The Stone Roses and a girl called Claire

17 Oct

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Well, try as I might, It was difficult to rectify things after this mistake. I got us tickets to see The House of Love at the Tunbridge Wells Angel Centre, which was near to where Claire lived in Tonbridge. I got a train all the way down, but things were not the same between us. I slept in Claire’s room, while she slept in her sister’s. I wrote another long letter while I was there, and underneath her poster of The Cure’s “Boy’s Don’t Cry”, I wrote “Yes they do”, which she really wasn’t impressed by, as she let me know in her next letter. Sending her my Boys Don’t Cry t-shirt (I’d gone off The Cure anyway) partly recovered things, but that was the last time we met up.

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We carried on writing, but distance was always the problem. We planned to meet up in London, but then Claire’s mum would supposedly stop her for fear of an IRA bomb attack while we were there! I got tickets for Spike Island, but Claire couldn’t come, and I ended up going with another Claire I’d got friendly with!

We each had other girlfriends/boyfriends, who we were happy to tell each other about in our letters – it was becoming more like a friendship – although secretly, I still hoped we could rekindle the flame at some point. At one time, Claire did some work experience with Sony, and sent me vinyl promo copies of albums by Liverpool bands The Real People and Rain. Perhaps just because they were on Sony, I told her I thought they were a bit commercial-sounding (another mistake probably!). I did later get quite into The Real People, but I never liked Rain.

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When I finished school, I did quite a lot of drugs, and went a bit crazy. I also had some quite bizarre experiences of God, which would eventually lead me to denounce atheism. Helen, my girlfriend at the time went away for a fortnight, and I sent Claire a letter saying “I love you more than I love Jesus (a reference I hoped she’d get to a band called Slow Bongo Floyd), Please marry me.” Then, without waiting for an answer, I hitched down to see her. She was there with her sister and boyfriend. On her wall was a giant picture of the cover of the Rain album, which I think Claire had painted. Well, anyway, I went pretty nuts – can’t really remember what I said, but my dad had to drive all the way and pick me up, and not long after, I had to have a spell in the nearby psychiatric hospital.

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I never heard from Claire again. In fairness to Helen, she stuck by me, even while I was ill. After about 10 years of no contact, I had just about decided that was that as far as Claire was concerned, until I got an anonymous Valentine’s message through friendsreunited saying something like, “Oh Nicholas, how I have yearned for you after 8 long years. I am married now, but you will always have a special place in my heart. Love always ?” The timing was wrong – it would have been more like 10 years since I’d seen Claire, it wasn’t quite her style, and I had thought she now hated me, but there weren’t too many other people who I thought it could be from. I sent a reply, but got nothing back – the person remained anonymous, and I still don’t know who sent it, despite contacting friendsreunited.

It did occur to me though that perhaps it might be worth trying to look up Claire again following this. I paid something like £50 to a tracking site that gave me Claire’s new name and address. Twenty years after I’d sent Claire “Can’t Shake the Feeling” for her birthday, in the heavy snow of January 2010, I got on a train to where Claire now lived, this time with a real red rose, and a 12” of a dance track I’d got made a while back, featuring lyrics based on “Standing Here” by The Stone Roses, which was the b-side to “She Bangs The Drums”, and possibly the better song.

http://www.myspace.com/classbreaks

I knocked on the door, not really knowing how it would go. A grown-up Claire answered, but sadly, as soon as she recognised who I was, she slammed the door shut, and rang the police. If closure was what I was looking for, I’d definitely got it now!

So while I am over the moon about seeing a re-formed Stone Roses, and hearing any new material – I still think they might go on to produce another 4 or 5 classic albums – it won’t be quite the same listening to them without knowing what Claire thinks of them now. Of course she’s blocked me on facebook, even though I’d be happy to lose all my other friends if she did add me (perhaps we could resume writing via this new-fangled format)! Claire, if you do happen to read this – I still want to know what you thought of “Second Coming”! And P.S. Hope this isn’t too embarrassing!

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