It's here again, that season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, and do you know what? I'm really glad. I love autumn, with its turning, tumbling leaves, its chill, frosty-grassed mornings and dark, silent nights. I love pulling on a warm sweater and a pair of old jeans and getting out into the garden to dig over the vegetable plot or stack logs. I'm made for autumn; I'm not blond enough for summer or winsome enough for spring, but I know that autumn is my time. It's the season for doing things, the season for storing and stacking and stocking, and everything else that begins with an 's'; but sadly one of the nicest 's' things that you can do on a chill, Sunday morning is still denied me, and that does rankle a bit. So I get out of bed at 8.30am, instead of staying where its warm and cosy, and I make myself a pot of tea for one. I read the Sunday papers without comment, because the girls are watching television, and Popworld beats politics for them every time. And when I've had my toast and peanut butter, I pull on my work boots and busy myself outside where its fresh and cold.

Today we picked Bramley apples from the two old trees in the garden; the girls loaded them into an old wooded box, which they put on a cart and took down into the village. They sell the apples in aid of the British Heart Foundation, and last year they collected £8.57, but this year they did rather better and managed to raise a whopping £29.00. I think having a couple of sizeable marrows on their cart help push up the proceeds, but even so, I'd like to thank all the people who contributed to such a worthy cause.

I have been making blackberry and apple crumble non-stop for two weeks now, and still the girls haven't tired of it. They are thriving on it, but I think eating a big bowl of crumble before bed is giving me an overactive imagination, which is something that I could really do without. I dreamed last night of what it feels like when a man takes your hand for the first time, and I dreamed of what it is like to be kissed, and it felt warm and wonderful, like cashmere next to the skin, like firelight and hot buttered toast. The longing I have for that first kiss has not diminished over time, it sits inside my subconscious and I keep it suppressed as best I can, but in my dreams it can escape and in my dreams I can kiss any man I choose. For me a kiss is the most exquisite expression of emotion, and when I see pictures of drunken girls in Faliraki, snogging undesirable yobs with clinical detachment and ill-disguised contempt, I feel sad that such a wondrous thing, such an intimate and sensual act, can be squandered by women who should be savouring it.

I admit I've kissed a few undesirable men in my time; there was the guy at school who had rather too many teeth and spots, and a guy at college who had a better body, fewer spots but more teeth. He took me home to meet his parents and then we adjourned to his bedroom and he put on 'Dark Side of the Moon' by Pink Floyd, and kissed me for the first time. And I really wished I had been anywhere else but in his bedroom, because when he kissed me there seemed to be so many teeth that I felt like I was necking an over-amorous piano accordion. It was awkward and uncomfortable and I ended up with a good deal more saliva in my mouth that I had begun with. Pink Floyd did nothing for the mood, I could just have easily been listening to Keith Floyd, all thoughts of romance had left the building, and I was left wondering how I was going to make my excuses and follow.

I can't remember how I ended it, but I don't think I'd get any prizes for sincerity. I should have been grateful for the attention, after all I wasn't exactly a bubbly blond cheerleader or head of the debating society, I was just Kate Dobson, the sarcastic girl with the dirty laugh. The real object of my desire wouldn't look at me twice. I worshipped him from afar, but afar was about as close as I ever got. There was something about his shy demeanour that suggested to me that he was a great kisser, and he was probably hung like a bear, because shy, good-looking men so often are, but I never got the chance to find out because I was a demure, innocent, seventeen-year-old, and the captain of the college rugby team was way out of my league.

I was never destined to be a trophy girlfriend, more of a consolation prize, but that didn't stop me wanting the best. And that's just what I ended up with. I held out for the man of my dreams and when he walked into my life I knew I had been right to trust to fate. And with him I discovered just how wonderful a kiss could be, when teeth don't clash and excess spittle doesn't dribble down your chin. I realised that kissing is the ultimate expression of love, and that if you get the right man, and the right amount of commitment, kissing can take you to places that you had only ever dreamed of.

I haven't been to that place for six years. I can hardly remember how to get there, but I'm hoping that soon I'll meet a man who can give me directions. And I'm trying not to build up my expectations too much, and I don't think about it when I'm awake, but sometimes, when my mind is unfettered by conscious thought, I get a taste of it, that first kiss, and it's sweet and soft, like blackberry and apple crumble and I don't ever want it to end. But daylight banishes my dreams, and I get a grip on my emotions and push all thoughts of kissing back into the dark recesses of my mind.

Pity the man who gets to give me my first kiss. Pity him indeed, because he's going to need breathing apparatus and the stamina of a triathlete in order to sate my lip-lust. Woman cannot live by crumble alone, and sooner or later I will get the chance to kiss a man who is not just a figment of my bramble-powered imagination.


© Kate Boydell 2004. All rights reserved. e-mail: [email protected]. Close window.