Hunting High and Low

My mother was only five years older than I am now, the first time that I fell in love. Unlike other mothers she didn't discourage me or make comments about how they looked like a girl. No, that was left to my father. Even so, both parents seemed happy enough to let me spent hour after hour locked in my room with my love, the first time that I had been old enough to want to shut my bedroom door.

The love was pure, exciting and filled with the boundless enthusiasm of youth. I though that I was so luck to feel that way and pitied the loveless around me. Several of my friends had fallen in love the year before but I felt that I had invented it and they didn't really understand.

Over time it grew into an obsession, healthy or otherwise, which was a common problem amongst the lovelorn at my school. And although I was just 11 years old, I felt that I was loved back, understood and my emotions returned.

Eventually, inevitably, I began to outgrow my love. But the first cut is the deepest, as they say, and it was always precious to me. People would joke about my first love but I felt that a love that pure should never be something to laugh at, no matter how it ended. I may have only been 11 but this was real.

I will always remember how I felt the first time that I saw my love- the rush of excitment, a feeling that I had never experienced before. I first saw them at my friend, Kathryn's, house for there was more than one object of my affections, indeed my emotions were claimed by no less than three people. Three six foot tall Nordic gods in their mid-twenties.

Yes, I am talking of my first celebrity crush. The deserving ones were the members of Aha, of 'Take on me' fame- also known as 'that video' back in 1985.

And it is true that I have never forgotten them. And on Sunday I bought one of their albums on CD. Of course, I have it on vinyl from my original purchase in 1986, when I ran out of school during my lunch hour to buy it the day that it was released and carried it around school for the rest of the day as if it was the most precious thing in the world. Which, of course, it was.

Now I'm listening to it on my MP3 player and I am reminded of the emotions that led me to jump around the room the first time that I played it, putting a small scratch at the beginning of the first track. I was perturbed that the CD doesn't retain this jump but amazed that I could still remember most of the words. Memories rush through my mind and my heart and I am 12 years old again and singing as though Aha might hear me, recognise my love and realise that they loved me right back.

Not a bad way to spend the journey to work. And the reason that I will always consider six foot to be the most attractive height in a man.