[Bagpuss]

Once upon a time there was a young lad who went to school at St Mary’s RC Oswaldtwistle. He loved his time there enjoying lessons, getting good grades and most of all playing football for the school team. Everything was fine until he started to notice the opposite sex, yes girls, he was aged 10 at the time and had taken a shine to a particular 9 year old, a dark haired cutie that had the loveliest eyes he had ever seen. Now as he had never had feelings for a girl before confusion set in, what was he to do? His knowledge of how to ask her out or even how to get her to notice him was extremely limited to school yard chatter and bits of stuff he had heard from older boys when out playing, but none of this was much use to him. Unable to deal with his emotions he did nothing but continued to gaze at her hoping to catch her eye but never did.

Then one day after football practice the young lad and a couple of his team mates where chatting as they sat having a drink on a grassy hill at the side of the pitch. The topic of conversation was the upcoming semi-final that the team were due to play but then it changed as one lad mentioned that he was thinking of asking a girl from the year below to go on a date with him. Sheepishly our hero asked “which one?” hoping the reply wouldn’t be the girl of his dreams. Of course the reply was the one he didn’t want to hear and in a panic said, “when are you going to ask her?” “as soon as I see her”, was the response, by now it had become obvious to the others that our hero also had the hots for the same girl and he knew it was judgement day and he had to do something about it.

As chance has it five minutes later he saw his girl approaching the bottom of the hill, the two love struck lads jumped to their feet and ran down to meet her. Still dumbstruck our hero couldn’t make the first move and lost out with the first line to his rival. To this day what was said and where the other lad asked her to go is still a blur but he remembers blurting out no don’t go with him I would like you to go out with me instead.

The next part of this story is so sad it stayed with him for years ruining his promising football career and putting him back to reception class when it came to asking girls out. In his eyes this girl was perfect and when she said she couldn’t decide his chest went tight and he felt ill, “I like clean boys” she said, “I can’t go out with someone who is dirty”, what does she mean he thought, “please show me your knees and elbows, whoever has the cleanest I will go out with”. At this all our hero was feeling was horror, all he was thinking was I made a tackle in that muddy puddle and I’m black under my tracksuit.

The rest is history he lost the girl because he had dirty knees, they never got as far as the elbows. For years he was obsessed with washing his knees, playing footy was no fun anymore, even in later life when he was getting ready for a night out he had a check list which included checking if he had clean knees.

Life can be cruel, he never forgot this young girl and imagine his surprise when he found out she was a member of Accyweb, could he keep it to himself, his tragic story or should he reminisce with her about how what happened all those years ago changed his life forever.


Cast
Our Hero - Bagpuss
Dark Haired Cutie - Gayle Knight

(I Hope her hubby has clean knees)