Loves of my life

There has not been that many. Being a shy person seems to hamper ones love life. However, I made an early start in the love stakes at the age of four. It was after Rosie and I had been cast as Bride and Bridegroom in a school play. Rosie lived a few doors away from me and after our performance in the mock wedding, we became playmates, not exactly lovers. Shortly after that my family moved to the next village and it fizzled out. At the age of seven I was besotted with Cynthia, this was love and I was sure she felt the same way to me by the loving looks she gave me, but we never seemed to be able to be alone together. Alas it petered out during the long school summer holidays. I wonder what happened to Cynthia? I have even forgotten what she looked like.
Nine years passed before my next encounter with the fairer sex. Peggy was a kitchen maid at the gentlemans estate where I worked in my first job after leaving school. The usual practice in those days was to take a girl to the cinama for a cuddle in the back row, in the dark, never mind what the film was about, that didn't matter. Peggy left her job as kitchen maid and went to work as a conductress with a local bus company. That was the end of that.
Not too long after that I was called up into the army. There were a few casual flings with ATS girls, nothing serious. While on leave in 1946 I went sick and ended up in the East Suffolk Hospital, Anglesey road Ipswich. After a few days I was transferred to The Bartlett in Felixstowe where I spent a month recuperating. Now the night nurse and I became very friendly. When all the other patients were safely asleep she would come and lay beside me on my bed, I had no problems in staying awake.I didn't want to leave the Bartlett and made excuses to the doctors that I did not feel fit enough to go back to my unit but I could only pull the wool over their eyes for so long. I did see her a few times after that, but it fizzled out as well.
Back to my unit, my mate Jimmy Bond, was Mess serjeant in the officers mess of our battallion. He wanted a barman, was I interested. I jumped at the chance. Now Mary was a cook and I quite liked her and she liked me, but she also had another follower and couldn't quite make her mind up. I had my own room in a nissen hut and Mary would bring me an early morning mug of tea when she was on the early morning duty. I had only been in that job a few months when I was posted to Colchester. the end of another romance.
My sister was getting married in June 1945. I had the job of giving her away as dad was an invalid confined to a wheelchair. During the festivities after the ceremony my next encounter was with Margaret, a land army friend of my sister, she was the only young woman there as far as I could see. I saw her every weekend as I was only a few miles away in Colchester but after a few weeks she left the land army and went back home to Bradford, I was not too worried as soon after I met Clare. On our first meeting we both realised that we would spend the rest of our lives together. My life carries on, but hers ended after we had spent 53 years together. It's no fun living on one's own but no-one could take her place.