascinating in the world. I was hopelessly in love but she disdained my spaniel-like gazes of devotion. And when I asked her to dance with me during the rehearsals, she replied: ‘No, I don’t think so.’ A crushing blow and it served me right for my thoughtless behaviour.
Of course, I should have apologised and beseeched her to accompany me to the dance but at the tender age of 11 I was too embarrassed, and restricted myself to worship from afar. Eleven is a terrible age. One day the music teacher announced that each of us was to sing solo Papageno’s Song by Mozart, and I was so terrorised that I was physically and dramatically sick on the scheduled day. But I digress.
Back to t’swarry, and what to wear at this highlight of the social calendar in beautiful downtown Nelson? My mum took me off to Burton’s the tailors where I was measured for a two-piece suit. I selected a dark-blue cloth with subtle black squares. It cost a penny short of ten pounds so that was my Christmas present gone.
Come the big night and I was almost too nervous to attend. Could I bear to see the lovely Lynne on someone else’s arm? And would I make a complete arse of myself on the dance floor?
Reader, all was well. Entering the hall I spotted the young lady standing alone and asked her for the first dance. Realising perhaps that if she refused she might end up with someone even worse, she graciously assented and we danced all night with nary a pratfall.
Did anything come of it? Nah. In those days the age of 11 was rightly regarded as far too young to have boyfriends and girlfriends, and we barely spoke again during the six-and-a-half years before leaving school.
At the second-year swarry I cut something of a dash in a black corduroy double-breasted Regency jacket over a white roll-neck jumper. It was enough to secure me the company of the belle of the ball, a girl from our form named Shirley Marsden who wore a patterned silk dress in red, yellow and orange. As we danced I sweated like a pig in my heavy clothes but she seemed not to hold it against me. In later days we discussed going to the pictures together but she insisted we should tell our mothers, who worked in the same cotton mill. I demurred, embarrassment again rearing its ugly head even though I’m now sure my mum would have been fine with the proposed date. So that was that regarding any Ashworth-Marsden attachment.
The following year I was again approached as a prospective swarry partner, and this time it was on behalf of a glamourpuss named Susan Evans, from a different form in our year. I instantly agreed, of course. It was subsequently made clear to me, however, that no romantic attachment was proposed because Susan was going out with a hard-case two years older named Bez and I was to be merely a chaperon. I did consider backing out but decided it might cause her boyfriend to beat the crap out of me. So we danced chastely together, she in velvet ball gown and me in check jacket over red crew-neck jumper. Afterwards I walked her back to the town centre, where Big Bad Bez awaited so I didn’t even get a goodnight kiss.
The reason I bore you with all this is the fact that I still recall those events of almost 60 years ago in minute detail – while these days I can hardly bring to mind what I did five minutes earlier, let alone what I wore the previous day. Described, as I have said before, as a CRAFT moment – ‘Can’t Remember A F***ing Thing’.
PS: I fail to recall subsequent swarries in such detail because they tended to involve illicit sneakings to the pub, half-bottles of vodka concealed in jacket pockets, necking and fumbling in dark corners. Yes, the age of innocence was over.
Old jokes’ home
The other day I met a bloke who compiles crosswords. I can’t remember his first name – it’s P-something T-something R.
A PS from PG
Jeeves: ‘And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er in the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.’
Bertie: ‘Exactly, you took the words right out of my mouth.’
PG Wodehouse: The Code of the Woosters