Sitting in a city-centre pub in Bath some years ago, enjoying lunch with two friends, one of them quietly pointed out that a raffish looking individual in the corner kept looking covertly at me. Equally covertly, I turned slowly round and the creature with long blond hair, a fetching purple shirt, and a fringed suede leather jacket quickly looked away, but continued to take quiet little looks in my direction.
Needless to say, my friends teased me mercilessly about this throughout lunch and, as Blondie got up to leave the pub, they went into stitches as “he” came up to me and spoke the immortal words of the world’s worst chat-up line, “I think we’ve met before. May I ask you your name?” Perhaps not surprisingly in the circumstances, I automatically switched to “no need to know” mode and, somwehat stuffily in the circumstances, asked why he wanted to know. By this time my friends were absolutely beside themselves with suppressed laughter.
“Oh,” he said, “I’m sorry to say that I don’t recognise your face, but I would recognise your voice anywhere”. Belatedly, I switched to “I’ll tell you who I am, if you tell me who you are” mode, following which I quickly discovered that Blondie and I had served together in HMS BELFAST when he was an engineer officer and I was a sub lieutenant - twenty-eight years previously! Well, at least it’s nice to know that I hadn’t changed out of all recognition ……..
Jack